The Parched Sea

by Troy Denning

  The guards had been killed yesterday by small parties of Bedine warriors using hit-and-run tactics. Twenty or thirty would ride into bow range and launch a volley at a few of the guards, then flee before the Zhentarim could counterattack. Sometimes two or three groups assaulted from different directions at the same time, but they always fled before the enemy could respond in force.

  It was the same tactic the Bedine had been using since the destruction of Haushi’s tribe. In daylight hours, the Zhentarim had to camp so their asabis could burrow into the ground and hide from At’ar. During this time, Bedine war parties lurked in a circle around the Zhentarim camp, firing their arrows whenever the opportunity to hit a target arose.

  The invaders, handicapped by the necessity to protect their asabis, could not chase the war parties without leaving the sleeping mercenaries vulnerable to an attack by the main body of warriors. If the Zhentarim sent out a smaller patrol to attack a war party, the Bedine simply gathered enough force to wipe it out. The enemy had no choice but to accept the casualties and counterattack at night.

  Even that had proven difficult for the invaders. When dusk came, the Bedine mounted and scattered into the desert, camping in small, widely dispersed groups. The Zhentarim could occasionally hunt down and destroy two or three war parties, but then they had to spend all night fighting instead of traveling—which could cause them even more trouble. The invaders had to find fresh pasturage almost daily, for the thousands of camels in their army decimated the foliage around their small campsites within a matter of minutes. In the end, the Zhentarim were left with only two choices: take the casualties inflicted by the war parties, or starve their camels and counterattack. So far, they had chosen to accept the casualties.

  Unfortunately, it appeared to Ruha that they were trying a new tactic. Scattered around the muddy oasis were the contorted bodies of dozens of hares, a pack of jackals, and even a pair of ostriches that had come to drink after the Zhentarim departed last night. All of the animals had died within fifty yards of the pond. For the past few minutes, the Bedine army, which had gathered in a large crowd around the pond, had been staring at the scene with a mixture of outrage and disbelief.

  As of yet, Lander was the only one who had dismounted. He was kneeling next to a jackal, using his dagger to pry the animal’s mouth open. “This one bit its own tongue in two,” the Harper said. “I’d say they all died of some sort of seizure.”

  “Poison,” Sa’ar hissed, staring at the bodies of the other dead animals.

  For several moments, no one said anything else. The warriors and the sheikhs just stared at the poisoned water, unable to comprehend the malevolence of men who would commit such a profane act.

  At last Utaiba said, “It would have been bitter water anyway. Standing ponds always are.”

  “Bitter or not, it was an oasis, and it is a blasphemy to foul it,” said Kabina, Sa’ar’s burly warrior. He pointed toward the mountains. “They shall pay for this atrocity with their blood.”

  “Especially the Ju’ur Dai,” said Sa’ar. “For a Bedine tribe to do this …” The burly sheikh shook his head, unable to find the words to express his outrage. “No punishment can be too terrible. Let us find them today!”

  A chorus of agreement rose from the throats of hundreds of thirsty warriors, but Lander shook his head.

  Sheathing his dagger, he approached Utaiba and the other sheikhs, saying, “That’s what the Zhentarim want. In the past three weeks, you’ve killed more than five hundred of them without losing even a hundred Bedine. Yhekal poisoned the well because you’re winning this war. He’s trying to force you into making a mistake. Don’t fall for his ruse.”

  Utaiba regarded the Harper thoughtfully, then nodded. “What you say is true—”

  “Truth doesn’t put water in our skins,” Sa’ar interrupted. “If Yhekal is trying to push us into action, he has succeeded. Our camels are thirsty and our waterskins are nearly empty. The only oasis within five days of here is on the other side of those mountains.” The stout sheikh thrust his finger in the same direction that Kabina had pointed earlier. “We cannot reach it without going through the same pass that the Zhentarim are in now. Our only choices are to attack or to return to the last oasis and let the invaders escape.”

  “Or to let thirst swell our tongues until we choke on them,” added Kabina, glancing at the other warriors. “I prefer to fight.”

  Utaiba nodded, then addressed his fellow sheikhs. “Sa’ar and Lander are both correct. As Sa’ar says, we must attack, but Lander is also right. In that canyon, the advantage of terrain will go to the Zhentarim. I am afraid that our only choice is to return to the last oasis for water. Only then should we try to catch the invaders again.”

  “Giving them time to poison another oasis?” Sa’ar demanded. “If we do that, Anauroch is lost.”

  “As it is if the Zhentarim destroy this army,” Utaiba said.

  “Perhaps there is another way,” Ruha suggested.

  The sheikhs looked to her with arched brows, unaccustomed to having women intrude during such debates. Their surprise lasted only a moment, however, for they were growing used to the idea that Ruha was no ordinary Bedine woman. “Can your magic cleanse the water of its poison?” Utaiba asked hopefully.

  The widow shook her head. “Unfortunately, I have no spells that can restore the oasis,” she said. “But I do have one that might deceive the Zhentarim into thinking a small attack was a large one.”

  “What good would that do?” Sa’ar asked, frowning.

  “Given the opportunity, the Zhentarim would surely destroy us, would they not?” Ruha asked.

  All of the sheikhs nodded their heads in agreement, but it was Lander who picked up on the widow’s plan. “Are you suggesting that we turn Yhekal’s trap against him?”

  Ruha nodded. “We will take two khowwans and attack as the Zhentarim want us to,” she said, smiling beneath her veil. “My spell will make it look like all of our tribes are assaulting. The battle will go against us, and we will have to flee. Yhekal will no doubt send his men to pursue, anxious to destroy us while we are vulnerable.”

  “And the routed khowwans will lead the Zhentarim into an ambush manned by the other twelve tribes,” Lander added. “A brilliant plan!”

  “And after we finish with the Zhentarim, we will destroy the asabis in their burrows,” Sa’ar added enthusiastically. He gave the widow a conniving smile. “You think like a camel thief, Ruha.”

  The other sheikhs gave their approval to the plan. As they worked out the details, Ruha forced her camel to kneel, then dismounted and removed Qoha’dar’s spellbook from her djebiras. Each night the young widow memorized the spells she thought might be useful the next day, but she wanted to look over the spell with which she intended to fool the Zhentarim.

  “Do you have everything you need?” Lander asked, stepping to her side.

  Ruha nodded, then said, “And a few things I don’t need.”

  Lander frowned in concern. “Like what?”

  “Trembling knees, uneasy stomach, shaky hands.”

  The Harper took her hand in his. “Relax. You survived the Battle of the Chasm. This one won’t be any worse.”

  “I’m not worried about dying,” the widow said, squeezing Lander’s fingers. “I just hope my plan works.”

  Utaiba rode his camel to the pair, scowling at their clasped hands. “You will come with Sa’ar and me, Ruha. The Mahwa and the Raz’hadi will serve as the decoys,” the wiry sheikh said. Looking to Lander, he added, “We thought it would be best if you stayed with the others.”

  The Harper frowned. “I’ll go with Ruha. She’ll need protection if the Zhentarim see her casting spells.”

  “There are others who can protect her,” Utaiba said, his expression firm and stubborn. “But you are the only one who knows the Zhentarim well, so you should be safe. The other sheikhs have agreed to respect your advice in preparing the ambush. More importantly, if something goes wrong, your knowledge may ma
ke the difference between victory and disaster.”

  Realizing that the sheikhs had made up their minds on this matter, Ruha mounted her camel and prodded it back to its feet. “I’ll be fine,” she said, smiling down at Lander. “You make sure the ambush works.”

  The Harper nodded, but Ruha could see that he was far from happy about being left behind. “It’ll work. You make sure you come back alive.”

  “I’ll make sure of that,” Utaiba said, urging his camel toward the place where the Mahwa and Raz’hadi had gathered.

  After Ruha and Utaiba joined the two tribes, Sa’ar gave the order to ride. The war party crossed the dried lake bed quickly, moving toward a point well south of their final destination to prevent anyone watching from the mountains from getting a good look at them. The rest of the tribes would not follow for another two hours, when the Mahwa and the Raz’hadi had had ample time to drive enemy observers away from the edge of the mountains.

  Once they reached the base of the mountains, Sa’ar stopped the column and looked to Ruha. “After you cast your spell, how long will it disguise our true number?”

  “An hour or so,” the widow replied. “Not much longer.”

  “We’d better send some scouts ahead to chase away the enemy sentries right away,” Sa’ar said. “We don’t want them to get a good look at us before you create your mirage.”

  The sheikh sent two dozen men forward to act as a vanguard, then waited fifteen minutes before allowing the column to continue. The two tribes moved along the base of the mountains for an hour, then turned up a winding, rocky canyon. Craggy brown cliffs immediately flanked the riders and rose more than a hundred feet to either side. They were laced with wide fissures.

  Sa’ar sent some men forward to check random crevices for hidden sentries, but the gesture did little to make Ruha feel more secure. The column was moving too fast to check every crevice, and the widow did not put it past the Zhentarim to hide assassins there. Uncomfortably aware of the conspicuousness of her veiled presence among the long line of keffiyehs proceeding up the canyon, Ruha did her best to ride between Utaiba and Sa’ar. From her previous encounters with Yhekal, it seemed likely to her that he had deduced she was a magic-user. In that case, the lone woman among a column of warriors would no doubt be a prime target for enemy arrows.

  The sheikhs allowed themselves to fall back to the middle of the column and tried to stay in the center of the canyon, as aware of Ruha’s prominence as she was. Unfortunately, it was not an easy task, for the gulch was no more than fifty yards wide in many places, and a good man’s arrow was accurate at twice that range.

  Thirty minutes of careful riding passed, and no one had fired at Ruha or anybody else. The scouts returned to the main body of the column, reporting that they had approached to within a hundred yards of the enemy camp without encountering a single sentry. It appeared that all the Zhentarim were asleep, for there was no other sign of the invaders in the canyon other than their sealed tents.

  Utaiba furrowed his brow, “I do not like this. The Zhentarim are not fools. They would not leave themselves so exposed.”

  “Perhaps not,” Sa’ar agreed, drawing his sword. “But what choice do we have? Even if they have prepared an ambush for us, we must attack in order to lure them into our own trap.”

  Utaiba considered this for a moment, then said, “You are right. Let us hope that Eldath, not N’asr, is with us today.” He also drew his scimitar, then looked toward Ruha. “Now is the time for your spell.”

  The young witch took a deep breath, then nodded and said, “We’ll need to be at the head of the column.”

  The two sheikhs glanced at each other with concern, but Sa’ar nodded. “Whatever you say.”

  They urged their camels closer to hers and moved to the head of the long line of warriors. Ahead of them, the canyon climbed through a stretch of steep boulder-strewn ground, then turned sharply to the left and disappeared into a maze of brown rock laced by deep, man-sized fissures. After that, the scouts had reported, it twisted back to the right and opened into a sandy dale that must have been a pool when there was water in the canyon. It was there that the tents of the Zhentarim were pitched.

  Ruha took a small quartz crystal from her pocket. As it caught At’ar’s rays, she faced the long column of warriors and manipulated the crystal in her hand until she could see their wavy image in the clear quartz. She selected a brawny warrior at the head of the column and focused on the jambiya in his belt.

  When she uttered her spell, Sa’ar gasped. “Incredible!”

  Ruha opened her eyes and saw that the spell had worked. Beyond the brawny warrior whose dagger she had selected as a focus, a sheet of wavering heat filled the canyon from wall to wall, obscuring the Bedine behind it. It was impossible to see anything beyond that single warrior clearly, for the images were all distorted. However, it did appear that there were about eight times as many men in the canyon than were really there.

  Ruha pointed at the warrior. “Everything behind that man’s dagger is distorted by the spell,” she said. “If he falls, the spell will stop moving until someone else takes his dagger and continues with it.”

  “Magic is not without its shortcomings, I see,” Utaiba noted wryly.

  “Neither are we,” Sa’ar answered. “But we shall do our best anyway. Now, let us return to our place in line. If we only have an hour, we must hurry.”

  “Be careful when you pass through the sunwarp,” Ruha said, urging her camel toward the column. “Don’t tarry inside, or you will have reason to regret it.”

  As the widow spoke, she urged her mount into the distortion, ferociously lashing at its neck with her reigns. The camel sprang forward into a wave of blistering heat. The beast roared in surprise and terror, but under Ruha’s prodding it continued forward, and, an instant later, they were on the other side of the sunwarp.

  On the downhill side of the distortion, a stiff breeze ran along the ground as the spell sucked the fire from the desert and sent it climbing toward the sky in a great wavering sheet. Sa’ar and Utaiba sat on the other side of the wall, staring in Ruha’s direction with awe and fear.

  “What do you see?” asked Sa’ar’s burly warrior, Kabina. “You look as though you are facing an army of djinns.”

  “We see nothing but wavering forms, and many times the number we know are there,” Sa’ar answered, still staring at the wall. “It is as if At’ar has blinded us!”

  “She has,” Ruha replied. “Now, come back here.”

  Setting their jaws as if riding into a wall of flame, the sheikhs urged their mounts forward and galloped through the sunwarp in two swift strides. When they reached the other side, their faces were as chalky as a white camel and they stared at the witch with expressions of awe and respect. Their mounts were so excited that it was all they could do to control them.

  Sa’ar pointed at a dozen warriors, then directed them toward the Bedine upon whom Ruha had centered the spell. “You men, ring Dahalzel. If he falls, one of you must take his jambiya and continue forward. If that man falls, someone else must take the dagger.”

  “I will need my dagger in N’asr’s camp!” objected the confused warrior.

  “Don’t argue,” Utaiba answered, drawing his scimitar. “Your jambiya is the center of the witch’s spell.”

  The man’s swarthy complexion paled to a sickly shade of yellow. “My dagger?”

  A roar of laughter went up from the twelve men assigned to escort Dahalzel. “We will protect you from the enemy’s arrows, my friend,” said one of them. “But you must look to the gods to save you from the witch’s magic.”

  “Enough!” Sa’ar roared, guiding his camel into place at Ruha’s left side. “Let us attack!”

  With a queasy look, Dahalzel turned his attention up the canyon. He nocked an arrow, then urged his camel forward and led the way toward the Zhentarim camp.

  A few minutes later, the column of nervous warriors emerged from the maze of fissure-laced rock. It stopped at t
he edge of the sandy hollow where the sheikhs had expected to fight the Zhentarim. As the scouts had claimed, several hundred tents stood in the dale, but there was still no sign of the enemy.

  Sa’ar looked immediately to Ruha. “Is your spell hiding the enemy?”

  Ruha shook her head. “No.”

  “It isn’t the witch,” Utaiba said, motioning six men forward. “I fear we are too late. The Zhentarim are gone.” The wiry sheikh sent the men to track the invaders up the canyon.

  “It cannot be!” Sa’ar objected. “What of the asabis? They cannot move during the day.”

  “Perhaps they are still in their burrows,” Ruha suggested.

  “Perhaps,” Sa’ar nodded. He sent a rider back to report the deserted camp to the tribes waiting in ambush, and five dozen men ventured into the dale to probe the sand with their spears.

  The probers spread out across the width of the dale and began searching for sleeping asabis. While one man pushed his spear deep into the sand, a comrade stood by with a drawn scimitar, ready to defend him if the prober got lucky and struck a sleeping reptile. When they found nothing, they moved a yard farther up the canyon and tried again. Occasionally a man fell excitedly to his knees and scooped the sand away, only to uncover a submerged rock or the half-petrified trunk of an acacia tree.

  The rest of the column waited in the sun, fighting the urge to open their waterskins and quench the thirst that always seemed worse when doing nothing. Now and then, the camels belched or roared, as irritated by the wait as their riders were. In hushed whispers, a few men suggested to their fellows what Ruha and the sheikhs had already guessed: the Zhentarim had escaped.

  Ruha’s spell fell long before the probers reached the other side of the dale, but it did not matter. The spearmen returned with nothing to report. Though their spears had often sunk clear to the bedrock, they had not found so much as a single asabi burrowed into the sand.