“Did they find the city?” asked Jame.
“They did. The northerners were amazed at its wealth, especially at a certain sheer fabric which they had never seen before.”
“Silk.”
“Yes. They took a bolt of it back to Kothifir led by the daughter who thus, because she had been born in Kothifir, became the first Kothifiran seeker. She had, by now, had a daughter of her own, who accompanied her. The travelers were welcome, but not by the king who had sent them. What for them had been only a few weeks’ journey for Kothifir had taken years.”
“So they had traveled in time as well as in space.”
“Again, yes. The king sent a trade mission, but they only found ruins in the desert. Langadine was not rediscovered until one of its two daughters, the maiden, agreed to lead an expedition. And so it has gone ever since. We seekers are always female members of the same lineage, able to find the city of our birth. There are usually three of us bound to each city: the maiden, her mother, and her grandmother, sometimes with a skip in generations, but there are fewer and fewer of us. I can lead this expedition back to Kothifir, having left a recently dead husband and a baby daughter behind me in that city, but my mother is also dead and Laurintine is the last Langadine seeker now that her great-granddaughter Lanielle is also gone.”
There was silence for a moment. Kalan clenched a plump fist and beat it against her thigh. Her hazel eyes were bright with unshed tears. “Ah, I should not have left my child and would not if she had not been ill. Will she live until I return? This is a hard life, always traveling to satisfy the greed of others. The lords of both cities ask too much of us. I only want a home and family of my own, before it is too late.”
“As it is . . . for me?”
“Laurintine, I am sorry. Service to the caravans has worn you to a bone, and all your children are dead.”
The wind soughed, the canvas boomed. All without was desolation. Here within, life was the fragrant if gritty cup of tea which the older woman poured and offered to the younger.
Jame watched them share the moment, the misery. Her own hand instinctively sought Jorin’s rich coat for comfort and he nuzzled her fingers. Could she have left a child behind, a sick baby? The very thought of children was alien to her, but she was young. Perhaps someday she would fully understand Kalan’s distress. She already knew what it felt like to long for a home.
“What about the time distortion?” she asked.
Kalan pulled herself together. “That,” she said, “is the other great worry. It varies from trip to trip. At first time passed faster in the north than the south, the present faster than the past, but that stabilized and then reversed. Now only two things are sure. For one, seekers cannot revisit their own pasts. Our lives lead forward, at whatever pace our surroundings decree. Whatever is done to us, we cannot undo.”
“And the second thing?”
“Langadine is catching up with Kothifir, or rather I should say with the Kothifir of three thousand years ago. Around that period, the southern city suddenly collapsed in some final, fatal cataclysm. We don’t know what happened, except that beforehand the sea turned to salt water and began to dry up. The process had already begun the last time I was there. What has taken them centuries is only years to us.”
Jame sat back on her heels, considering. “We could slip through one last time,” she said, “or we could get caught on the cusp of disaster. Here and now, though, I don’t know what we can do about it.”
“Turn back,” said Kalan.
Laurintine gripped the other’s knee with a bony claw. “I want,” she rasped, “to die . . . at home.”
“And the wagon masters aren’t likely to listen to me,” Jame added. “Would they to you?”
The two seekers looked chagrined.
“I thought not.”
An idea struck her. “The spoils of the Wastes can only survive in the present if King Krothen touches them. Lanielle hadn’t met him yet. Is that why she died after she was injured?”
Kalan inclined her head without speaking.
Leaving their tent, Jame paused on its threshold to consider the situation. If she understood her people’s role, they wouldn’t be permitted beyond the boundary between past and present. That should put them out of the path of disaster unless, as Kalan said, something went wrong.
And it always does.
G’ah, she hated being out of control, but this situation loomed like the mountain ranges to the east and west, not to be changed by any puny effort on her part. At least the wind seemed to be abating. In another day or two, they should reach the edge of the Great Salt Sea.
CHAPTER X
The Sea of Time
Winter 13–15
I
THE NEXT DAY dawned clear and hot, revealing that the caravan had camped on the very edge of the sand dunes. Flat, rock-strewn land stretched away before them in unparalleled monotony, broken here and there by wind-tortured stone formations. Once again the wagons were unpacked, the wagon wheels restored, and their loads returned. Jame supposed that the rocks, as small as they were, would scrape on the sledge bottoms. Lambas whiffed and hooted, not eager to resume their harnesses. Over the past few days without water, their swollen bellies had shrunken noticeably and their girths needed to be tightened. Soon they would require another deep drink.
Few other beasts had made it so far except for the moas, who required copious amounts of water at least every third day. Horses, mules, and oxen had long since turned back or died in harness under the lash of desperate drivers. Some of the latter found passage on the wagons, abandoning all but the choicest of their own loads, but most shouldered what water they could carry and started the long trudge back to Kothifir. Jame wondered how many would make it.
To have come so far, to fail by so little . . .
At dusk on the thirteenth of Winter, the remaining travelers—some fifty wagons in all—arrived at the edge of the Great Salt Sea. It stretched out before them to the horizon, its surface broken by drought into octagonal plates. A failing slash of light from the west washed its white surface with pink and mauve. The east wind picked up, causing sparkling salt ghosts to drift across the empty plain in stately procession like an army on the march, until the shadows overtook them.
Tents were pitched, evening meals cooked.
When Jame rose early the next morning, she found that the trade caravan had slipped away in the night, leaving its Kencyr escort behind. Moreover, she smelled fresh water. They had set up camp at a brackish oasis which, when dug out of the sand, stank of rot. Now the camp was surrounded by grass, sedge, and tall reeds marching into a shallow sea. One could still make out the salt plates under the surface, but they hadn’t yet dissolved to contaminate the rainwater swell. The face of the water reflected the glowing morning sky like a vast mirror, dazzling the eye.
“What in Perimal’s name . . . ?” said Timmon, coming up to her. “I know this is the beginning of the rainy reason, but surely it didn’t pour last night. Runoff from distant mountains?”
“That might explain it, but not all of this established vegetation. What do you think, Ran?”
The senior officer stood near them, surveying the sudden sea. “I’ve heard of such a thing,” he said, “when the Tishooo plays tricks.”
“Because the Old Man controls the flow of time in the Wastes?” Jame asked, remembering what she had been told in the Undercliff.
He gave a short laugh. “So the natives say.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” said Jame.
Laurintine had guided the caravan back to lost Langadine, into the past. What if the Tishooo had taken them there too, for some obscure reason of its own? If so, where in the past might they be? She gathered that each caravan trip was closer to the Kothifir of three thousand years ago and to Langadine’s ultimate, mysterious destruction. Perhaps the caravan had barely arrived there. Perhaps it had been in Langadine for days, or months, or years. How long could they wait for its return before their su
pplies ran out?
Brier also stood by the shore, gazing out at the watery expanse. Jame wondered if she had been there all night and had seen the flood rise. What must she be thinking now? Her mother Rose Iron-thorn had escaped with Tori, Harn, and Rowan from Urakarn on the edge of this same sea, if much farther to the west. It had been dry at first as they fled, and sinksand had swallowed Rose. Jame remembered Brier’s voice telling her the story as Tori had told it to her, how at dusk they had come across the petrified remains of a boat and had collapsed into it.
“In the night, feverish,” Brier had said, “he thought he saw the water return . . . all that flat sand plain changing back to the sea it had been, and the stone boat afloat on it. Under the surface, he saw Rose and reached down to her. She took his hand, pulled it down into the stinging salt water, pulled the whole boat across the sea . . . in a dream, he thought, born of fever; but in the morning, there they were safe on the northern shore, with nothing behind them but sand . . .”
“Do you think that your mother is still out there, under the sand, under the water?” she asked Brier.
The Southron shrugged, malachite green eyes still sweeping the sea. “Did she come back at all or did the Highlord only dream it? Did you?”
“For your brother’s sake . . .”
Cold words, cold hands, thrusting Jame back to the surface when the returning sea had swallowed her outside Mount Alban after the weirdingstrom had swept it into the Southern Wastes. She had no doubt, herself, what she had experienced.
Brier shrugged. “Her bones at least still lie under the sand. Who knows?”
The laughter and catcalls of Char’s third-year cadets sounded behind them. They turned to see Gorbel trudging toward them from Ean’s abandoned tent, stripping off ropes and spitting out a gag.
“One of the wagon masters recognized me,” he said with disgust. “Our friend swore that I was his assistant, but they dragged me off anyway and tied me up to keep me from following. Is that them?” He peered at vague, wavering forms on the horizon.
“It could just be a mirage,” said Timmon.
“Or the spires of a city,” Jame said, staring hard.
An uproar burst out near the shore where the moas had gathered to drink. Something huge lunged out of the reeds and chomped down on the nearest bird. The rest flopped down flat and froze like so many brown lumps, some with their heads inadvertently underwater.
“Ancestors preserve us,” said the senior randon. “A rhi-sar.”
The beast stood on the shore, ignoring the motionless birds. The long legs of its prey dangled out of its toothy jaws, twitching slightly. It threw back its massive head and bolted them down. A second giant reptile emerged from the reeds. Both stood on their powerful hind legs, smaller forearms tucked almost delicately against their armored chests. The first was blue and mottled green, its scales edged with gold. The second was orange shading to the dark red of dried blood. Their lashing, scaly tails made up nearly half of their thirty-foot lengths.
The reeds parted and a third, smaller reptile joined them, this one creamy white with watery blue eyes.
I should have brought Death’s-head, thought Jame. As she had foreseen, however, he had stayed behind with Bel.
“Stand still,” said the randon. “They react to motion.”
Too late: Char broke ranks and dashed to grab a spear.
The two rhi-sar bellowed and charged the camp.
Yells sounded as the cadets scrambled for weapons and into formation. The blue brute lunged at one such group, catching a spear and jerking its wielder out of place. Its red mate snapped sideways, catching the cadet and folding him double backward before bolting him down. The senior randon plunged to the rescue, only to get caught between the two.
“No!” Jame cried, but already they had grabbed him, one on each side, and between them had ripped him apart. Blood sprayed the sedge. The water tinged pink.
Both rhi-sar spread their frilled collars and trilled their triumph.
Jame turned to watch the white rhi-sar. It had held back so far but not, she thought, out of fear or weakness. Its small eyes switched from reptile to reptile like a general directing troops. One of them lumbered back to it and vomited mixed body parts, steaming with acid and already half-digested, at its feet. An offering.
Someone handed her a spear. She balanced it, advanced, and threw it at the white beast. More by luck than skill, she caught the creature in one eye. It reared back, bellowing, and clawed at the shaft, snapping it off in its eye socket. The other blue eye focused on her. How well could it see? Well enough to chase her if she moved.
The other two rhi-sar seemed confused, snapping at random as cadets ran past them. Damson stood before one of them, holding it in her baleful gaze. It lunged at the air on either side of her as if unable to bring her into focus. The other rhi-sar stumbled into it and they fell, tearing at each other.
But the white one wasn’t confused. It thundered straight at Jame, jaws agape. She turned and ran, trying to draw it away from the other cadets, but they in turn were running toward her. Char thrust a spear between its hind legs, tripping it. It turned its fall into a lunge at Jame, missing by inches when she dodged to its blind side. Before it could recover, she threw herself on its head and clasped its jaws shut with her arms and legs, half expecting them to be ripped off. But she had guessed right: the muscles that opened that fearful maw were weaker than those that closed it. The brute reared up, trying to shake her off, scraping futilely at her with its foreclaws.
Cadets darted in and stabbed at its exposed belly. It was armored as thoroughly as a rathorn, but there were wrinkled gaps of bare skin under the forearms. Gorbel’s spear found its mark and bit deep. The creature toppled over backward, pinning Jame under its massive muzzle, knocking the wind out of her. She thought at first that she was dead, but then hands pulled her free.
The other two rhi-sar retreated to the water and reeds. The white one lay on its back, thick crimson blood sluggishly crawling down over its plated stomach. It scrabbled feebly at the sky, then fell limp, its armored jaw harmlessly agape.
Timmon pulled Jame to her feet and she clung to him, gasping. “Did I really . . . just do that?”
“You certainly did, and scared the spit out of me.”
Gorbel braced a foot against the creature, wrenched free his spear, and limped up to them. “I could claim the kill, but it only happened because of your insanity. Besides, I’ve already got a rhi-sar suit. I’d say that you’ve just earned your own armor, Lordan of Ivory.”
II
THEY GATHERED the dismembered limbs of their dead, such as they could retrieve, and gave them to the pyre. Char scowled at Jame over the flames.
I had as much to do with this kill as you did, he seemed to be thinking, and that was probably true, given that she couldn’t have pinned the brute if Char hadn’t tripped it first.
On the bright side, only two Kencyr had been killed, thanks mostly to Damson.
“Good work,” Jame told her.
The plump cadet nodded. She looked thoughtful, not smug, as Jame might have expected.
“I asked myself what you would do, Ten, if you could do what I can. Not run.”
“I did, though.”
“To draw off that white monster. I saw. Then you turned on it. I know I don’t think or feel the way that other people do. Something is . . . missing. But I can imitate you.”
Jame stared at her. “Trinity, Damson, you’d do better to take someone else as a model. Why not Brier?”
The cadet shook her head. “I can see that Five is a good randon. Someday she may even become a great one. But she isn’t like me. Not a bit. You are.”
Jame considered that as she watched the cadets start to skin the white rhi-sar—no easy task given the toughness of its hide. When properly tanned, it would be nearly as impenetrable as rathorn ivory, which itself was the second hardest substance on Rathillien after diamantine. Brier cut free the skull and they began the messy job of hol
lowing it out, leaving the fearsome, hinged jaws. Others worked on the feet, flaying them but retaining the claws.
All her life, Jame had turned to the Kendar as guides, primarily to Marc, whose moral sense she trusted far more than her own. To have one of them return the favor was . . . unnerving. But Damson was right: as a destructive Shanir, she and Jame had a lot more in common than either did with Brier Iron-thorn.
Meanwhile, Gorbel was arguing with the senior surviving officer, Onyx-eyed. The Caineron Lordan wanted to pursue the caravan.
“That would violate our standing orders,” said the randon.
“Yours. Not mine. My father told me to follow them. Anyway, as lordan I’m the highest ranking Caineron here.”
“You’re the only Caineron here.”
“Fine. I’ll go by myself.”
Jame peered at the black line of the distant horizon, all that separated sky from reflecting sea. The slight, wavering distortion was still there on the edge of sight.
“How far away is it?” she asked. “Three miles? If that’s a mirage, most of what casts it could be below our line of sight, if there’s anything there at all. Still . . .”
The randon looked at her, as blank of expression as ever. “So you want to go too.”
“And me,” said Timmon, coming up.
“You’re asking me to risk the heirs of three houses.”
“We aren’t asking anything,” said Gorbel, his jaw thrust stubbornly forward. As a cadet, he took orders; as a lordan, he gave them. They could all feel the authority radiating off him like heat off a sun-baked stone, and like that stone his will was no easy thing to break.
Onyx-eyed blinked. “Take an escort with you, then,” she said mildly, “and turn back if you lose the tracks.”
“You stay here,” Jame told Jorin. “What, d’you want to wade all the way to the horizon?”
She, the other two lordan, and her ten-command saddled up their moas. They could see the scrapes where the reverted sledges had entered the shallow water to become boats, and beyond that, salt plates on the bottom were broken by the lambas’ hooves. The moas dithered on the shore until encouraged in with whip and spur. The water came halfway up to their knees. They lifted their three-toed, webbed feet high, almost daintily, with every step.
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