by Lara Morgan
‘I’ll miss you,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry things have come to this.’
‘What is cannot be changed, remember?’ Tuon did smile then, a brief, weak curve of her lips. ‘You have bigger things to worry about. Promise me you will think hard about what Veila told you was in the scrolls. You may not like what they say, but perhaps they could help you, even save your life.’
Shaan sighed. ‘I’ll try.’
‘Well, that’s better than a no.’ Tuon took her hand. ‘Have you told Tallis?’
‘Yes.’ He’d sought her out straight after she’d left Veila’s tent, sensing her anger and confusion. ‘He agrees with me,’ she said. ‘He’d rather make his own choices as well.’
‘You really are related, aren’t you?’ Tuon said. ‘But maybe he’s the one who could split the Birthstone. After all, he is very powerful now, isn’t he?’
‘I wouldn’t want him to touch it.’ Shaan was afraid at the thought. ‘It’s too strong, Tuon. It’s almost as if it’s alive, listening.’
Tuon’s eyes were filled with concern. ‘Then all the more reason it should be destroyed.’
‘If it’s that easy,’ Shaan murmured.
Tuon took in a breath to speak but was distracted by Morfessa shouting. His face was filled with irritation as he snatched his pack from one of the Hunters, who had been about to tie it down beneath a tent cover.
‘Looks like Morfessa’s going to be a joy to travel with,’ Tuon said, watching him push the Hunter aside.
‘I’m sure Veila will keep him in line.’ Shaan leaned closer and lowered her voice. ‘You might need to watch Nilah, though. I think she has some plan other than hiding in the ranges until someone comes to fetch her. She as good as told me so.’
‘Have you told Rorc?’ Tuon asked.
Shaan shook her head. ‘Don’t see it would do much good, but you could mention it to Veila. Keep an eye on her.’ She looked at the young Guardian, who was standing with her arms crossed watching the packing with a closed expression on her face. ‘Don’t let her order you around,’ she said. ‘She’s not in the palace now.’
‘You know you don’t need to worry about that,’ Tuon said. ‘I’m not planning on being her servant.’
As if she realised they were talking about her, Nilah came toward them. Shaan had talked little to her while they travelled, spending most of her time off the serpent with Tuon, but she still considered the young woman a friend and was almost sorry to see her go.
‘Shaan,’ Nilah said, ‘I wanted to thank you again for coming to my rescue in the palace. And for the extra clothes. You, too Tuon; I was weary of wearing only my nightgown.’
‘Veila gave me more than I needed,’ Tuon said.
Nilah smiled. ‘It’s too bad we didn’t have more time to talk, Shaan. I see you’re still wearing Balkis’s family stone.’ Her eyes filled with conspiratorial amusement. ‘You can tell me how good he was when we see each other again. I hope things go well for you in the Clans.’
‘I’m sure Rorc will send you word either way,’ Shaan replied.
‘Possibly, although we both know how he plays things. I do have my own ideas, though.’
‘Nilah!’ Morfessa called. ‘Come on, it’s time.’
The young Guardian rolled her eyes and looked at Tuon. ‘The old man still treats me like a child. I’m glad you’ll be coming with us so I have someone else to talk to.’
‘I’m sure it will be interesting,’ Tuon said.
Nilah held her hand out to Shaan. ‘Until we meet again, descendant,’ she said.
Reminded of the first time she’d met the young woman at the Serpent Inn, Shaan shook her hand. ‘Take care, Nilah.’
‘Don’t worry, no inns where we’re going — unfortunately.’ The young woman smiled wider, then walked back to the muthu.
‘Trouble,’ Tuon said under her breath, and put a hand on Shaan’s arm. ‘Come on, I guess I have to go as well.’
They walked to the waiting muthu, where Rorc was having last words with Veila. He looked up as they approached and Shaan thought she saw something flicker behind his eyes when he looked at Tuon. But then it was gone as he shook Morfessa’s hand and gave some final instructions to the Faithful accompanying the party as their guards.
‘We’ll send a message bird as soon as we know the Clans’ decision,’ he said. ‘Tuon, make sure you look after Veila and … take care.’
‘We will,’ she said, ‘and you also take care.’ She looked at him sadly for a moment before mounting the muthu one of the Hunters was holding for her. Ivar, already sitting on the muthu next to hers, nodded at Shaan as she stepped forward to say a final goodbye.
‘Be careful,’ she said.
‘I’ll be fine.’ Tuon took her hand. ‘You make sure your brother looks out for you.’ Her eyes were sad as she watched her. ‘Who knows when we will see each other again.’ She leaned down and kissed Shaan’s cheek.
Shaan gave her hand a final squeeze but could not speak as she stepped back, struggling to hold in her tears. The Faithful were mounted and with a sharp command they moved off. Tuon twisted to wave to her and then the muthu started to trot, dust clouding under their hooves.
‘It’s hard to always be saying goodbye.’ Mailun remained beside her as the others began their own preparations to leave. ‘She is a good friend, Tuon, isn’t she?’
‘I’ve known her since I was nine,’ Shaan said.
Mailun smiled sadly, watching the dust cloud dwindle. ‘I had to leave a good friend of mine when I left the Ice Lands,’ she said. ‘I still miss her.’ She sighed and looked at Shaan. ‘The Seer, Veila, told me the Prophet wrote about you and a temple, a stone eye staring blindly,’ Mailun spokecarefully. ‘She thought I should know — since we both suspect it is the temple of Kaa he wrote of. A place in the Clan Lands.’
Shaan nodded, crossing her arms over her breasts. She wasn’t sure how she felt about Veila telling her mother.
‘I’m sorry if you didn’t want me to know,’ Mailun said, but Shaan shook her head.
‘It doesn’t matter, the Seer has her own reasons, I should think.’
‘There’s a Dreamer of the Jalwalah — Shila,’ Mailun said. ‘She told me things I didn’t want to hear, things the Guides had told her — they want so much, take so much. It’s hard to bear sometimes.’ She hesitated and put a hand slowly, tentatively, on Shaan’s shoulder. ‘I know there are years between us, daughter, and perhaps too many have been lost, but I would be your friend — if you need one.’ Her hand was rough and warm.
‘I’ll remember that.’ Shaan cleared her throat. ‘I think Rorc is waiting for us to go soon. I have to put a harness on Asrith.’
Mailun’s hand dropped from her shoulder. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He’s impatient to leave.’
Shaan nodded again, awkward for a moment, then walked away toward the serpent.
Chapter 27
They travelled hard for another day and a night. Irissa was now sharing Shaan’s saddle and the clanswoman proved a natural rider, despite her initial reluctance. She sat relaxed and steady behind Shaan, not bothering her with conversation as they rushed fast through the wind.
The air was warm and getting drier as they headed toward the desert, and the land below had become a rugged, barren stretch of rocky hills and flat plains. They were so close to the desert now Shaan thought she could smell it — a dry dusty scent like baked leaves — and by late afternoon they crossed over a low row of sandy hills covered with rock and sparse shrubs and entered the Clan Lands.
There was nothing but great swathes of sand spreading away to the horizon, and rocky uneven country of prickly shrubs and tumbles of stone. It gave Shaan a strange feeling she couldn’t quite identify to be finally heading to the place of her birth. It was like recognition, but not of anything she could understand.
They landed for the night in a bare space of sand much like any other. A few small shrubs and some rocks were scattered about the perimeter, but other than that it was most
ly coarse red sand, dry as her lips in the constant wind.
Tallis and Irissa were still barely speaking, and Rorc and Mailun said little to each other but, like the night before, they were all too weary from the long day of flying to talk much anyway. An uneasy camaraderie settled over them, each finding their own chore to do that would keep them out of the others’ way.
Irissa and Mailun lit a fire for the evening meal while Rorc erected the tents. Shaan and Tallis dealt with the serpents, removing their harnesses so that Marathin, Asrith and the Isles serpent Rorc rode, Fen, could settle down to rest in the sand.
Tallis took Asrith’s saddle, adding it to the others he had slung over his shoulders, and Shaan carried the lighter strapping and weapon harnesses back to the camp. Nearby Rorc was putting in the final pegs on the tent he shared with Tallis, and Mailun watched them as they dropped the tack on the ground.
‘Son,’ she said, ‘help me with this, will you?’ She held a small, furred animal Irissa had shot. A mar rat, Tallis had called it. ‘Can you skin it for me?’
Tallis pulled the knife from his leg sheath and took it without speaking.
‘The leather needs some oiling,’ Rorc spoke behind Shaan, and she saw him holding a tin and some rags. He handed one to her. ‘Start with the harnesses.’
Shaan took the rough cloth and was surprised when he sat down in the sand and opened the tin, then began to smear the fat on the saddles.
‘Make sure you wipe any residue off,’ he said.
‘I know how to do it,’ she answered, and sat on the opposite side of the pile of gear. She picked up a harness and dipped her cloth in the tin. As they worked in silence, the shadows lengthened across the sand and Mailun and Irissa prepared the evening meal over the small fire. Tallis finished skinning the mar rat, then sat on a low rock nearby and began checking arrow fletches and the blades of the knives they all carried as the day softened into twilight.
It was incredibly quiet in the desert and Shaan found the stillness oddly soothing. There was no wind now and no sounds but for those made by the five of them. Even the serpents were quiet, sitting like beasts carved of stone.
‘We should reach the Halmahda’s Well late tomorrow,’ Rorc said, polishing the seat of the saddle. ‘If the weather holds.’
Shaan glanced up at the clear sky. She thought they’d left the rain behind.
Rorc pointed to the sky in the southwest. ‘There,’ he said, ‘do you see that streak of cloud?’
Shaan squinted. ‘But it’s nothing,’ she said, ‘barely a scratch.’
‘Or it could be a storm building.’ Rorc went back to his polishing.
‘But I thought it hardly ever rained out here?’
‘Rain, no.’ He shook his head. ‘A sandstorm. It’s the season for those.’
‘How bad can they get?’
Rorc’s lips quirked. ‘Bad enough. Hopefully we’ll be lucky.’ He threw his rag down on the top of the tin. ‘You finish up.’ He stood and went over to Mailun, and Shaan saw her face close up as she looked up from the cooking pot.
Shaan went back to polishing the tack. She didn’t want to know what Rorc had to say to Mailun, possibly something about the sandstorms, or maybe something else. She rubbed vigorously at the leather and wondered how Tuon was.
‘Thirsty?’ Tallis handed her a water skin and sat next to her.
‘Thanks.’ She took a long sip. They both watched Rorc and Mailun talking. They had walked some distance from the camp so the others couldn’t hear them. Irissa was ignoring them all, staring down at the contents of her cooking pot.
‘Do you think you and Rorc will be able to convince the other clans to fight Azoth?’ she said.
Tallis shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
She felt his uncertainty through the pores of her own skin and knew he feared not just their refusal but also how they would react to him and the serpents.
‘Morfessa has put together a good offer of trading possibilities,’ she said without enthusiasm.
‘If they and we survive long enough to honour them,’ Tallis said. ‘But to trade fighting skills for a year’s supply of wetlands grain is not an offer to dismiss lightly. I don’t know if Karnit will see it that way, though. Clans and wetlanders have never mixed well.’
‘Pride is useless if you’re dead,’ Shaan said, already despising Karnit.
‘Dying is not something Karnit fears.’
Shaan looked to the west as the sun dipped in the fiery sky. Dying would be something to fear if Azoth sent his serpents into the desert. But thinking of Azoth only made her mind turn to the predictions of the Prophet and those scrolls Tuon had found in the Isles.
‘How far are we from that temple?’ she said quietly.
‘Too far for you to go looking for it,’ Tallis said.
He took her hand. ‘You can’t believe too hard in what an old, dead man wrote over a thousand years ago,’ he said. ‘When we get closer to the temple, then maybe we can go, but not now. I’d rather put my faith in the Guides anyway.’
‘But you said it might even be the Guides who sent us the dream we shared, the dream where I saw the temple.’
He sighed. ‘I know, but just … not yet, Shaan.’ His anxiety, his fear for her, flowed through his skin to touch hers. ‘Please.’
She nodded, unable to cause him any more pain. ‘All right, not yet.’
Later in the night Shaan woke suddenly in a sweat, her heart pounding, her mind filled with the image of a ghostly dark figure beckoning her to the stone eye. She lay on her back, listening to the wind rippling the sides of the tent, her hands dusted with sand where she had been clawing at the earth. She took in a deep breath, one then two, and her heartbeat began to slow. But the image in her mind remained, clearer than ever before and also … She sat up slowly. There was a keen feeling inside her of something missing — an absence. She felt no shadow of Azoth here. Nothing. Not a glimmer. She put a hand to her face and wiped at the sweat on her forehead. She felt lighter and … released. She pushed open the tent flaps and went outside.
The sky was dark, but she could see few stars and a strong wind whipped at her clothes, flicking her hair about her head. She walked a few steps out into the night. The air was full of pressure and the wind was making a sighing, singing noise in the air. She knew perhaps she should wonder about that, but she was suddenly so alive. She couldn’t remember what it was like to be free of him. She hadn’t realised how strong his hold on her had become.
She walked further away from the camp, revelling in the wind rushing past her face, filling her lungs. The sand was still warm beneath her bare feet and she was gripped by a fierce sense of exhilaration, so she stretched out her arms and tilted her face back toward the dark sky, her eyes closed as she did nothing but feel the force of the air about her.
Then she heard Tallis call her name. She turned, wind pushing against her. How far had she walked? She couldn’t see the camp at all.
Tallis?
Shaan! Get back here — a storm’s coming! His voice was loud in her head and a flicker of fear grew as she heard a low moaning wind coming toward her. Sandstorm. She began to run back toward Tallis, but a sudden shrieking howl of wind knocked her down.
‘Shaan!’ Faintly she heard Mailun’s scream and for a moment thought she saw her, but then a spray of sand whipped up between them. Shaan rolled backward, her mouth, her nose, her ears, full of sand.
Arak-si, a serpent hissed in her mind and she sensed a great bulk descending toward her.
Asrith?
A taloned foot landed near her head and she desperately grabbed at it, pulling herself up. Wind howled. She could see nothing as she dragged herself onto the serpent’s back then lay as low as she could, clinging to her wing nubs as Asrith leaped into the air.
An enormous wall of sand and wind hit a moment later. There was a sudden shrieking howl and Shaan was almost thrown off as the storm caught them, flipping them sideways. The serpent screeched as wind stretched her wings to breaki
ng point, pushing them backward. Clinging on, Shaan felt the strain of the serpent’s muscles as she tried to counteract the immense force of the storm. It was pitch black and she had no sense of where the others were. She could feel Tallis alive somewhere but had no idea in what direction, and she could hear nothing but the screaming of the wind as it flung them across the sky.
Asrith! She reached out to the serpent but Asrith was too intent on battling the storm to answer, and Shaan could do nothing except hold on as Asrith fought hard, twisting her body, fighting to bring her wings closer in, trying to land. But the fury of the sandstorm was too much and she felt Tallis slipping further and further away.
Sand peak ahead, Asrith suddenly hissed in her mind. Hold on!
A sudden bone-rattling jarring came as Asrith ploughed head first into a solid hill of sand and rock. Grit exploded across her face, small stones bounced off her head and Asrith shuddered beneath her as they skidded across the face of the hill, finally coming to a stop in a shower of earth and rock. The wind still howled but its strength seemed diminished and, spitting sand and covered in bruises and scratches, Shaan slipped down the serpent’s side. She could see nothing, not even stars, and her eyes felt grazed by sand. Exhausted, Shaan huddled down between the serpent and the dune, protected from the buffeting winds by her bulk. There was nothing to do now but wait.
Chapter 28
The storm blew itself out just before dawn and Shaan emerged from the scant shelter of Asrith’s body, her eyes watering as pale light began to spread along the horizon. It was very quiet, the only sound the shuffle of her feet and Asrith’s snorting as she blew grit from her nostrils. The night had been cold and Shaan was glad the sun was finally rising. She had no idea where they were or where anyone else was. All she could see in the dim light was a vast sand plain and a line of dunes in the distance. The massive sandhill they’d ploughed into the night before rose high above Asrith’s head, the peak a sharp edge against the lightening sky, the base littered with small, pale rocks. She bent and picked one up and tossed it up and down as she looked about her.