Sword and Sorceress XXVII

by Unknown

  “Thought you wanted to learn to tie knots.”

  Dorsag’s face lit up. “You’d teach me?” Her eyes narrowed a bit. “You trust me?”

  “Of course not, but I’m not getting younger, and so far no one ‘round here has shown much skill for making truly secure knots. Some do decently, but I could use someone with strong fingers who’s willing to work hard. Don’t steal the silver and we’ll get on fine, Dorsag.”

  “I’d really prefer Shadow, if you don’t mind.”

  Zair shrugged. “Nothing wrong with Dorsag. Could be worse. There was a girl in my age-group named Loonwit.”

  “Why?”

  “Grandmother’s name.”

  Dorsag laughed. “While we’re being honest with each other, that old winemaker is over the moon for you.”

  Zair raised an eyebrow. “You really think I haven’t noticed?”

  The corner of Dorsag’s mouth quirked up. “Okay, good point. Still, I don’t think I’d wait around at your age.”

  And she’d been doing so well... up until the last bit. Well, her heart was in the right place.

  “So,” Dorsag said, and a spark of eagerness leaped through her indifferent calm. “What do you want to teach me first?”

  “Well, to begin,” Zair said, “there are sixty-eight different knots for tying down thatch.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “You wanted to learn, didn’t you?”

  By the time they broke for lunch, the thief had already mastered two of the sixty-eight, and the roof looked better than ever. Dorsag’s long, clever fingers were bloody from the coarse twine, but she was grinning.

  The Salt Mines

  by Dave Smeds

  Dave always sends us wonderful stories. This one features his new characters Azure and Coil, the witch who hired them to rescue her daughter, the pirates who captured the daughter, and the daughter who, while happy to be rescued from the pirates, has goals of her own. Naturally, some of these overlapping sets of goals are going to come into conflict with each other, but that’s what makes a story interesting.

  Dave Smeds is the author of novels such as THE SORCERY WITHIN and THE SCHEMES OF DRAGONS. His short fiction has appeared in myriad anthologies, including at least a dozen previous volumes of SWORD & SORCERESS, and in such magazines as Asimov’s SF, Realms of Fantasy, and F&SF. “The Salt Mines” introduces a pair of characters that Dave suspects he will feature in other stories in the not-too-distant future.

  His most recent publication is the eBook short story collection RAIDING THE HOARD OF ENCHANTMENT, a gathering of seven of his recent tales of high fantasy. See www.bookviewcafe.com for details.

  ****

  “The sunsets are beautiful in the Desert of Fumes” the saying went. Now Coil knew what that meant. It wasn’t that the sunsets were more spectacular to the eye. It was that with dusk came the promise the air would cool enough to breathe without pain.

  In the canyon below, shade had been the rule for hours. The caravan Coil and Azure had been watching was now entirely out of the harbor gates, heading westward along the trade road, camels and slaves resigned to plodding along through the night. Back within the village, lamps were being lit. Stevedores were unloading the cargo of the newly-arrived merchant vessels and filling up the soon-to-depart. They worked slowly, pausing often to wipe sweat off brows or napes of necks. Hours would have to pass before the temperature dropped enough to pick up the pace.

  “Another caravan will leave tomorrow night. You’ll have no trouble attaching yourself to it.” Lady Sirocco spoke in Irsi so classic she must have spent years studying the scrolls, but with a peculiar sort of dungburner accent that said she had come to the language as an adult.

  Coil was not looking forward to threading through these shattered hills. Everywhere he looked he saw only ridges and cliffs of banded, crumbling rock. No trees. Just a wisp, here and there, of goat brush or spine weed. The route was twisted and uneven and narrow, vulnerable to avalanche or banditry. And to think it would be the nice part of the trip.

  They retreated from the cliff edge, moving back into the hollow in the mountain where Lady Sirocco had set up her pavilion. The encampment was thoroughly out of sight to anyone below. It had to be. If the Salt Pirates discovered the Witch of Sandstorms had returned to their territory, they would send as many assassins as they could gather.

  The remnant of a man hung in the center of the camp like a fly caught in a spiderweb, ropes splaying him as far apart as his tendons and joints would allow—and then a little more. Scorch marks decorated his flesh here and there, puffy and livid beneath the char. A brazier of hot coals stood in front of him. A plucked-out eye and severed parts that had until recently defined him as male were turning to ash atop the embers. The other eye was intact—the better to witness what the fire was claiming, Coil supposed.

  “From what I have learned from this one, you will have time enough to do things right,” the sorceress said. “But not much more time than that. The lord of the pirates is keeping my daughter for his own use for now, but he will ultimately send her to the pens for his lackeys to enjoy. He will do it no matter how sweet he finds her to be, because he knows it will cause me anguish. My daughter is strong-willed, but a day or two in the pens will break her. See that you rescue her before she is removed from the tower.”

  “We will,” Azure said. Coil was glad it was she who answered. When he did it, sometimes his confidence came across as boasting. Her soft voice transformed it to prophecy.

  “Go, then,” the sorceress commanded. “I will be waiting.”

  She put the smithy gloves back on her hands and picked up the tongs she had left on the coals.

  Coil and Azure headed off down the shepherd path that would take them to the harbor. They hiked as fast as the fading light would allow. Even so the screaming began before they could pass out of hearing range.

  “I really wish we could turn this job down,” Coil said.

  “I know how you feel,” his milk sister replied.

  #

  About all it took to join the next night’s caravan was to stride into the caravanserai, locate the underseer of supplies, and announce they were entertainers willing to work in Salt Town. The underseer did not even ask what their talents were. For the sake of form, the two sides spent half an hour bargaining about the rate at which the mine scrip would be redeemed when they got back, and how much the underseer’s bribe should be. As usual, Azure handled the negotiations, but her persuasive skills were not needed. By the third cup of tea, the underseer was offering terms as good as if she had agreed to slip into the back room and serve as his wife of the hour.

  All too easy. Azure didn’t like it. Had they actually been entertainers going to Salt Town for no other reason than to earn a living, she would have backed out then and there. But soon the underseer was stamping his master’s mark on a scrap of papyrus to confirm the rate. Coil placed the contract in his money belt.

  The underseer beamed, as if pleased that his shift had included the diversion of hiring them. “If you have any silver on you now, it won’t do you any good in Salt Town,” he added with what seemed to be honest good will. “Buy extra water. That will be of value.”

  They did as he said, though it meant renting an extra camel. They made sure to mark their skins and kegs well, for there were a great many camels carrying the same sort of load. Just as salt was the only export out of Salt Town, water was the main import.

  Water. And slaves.

  A single long train of naked men was herded into the staging yard. Coil estimated there were forty of the wretches, wrists bound behind their backs, connected to each other by chains and ankle shackles. They shuffled along, backs and buttocks and sometimes faces adorned with lash marks, reeking from a voyage spent having to sleep in their own filth. They were a mix of peoples, some bearing the slavers’ brands, which implied they had been acquired at auction. Most of the rest looked to be sailors from ships the Salt Pirates had captured.

 
; One of the handlers stalked down the line with a pole, swinging at testicles, evaluating how vigorously the owners twisted or dodged to avoid a direct hit. One poor skeleton of a fellow didn’t dodge at all, just took it and then tried feebly to breathe. The handler gutted him and moved on to the next in the line. After the fallen man was done twitching, the handler’s two juvenile assistants sawed off his foot to free it from the shackle and dragged the remains to the sty to fatten the pigs.

  Coil muttered something under his breath. Azure’s knife hand twitched.

  Fortunately the worst was already over. The handlers, having apparently satisfied themselves that the remaining slaves might have a chance of surviving the two-day walk to Salt Town, unbound the wrists of their charges and threw down what appeared to be piles of dirty rags at their feet.

  “Put them on,” the handler growled.

  The slaves stared at the piles as if unsure they were hearing correctly. But as whips cracked, they picked up what proved to be cowls and cloaks of rude handspun.

  Azure was surprised. Providing slaves with clothing was an expense. She decided the investment must be worth it. No doubt even the dark-skinned natives of the Steaming Lands would not survive in open salt pits without coverings of some sort. The pale antlermen at the end of the line might not last a day.

  A chain of a dozen women was prodded into a corner of the yard. Intended for indoor labor, they were left naked. Both groups of slaves, though, were given gourds of water and millet porridge served atop banana leaves. Every individual eagerly seized his or her portion, but some of the former sailors chewed as if they had forgotten what it was like to have food between their teeth.

  Azure had been thinking of having some millet porridge. She ate some yoghurt and dates instead.

  The sun sank. The shadow of the high ridges stretched eastward and met the sea. Eventually the dust of the inland trade road cooled enough that lizards crept out of their dens and began reconnoitering the piles of camel dung in search of insects. The master of the caravan blew his ram’s horn and the company set out.

  The port they were leaving was called Titan’s Crack. Azure considered it well named. The rockfaces on either side of the road were rough and pitted. No ancient river had made this canyon. The caravan was journeying along a crack in the very body of the continent. The plateau had somehow split apart.

  To her astonishment, Azure smelled wet rock. Whatever moisture the formation possessed emerged down here in the depths of the fissure. Azure spotted a second and then a third place where the lower cliffsides were veined with seepage. She now knew what filled the natural cistern beneath the walls of the harbor—the supply of drinking water that sustained not only Titan’s Crack, but Salt Town as well.

  She saw no true waterfalls. And as the camels plodded onward into the night, the impression of humidity vanished.

  #

  Before midnight, they smelled brimstone. By the time the caravan paused a couple of hours later to cast away a slave who had not been strong enough for the journey after all, Coil’s nostrils were raw from the stench. He had mocked Azure when she had taken out a handkerchief, soaked it in perfume, and made it into a veil for her lower face, but when she prepared another for him, he took it and thanked her humbly.

  “The wind will change soon,” said the nearest camel drover as he rubbed liniment on the abraded ribs of one of his beasts. “That will help. A little.”

  The drover, a leathery, whip-thin Rhirzadi of the Ibex Hills, had laughed and called the dead slave vulture meat when he had fallen, but he seemed well-disposed toward Coil and Azure. Coil welcomed his insights. He and his milk sister had seen a thousand places in their travels, but this was as out of their element as they had ever been.

  The drover was correct. Eventually the temperature of the continent dropped low enough to draw marine air inland. Soon the breeze was carrying away the worst of the acidic miasma.

  Dawn was purpling the horizon behind them but stars still shone in the west when the ram’s horn blew again, signalling a halt. To Coil, this seemed premature. He had expected the caravan to push on at least until sunrise, if not an hour or two into the day.

  “Last good spot to camp,” the drover explained.

  The handlers goaded the male slaves down a channel to the right. Coil and Azure stayed with the camels and the female slaves, seeking their shelter off to the left. They soon came to a natural hollow surrounded on three sides by rock outcroppings. It was a place where there would be shade available during every part of the day as long as they rearranged themselves from time to time.

  The sun was up but the air still tolerable when Coil and Azure climbed to the top of one of the outcroppings. Out to the west spread the terrain through which they were to travel the next day.

  Here was the heart of the Desert of Fumes.

  The trade road snaked between one hellish feature after another, bleached bones of camels and humans delineating the route. Vapors rose from the cracked landscape. Magma glowed in a pair of fissures off to the south. To the north a dozen hotsprings throbbed, the oily contents never lying still. The nearest pools were dense turquoise. Farther away they were the shade of emeralds lit from within. Both types were crusted at the edges with mineral mats—their hues of orange, blood rose, and pus yellow too vibrant to seem natural. Hardened-lava ridges thrust up out of the sands as though the mummified corpse of a giant crocodile lurked below, leaving only the sunburnt ridges of its back revealed to the surface world.

  Beyond the jumbled terrain, the land descended into a vast basin. Coil was good enough at judging elevations that he knew its rim was at the same level as the tideline back at Titan’s Crack. Twelve hours earlier he had stood at the gates of the caravanserai and looked east and seen the ocean—an endless expanse of water. Now he was viewing a place so dry its sea had evaporated.

  Somewhere down at the bottom of the basin, lost in the sulfurous haze, was Salt Town.

  #

  The next night was the longest Azure could recall experiencing in her one-and-twenty years. The moonlight crafted baleful shadows out of the macabre landscape. Coarse bits of lava crunched uncomfortably beneath her sandals, the desert winds having blown them onto what should have been a track worn benign by centuries of caravan traffic.

  They marched and they marched. The handlers and drovers pressed hard, cracking the lash to lengthen the gait of the slaves and camels. No shelter awaited until they reached Salt Town. Go too slow, and they would be caught in the open when next the sun climbed high.

  Even though the temperature dropped steadily throughout the night, the air remained oppressive, because as they descended into the basin, they passed below the winds. The air puddled like lead in a crucible, the rim of higher terrain blocking any current that might stir the layers trapped within the bowl. The perfumed veil was not enough. Azure breathed in particles that desert air was not supposed to contain, material that burned her throat, dried her nostrils, fouled the taste of her tongue. But the worst was what it did to her eyes.

  Coil bore it without comment. As always. So did she, but only because complaining would have required her to open her mouth and let in more of the foulness.

  Despite a pace that made three of the slaves drop dead, they were short of their goal when dawn arrived. A crepuscular glow spread across the basin floor.

  “What is that?” asked her milk brother.

  A chaotic maze of buildings emerged from the gloom. Azure had seen oasis towns of mud-brick walls, and this had that look, but the chief building material was not clay or sandstone, but salt, as if the seafloor had grown strange blocky pustules during its final evaporative decay.

  A massive tower rose high from the core of the outpost. Azure guessed it was as much as a dozen times the height of the inn where she and Coil had spent their first eight years of life. A pavilionlike canopy of stiffened leather supplied life-preserving shade to the lookout platform at the top. In silhouette the structure possessed a disturbing non-architectural
aspect. It reminded Azure of the corpse toadstool she had seen a year ago when she and Coil had been forced to flee across the Fever Bogs to escape the giants—except that lethal fungus had only stood as high as her ankle.

  Aside from the canopy, the tower was constructed of fine veined marble. Bringing the material here from the coast and assembling the building must have taken years and cost the lives of a thousand slaves.

  “That,” she murmured, “is what we came here to find.”

  The daylight strengthened further, revealing that though the outpost might be another half hour’s walk away, the caravan had already entered the mining zone. Broad, shallow pits sprawled on either side of the road. She spotted several crews of slaves prying cakes of salt from the ground and stacking them into pyramids. Elsewhere another crew was disassembling a pyramid and loading cakes into the panniers of waiting camels. Drovers were urging fully loaded camels toward shelter.

  Work ended with the sunrise. The slaves began plodding toward their blockhouses, which like the outpost were constructed of salt bricks. They seemed alive only by comparison to the piles of bones where past workers had fallen. Vultures clustered around a pair that had succumbed that very night.

  Azure shaded her sore eyes, trying to spot the far end of the excavations. She thought she saw it, but given the distance and the haze, she couldn’t be sure.

  “How long have people been digging salt here?” Coil asked the drover.

  “Longer than men remember,” replied the Rhirzadi, blowing road grit out from between his remaining teeth. “One warlord after another fought to control this place. Seventy years ago the pirates took it from the chieftains of the Gnarled Hills. Nobody called them the Salt Pirates until then. Now they’d rather die, every last one of ‘em, than let this jewel be pilfered from their hoard.”

  The drover jerked a thumb at the tower. “There’s always a prince of the cartel up there keepin’ an eye on things. They rotate out every couple of years. None of ‘em want to be posted here, of course, but they don’t trust underlings to run the place.”