Desert Wind

by Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  “Ποιοι είναι εσείς?” the man tried again in Oceanian.

  Unconsciousness was reaching up to claim Halim and he welcomed it for the pain was more than even his superior warrior training could endure.

  “Who are you?” Once more the man tried this time in Obinese and Halim answered.

  “Captain Halim Evren.”

  “Hasdu?” the man inquired, his hand tightening on Halim’s chin.

  “Asaraban,” Halim replied then sank down into merciful oblivion.

  Chapter Eleven

  The rugged coast of Ojani was littered with tall, soaring cliffs that reached to the burning bright heavens. Seagulls flashed by overhead, stitching white threads across the vibrant blue of the sky. A crescent-shaped beach had been carved from the jagged mountains and lay in a sweet cove like a haven of peace. Beating down on the back of the man lying in the breakwater, the sun was a merciful torment, heated to well over one hundred degrees, burning his flesh unmercifully as he lay there in the reflecting water.

  For four days the man had been without food and water before the boat upon which he’d lain unconscious capsized under a forceful wave and he was washed to shore. The two people standing over him did not know this as they lifted him carefully between them and took him to a horse-drawn cart.

  Laying the stranger gently upon a bed of blankets, the driver—a man—hopped upon the seat of the cart and his companion—an overweight woman—climbed into the back of the cart with their passenger.

  “If you do not wish for the watch to see him, throw a blanket over him as we pass the fort,” the man told the woman.

  “Aye,” she agreed.

  It had been the woman who had found the stranger lying on the shore earlier that morning as she gathered shells from the beach. At first she had believed him dead, but upon closer inspection, she had discovered he was breathing as he lay facedown in the shifting sand. Upon turning him over, her heart had ceased to beat and she had sat back on the sand, her eyes wide and her mouth open with shock. Sitting beside him now to smooth the hair from his face, she was more than aware of the blood pounding in her temples.

  “He is not Devrim, Alara,” the woman’s brother told her. “He is not your husband come back to life.”

  Alara Ramsaur did not take her eyes from the stranger for he was a carbon copy of the man she had lost two years before to an Diabolusian pirate’s blade. “I know who he is, Mualla,” she acknowledged.

  Mualla Zafer picked up the reins of the cart and clucked his tongue, setting the two horses forward. He was frowning deeply, for when his sister had come running to tell him she had found her dead husband washed upon the beach at Meyiah he thought she had at last lost what little reason she still possessed. Simply humoring her, he had taken the cart and driven her back to the place where she swore she had found Devrim. When he saw the man for himself, he was taken aback.

  “By the Prophet!” he had whispered. Dropping down beside the man, two things became apparent right away. The stranger was more muscular than Devrim had been when he was killed, and this man carried the royal tattoos of the House of Jaleem.

  “We will nurse him back to health,” Alara told her brother. “Hurry! Let us get him in the cart before the watch finds him!”

  Mualla’s house was nearer than his sister’s but it was to her cliffside dwelling to which Alara insisted he go. His home was near the fort and he had to pass the ancient cluster of towering sandstone buildings to reach the treacherous pathway that led up the mountain to his sister’s abode.

  “Is he covered?” Mualla asked quietly, for the guards on duty at the fort’s entrance had turned to glance his way. “Are his arms hidden?”

  “Aye, Mualla,” Alara said, easing the blanket over the man’s still face.

  The pathway to his sister’s village was dangerously steep, carved into the sheer face of Mount Saffet long ages past. Twisting and turning, hugging the craggy terrain with the same tenacity as that of the people who lived upon that barren countryside, the trial led upward at a dizzying incline, making the journey perilous. It was slow going for animals, slower yet on the patience of the man navigating up it.

  As the ponies turned onto the path, the cart creaked and popped, the iron-rimmed wheels crunching the loose scree.

  “You know I hate driving up this road,” Mualla complained. He avoided looking off to his right for the wheels of his cart were only a foot from the vertical drop-off. One misstep of his ponies and cart and occupants would slide to a crushing death down the escarpment.

  Alara said nothing for she had thrown the blanket from the stranger and was gently tracing the unconscious man’s handsome features with her fingertips.

  It was to an oasis village Mualla was directing his ponies, but between the beginning of the pathway up to the village and the destination, it was a harrowing trip that had the driver sweating profusely and praying to the Prophet to make the feet of his animals sure and steady. His hands on the reins gripped tightly, his breath drawn in and held at certain places along the route for the vertiginous climb to Alara’s hillside dwelling was still several miles in length.

  “How do you suppose he came to be on the beach?” Alara asked as she ran her thumb over the fine arch of the unconscious man’s thick brow.

  “How would I know, Alara?” Mualla snapped. He was in no frame of mind to carry on a conversation with his half-mad sister at such a time.

  “Do you think the tattoos hurt when they applied them to his wrists?” she asked.

  “Aye,” Mualla growled. “I am sure they did.”

  “There is a gash on his head that will need sewing,” she remarked. “A very deep bruise on his cheek.” She moved closer to him and opened the front of his robe, pushing back the material to view his chest. She drew in a horrified breath.

  “What is it?” Mualla demanded, his eyes wide. “Is he waking?”

  “His chest,” Alara said. “He has wounds on his chest.”

  “He is a warrior, Alara,” Mualla said. He was uneasy, knowing more about his passenger than he was willing to relate to his sister. “Warriors by nature accumulate wounds.”

  Alara rubbed her palm over the wounds, lightly touching the ridges. “He is a warrior, indeed, Mualla. Just look at him. Wherever he’s been, they have honed his body to perfection.”

  “Aye, well, my eyes are staying on this Prophet-be-damned road!” he grumbled.

  Ahead of them was the vast expanse of the peaks of Mount Saffet and the mysterious, mist-shrouded Pinnacles of Anhkbar beyond. Dotted here and there were small plantations clinging to the mountainside terraces. The plantations were fed by cold underground springs that started as a trickle high at the summit of Mount Saffet. Here and there a wadi—an oasis—teemed with abundant green life, fed by the springs and meandering streams that flowed down from the higher elevation.

  “I have prayed for this day for so long,” Alara said, and heaved a heartfelt sigh Mualla could hear over the snort of his straining animals and the crunch of gravel beneath the wheels.

  Another mile would see them to Alara’s village and Mualla could return to his wife and sons. His sister’s yearly visit always put a strain on his marriage for Alara lived in her own world of make-believe and had since learning of her husband’s death. Never having seen Devrim’s body, all she knew was what his fellow soldiers had told her—Dev had been slain in the line of duty, attempting to help arrest one of the many pirates who preyed upon the fishing villages along the Ojani coast.

  Knowing it would do no good to try to convince his sister her dead husband had not come back to life, Mualla decided he would make no mention of the Asaraban to the people of Alara’s remote village and hope none of them recognized the telltale tattoo until he could make arrangements of his own. As unworldly as her villagers were, he thought them just as liable to believe the stranger was Devrim Ramsaur as not. He chuckled at the thought.

  “You are as glad as I am that Dev is home, aren’t you, Mualla?” Alara a
sked. “He’s our prayers come true, isn’t he?”

  “He’s worth his weight in gold vedai, that’s for sure,” Mualla mused.

  It was a spectacular view that revealed itself as Mualla’s ponies pulled the little cart around a sharp bend in the roadway. Pressed closed up against the mountain, terraced dwellings had been chiseled out of the escarpment and overlooked a lush valley below. Fed by a mother well that ran one hundred and thirty feet deep at its center, a breathtakingly beautiful oasis perched upon one long jagged rim. Surrounded by verdant foliage, tall date palms, lemon trees and richly blooming flowers, the oasis’s backdrop was framed by the rugged striations of Mount Saffet. Its shore was scattered with white crystals that glittered in the noonday sun. Irrigation ditches had been dug to garden plots and groves of date palms and lemon trees, for this was the source of income for the remote mountain village. That and the goat fur rugs for which Alara’s nimble fingers were known.

  Alara’s cliffside dwelling was nearly to the top of the terraced buildings and Mualla did not look forward to having to carry the dead weight of the stranger up the many shallow steps needed to reach her home. But the thought of the money that could be his if the Asaraban was worthy of ransom gave the Ojani fisherman more strength in his burly arms and the stamina with which to carry the limp man all the way to Alara’s front door.

  “What do you have there, Alara?” an old woman asked. Those who were not working their plots or tending to their goats were milling about in the heat of the harsh sun. They were straining to see what was going on.

  “It is my Devrim,” Alara announced. “He has come home!”

  Shocked gasps rang out over the still mountain air then a smattering of applause as villagers suspicious of such a thing made them come closer.

  “It is him!” someone shouted. “It is Devrim!”

  Mualla was hard pressed to keep his laughter from giving everything away. When people began coming up to him, jockeying for position to take a look at the stranger’s face, he merely shook his head to their questions, trying to give the impression he was as astounded as they.

  “It is Devrim Ramsaur!” people began yelling. “Dev is alive! He is alive!”

  Those who were curious followed along behind Mualla and his burden. Alara was walking ahead—looking back now and again to beam at her fellow villagers—and for the first time in many years, she walked straight and tall, not bent over by grief and time.

  Those widow women who lived to either side of Alara’s high-rise dwelling came out to see what the ruckus was all about. Pulling their heavy black abayas around their spindly frames, the widows stepped from their doorways and crossed their arms with disapproval of the noise. Upon seeing the man they thought was Devrim, their eyes widened and they set up a loud ululating cry that reverberated down the mountainside.

  “It my Devrim, Grandmother Selva,” Alara told one of the widows. “My Devrim has come back to me!”

  “Leeleeleeleelee!” the widows trilled.

  Amidst the strange wavering cry set up by the women of Alara’s village, Mualla carried the unconscious man into his sister’s dwelling and took him straight to her bedchamber, placing him gently on her bed.

  “Praise to the Prophet!” the women began to chant. “Praise to Alel!”

  There was much to be done, Mualla thought, if he were to see even one copper suma from this day’s unexpected windfall. He reached out to briefly touch Alara’s arm as she knelt by the bed, but he knew she was completely unaware of her brother’s presence. He eased past villagers who had crowded into the bedchamber—striving not to break into hoots of laughter at the expectant looks on the faces of those he considered imbeciles—and hurried back to his cart. As much as he wanted to race the ponies down the switchback mountain trail, he didn’t. He carefully took his time, whistling as he had not in many a year. After all, a fortune might well be waiting for him in Asaraba.

  But as careful as Mualla was in going down the mountain, the rockslide that claimed his life could not have been expected. Mualla died and his secret knowledge died with him. His wife—who despised her husband’s sister—saw no reason to inform Alara of her brother’s passing for fear the crazed woman would show up at the funeral and cause a scandal.

  Chapter Twelve

  He felt hands on him and sighed. There was a cool cloth being dragged down his arms, across his chest, over his belly. The soothing path of the cloth spread along his hips and moved along his thighs and shins. His feet were each lifted in turn and bathed gently, each toe receiving prolonged attention. Vaguely, he heard water cascading into a bowl—the sound of the cloth being wrung out. As the coolness of the cloth wrapped around his manhood, his eyes fluttered open.

  He was lying on his back, looking up at a ceiling with thick timbers running across it. The walls were of chiseled stone, lending more coolness to the sweet air flowing in through the opened casement windows. Jasmine drifted in on the soft breeze to wash over him where the cool cloth had passed.

  “Are you thirsty, my husband?”

  “Aye.”

  He didn’t know the woman’s name. He didn’t know his own and she had yet to call him anything other than husband or beloved. Her touch slightly disturbed him but he didn’t know why it should. She was—as she had reminded him many times over the last few days—his wife. It was her right to touch him even in places he felt she should not.

  Feeling completely helpless, he sighed again as she came to his side and lifted his head to place the rim of a metal goblet to his lips. The water was cold and refreshing and he drank greedily, reaching up to cover her hands with his to steady the goblet. Despite the effort, a trickle of water fell to his bare chest and he tensed for he knew how she would rid him of the spill.

  Gently lowering his head to the soft, clean pillow, Alara bent over her husband and lapped at the spilled water, running her tongue over his flesh as though he were a feast laid before her. Her tongue spiraled over his paps, she drew them into her mouth and suckled until he threaded his fingers through her hair.

  “Enough,” he said.

  She hated to stop, but his grip in her hair held a bit more strength this day and she lifted her head. “What else may I do for you, my beloved?”

  Closing his eyes, he wanted her to leave him alone, but her hand had gone to his staff and she was massaging him as she had been when he had awakened the first time several days before.

  “Don’t, lady,” he asked. “Please, I—”

  “You are tired,” she said, springing to her feet in a rush that startled him, making him open his eyes to look up at her with something akin to fear. She reached down and tugged the covers up over his nakedness. “I will let you rest a while.”

  He had been drifting in and out of sleep ever since coming to in that cool, dark room. She bathed him often—whether every day or every hour he could not be sure for the minutes merged into one another in such a way he lost track of time. He thought perhaps she ran the cloth over his aching body far too often, but how was he to judge?

  “You were badly wounded, my husband,” she’d told him. “Lie still so you can heal.”

  He was very weak, that much he knew—so weak he could barely lift his arm. His head hurt unmercifully and there were places on his chest and right side that felt as though a hundred bees had stung him there. Lying still was the only thing he seemed capable of doing, yet he knew he needed to get up, move about, or the weakness would only get worse.

  “I will tend your chores today,” the woman told him, “as I have all the time you have been gone from me.”

  What chores, he wondered, did she need to undertake. His world was blank, huge pieces missing, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not make the pieces left fit together. Trying only made his head hurt more so he stopped, giving in to the debilitating limitations of his aching body.

  The woman was moving about the room, tidying up, throwing his bathwater out the window, calling to someone to ask them had they heard her man was home
.

  Frowning deeply, he struggled to bring his hand to his head. The pain was so ghastly it made him sick to his stomach and the effort to touch the throbbing agony stabbing at his temple too much. He let his arm fall back to the mattress.

  “Do you need something, my beloved?” the woman asked and her cool, roughly calloused palm caressed his forehead.

  He flinched for there was, indeed, something vitally important he needed, but he was loath to tell her. “I have to piss,” he said.

  “Then I will help you,” she said.

  He reached out to capture her wrist. “I need to get up. I need to do it on my own this time.”

  She was quiet for so long he turned his head—a major undertaking with all the pain pounding through it—and he could see by the set of her mouth she was upset with him.

  “You believe yourself able to piss for yourself?” she asked, and her tone was sharp with reprimand.

  “Aye, lady,” he said. “I have to try, else I’ll never leave this bed.”

  Her eyes softened. “Of course you will, my husband. It will take time, but you will eventually be up and about.” She pulled her wrist from his weak grip. “Let me fetch the chamber pot.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief that she’d given in as easily as she had. It shamed him to have her hold his cock and direct his piss into the jar she’d insisted he relieve himself in. At first he’d been too out of it to complain, but it had disturbed him greatly that she did such an intimate thing.

  “Here we go,” she said, and bent down to place the chamber pot beside the bed. She slid her arm behind his back and helped him to sit up.

  Easing his legs from the bed proved to be a monumental task. It brought tears of agony to his eyes as his head set about to pounding brutally. The room wavered, shifted, spun for a moment at a dizzying pace, and he had to squeeze his eyes shut to remain conscious.

  “The Diabolusians have much to atone for, beloved,” she said, her voice filled with hatred. She ran her hand down his scarred back. “To have marked you so with their whips was evil.”