Sanctuary ee-1

by Paul B. Thompson

  Two more horns blew, and the Lioness was on her feet.

  “Nomads?” said Favaronas, dropping his plate of beans.

  “No,” she said, her attention focused toward the sounds. “Northeast, from deeper in the valley. The other two signals are from the sentries on either side of Camthantas.”

  She pointed at two of her commanders, indicating they and their troops would accompany her. Glanthon would remain to defend the camp. The warriors scattered to their duties.

  “You, too, Favaronas. You’re with me.”

  He jumped to his feet, face ashen in the low light. “What? I’m no warrior! And I can’t ride that beast of yours!”

  “You don’t have to. I’ll go by horse.” Eagle Eye was asleep, tethered inside an angle of stone wall. He’d spent many hours in the air today and had earned a good rest.

  The Lioness took Favaronas’s arm and pulled him along. “I’m sorry, but I may need your knowledge of the valley.” When be continued to babble frightened protests she whipped around and shouted into his face, “Favaronas! I need you! And I will protect you!”

  In minutes forty elves, led by the Lioness, with her reluctant companion riding pillion, were cantering up the road toward Camthantas’s position. The Vale of Silence was lit only by the stars, brilliant as a thousand diamonds on a bed of ebony silk. Off to Kerian’s right, another alarm horn sounded, then another. In succession, the signals showed the source of the alarm was moving away from her and her small troop. She pressed ahead. When she reached Camthantas’s assigned position she knew something was very wrong. His horse was dead, its stomach slashed open.

  “Draw swords!” Forty blades rose into the cool darkness. “First troop, deploy left; second, right! No one is to lose sight of his neighbor. At the walk, advance!”

  She felt Favaronas trembling violently behind her, his hands lightly holding her waist. She was not without compassion. He was indeed no warrior. Despite this, and the deaths of his assistants, he’d not slowed them down on their difficult trek. Now he followed her into battle-perhaps not willingly, but without whining. Gruffly, she told him to stop worrying about protocol and hold on tight. His shaking hands clenched her waist.

  They moved forward slowly. Her command to keep in sight of each other soon proved impossible to obey; the warriors were forced to ride around sections of walls or monoliths.

  Something darted between two towering sarsens, and Favaronas let out a cry. He’d seen only a silhouette, but it was big-bigger than a horse. As he stuttered this warning, realization flooded through Kerian.

  Wrenching her horse’s head around, she shouted, “The sand beast! Retreat! Retreat!”

  Her words were punctuated by a nearby chorus of shouts, followed by a veritable fanfare of horns. She kicked her horse into a gallop. Favaronas yelped as he was flung backward, but his grip never loosened.

  “Rally to me, by the road! Rally to me!”

  The forty elves converged on their general. Several confirmed her fears. They’d seen the reptilian monster. Arrows were nocked. The horses shied and snorted. They could smell the sand beast.

  And then it was upon them, zigzagging through the ancient stones with unbelievable agility and speed. Bows creaked, strings sang, and arrows sped at the monster. Every one glanced off.

  The Lioness drew a bead on the monster’s eye, but it moved so fast her arrow flashed through empty air. The sand beast charged among the elves, throwing its horned head this way and that. The horses’ mad panic made it hard for their riders to avoid the beast’s rush. Horses and elves tumbled to the ground. It leaped upon one struggling pair, savaging them. All the while arrows bounced off its armored hide.

  “How can we kill this thing?” Kerian shouted desperately.

  One horse, braver than its fellows, lashed out at the bloodthirsty beast. With iron-shod hooves coming directly at its eyes, the monster backed up, bumping against a standing stone. The eighteen-foot monolith shifted.

  Favaronas, clinging to Kerian’s back, saw this, and it gave him an idea. “General, look!” he shouted, pounding her shoulder with the side of one hand. “The stone is loose! If we topple it-!”

  She began issuing orders before he’d even finished. While most of the troop fought to keep the monster where it was, fourteen elves, dismounted, gathered on the other side of the stone to push.

  The attackers charged, launching arrows at the sand beast’s head. The creature was forced to blink every time an arrow flew at its eyes. Hips against the monolith, it shook its head from side to side and screeched with frustrated fury.

  “Now!” Kerian cried.

  Fourteen elves threw themselves on the tottering spire. it gave a little, and the sand beast obligingly stepped forward when it felt the cold stone nudge its back. The attackers pressed in, harder, and the sand beast fell back, rocking the stone backward and loosening it further.

  “Again!”

  Elves clambered up to their comrades’ shoulders to get at the leaning stone. With groans, grunts, and more than a few curses, they shoved the monolith. At its base, the turquoise soil began to bulge and rise. The monument was breaking loose.

  “Get back! Get back!”

  Elves on foot and horseback scattered. Suddenly freed of the annoying rain of arrows, the sand beast lashed out with a foreclaw. With its double burden, the Lioness’s horse lagged behind the rest. Iron claws snared the animal’s flanks. Horse and riders went down in a heap.

  The great stone continued its inexorable fall. The sand beast sensed the danger, but too late. The tapered spire crashed down on its hips, smashing it to the ground and pinning it beneath tons of stone. The beast let out a high-pitched howl.

  Elves scrambled up the monolith, adding their weight to the burden on the creature’s legs. As it roared and clawed at the stone, they stabbed furiously at the softer skin under its legs. Some swords snapped, but enough penetrated to make blood flow. Stirred by an agony it had never known, the sand beast arched its back with a mighty effort, shifting pillar and elves, and freeing itself. Crushed hindquarters dragging, it fled, mighty foreclaws propelling it several yards at a time. The lust to kill elves was subsumed beneath a more primal need-to live.

  Her warriors found the Lioness, groggy but uninjured. Atop her sprawled Favaronas; the archivist was senseless.

  “We beat it, General! It’s running away!” they shouted, moving Favaronas aside and pulling her to her feet.

  The words penetrated the fog in her battered brain. “What? Go after it! Don’t let it escape!”

  Mounted elves spurred away. Kerian called for a new horse. While one was being brought, she knelt by Favaronas. Blood trickled from his nose, but his eyes had opened. With her help, he sat up, holding his head in both hands.

  “We aren’t dead?” he muttered.

  She grinned. “Didn’t I tell you I’d protect you? I even let you land on me!”

  The sour look froze on his face as his gaze went beyond her. “Look there!”

  Issuing from the deep hole left by the uprooted monolith was a swarm of tiny lights. They drifted and darted in the night air: blue, white, red, and a smoky orange. The blue lights rose more quickly than the rest, and winked out one by one. White and red lights drifted to the ground and died like embers falling on wet grass. Only the orange wisps remained, circling and rising.

  The Lioness had taken a few steps toward the lights, but Favaronas warned, “Stay back! Don’t touch them!”

  “What are they?”

  “I don’t know, but they were imprisoned by the standing pillar. They weren’t meant to roam free!”

  A horse arrived for Kerian. Wincing from her accumulated hurts, she swung onto its back, telling Favaronas, “Watch those things. Tell me what happens.” She spurted hard after the sand beast.

  The orbiting orange lights peeled off in groups of two and three, and followed her. Favaronas and the foot-bound warriors shouted warnings, but she was already too far away to hear.

  Fiery pain kept the
sand beast to a speed little better than a horse’s best gallop. The bones broken in its left hip grated against each other. Sword cuts in the tender junction of its left hind leg burned.

  Great as its agony was, even stronger was the fury blazing in its breast. The need for vengeance pushed it onward. It would visit this pain a hundredfold on the one who had sent it here. If necessary, it would cross the entire world to slay the one responsible for this agony.

  Something snagged its right rear foot. Brought up short, the monster toppled forward, burying its chin in the turf. Before it could get up, more ropes whistled in, snagging its horned head and front limbs. Each loop drew tight, the one encircling its neck cinching so hard it couldn’t draw breath. Then the creature found itself pulled in four directions at once.

  Kerian galloped into the fantastic scene. The sand beast was down, thrashing against its bonds. Wounded and confused, it couldn’t break the ropes holding it before more arrived. Its gyrations tore up clods of blue-green soil and widened its wounds. Blood flowed freely. Additional loops cinched its neck. Its eyes bulged as the pressure on its throat grew and grew.

  As her horse skidded to a halt, she was amazed to see the orange lights sweep past her. They never paused, but flowed toward the tormented beast. They held off a few feet, sparkling like quartz in firelight, until all their number was gathered, then in unison they dropped. When they touched the sand beast’s hard flesh the area was bathed in a silent flash of white light. A gust of cold wind stole Kerian’s breath. The ropes abruptly went slack, causing the straining horses to surge forward and nearly unseating their riders.

  To the amazement of all, the sand beast was gone.

  * * * * *

  Wapah halted at the flap of Adala’s tent. “Weyadan, I have food for you.”

  “Enter, cousin.”

  He ducked under the ridge pole and knelt in front of her, taking care not to spill the contents of the tin plate he carried. Only ripe olives, bread, and rice, all cold, but she made no comment on the poor fare.

  Two days had passed since the laddad had escaped into the Valley of the Blue Sands. Adala had pitched her tent where she stood, and the rest of the nomad warriors camped around her, tending their wounded and burying their dead. Here they would remain until the elves returned.

  Trouble was, they were not equipped for a long stay. They had only the food and water they happened to be carrying at the time of the battle, and nothing more. It was their tradition to fight light and unencumbered; siege warfare was not their style. The bulk of their supplies had been lost when the family camp was attacked.

  Shortages appeared immediately. Inmost Khurish camps, each tent had its own fire, but the nomads had so little fuel, campfires were rationed to one per five tents. Traditionally, they burned cow or goat droppings, but they were far from their herds. Water was precious, and food scarce.

  Adala went without a fire, though any warrior in her host gladly would have given up his fuel to her. She sat in her tent and sewed on a project of her own, her only illumination the starshine she collected in a concave silver mirror set in the open door.

  “There’s no sign of the enemy,” Wapah reported. She nodded, but didn’t look up. Her fingertips were pricked and red with irritation, the inevitable consequence of sewing so long in such poor light.

  He waited for her to stop sewing and eat. When several long minutes passed with no sign of this happening, he decided to go ahead and ask the question weighing on his mind. She would eat when she would eat.

  “Maita, how long will we stay here?”

  Lately, the tribesmen had added this to her titles. No longer speaking of “Adala’s maita,” they named her Fate itself.

  “We will stay here until the laddad come out.” She turned the heavy rectangle of cloth over and started stitching on the other side. “Or until we are told to go.”

  “Told by whom?”

  “Those on High. I am but Their instrument.”

  Frowning, Wapah departed. It was a dark and somber camp he traversed back to the tent of Bindas, newly sworn war chief of the Weya-Lu. The tribe’s warmasters had taken to congregating there, not least of all because Bindas’s late uncle, Gwarali, never traveled anywhere without a generous supply of wheat beer. The leaders sat together in the hot darkness, sipping beer from tiny brass cups and speaking in low tones about their situation. Already there was talk of leaving the valley mouth. They didn’t need to hover here, the dissidents said. All they need do was guard to route back to Khuri-Khan, and they would surely catch the laddad as they tried to return to their people. Food, water, medicine, and other supplies could be had by trading if only they left this place and kept on the move. That was their way. Sitting here in the shadow of the Pillars of Heaven was foreign, and dangerous.

  “The Weyadan knows what she is doing,” Wapah insisted. “Those on High have chosen her to cleanse our land. Do you doubt her?”

  None would say so, but the beginning of that sentiment was plain in the black tent, as plain as the aroma of Gwarali’s brew.

  Talk turned to strategy. What was the best way to catch and defeat the elusive elves? Their long-legged horses were strong and fast, if not as hardy as desert ponies. Laddad armor resisted the nomads’ favorite weapon, the bow. Even their swords had longer blades than the tribesmen’s.

  “In Estwilde, the Nerakans rode with lances,” said Bindas. He’d served as a mercenary in the Knights’ army during the recent great war. “They pierced any metal plate they rode at.”

  “You need hardwood to make lances,” another mercenary veteran pointed out.

  “We can trade for it.”

  “Before the laddad come out?”

  And so it went. Voices rose and tempers flared as more beer was consumed and frustrations were voiced. A few of the warmasters who’d been to the world outside Khur offered to lead troops into the valley to find the elves.

  The older chiefs were shocked. “Your crime would be as great as theirs!” one said.

  “Where is it written we may not enter the valley?” said a young warmaster. “It is tradition, yes, but why? What makes this place so sacred?”

  Wapah cleared his throat. Many rolled their eyes; the Weyadan’s cousin was known as a talker.

  “When Those on High made the world, each in turn pressed a hand on the new ground, leaving an impression. Each god said, ‘This is my place. Let no one desecrate it.’ Over time, the elements and various upheavals obscured most of these places. But the Valley of the Blue Sands remains, just as when the gods made it. It is their place, not ours, and not the laddad’s.”

  Silence reigned for a time, broken only by the clink of brass cups and the splash of beer being poured. Bindas drained the last drops from his cup set it down. He was asking pardon of the group, preparing to suggest they all sleep, when a strange, metallic blast rang out over the camp. The men hurried outside, joining the rest of the camp, likewise turning out to see what was happening.

  The sound came again, and they found its source. On the crest of a ridge sixty yards away, framed by the starry sky, a rider on a rearing horse was blowing a horn. Bows were strung, but Bindas put a stop to anyone loosing an arrow. An enemy would hardly announce his coming with a brass horn.

  The rider galloped down the stony hillside, zigzagging around juniper bushes and large rocks, to the center of the camp. This put him outside Adala’s tent. The Weyadan came out in time to receive the swirl of dust kicked up as the black horse skidded to a halt. Its rider was clothed in billowing robes, not light-colored like a traditional geb, but scarlet, turned nearly black by the starlight. His head was covered by the robe’s hood. He was lean, with a pale foreign face. He seemed small, but perhaps that was only because his horse was so large, eighteen hands at least.

  “Who commands here?” he asked. The voice was male, and young. “Do you understand me? Who is your leader?” “I am.” Adala stepped forward. “Who are you?”

  “I bring you a message from Shobbat, Prince of Khur
!” He paused, obviously expecting a response. When Adala gave none, he added, more loudly, “The prince calls upon the desert people of Khur to save their country!”

  “That’s what we’re doing.”

  Adala lifted her hem and approached. She stopped quite close to the imposing horse and looked up at its crimson-clad rider. “I am Adala, Weyadan of the Weya-Lu, chosen leader of these people. This horse is not Khurish. Neither are you. Who are you?”

  “A messenger, nothing more. I was born beyond the mountains. Now I serve in Khur. I have a proclamation from Prince Shobbat. Will you receive it?”

  “Why does the Prince of Khur employ foreigners to do his bidding?” Adala asked.

  The messenger had removed a small scroll from his belt. “My horse is powerful and swift. I came to Khuri-Khan to serve.”

  Adala shrugged one shoulder, and murmured an old proverb: “A rat in a palace is still a rat.”

  The rider flung the scroll at her feet. “There is Prince Shobbat’s summons. Read it, and know the truth. Or do I need to read it for you?”

  The slur went unchallenged. Adala picked up the scroll and handed it to Bindas, standing near her. The war chief broke the seal and read the message aloud.

  “‘Be it known, I, Shobbat, rightful prince of Khur, do set my hand to this message.

  “‘Beloved sons of Khur: the plague of foreigners we have long endured now threatens our ancient land. For five years, the laddad have dwelt among us, living their foreign lives and spreading their foreign ideas. In Khuri-Khan their steel buys hearts and their heresy clouds minds. My father, the Khan of All the Khurs, Sahim, has succumbed to the lure of laddad money.’”

  The nomads already thought this was true. Hearing it from Sahim’s heir was a revelation. There were murmurs and wide eyes all around.

  ‘The temples of Khuri-Khan have become unclean. Sahim-Khan allows the laddad to go where they will and flaunt the laws and customs of Khur. As a loyal son of Khur’ “-Bindas snorted at the irony of this phrase-” ‘I cannot abide this treason any longer.’”