The Parched Sea

by Troy Denning

  Kadumi and Ruha stepped to Lander’s side.

  “What happened?” asked the widow.

  To Lander’s surprise, his companions were not staggered by the sight. Their faces showed anger and outrage, but there was no sign of horror in either of their expressions.

  “The men ate the camels,” Lander said, wondering if all Bedine were made of such stern stuff. “The reptilian sell-swords ate the men.”

  “There must be over a thousand mercenaries with the Zhentarim,” Kadumi said, studying the gruesome scene with a thoughtful air. “A few hundred could not have eaten so many.”

  “True, but this points out the Zhentarim’s weakness,” Ruha said. “The invaders must be running low on their food. Perhaps they will starve, after all.”

  “If that is going to happen,” the Harper said. “We must reach the next tribe before the Zhentarim feed it to their mercenaries. Can we do it?”

  Ruha nodded. “Colored Waters is a week away. With Kadumi’s extra camels, we should easily overtake the Zhentarim.”

  The youth frowned at his sister-in-law. “Do you know who is camped at Colored Waters? Are they allies of the Mtair Dhafir?”

  Ruha shook her head.

  “Then perhaps it is not our place to go with the berrani,” he said. “Even if they let us into camp, those camped at Colored Waters may not believe us.”

  The widow shrugged. “I see no harm in helping Lander,” she said. “Besides, it is our duty to avenge the slaughter of the Qahtan and the Mtair Dhafir, is it not?”

  Kadumi regarded the corpse-filled wadi for several moments, then nodded. “It is.”

  “Good,” Lander said. He glanced at the bodies uncomfortably. “Is there anything we should do?”

  Ruha shook her head. “N’asr’s children took their spirits away last night,” she said. “There is nothing we can do but reach Colored Waters as fast as we can.”

  Lander did not understand what she meant, but he felt he should follow his own custom and warn the spirits about the dangers they faced in the Realm of the Dead. He stepped to the edge of the wadi, then called in a clear loud voice, “Dead ones, Cyric—er, N’asr—has denizens everywhere. Remember your gods and keep their faith. If you doubt your gods, you will suffer as surely as the wicked.”

  When the Harper turned away from the gulch, Kadumi was openly smirking at him. Even Ruha’s eyes were twinkling as she asked, “What did they answer?”

  “It’s sort of a prayer,” Lander explained.

  “It sounded like advice to me,” Ruha countered. “Have you visited N’asr’s camp?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then how can you give advice to the dead?” demanded Kadumi, forcing his camel to kneel so he could mount it. “You don’t know what they’ll find.”

  Lander started to explain that he had learned about how the Realm of the Dead worked from his Cyric-worshiping mother, then thought better of explaining his family history. Instead, forcing his own camel to kneel, he simply said, “It can’t hurt.”

  “That’s right, Kadumi,” Ruha said, also kneeling her camel. “After the vultures carry off the spirits of the dead, Lander can say whatever he likes to the corpses.” She climbed into her camel’s saddle, then added, “Now, if they start talking back, we’d better change our minds about riding with him.”

  Lander flushed, uncertain as to whether or not the widow was poking fun at him, and uncomfortable in either event. He mounted his camel and urged it to its feet. “I told you, they never talk back.”

  Kadumi laughed, then commanded his camel to rise and pointed the way into the desert.

  On the western side of Rahalat, the sand dunes grew smaller and more yellowish in color. Within two miles, they assumed the parallel, ridgelike pattern of transverse dunes. To Lander, the sands resembled nothing so much as a lake of golden waters on a breezy day. In the wide troughs between the dunes, the sand was no more than a few inches deep and the camels found the going quite easy.

  The dunes themselves rose no higher than thirty feet, with gentle slopes leading both up to and down from the crest. Where the Zhentarim had crossed them, the passage of so many thousands of feet had often pounded a small pass through the ridge. These passes made travel even easier, for they often reduced the height the Harper’s small company had to climb by as much as ten feet.

  As he reached the summit of one of these passes, Lander paused between its ten-foot walls and looked over his shoulder. He saw that the ground had slowly been rising as they rode away from the Shunned Mountain. The great whaleback dunes on the eastern side of Rahalat lay in an immense basin. From this distance, they looked like a stormy ocean of ice. Remembering the effort it had required to struggle over one of those monstrous dunes, the Harper was grateful for the easy travel through these golden sands.

  When Kadumi and Ruha reached the summit of the little pass, Lander nodded toward the white sands. “It’s like an ocean.”

  Kadumi looked confused. “We call it the Bowl of Loneliness. What do you mean, ‘ocean’?”

  Lander started to explain. “It’s a pond of water so large—” A heap of sand sloughed off the northern wall of the pass, and the Harper stopped in midsentence.

  “What’s wrong?” Ruha asked.

  Before Lander could answer, a black shroud burst out of the sand. At the same time, a swarthy voice called, “Show yourselves!”

  The voice was speaking Common, so Lander assumed it belonged to a Zhentarim. Reaching for his sword with one hand and using the reins to whip his mount with the other, the Harper yelled in Bedine, “Ambush! Get out of here!”

  Before the camel took two steps, a pair of crossbow quarrels sailed across Lander’s path from the other side of the little pass. The Harper spun around to face the attack and found two men less then ten yards away. They held empty crossbows in their hands. Behind them, four more men were flinging the sand from their black burnooses and rising from their subsurface hiding places, crossbows cocked and ready to fire.

  “Move and you die!” warned the figure that had first burst from the sand. “Stay still and perhaps you will live.”

  Lander reined his camel to a halt, then slipped his sword back into scabbard and turned to face the speaker. The invader wore the black burnoose the Zhentarim had adopted as their desert uniform. Narrow, steely eyes gazed out from beneath his furrowed brow. Behind him stood another five Zhentarim, sand running from their robes in yellow rivulets. That meant that there were a total of six men on each side of the pass.

  The Harper did not answer the leader’s question, for if he showed that he understood their words, the Zhentarim would realize that he was no Bedine. He suspected that the ambushers already knew his identity—or would deduce it from his light skin soon enough—but he saw no reason to make the enemy’s job simpler. Perhaps he might even confuse them long enough to plot an escape.

  “Dismount!” the Zhentarim demanded, still speaking Common. While his subordinates kept their weapons trained on the small party, the commander moved toward Lander and motioned for all three of his captives to kneel their camels.

  Kadumi started to pull his scimitar from its scabbard, but Lander motioned for the youth to keep his blade sheathed. Ruha was the first to obey the Black Robe’s command, slipping out of her saddle and kneeling at her mount’s side. The widow held the reins drawn tightly to her body, forcing the beast to crane its neck around at an awkward angle. Her mount roared its indignation, but she ignored it.

  Puzzled by Ruha’s peculiar action, Lander also couched his own mount, then watched as Kadumi resentfully did likewise.

  The Zhentarim walked straight to Lander. “Where are you going? Why are you following us?”

  As he spoke, he reached for the Harper’s aba, and Lander knew there was no use in trying to hide his identity. Beneath his aba, Lander still wore the harp and moon pin of the Harpers. After Bhadla had noticed its outline, he had taken care to keep that part of his outer clothing dirty enough to camouflage the pin
beneath, but he had not removed the symbol. When Florin had fastened it on his breast, he had sworn to always wear the harp and moon over his heart.

  The Zhentarim ripped Lander’s aba open, then looked directly at the symbol. In Common, he called to his men, “This is the Harper. Let’s take them all to Yhekal.”

  When the other Zhentarim started to step forward from the sides of the pass, Ruha yelled, “Ride, now!”

  Kadumi obeyed immediately, commanding his camel to rise. The widow began chanting in the deep, mystic tones that Lander recognized as a spellcasting.

  The Zhentarim commander’s eyes widened in alarm and he pointed at Ruha. “Kill—”

  That was all the commander said before Lander struck his shoulder with the edge of an open hand. Without pausing an instant, the Harper went into a well-rehearsed attack. He grabbed the back of the Zhentarim’s neck and smashed the opposite elbow into the commander’s face. When the astonished invader reached to cover his shattered nose, Lander kneed him in the groin, then slapped his open palms against the man’s ears. The Harper finished the attack by slipping an arm around the back of the Zhentarim’s neck, grabbing the chin, and pulling hard. The invader’s neck popped, and the man collapsed into a lifeless heap.

  Realizing he was now a target for the crossbowmen, Lander dove forward. The twang of crossbow strings filled the air before he hit the sand, half-a-dozen quarrels whistled past where he had been standing, and his camel roared in pain and terror.

  Continuing his dive in one fluid motion, Lander rolled back to his feet, drew his weapon, then turned toward his companions. Most of the Zhentarim were cocking crossbows again. One had drawn his saber and was rushing Ruha, who had picked up two fistfuls of sand and was letting it sift through her fingers. Kadumi drew his scimitar and turned his camel to defend Ruha.

  “No, Kadumi!” Lander called, rushing after the youth. “Take the camels and go!”

  The youth paused long enough to glance over his shoulder and frown, then urged his mount forward. As he approached the Zhentarim, he screamed his battle cry and raised his sword to strike.

  The invader hit the ground and ducked the boy’s wild slash. As the Zhentarim returned to his feet, he lashed out with his saber and cleanly lopped off one of the camel’s rear legs at the knee. The beast fell immediately, spilling Kadumi three feet from the attacker.

  The Harper hazarded a glance at the men still fighting with crossbows. They were just securing their bowstrings into place and recocking their weapons. Realizing that he still had a moment or two before they loaded their quarrels, Lander rushed up behind Kadumi’s attacker and brought a vicious slash down on the Zhentarim’s collarbone. Screaming, the man dropped his sword and stumbled forward, falling onto the young warrior. Lander finished the invader with a thrust through the spine and pulled the dead man off of the boy.

  Pointing at the string of white camels, Lander yelled, “Take the mounts and go! I’ll protect Ruha!”

  Without pausing to see if the wide-eyed youth would obey this time, he stepped past Kadumi. The surviving Zhentarim had reloaded their crossbows and were raising them to fire at Ruha.

  Dropping his sword, Lander launched himself at the mage. He struck her full in the body just as the twang of crossbow-strings filled the air. As he hit the ground, the Harper heard more than four quarrels hiss over his head. A heavy groan escaped the throat of Ruha’s mount, then it lay motionless in the sand.

  The Harper leapt back to his feet and retrieved his sword. To his relief, he saw that Kadumi had obeyed him and was leading the string of surviving camels down the other side of the ridge. Lander stepped back toward Ruha, expecting to hear a chorus of Zhentarim battle cries. Instead, however, all he heard were screams as the sandy walls of the small pass avalanched down on top of them.

  A small hand seized his free arm. “Come!” Ruha urged. “We must hurry!”

  Pulling him by the arm, she led the way as they half-stumbled, half-ran after Kadumi and the camels. The pair was thirty yards from the dune’s base before Ruha stopped. Panting and sweating heavily in the terrible heat, Lander turned to look at the ambush site.

  All that remained of the small pass was a slight, barely noticeable dip in the ridge of the dune. The sand had rolled forward from both sides, completely burying the ambushers. There was no sign of any of the invaders.

  “Do you think any survived?” Lander asked, noticing that the widow still held his hand.

  Ruha shook her head. “No. It is one thing to hide in the sand and another to be buried by it. If they are not dead already, they will soon suffocate.”

  Kadumi joined them, still leading the camels. Instead of thanking Lander for saving his life, as the Harper had expected, the youth studiously avoided meeting the older man’s gaze. Instead, he turned to Ruha and spat at her feet.

  “Witch!”

  Eight

  Ruha’s mount suddenly slowed its jolting pace, jarring the widow out of the lethargic daze into which she had fallen. For the last five days, the three companions had been riding hard, hoping to overtake the Zhentarim. The effort had exhausted Ruha and, despite her best efforts to stay alert, she often felt as if her mind had left her body to fend for itself.

  When Ruha looked up to see why her camel had halted, she saw Lander stopped twenty feet ahead. He was staring at the horizon, where a broad, black line of apparent nothingness separated the dun-colored ground from the cerulean sky. Ruha squinted at the dark line. When it did not disappear or become more distinct, she dismissed it as one of the desert’s thousand and one visual illusions.

  “What’s he doing?” Lander demanded, pointing at a black fleck on horizon, where the blue sky met the black strip of illusion.

  The speck was Kadumi. At his own insistence, the boy was riding ahead to scout. Since learning that his sister-in-law was a sorceress, the boy had said no more than a dozen words to her, and all of them had been disparaging. Ruha was not surprised by his reaction, for she suspected that he blamed her magic for the bad fortune that had brought the Zhentarim down upon his tribe. Most Bedine would have done the same.

  Whatever the cause for Kadumi’s detachment, it set Lander’s nerves on edge. The Harper preferred to do his own scouting and did not like trusting his safety to someone else.

  “Why’s he dismounting?” Lander demanded.

  Ruha squinted at the distant figure. “You can see that?”

  “Of course,” he responded gruffly. “You don’t think I’d let him out of my sight!”

  “But that far—and with only one eye?” Ruha immediately regretted her question, fearing that she would touch a sore nerve. “Please forgive me. I didn’t mean—”

  The Harper chuckled and raised a hand. “No offense taken,” he said. “It’s a badge of my own damn stupidity.”

  “How so?” Ruha asked, anxious to appease the curiosity she had felt ever since meeting the stranger.

  “When I was a boy, my mother gave me a pet hawk that didn’t want to be a pet. I had to keep it on a tether.” He paused, unconsciously rubbing a finger along the edge of his patch.

  “And?” Ruha prompted.

  “One day it made its feelings known.”

  Ruha grimaced, imagining the raptor tearing at Lander’s boyish face. “What did your father do?”

  Lander smiled. “Let it go, of course.”

  “A Bedine would have killed it,” Ruha said. “I think I would have, too.”

  “Why?” Lander asked, meeting her gaze with his one good eye. “You can’t blame an animal for wanting to be free. Your people should realize that more than anybody.”

  “The Bedine would have been more concerned with vengeance than with what is right.”

  Instead of commenting on Ruha’s reply, the Harper turned his attention back to Kadumi’s distant form. “Why is he stopped? Is it the Zhentarim?”

  The faint whistle of a high-pitched amarat horn wafted across the barrens. “I don’t think it’s the invaders. Kadumi’s signaling us to come.
”

  Urging his camel forward, Lander asked, “Why?”

  “We’re there,” Ruha replied. “He dismounted to meet a sentry.”

  The Harper scanned the horizon with a scowl. “That’s unfortunate.”

  “Why?”

  “I’d rather Kadumi didn’t meet this new tribe without us being there,” Lander replied. “I don’t trust him to keep your secret, and there’s too much at stake here to let superstition get in the way.”

  Ruha glanced back to make sure everything was in order with the string of Kadumi’s camels she was leading. “We can only hope that he remembers his duty to protect his brother’s wife.”

  “Will he?”

  Ruha shrugged. “I think so. He’s seemed very bitter since the fight, but that’s only natural, considering what he’s been through in the past weeks. The blood runs hot in boys that age, and any Bedine would be upset to discover that his brother had married a witch. Still, I don’t think he will let his emotions overcome his honor. He impresses me as a boy who listened closely to his father and knows what is expected of a man.”

  “And what happens if you’re wrong?”

  “I don’t think the sheikh will kill me,” she said, avoiding the Harper’s gaze. “But he won’t listen to you, either. You and I will have to leave.”

  Lander frowned. “The Zhentarim—”

  Ruha lifted her hand to quiet his objection. “If it comes to that, nothing you say will change the sheikh’s mind. In that case, I’ll help you find another tribe. You can repay the favor by letting me ride with you to your land.”

  The Harper raised an eyebrow and looked her over from head to toe. “I don’t think you’d like Sembia,” he said. “Still, if you really want to go, I’ll take you there.”

  “Sembia,” Ruha said, smiling to herself. “That is a nice name for home.” Aside from its name, she knew only one thing about Lander’s home, but it was the only thing she needed to know. In Sembia, at least if the Harper was any example, no one would care that she was a sorceress.

  After a moment of silence, Lander scanned the horizon with a furrowed brow. “If we’re getting close to Colored Waters,” he asked, “why do I see no sign of an oasis?”