Sandstorm

by Christopher Rowe

  through a gate that never closes.

  —The Nar’ysr’s Last Prophecy

  (apocryphal)

  THE WORST OF IT, BY FAR, OCCURRED WHEN SHAN CLOSED her hands around Marashan’s mouth and nose.

  The girl had fought her way back to consciousness at the sounds of her brother’s terrible last cries. Marashan gathered earth-force, and Cephas shouted above the screams.

  “No! He does this for you!”

  Marashan’s breath cut off and she trembled for a moment, then became still. Before Cephas could speak, a small, calloused hand found his and moved his fingers against the genasi girl’s neck, where he felt a thin pulse. Shan knew he thought her capable of killing the girl, and wished to ease his mind.

  It was that moment, not the long night of waiting that followed, that Cephas kept returning to as he watched the Argentori bury their dead. He supposed it was because that was the only moment during the long and terrible night of waiting when they were moving, acting. Otherwise, they had not spoken and barely stirred except to draw shallow breaths.

  On Jazeerijah, the dead were thrown over the side for scavengers to find, but more than one of the Founding Stories took the tomb cities of the desert for their setting. He knew what a grave was.

  Maybe Elder Lin sensed his worry that this dirt cell would become their grave when she detected their life-forces in the smoldering canvas ruins. She had caused the ground her son shielded them beneath to explode outward. Even aware that the remains at her feet were those of Flek, she took the time to look all four of them in the eye, speaking to the twins and Cephas as gently as to her own daughter, saying, “You are alive.” It was not an exclamation of relief. It was a reminder.

  She issued other reminders as she opened the cracks in the center spires of the village, six in all. These would hold the remains of those earthsouled who died by fire or blade. “The Old Mother birthed these souls,” she said, “and now the Old Mother gathers them back up. They died in violence, but they lived in peace, so their sleep shall be untroubled. The earth abides.”

  All the villagers, and many of the circus folk, were gathered at the spires. The genasi answered their elder with an echo. “The earth abides,” and some among the circus troupe whispered other imprecations and blessings. The circus would bury its own dead in the afternoon.

  In addition to Candasa—the clown Candle—four others of Whitey’s family had died the previous night. The man Candasa tried so hard to save had been Kip, the youngest of them all. Cephas did not believe he had ever spoken to the boy.

  Micha and Green Beth, two other clowns, died when they tried to roll the burning roof back onto its scrollworks. One more of Whitey’s family lay in a cool cave offered by Elder Lin, swaddled in soft bandages and driving a hard bargain with the Lord of the Dead. This was his wife, Melda, who took a minotaur’s axe and rushed into the burning fall of the southernmost canvas wall when it settled over the stone kraal where her oxen were stabled. She led every team free before she collapsed.

  Now the troupe waited on word of Tobin and Mattias, who had disappeared into the spires before dawn. Trill was tied down, her efforts to take flight pathetic but dangerous to any who came near, so the goliath volunteered to accompany the old man in her stead.

  From the fire, the efforts of Cephas and the twins, and his arrows, Mattias counted eleven dead minotaurs. Down on the road, where Trill descended on the attackers like an angel of death, the roustabouts found the corpses of twelve more, along with the lances and javelins they had used to poison the wyvern.

  “Twenty-five,” Corvus told his old friend. “El Pajabbar always number twenty-five.”

  Mattias nodded, signaled Tobin, and faded away, silent on his canes.

  Escorted by Elder Lin, Cephas and the twins arrived at the wagons as they were leaving.

  “I should go with them,” Cephas said.

  “They should not go,” said the Elder.

  Corvus shook his head, though it was unclear to which of them he was responding. “All the decisions are being made elsewhere,” he said, as if to himself. “That has to change.”

  Sword in hand, Ariella Kulmina appeared in the air above the lowered facade of a circus wagon. Smoke rose in the near distance, turning the first rays of dawn a red that bathed the spires around her in a light the color of blood.

  No living thing stirred.

  The silver-skinned woman floated to the ground, holding her blade in a high guard position, and sent out her awareness, wary of enemies concealed by magic.

  The enemy that found her did not strike from concealment.

  Unbelievably fast, an earthsouled fighter in the regalia of a gladiator sprang from between two wagons, spinning an enormous double-headed flail as easily as a child wielding a sling. The swordmage had been told the genasi of the village were pacifists, but she had stepped through the WeavePasha’s teleportation portal with defenses raised nonetheless.

  A lucky thing that was, or the spiked heads of the flail would have struck her down instantly. Instead, she breathed a syllable and brought her long sword down in a parrying arc. One flail head bounced off the eldritch shield raised at her command, and her sword struck the other with enough force to send it swinging wide.

  The gladiator took her actions in stride, springing back lightly and setting his weapon to swinging in a figure-eight pattern that would be impossible to penetrate with just a sword.

  Ariella had more than her sword to give battle with.

  Mimicking the gladiator, she backed away from close contact. But with another arcane word and a flick of her wrist, a crackling line of energy extended from her weapon’s tip like a whip. She swept this extension of her will in an arc beneath the earthsouled’s defenses, surprising him. The line wrapped around the man’s ankles and, using both hands and all her strength, she raised her sword high above her head.

  The earthsouled man’s feet flew out beneath him, and he landed flat on his back, while the eldritch whip bound his legs tightly together. Approaching warily, Ariella saw there was no fear in the man’s face. Instead, she saw only exhaustion and grief. And she swore she heard something from inside him—something that reminded her of the wind.

  The man was staring up at her. He made no move to raise his weapon. “You are not a minotaur,” he said.

  Ariella pursed her lips in confusion, but answered him. “And you are not a pacifist.”

  The Argentori removed every sign of the previous night’s terrible occurrences with remarkable speed. They finished interring their dead, respectfully assisted Whitey’s family in the ceremony of their own tradition, then buried the signs of conflagration beneath the stones. The ground, at least, bore no scars.

  The genasi also carried away the bodies of the minotaurs, no doubt to a gentler end than would have come if the circus folk had taken charge of the grisly task. Shock was passing from most faces now, except perhaps that of Whitey, the master clown who looked so stunned and haunted. The others were asking questions among themselves.

  “Wait for Mattias to return from his hunt,” Corvus told them, and refused to say anything more. He would not even introduce the mysterious swordswoman who had apparently arrived at his request.

  “She is windsouled,” the grieving Sonnett told Cephas. “She is genasi, like us.”

  Sonnett was in the Welcome Terrace, working with her kin to restore the place to the function intended by its name. She looked to her mother’s serenity and made a great effort to match it. Cephas watched the crystal-haired windsouled woman study everything around her, and thought of the near-deadliness of their first encounter. Like me, perhaps, thought Cephas in silent reply to gentle Sonnett. Not like you.

  And not like shattered Marashan, who had not left the spire where her brother now rested forever. The girl had spoken to no one—not even to her mother and especially not to Cephas, at whom she would not even look. She sat with her back against the spire, rocking and keening, arms wrapped around her knees.

  “Ther
e is a storm inside my daughter,” Elder Lin told Cephas when he struggled to apologize. “You did not ignite it. Even those horned slaves of the Calimien did not plant it within her. It has always been there, and shielding her from the world has not prepared her for the way it tosses her heart now. But I knew no other way.”

  Cephas had no reply, and Blue came for him then, dashing his hope that the Elder might explain further.

  “My brother’s wife will live,” Blue said as they made their way back to the wagons. “I always said he’d married an ox, not an ox maiden. That strength is showing.”

  Cephas clapped the man on the shoulder, relieved. “Perhaps I can show you how to work a crossbow later,” he said.

  Blue shook his head. “No need,” he said. “My brothers and I had the ringmaster teach us while the rest of you buried our kin.”

  Corvus had set out a circle of canvas chairs around a small campfire. He, the twins, the windsouled woman, and Whitey sat talking. As Cephas approached, he saw Mattias and Tobin joining the group. The two wore grim expressions.

  Cephas joined the circle, finding a seat between Whitey and the swordswoman.

  Corvus waited for them all to settle themselves, then spoke. “This is Ariella Kulmina, a swordmage of Akanûl, a land ruled by genasi like the Emirates.”

  The woman protested. “Not at all like the Emirates—”

  Corvus waved her to silence. “Last night I appealed to the WeavePasha of Almraiven, our sponsor in this mad business, for aid against our attackers. He was sharing a meal with the swordmage, and she volunteered to travel here by means of his magics. We will speak more of this in a moment. First, I would hear what you found out there in the spires, Mattias.”

  By way of answer, the old man spilled open a roll of roughly woven cloth. Two sets of horns, still joined by the polled ridges of bone they grew from, clattered onto the stone.

  The woman of Akanûl breathed in sharply, and even Whitey turned his empty eyes away.

  Corvus said, “I make that twenty-four.”

  Mattias nodded at Tobin. For the first time, Cephas noticed how wan the big man appeared. He had the thin-skinned appearance of a gladiator sent back into the arena too soon, with only a hedge shaman’s inadequate chants closing his wounds. Tobin had been in a dreadful fight, and recently.

  The goliath turned something over and over in his hands—the jagged end of a single horn, dried blood crusting its broken end. “I could not hold her,” he said. “She was so strong. So terribly strong.”

  Cephas realized the whole company was staring at him, and he looked down to see that he had risen to his feet. He shook his head, began to apologize, but then decided to give voice to the question so unaccountably important to him. “She lives? The minotaur woman who led the attack—she escaped you?”

  Mattias answered. “Aye. And retreated south toward the mountains, running fast and alone. Tobin took her measure, and she’ll not forget him. But I am glad she fled, and I hope never to face her again.”

  Cephas sat, feelings of relief and unease and bewilderment warring inside.

  Whitey spoke. “What do you mean, ‘our sponsor in this business,’ Ringmaster?” There was an edge to his voice Cephas had not heard before.

  “Old friend,” Corvus said, and Whitey shocked them all by savagely cutting his hand across his chest. He knew how to stand in for the kenku in the ring, and he knew the kenku’s means of imposing quiet.

  “Employee,” he said. “I am your employee, Corvus, in a circus. Your other activities, all the shadow games those of you sitting here get up to, you know they’re no secret to me. I knew what the score was when I signed my family on, and I signed anyway, because you pay well and you have access to routes nobody else does. But most importantly, Corvus, because you swore, you swore to me, that our worlds would not intersect. You swore to me that my family would never be in danger because of something you did.”

  There was a long silence. Then Corvus sighed. “Whitey, the attack last night, Melda’s wounds, they cannot be blamed—”

  And this time it was Mattias who interrupted, though he required only a soft word to silence Corvus.

  “No,” he said. “No, Corvus. He is right. We set no fires, we put our hands on no axes, but he is right. Nine Hells, I don’t know half of what you’re stirring up right now myself, but I do know that Candle and Kip and the others would be breaking down the tent right now if we were nothing more than circus performers.”

  Corvus did not immediately respond. He waited so long to speak that the silence, uncomfortable to begin with, grew almost desperate. Cephas searched his memories for some experience that would offer succor or solution, but found nothing. There was too much he did not know.

  Finally, Corvus said, “If we were nothing but circus performers, Candasa and Kip would be buried on their father’s farm in the grainlands north of Elturel”—Whitey started to stand, but Corvus had suffered the last interruption he would countenance—“dead like their parents from plague in the Year of the Second Circle.”

  Whitey, unimpressed, held his hands wide, shaking his head.

  Corvus spoke on. “If we were nothing more than circus performers, then Tobin Tok Tor would still be haunting the Riftedge, chased by dwarf patrols and clanless.

  “And wouldn’t Melda, your wife, Whitey, have died with her sisters and their herds if we had not come across her fighting druid-fettered wolves all alone?”

  Only Cephas and, he noticed, the Akanûlan Ariella Kulmina, still watched Corvus, who had risen to his feet and circled the campfire. All the veterans of the circus stared at the ground.

  “I have broken no vows. And I have gone far beyond the requirements of our covenant. Our worlds will not intersect? I said no such thing, Whitey. I promised to protect you and yours from the shadows that haunt this spell-blasted, god-torn, tyrant’s playground of a world, and I have done that. I have done that more than any of you know. Any of you.” The last three words he said standing before Mattias.

  “And now I will do still more. When the sun sets, I will accompany this woman back to Almraiven. The WeavePasha will open a portal. Some of you will accompany me. The rest will stay here until Melda is recovered. Then Whitey will lead the circus north in rebadged wagons.”

  The clown was confused. “I had no intention—”

  “I suggest you make for Cormyr. I have a legitimate-looking Player’s Writ packed away somewhere, so you’ll not have to pay their fees. With luck, you should cross the Bridge of Fallen Men in time for the autumn fetes and festivals.”

  Whitey said, “You are giving me your circus, Corvus?”

  Corvus said, “For a time. I may one day reclaim it. I make no promises.”

  There was no humor in Whitey’s answering laugh. “I will go and speak with Melda and Blue, then.” He looked at the others. “All of you are welcome to come with us. All of you should.” With that, he left.

  Corvus took his seat. “He’s right, of course. Make no mistake, the attack last night was not made on the order of a one-horned she-minotaur. And yes, Mattias, I know more than I have told you, just as always. The minotaurs came for our newest member and were sent by people whose enmity I never sought. But if you go with Whitey, Cephas, you’ll draw other attacks.”

  Cephas did not understand what possible link he might have to the tragedy that had befallen them. “I will go with you, Corvus,” he said. “But I have done nothing I know of to cause this. My only enemies are those I bested on the canvas at Jazeerijah, and Azad and the other freedmen, I suppose.”

  “You suppose,” Corvus said with a chuckling sound. “ ‘A slave is always the enemy of his master,’ ” he said.

  Cephas pursed his lips. “I know that saying. Or I have heard something very like it.”

  The windsouled woman spoke, her accent strange, but her words clear and voiced in tones that reminded Cephas of bells—specifically of the bells that jingled on a weapon harness. “It’s from one of those old stories the humans of Calimsh
an valued so highly. I read hundreds of them in Akanûl before we came south, in preparation for our meetings with the WeavePasha.”

  “Not Bashan Reaver,” said Cephas. “Another one.”

  The woman shrugged. “There are dozens of escaped slave narratives in the Book of Founding Stories, the histories, the songs. They all end the same way.”

  Cephas thought about that for a moment. “The slave always dies gloriously, or else goes back to his master to better the lives of his friends still in chains.” He paused, sifting through the implications of what she said. Surely there was some exception.… “I never thought of it,” he eventually admitted, “but Azad never told a story that ended with a slave alive and free.”

  The woman sniffed. “Of course not. That’s the whole point. Who is Azad? A genasi slaver of the Skyfire Emirates?”

  “A human,” Corvus answered for Cephas. “An escaped slave himself, and a man whose motivations have proven unknowable thus far. Especially his motive in bringing Cephas out of the desert.”

  “Is that why these people seek me?” asked Cephas. “Was I the property of some other genasi who wishes to retrieve me after all this time?”

  “Something very like that,” said Corvus. “To be honest, I cannot be sure. I believe you to be connected to the windsouled families who rule the city of Calimport, and have sought proof of that in the Herald’s records in Saradush and by consulting with the Elder Lin, who has great expertise in the szuldar lines of the earthsouled clans. The Calimien are the great enemies of the humans ruled by the WeavePasha, and he has long sought some leverage to use in his endless negotiations staving off war. Word came to me of a genasi living with slaves escaped from Calimport, and I sent Mattias to investigate. The rest, you know.”

  Cephas shook his head. The kenku had dodged answering fully again by offering crumbs of truth. He was sure there was more.

  But Corvus continued. “And what you don’t know, what we all need to know, can be learned from the WeavePasha himself now that he is forced into the game. The human has extraordinary resources, and his magics are among the greatest of his race.”