“That doesn’t help,” Tarn told her.
“Can’t you just transform and get rid of the cramp?”
“I’d take it with me,” he told her. He’d tried that a few times when he had first discovered humanity and his ability to take on their fascinating little shape. He’d heal faster in his true form, but he couldn’t simply shake off the pain.
Jancis gave a shuddering wince. “Ow. So, what happened in Istel?”
“Got caught in Alagard’s temple by the Shadow’s Guard. Hiding place wasn’t big enough for all three of us.”
“And?” she prompted, poking him in the side. Then she shuddered. “Will you get that vile shirt off? And then tell me the rest of it?”
Tarn stripped off his bloodied shirt, ignoring her cackle and whistle. The air was cooling, enough to be pleasant on his clammy skin. It felt like the north for a moment, the wind, the ground that fell away in rough wrinkles, and the high, sweet air. He breathed in deeply and asked, “The rest of what? They found us. We fought. They died. There was little more.”
“So why is Gard so furious with you?”
“With me?” Tarn asked, startled. “I did nothing wrong.”
Her face dropped sympathetically. “I hate to be the one to tell you, but he’s been cursing your name for the last three hours.”
“I should find him,” Tarn said, getting up with a sigh.
She patted his arm kindly. “Good luck.”
He found Gard and Esen sitting on the back of one of the wagons, their legs crossed and their foreheads pressed together as they spoke urgently. As he neared, Esen let out a shaky laugh and then a sob, which Gard wiped away with his sleeve. Leaning together, they could have been brother and sister, even though her father had been Gard’s lover.
Loath to interrupt, Tarn hesitated, listening to the lilting rise and fall of their conversation. The language was pretty, full of sighs and trills and music, and he was determined to learn it before they reached the north once more.
Then Esen looked up and saw him. She giggled nervously and whispered to Gard.
Gard’s head whipped around, his braids flying, and he fixed Tarn with a look of blazing fury.
“What’s wrong?” Tarn asked, raising his hands to placate him.
“What’s wrong?” Gard echoed, swinging to his feet. Esen scuttled back out of his way, whispering something quick and admonishing.
Gard ignored her to stalk forward, past Tarn, and away up the side of the mountain.
“Gard?”
“Not here,” Gard snapped. “I’m angry enough to raise a storm, and I won’t do that around mortals.”
Tarn’s heart sank, and he followed Gard up the hillside. When Gard turned, he was lit from behind by the final blaze of the setting sun, sand stirring around his feet.
“Esen told me,” he started conversationally, “how angry I was when some arrogant northern dragon landed in my domain and refused to leave. Yet, again, here you are.”
“Gard…,” Tarn started.
“Alagard,” Gard corrected him. “My name is Alagard, and I am no human sand mage to answer to your fancy. How long did you think you could make me forget it?”
Chapter 15: Clashing
“I DIDN’T mean to—” Tarn started.
“Didn’t mean to what? Strip my memories from me? Bind me in mortal form? Steal my desert?”
“The binding was necessary,” Tarn protested, irked, “and you agreed to it. And the memories weren’t my fault.”
“And my desert?” Gard was spitting his words out, and Tarn remembered a furious, fussy little dust devil and couldn’t stop himself from smiling fondly. “This is funny to you? How dare you come here? This isn’t some great empty lump of a mountain you can just take over! This is my place!”
“I like that about it,” Tarn said, sidling closer. Perhaps if he got his hands on Gard, he could placate him. “I want you both.”
“I’m a pawn,” Gard snarled. “Don’t touch me! I’m just a playing piece in your war with the Shadow. The two of you, all you ancient spirits, you come back into the world and destroy what we’ve built while you’ve been gone. You’re an anachronism, and I want you to unbind me and get out of my desert!”
The sand was rising around him again, twisting like snakes around his legs and overstretched arms. Angered, Tarn snapped, “You have no idea what’s at stake here.”
“What, because I’m younger than you? Because I’m weaker? Unbind me!”
The sand was spitting into his face now, and Tarn’s own temper flared. Crossing his arms, he growled, “Be civil, first.”
“Civil!” Gard spat, and his braids were lifting in the rising breeze, the sand catching in them to glint like blood and fire in the light of the setting sun. “Free me!”
“The Shadow will come for you,” Tarn warned. “You were a broken and tattered thing when I pulled you from its grasp. You cannot resist it twice. It will come for you, and the last hope of the people of the desert and the world beyond will fall when you fall.”
“You think I’m that weak?”
“I think you are hurt,” Tarn said, trying to gentle his voice, “and in need of protection. Let me look after you, you and this warm and precious land. Be my hoard, and the Shadow cannot touch you.”
Gard’s fists clenched. “You’re not listening to me, Tarn. I neither want nor need your protection.”
“Yet you have it,” Tarn said, shrugging. “Peace, now. Let us worry about the greater threat.”
“Set me free!”
“No,” Tarn said.
He shouldn’t have been surprised by the wave of wind and sand that struck him. He closed his eyes against it, staggering and swearing, and got a mouthful of sand. Spitting, he lunged for Gard, determined to settle this, but he couldn’t see, and all he got was Gard’s hands clenching on his shoulders and a furious hiss of “I am not your slave!” before Gard was pushing him back and running down the mountainside, his footsteps fast and heavy.
It took longer for the sand to die down, and Tarn was raw skinned and snarling by the time he got back down the mountainside to the camp. He had nothing on his mind except the desire to drag Gard out of wherever he was sulking, bellow some obvious truths at him, and then kiss him until he submitted.
When he reached the others, though, Gard was with Esen again, his face thunderous as she talked, her hand on his knee. She scowled at Tarn when she saw him approaching.
“Leave it,” Ia said at his elbow. “He’s in too much of a snit to listen to you, and I’ll not have elementals warring in the middle of my caravan.”
“He’s being irrational,” Tarn pointed out, not bothering to lower his voice.
Ia rolled her eyes. “He’s a man.”
“He is not, and there’s the problem. Ridiculous sprite.”
She snorted. “Seems to me he’s in the shape of a man, and so are you, and you’re both keeping your brains where all men do. Come on, I’ll help you clean the worst of the sand out of your hair.”
“I’ll burn it out,” Tarn muttered, but went to sit with her anyway, since he wasn’t wanted elsewhere.
He spent the rest of the evening with her, sitting on the folded-down back of Sethan and Cayl’s wagon and glowering across the fire to where Gard and Esen were intent on their own conversation. He watched Gard wipe the tears from below her eyes with his thumb, and saw how gentle his hands were.
“She’s far too young for him,” he muttered at Ia. “Even when she grows up, she will still be too young.”
He got thwacked round the back of his head for that. “Doesn’t matter how big and scaly the man is, does it? Idiot.”
“He likes her,” Tarn pointed out morosely, leaning out of her reach.
Ia groaned. “She’s his priestess….”
“We should never be worshiped.”
Sethan breezed past. As Tarn spoke, he paused and then turned to say, his voice dripping with mockery, “Don’t worry, dearest. None of us will be worshiping yo
u, not after hearing you snore for the last three months.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Cayl remarked, joining them. “I’m sure I heard young Dit find religion that one time.”
“Oh, but he’s clearly apostate now,” Sethan remarked. “Didn’t you hear him kneeling to our Barrett last night?”
Tarn lifted his knee so he could rest his chin on it and glared at them all. Humans.
“What’s troubling our favorite ancient entity today, then?” Sethan asked brightly, settling down on the other side of the step. He clearly wasn’t going to take the hint and just go away.
Ia snickered. “Sandstorm in the face.”
“Aw,” Sethan said. “Did Gard not enjoy your own special invasion?”
Tarn narrowed his eyes. “Someone told him he wasn’t human.”
“And that someone wasn’t you?” Cayl asked, looking friendly for the first time since Tarn had transformed. “Oh, you’ve got some groveling to do.”
“I,” Tarn growled, “do not grovel. Nor do I take slaves. Nor”—with a glare at Sethan—“do I invade people against their will.”
“Was that a euphemism or not?” Ia wondered aloud.
“I just protect,” Tarn continued over her, his voice rising. “Whether it’s appreciated or not.”
“Yup,” Ia said, grinning at Cayl. “This is going to be even more fun than when you two met.”
Tarn, affronted by their laughter, went back to sulking silently.
TARN LINGERED hopefully behind Jirell’s wagon that evening, but Gard did not appear, so he stomped away to set up his tent, half hoping the dead would show up so he could slaughter something.
Halfway through the night, he was woken by the soft scuff of feet. He crawled out of his tent and glanced quickly across the camp for signs of danger.
But it was Esen who was moving, tiptoeing softly away from the wagons. She was back in her blue dress, fading into the shadows as she picked her way between the rocks. Quietly, Tarn rolled to his feet and followed her, using all the skills he had once learned to keep close to the shadows. She was still an unknown to him, and he did not trust her, though Gard clearly thought she was beyond reproach.
He followed her for a long time as she wound between the rocks, stopping and starting, picking her way along a path he couldn’t make out until he followed in her steps. They wound between the rough ridges of the mountains, along the edge of deep wadis, and around the sides of the slopes, almost until dawn.
Then, very suddenly, she darted down a side path, her steps growing faster. Tarn strode after her, but she was suddenly out of sight on the scree-scattered slope below.
He marked the place, scuffing a cross with his heel as he squinted down. In her dark clothes, she was impossible to spot in the half-light.
It was the bottom of the wadi that caught his attention, though. In the side of the cliff, well above the flood-flattened base, countless ornate entrances were carved into the soft stone. Lamps shone softly in windows and doorways and along narrow flights of stairs that linked the entrances to each other and the ground. He could see women’s silhouettes in the windows, moving with easy grace.
As he watched, he saw Esen’s slim figure pick her way across the base of the wadi and start up the first flight of stairs.
He wasn’t going to follow her into a city, not alone and not when he didn’t know if this was some ally of the Shadow or not. Troubled, he began to retrace his steps.
Chapter 16: Scouting
“A TOWN?” Sethan repeated, shaking his head. “There is none. Istel is the only stop on the route to Tiallat. This road doesn’t even lead anywhere. It’s just an alternative longer route to the south.”
“Never mind that,” Gard snapped. “Where’s Esen? Why did you leave her in danger? She’s a child.”
“She knew where she was going,” Tarn said, crossing his arms. “Knew enough to suggest we take to the mountains, even.”
“Just because you dislike her for some reason, there’s no need to accuse her of things. She’s vulnerable. She just lost her father—”
“Gard!” Sethan interrupted. “I’m more concerned about a town that has appeared from nowhere. Could you see any of the dead in it?”
Tarn shook his head, looking around the gathered merchants and guards. “Just a few women in the windows.”
“Women,” Ia said quietly, and there was an odd note in her voice. “And Esen is a wounded girl.”
No one else seemed to be listening to her, the whole group talking at once, conversation swelling and splitting through the quiet dawn. Tarn heard, though, and turned to her. “You know something of this place?”
“She followed the road no men walk,” Ia said softly, her whole face quiet with wonder. Then she shook herself and looked at him. “No men save you, it seems.”
“I am not a man,” Tarn reminded her. “Where has she gone?”
“To the queen,” Ia said, the smile breaking across her face again. “She has gone to our queen.” She shook her head in wonder.
Then, above the rumble of conversation, and Gard’s frantic demands that they gather a search party, the thrum of a bow sang out from farther down the path, where the guards had been stationed.
Everyone went quiet, the guards tensing and reaching for weapons. Then Jancis’s voice rang out, clear and steady. “Just one of the dead! No more approach.”
“An outlier?” Barrett asked anxiously, stepping closer to Dit.
“Where one walks, more may follow,” Tarn pointed out.
Everyone burst into worried questions and demands again, and Tarn turned quietly to Ia. “This place, where Esen has gone, is it forbidden to men?”
She stepped back, shaking her head. “It’s a women’s place. It’s not….”
“Would they refuse us shelter, if the dead came in force?”
“No, of course not. If the queen lives….”
Tarn nodded, pondering his choices. “She was a mortal woman, Ia. The brightest and the best, but still bound to human years and mortal flesh.”
“Let an old cleric cling to her beliefs, Tarn.” She looked up at the bright and shining colors of the dawn sky. “I believe her spirit lingers in the Court of Shells, her oldest sanctuary.”
“I hope so,” Tarn said and bowed to her. “The choice is yours.”
She stared at him for a moment before she smacked him round the head again. Tarn yelped, and she snorted at him. “What? You think I’d put some legend above the lives of my people? Is the road wide enough for wagons?”
“Not the path she took.”
“Let’s get scouts out to plot a course, then. Sethan, Cayl, I need you! Dit, Ellia, Hadallah, Kirtis, here! The rest of you move up the road and set up a defensive ring against those rocks. I want archers on the crags!”
Within ten minutes, Tarn was retracing his steps with a party of scouts and a tense and furious Gard, who had refused to stay behind and wait. Now Tarn was walking by daylight, he could discern a faint track winding between the spars of rocks, just wide enough for one of their wagons. His footsteps and Esen’s still showed as soft dips in the thin layer of sand that had gathered along the path, fading as the wind trickled past them.
Behind him Dit and Gard were talking. Every cheerful response Dit made seemed to soften some anxiety from Gard’s voice, though half his replies were still sharp and brittle.
“… getting many memories back, then?” Dit was asking.
“Piece by piece,” Gard said. “I’m patching scraps together—there’s a picture of the stars here, the music of the temple dancers there, a shadow in the southeast, and Esen’s first smile, and I cannot see which piece sits with which, not until I find more.”
“It’ll come,” Dit said comfortably. “Friend of mine once got a smack on his head with a frying pan in a pub brawl. For a week, all he could remember was the music that had been playing when he got walloped. When it started to come back, though, it was all of a rush, and now he’s almost himself again.”
/> Eventually, they found the place where she had turned down through the scree. For a moment, he let the others exclaim at the sight of the ancient pillars carved into the side of the wadi. In daylight, they gleamed pink and silver like polished shells worn smooth by the blowing sand.
“Can the wagons handle that?” he asked Hadallah, a wiry guard who often served as the caravan’s carpenter and wheelwright.
“Not a hope,” she told him, pursing her lips. “Looks like the track carries on, though. Might be worth seeing if there’s a way down further along the wadi.”
Tarn was about to reply, when Gard shrugged off Dit’s restraining hand and started down the slope, slipping and sliding on the rough sandy shale.
“Come back!” Tarn called after him. Whatever Ia expected of this place, it was still an unknown situation that needed approaching with care. “Gard!”
But Gard didn’t stop, so Tarn turned to the others and snapped, “Find another way around and meet us at the bottom if you can.”
He paused long enough to see Hadallah’s nod, and then set off down the slope after Gard. Tarn wasn’t as fast, mostly because he was taking more care not to fall flat on his face as the ground shifted below his feet. He was still only a few steps behind when they reached the bottom and Gard stopped dead, looking up at the arched windows.
Tarn couldn’t help stumbling into him, putting his hands out to catch himself on Gard’s shoulders. Gard shrugged him off irritably.
Down here, at the bottom of the wadi in the shadow of the mountains, it was surprisingly cool. Low bushes of scented myrtle and pink-plumed tamarisk grew along the banks. A wavering silver line ran down the center of the wadi, where a stream had once pressed its mark. The citadel before them seemed quiet, but Tarn could see the shadows of watchers in the windows.
“I’ve been here before,” Gard said, without looking at him. “I know this place.”
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