by Troy Denning
The sheikh frowned thoughtfully. “Now that you ask, I can’t imagine. How?”
Both Lander and Kadumi smiled, anticipating what she would say. She settled her gaze on the Zhentarim, then said, “After the Zhentarim finished with the Mtair Dhafir, they cooked a hundred camels and gave the bodies of the Mtair Dhafir to their reptile soldiers.”
Upon hearing the last part of the report, the sheikh’s mouth turned downward in disgust. “Cannibals,” he hissed. When Bhadla started to translate what had just passed, the sheikh cut him off. “Yhekal obviously understands our words,” Sa’ar said, “and I am tired of playing his game.”
The Zhentarim’s brow furrowed, but he did not lose his temper. “They’re lying, Sheikh,” he said, now speaking Bedine.
The sheikh looked the Zhentarim over thoughtfully. “I don’t think so, Yhekal. You are the one who has presented himself as something he is not.”
“Am I to take that as your reply, then?” the purple-robed invader asked.
The sheikh looked toward the camp outside his tent. “I have not yet decided. Now that I have heard the words of both the Zhentarim and these Harpers,” he said, mistakenly waving his hand at Ruha and Kadumi as well as Lander, “we will discuss the matter. I will send for you when we are ready.”
“As a friend,” Yhekal said, his voice as even and cold as ever, “I warn you not to choose the Harpers over the Zhentarim—”
“Listen to this warning carefully, Sheikh,” Lander interrupted. “Threats are the only truthful words you will ever hear a Zhentarim speak.”
Yhekal closed his mouth, and Ruha saw his hand drop toward his jambiya. For a moment, she thought that the invader might actually lose control of himself and draw his weapon, but Bhadla gently laid a hand on the man’s arm.
“Perhaps we should go, Lord,” the D’tarig said. “Sheikh Sa’ar needs time to consider your proposal.”
The Zhentarim relaxed instantly. Without looking at his translator, Yhekal said, “Of course, Bhadla.” He glared at Lander with a menacing look, then turned to Sheikh Sa’ar. “I hope to hear from you soon—shall we say … tonight?”
Nine
A bitter wind gusted over the hillside, sending dust devils of sulphurous grit scuttling across the volcano’s pale slopes. Lander sat in a ravine about a quarter of the way up the cinder cone, staring at the campfires three hundred feet below. Though he wore a jellaba given to him by Sheikh Sa’ar, the heavy camel’s wool robe did not prevent him from shivering.
Sa’ar lifted the battered pot off the steaming rock-fissure upon which it had been placed to keep the tea warm. He poured a generous helping of the black liquid into a wooden cup, then offered it to Lander. “Here, something to warm you,” the sheikh said.
The Harper accepted the tea with heartfelt gratitude, then wrapped his hands around the warm cup and sipped the rich drink. Though the steam vent kept the tea far from scalding, it was still hot enough to warm his insides. “Thank you,” Lander said, at last bringing his shivering to a halt.
Sa’ar put the pot back in the vent-hole, then shook his head in amusement and shrugged Lander’s thanks off without comment. It was a Bedine peculiarity, the Harper had noticed, that they did not express gratitude for food or water. From what he could tell, they regarded these two essentials as the property of whomever needed them at the time. It seemed a strangely charitable custom for a people who thought it praiseworthy to kill a man in order to steal his camel.
“You had better be right about the Zhentarim,” Sheikh Sa’ar commented, studying the black basin of emptiness lying beyond his tribes’ campsite. “I would not like to think I made my people abandon their khreimas for nothing.”
“I’m right.”
Lander’s answer was confident, but even he was beginning to doubt the Zhentarim would attack. Already, Mystra’s Star Circle was touching the western horizon, and by the constellation’s position, Lander knew dawn would come in less than three hours.
The Harper and the sheikh had been sitting in the ravine since nightfall, when the Mahwa had silently snuck out of their camps, leaving their khreimas standing behind them. Under the cover of the moonless night, the tribe had ridden for the far side of the caldera. Behind them, they had left only two sentries and a half-dozen warriors to tend the campfires so that it would appear that the camp remained occupied.
Tethering their camels two miles away, about a quarter of the way around the volcano’s cone, Lander and Sa’ar had come to watch the Zhentarim overrun the empty camp. Sa’ar had justified the adventure by claiming he wanted to study his enemies, but Lander suspected that the sheikh was more interested in witnessing the Black Robes’ reaction when they learned they had been duped.
Fortunately for Lander’s nerves, they had to wait only twenty minutes longer. A familiar, shrill note wafted across the black emptiness, and then a tiny bolt of bright light flared in the distance.
“What was that?” Sa’ar demanded, rising to his feet.
“Lightning bolt,” Lander explained.
“Magic?”
“Yes,” the Harper replied, also standing.
The sheikh groaned. “My warriors won’t like that.”
“The Zhentarim try to eliminate the sentries, then overrun the camps quickly,” Lander explained. “They won’t tolerate survivors.”
“With good reason,” Sa’ar responded, pointing at Lander. “You, Ruha, and the boy have certainly caused them enough trouble. If you hadn’t told me of their atrocities to the Mtair Dhafir, I might well have allied with them. From what Kadumi told me, the Mtair Dhafir would have also joined them—if you hadn’t cut their envoy’s throat.”
“Kadumi told you that?” Lander asked, surprised.
The sheikh turned and watched the dark shapes of two warriors ride their camels out of camp. “No,” he replied. “Kadumi claimed it was someone named Al’Aif, but I think you had more reasons than this Al’Aif.”
Lander did not bother to deny the conclusion. At the moment, who had killed Zarud did not matter, and he did not wish to offend Sa’ar. Instead of arguing with the sheikh, the Harper reached for the tea pot. “May I?”
“Why do you have to ask?”
Lander filled his cup, then sipped the warm drink while they waited for the Zhentarim to reach the camp. The Harper barely finished his tea before dark shapes began skulking through the golden grass around the lakes.
“Weren’t the sentries stationed at the edge of the basin?” Lander asked.
“They were supposed to be,” the sheikh responded, already thinking along the same lines as Lander. “But that seems impossible. It should have taken the Zhentarim twice this long to reach the camp.”
The two men watched silently as a long line of dark silhouettes appeared outside the camp. Though Lander guessed the line to be less than four hundred yards away, the shapes remained indistinct and small. For several minutes, the army held its ground, awaiting the resistance that would not come. After a time it began to creep silently, cautiously forward.
“All right,” Sa’ar said. “Let us see what they think of our little ruse.”
As Lander had expected, the first ranks entered the fire-lit camp scurrying on all fours. Even from two hundred yards, the Harper could see their distinctive shapes, with four limbs protruding from sinewy bodies at right angles and a serpentine tail twitching behind. As they stopped and stood on their two rear legs, about half of the reptilian mercenaries drew sabers. The others pulled crossbows off their backs.
“It is as I feared,” Sa’ar whispered. “Asabis.”
“What?” Lander asked, turning to the sheikh.
“Come,” the sheikh said, grasping the Harper’s shoulder. “We must leave here at once.”
Lander did not move. “You know what those things are?”
Sa’ar nodded. “I suspected it when you and Ruha described what had happened to the Mtair Dhafir. My tribe and I are in your debt.”
The sheikh started to leave, but Lander did not
follow. “Why are you so frightened of them?”
“There’s no time,” Sa’ar said. “I’ll explain after we rejoin the tribe … if we live that long.”
Because Sa’ar was not the type to be easily frightened, Lander found the man’s fear more than a little contagious. Still, the Harper was not ready to leave. He wanted to study the asabis for at least a few minutes. “I’ll catch up to you later.” Lander turned back toward the campsite, where the asabis had made torches and were setting khreimas afire. “I want to watch awhile. Maybe I’ll learn something useful.”
The sheikh sighed. “I cannot leave you here alone,” he said. “Can we go after I tell you about them?”
Lander nodded, then picked up the tea pot and poured the last of the black drink into a bakia. “I suppose that would be fine.” He handed the cup to the sheikh. To his embarrassment, he noticed that his hand was trembling.
The sheikh glanced at Lander’s trembling hand, then chuckled and took the tea. “Very well,” he said, his voice and manner now absolutely calm. “We’ll stay until you are ready to go.”
Sa’ar turned toward the campsite and squatted down on his haunches. “Once, after my brothers and cousins had raided too many other khowwans, my tribe was driven into the Quarter of Emptiness. Our enemies did not follow us, for they expected that our camels would starve and we would die of thirst.”
The sheikh’s eyes grew hard and his attention seemed focused on a distant land and time. “We would have perished, save that we stumbled across an ancient city. It was half-buried in a massive dune, but its walls were made of gray stone as thick as a camel is tall. Inside the walls, the buildings stood as they had stood a thousand years ago, and in the center of the city lay an abandoned fort as large as a mountain.”
Sa’ar sipped his tea absently. “That fortress was both our salvation and our damnation. In its courtyard, there was an ancient well. When some of the warriors climbed down to clean it out, they claimed that it descended five hundred feet and that it opened into a great labyrinth of underground grottos filled with rivers of cool water.
“Of course, we thought they were exaggerating—at least until we began drawing water. It was sweet as honey and cool as the night, and the well’s capacity seemed endless. We pulled hundreds of buckets of water, and the flow never slowed. Before dusk fell that day, the sheikh and the elders were already making plans to turn the fort into a secret oasis, to make it a stronghold from which to build our khowwan into the strongest tribe of Anauroch.”
“What happened?” Lander asked, intrigued by the story of the lost city.
Sa’ar nodded toward the burning campsites below. “The asabis,” he said. “They climbed from the well in the dead of the night, falling upon our warriors and our mothers in the tents. A few of us children, afraid of sleeping inside a city, had stayed outside with the herds. When we heard the screams of our parents, we went to investigate.”
The sheikh paused. “You saw what the asabis did to the Mtair Dhafir, so I hardly need to describe what we found.”
Recalling the sight of the corpse-filled wadi below Rahalat, Lander shook his head. “No. I can imagine.”
“We went back to our camels and fled,” Sa’ar began. “And that was when the horror truly began. The asabis heard our beasts roaring and came to the chase. We were already mounted and riding, but they ran across the sands on all fours. Though our mounts were strong and freshly watered, the asabis followed close behind, and our camels had to gallop to stay ahead.
“By dawn, there were only six of us left. Every time a camel stumbled or someone fell from the saddle, the asabis got him. Soon our tired camels could barely keep their footing. Three of the others gave up hope and drew their jambiyas, then turned to meet the beasts. They might as well have stopped and let the fiends take them.”
The sheikh paused, then pointed at the campsite. “They’re about finished.”
Lander looked toward the camp and saw that all of the khreimas were engulfed in flames. In the center of the camp stood Yhekal, dressed as always in his purple robe. A hundred asabis had gathered around him, and he was gesturing at them wildly, waving his sword at both sides of the volcano. Lander suspected he was ordering the reptiles to sweep around the cone and destroy any living thing they encountered.
On the far side of the camp stood a line of black-robed Zhentarim and their camels, the eerie orange light of the fires reflecting off them, making them appear ghostly. The camels were frantically ripping at the lush grass, but the drivers had made no move to remove the baggage from their backs.
Now that he was finally ahead of the Zhentarim, Lander realized, he would have to ride hard to stay there. Without taking his eyes from the camp, Lander asked, “What happened to the rest of you?”
“We kept riding,” the sheikh said. “About two hours after dawn, the asabis stopped and burrowed into the sand. That was the last I ever saw of them—until tonight.”
“So that’s why they always attack at night!” Lander exclaimed, rising.
“What?” Sa’ar asked. He made no move to follow the Harper.
“All of the Zhentarim’s attacks have come at night. Until now, I thought they were just trying to take their enemies by surprise.”
Sa’ar smiled. “But it’s really because the asabis are creatures of the night,” he said. “During the day, they’re worthless.”
Lander nodded.
In the camp below, the asabis scattered, gesturing wildly at each other. The acrid smell of burning camel-hair began to waft up the slope. Realizing that he and the sheikh would be trapped on the cinder cone if they did not leave soon, the Harper climbed out of the ravine.
When Lander reached the lip of the gulch, he perceived a curious silence behind him. Alarmed that something had happened to Sa’ar, he turned and saw the sheikh still sitting in the ravine, sipping his tea.
“Are you coming?” Lander asked.
Sa’ar looked up with a roguish grin on his lined face. “You want to leave so soon?” he asked, rising to his feet and slowly stretching his arms. He sauntered to the steam vent and picked up his battered tea pot. “Mustn’t forget this. I paid two camels for it.”
Carefully working their way from one ravine to the next, they hurried across the cinder cone’s gritty slope and returned to their camels. By the time they untethered the beasts and mounted, they could hear the asabis barking orders to each other in a sharp, chattery language.
The two men reached their rendezvous point with the Mahwa at dawn. Without dismounting, the sheikh gave the order to ride for the Well of the Chasm. It was, he explained, the next waterhole in the Zhentarim’s path. The tribe camped there was allied with Mahwa, so he was obligated to warn them of the approaching hazard.
Sa’ar flattered Kadumi by asking him to scout ahead with the Mahwa’s best warriors. Lander and Ruha were assigned to ride with the sheikh’s party.
To Lander’s amazement, after Sa’ar issued all of his riding orders and the tribe began to move, the sheikh closed his eyes and fell asleep in the saddle. As the sun rose higher in the sky, the Harper found it increasingly difficult to keep his own eyes open, but did not dare imitate the dozing sheikh. Unlike Sa’ar, Lander was not so accustomed to camels that he could ride them in his sleep, and he did not fancy the idea of falling onto the hard desert floor from the height of a camel’s back.
Lander tried to keep alert by studying the Mahwa caravan. At first glance, it seemed a disorganized herd, but the Harper quickly realized that there was an order to the jumble. Riding far ahead and far behind the tribe, mounted on the fastest camels and well beyond sight, were the youngest and most daring warriors. Like Kadumi, they were scouts who would alert the khowwan to any dangers lurking ahead—or approaching from behind, Lander added silently, remembering the Zhentarim.
Ringing the tribe at a thousand yards were the rest of the warriors, accompanied by their eldest sons, sleek saluki hunting hounds, and falcons. As they traveled, they periodically unleashed a dog
or bird, or broke into a spirited gallop themselves. At first Lander thought they were pointlessly wasting energy on high-spirited displays of riding and animal mastery, then he noticed that after these bursts of activity the sons returned to the center of the caravan with a hare, lizard, or some other meat for the evening’s pot. Once he even saw a proud boy riding with a small gazelle slung over his camel’s back.
The boys delivered the game to their mothers and sisters, who were riding in the security of the caravan center. The women of the wealthiest warriors rode in elaborately decorated haouadjejs, but most of the families could not afford the extra camel’s wool needed to make one of the box-shaped litters.
As Lander studied this part of the caravan, he realized that the Mahwa were moving at what must have been an extraordinary pace for the khowwan. Every camel was carrying at least one person, sometimes two. Even the baggage camels had small children perched atop their bundles, their little hands tightly gripping the leather thongs that held the cargo in place.
Lander turned to Ruha, who had been riding at his side all morning. “Do Bedine children usually ride the baggage camels?”
Ruha laughed. “No. The women and children usually walk to avoid tiring the camels. Sheikh Sa’ar is anxious to stay ahead of the Zhentarim, though, so everybody must ride. With luck, we will cover forty miles today.”
Lander glanced back over his shoulder. The ebony basin holding Colored Waters had already disappeared. For dozens of miles, all he could see was dun-colored barrenness. In the far distance, perhaps a hundred miles or more away, a low range of mountains rose out of the glassy heat waves drifting off the desert floor.
“I hope it will be enough,” he said.
“What makes you think it won’t be?” Ruha asked.
“Have you ever heard of asabis?” Lander asked, turning his attention to his riding companion’s sultry eyes.
She furrowed her brow. “No. The name means ‘eaters-of-parents’.”
“Maybe you haven’t heard of them, but you’ve seen them,” Lander replied. He repeated Sa’ar’s story to her, then added, “I have no idea how the Zhentarim made contact with them, but it appears our enemies already have one group of allies here in the desert.”