Guardians of the Desert (Children of the Desert)

by Leona Wisoker

  Deiq stared, speechless. At last he managed, “It is? Really?”

  Idisio laughed. Dawn light edged his smooth, fair skin with a golden tint and caught greenish highlights from his grey eyes. “You never heard any of those tales?”

  Deiq shook his head slowly, fascinated. “Tell me one.”

  Idisio shot him a dry sideways stare, suddenly seeming mature beyond his years. “Stalling?”

  “No more than you are.”

  Idisio shrugged again, his gaze going distant. “At least Riss didn’t throw anything at my head.”

  Deiq shook his head but didn’t correct the misunderstanding; he wasn’t avoiding Alyea out of fear, but irritation. Smoothing out the incident with the kathain handler and Lord Scratha had taken some delicate maneuvering. If Alyea threw something at him, he was likely to throw it back, rather harder, just at the moment. But explaining all that to Idisio would probably spark another argument about relative morality.

  At last Idisio said, “Mmm . . . all right. Got one. I’m no bard, mind you. But there’s one story I’ve always liked. . . .”

  In the dead wastes of the kingdom-that-was lies a crypt; a grave, from the days when stone was worked with tools that cut through granite as though it were only clotted milk, and the bodies of even the common-born were buried entire, rather than set into bone-boxes or ground up for fertilizer. In those days, beautiful trees raised their arms to the sky, and water moved freely across the surface of the land, laughing and sparkling like rivers of liquid blue diamonds; the air-spirits walked in bodies of gold, and the earth was cool and black with life.

  In those days, there was a leader, a kaen, a man of surpassing strength and virility, with many women attending to his every desire. And it came to pass that the one thing he most desired, he could not have; no woman quickened with his seed. He had no children, for all his many wives, and while he put this woman and that woman aside, at last he was forced to admit the fault lay within himself.

  Deiq’s stomach tightened, and he shut his eyes. It would have to be this story. Unwanted, an image of the city rose in his mind: sunlight gilding the great striped arches with tones of honey and apricot; white, gauzy draperies fluttering in a breeze. A nightsinger warbling outside his guest-room window, the scent of ravann oil and the light scrape of salt scattered over smooth skin as he passed his palm across—he blinked hard and stopped the memory there, before it cut any deeper.

  Idisio went on more slowly. His voice broke and steadied a few times as he tried different pitches before finding one that worked.

  This troubled the kaen mightily, as well it might. His lands, rich as they were, would quickly be torn apart by his three younger brothers, all of whom desired to lead after the kaen passed from this world, and none of whom were competent to do so. The kaen summoned healers and wise men from all over the lands, and consulted seers and mystics until his head swam from all the incomprehensible things they told him. At last, befuddled and angrier than ever, he sent them all away, no closer to a course of action that would gain him legitimate children; and he went out to walk his lands with a hood over his face and his leadership staff and chain left behind.

  This was a common thing, you must understand, that the kaen did such a thing; while his advisors spoke against it, still he went walkabout often. His subjects were accustomed to treating all strangers with courtesy in case such a visitor turned out to be their kaen in disguise, and the kaen was accustomed to being received with great courtesy everywhere he went, with or without his marks of leadership.

  Deiq found himself smiling. Idisio’s delivery managed to capture the kaen’s pompous arrogance perfectly. More than one kaen had taken that approach; some from paranoia, some from a strange desire to be ordinary for a few moments. Deiq thought it a stupid custom. The kaens never had understood the burden they placed on their subjects with their wanderings, and never wanted to listen to him on the matter, either.

  Thank the gods that at least Oruen hadn’t taken such a notion into his head yet; Chac had done some good with his biased teaching.

  Idisio drew a deep breath. His eyes slid half-shut, and he went on, the last traces of uncertainty leaving his voice:

  So you can imagine the kaen’s surprise when he stopped at a well near the center of his lands and was rudely pushed aside by a fat old man.

  “No drinking here today!” the fat man declared. “I’ve claimed this well for mine, and you shan’t have any!”

  “This is a public well,” the kaen pointed out, amused by what he took to be a madman; for the fat man’s eyes had a glaze never seen in one wholly rational.

  “Not any longer!” said the fat man. “It’s mine now. And the only way you’ll drink from it is if you come to me with your firstborn child.”

  Now the kaen began to grow angry. “You have no such authority,” he said. “Step aside, before you go to the guards!”

  “If you touch me,” said the man, “this well shall instantly go dry, and your entire lands, O kaen, will then go as dry as your loins.”

  Deiq repressed a sigh. An old, fat man? Time distorted history in strange ways. And the story itself was, not surprisingly, going far off the track already.

  Maybe that was a mercy.

  The kaen stood up straight and put his hood back.

  “How do you know who I am?” he demanded.

  “Never mind that,” the man said. “None shall drink from this well, until you come to me with your firstborn child.” He smiled, and it was a thing of terrible evil, that smile.

  Terrible evil? Deiq suspected the Northern Church had meddled with the story at some point. It didn’t sound like anything from the southern religions; they tended to avoid notions of absolute good and evil.

  The “firstborn child” part was accurate enough, if badly twisted; it hadn’t been his fault, damn it! But then, he hadn’t been old and fat, either. He tried—and failed—to find amusement in that.

  If only the kaen had listened . . . If only Deiq himself hadn’t been such a fool.

  He shook off sour memory and tried to listen to the story as nothing more than an amusing fiction.

  “How dare you!” raged the kaen, and losing his temper, laid hands on the man to thrash him for such impudence. Upon the moment he touched the fat man’s sleeve, the entire of the man within the robes disappeared, and the kaen was left holding only a greasy, ragged scrap of cloth.

  A strange sucking sound came from the well, and the kaen rushed over to look; and indeed, all the water drained as though a great plug had been pulled, and within two breaths only black mud remained at the bottom. A great wailing went up from all around him, as the other wells, rivers, lakes, and fountains all vanished the same way and with the same speed; and the kaen stood aghast at what his pride had caused.

  Deiq’s amusement faded. He wanted to stop the tale there; but that would mean explaining why it bothered him.

  The vivid image of all life draining from the once-glorious city brought back the rush of guilt he had felt, standing in the ruins years later. The kaen had been a fool, and a proud one, but his people hadn’t deserved to suffer any more than the people of Bright Bay deserved what Rosin Weatherweaver and Ninnic had handed out.

  If Idisio had found the story about Onsia damning, he’d react even more poorly to the truth of this tale; and once more, Scratha Fortress wasn’t the place for the argument.

  Deiq pursed his lips and stayed silent as Idisio continued. The young ha’ra’ha’s eyes were fully shut now, his thin hands moving in great descriptive swoops.

  For all the rest of his days the kaen sought to find some word of the fat man, to trace down his identity; and just as ardently sought to produce a child, submitting to every indignity and procedure his healers and sages heaped upon him. Both efforts were to no avail, and he died younger than his father had, and was buried in a great crypt in the center of his lands.

  His people tried, as the lands dried around them, to draw the favor of the gods back upon them. T
hey held great ceremonies begging for forgiveness. They sacrificed animals, criminals, even young children in an effort to appease the angry gods. Nothing worked, and at last they left the barren land, carrying all they owned on their backs and in carts. Some went north, and some went west; some east, and some south.

  From that scattering came the desert Families. The great central desert remains empty to this day, but for the restless ghost of the old kaen: still looking for some way to produce an heir, to find that evil fat man, and to return his lands to their former lush glory.

  Deiq said nothing for a long moment, staring out at the western horizon. His eyes blurred with tears; not at Idisio’s revisionist story, but at the memory of how beautiful that city had been, and how broken it had become. Regardless of whose mistake had been the deciding factor, in the end, the kaen’s ghost would never find any peace from the disaster he’d brought on his city—and neither would Deiq.

  He cleared his throat and said, thickly, “And you like this story, do you?”

  “Well,” Idisio said, “it stuck in my mind, anyway.” He grinned, then took a sharp look at Deiq’s face. “Deiq?”

  “Never mind,” Deiq said, and rubbed an arm over his eyes briskly. “Just remembering. That story’s nowhere near accurate.”

  “You mean there really is a city out there under the sands? And you were there when it fell?” Idisio’s eyes went as round and almost as pale as a full moon.

  Deiq shook his head and didn’t answer. When Idisio opened his mouth to press the question, Deiq made a curt gesture with one hand to indicate the subject closed, and Idisio subsided, a keen glint in his grey eyes that warned the topic would come up again.

  There would be time to talk about it later. Deiq closed his eyes, suddenly weary. Once they cleared Scratha lands, maybe . . . He had a lot to talk about with both Idisio and Alyea, and almost none of it could safely be said within these walls.

  “Let’s go see what’s left of the armory,” Deiq said at last. Idisio, malleable as any young human male, perked up immediately, and they left the wide roof of the outlook post without looking back.

  Chapter Ten

  Lord Azaniari’s suite had oddly colored walls. Where most of the fortress was a plain, drab grey or brown stone, here the blandness was punctuated by a random series of pale yellow blocks. It was attractively done, and made the room more serene. The dawn light tumbling through ceiling tubes overhead and through the great, deep-silled windows glowed against those bricks.

  Alyea glanced up at the ceiling tubes, awed yet again; the Northern Church had destroyed all such mysteries as “heathen, heretic, demonic devices”. They seemed entirely common in the southlands, however. All the subtle sophistications she encountered here made a lifetime of believing the southlands barbaric seem painfully ignorant.

  Nothing but sand and savages, her mother had sniffed, time and again; and the Northern Church certainly painted everything south of the Horn as brutal, dim, and dangerous.

  Dangerous, at least, Alyea still agreed with.

  She cradled the simple white teacup in her hands and held it out for Lord Azaniari—or “Azni,” as she insisted on being called in private—to refill, then sat back in her chair, sighing.

  “This is all so damn complicated,” Alyea said, abandoning courtesy.

  Azni smiled. “You’ll get used to it.” She tucked her feet up under her as she curled sideways in her wide, overstuffed chair, a northern-style piece of furniture unearthed from storage.

  Alyea resisted the impulse to do the same. She needed to keep every shred of dignity she could manage right now. It was all very well for Azni to play casual. Alyea’s mood was just too sour at the moment.

  She sipped the dark tea, catching the familiar aroma and smoky taste of thopuh, and grimaced at the memory of Deiq’s outrageous behavior the night before.

  “Last night,” she said, lifting her cup slightly. Azni smiled, apparently understanding.

  “I’ve always been fond of thopuh tea,” Azni said quietly, turning her cup in her hands. “And the story behind it is interesting, if rather embarrassing.”

  “How does he get away with such rudeness?” Alyea burst out, leaning forward. “He’s impossible!”

  Azni lifted a thin eyebrow. “He’s an elder ha’ra’ha,” she pointed out. “He could ask Lord Scratha to bend over if he liked.”

  Alyea stared, mouth open at that bluntness, feeling shock rush a wave of color to her face.

  “Oh, Alyea,” Azni sighed, leaning forward to refill her cup. “You haven’t the slightest idea yet what you’re dealing with here, do you? You’re still thinking in northern terms.”

  She shook the sturdy white teapot gently, then whistled, short and sharp. A plump servant came in from a side room and removed the empty pot without speaking.

  “Deiq’s been getting away with much worse than that dinner tale for many years,” Azni said. “The rules are different for him. Mainly because he doesn’t care. I admit a reluctant admiration for that. I used to be like that. . . .” She pursed her lips, frowning, and shook her head.

  The servant returned and set the teapot down; Azni leaned forward and tilted the small lid sideways. Steam spilled out, braiding up into the still air, and the thick scent of thopuh tea filled the room.

  “But Deiq, he’s not as bad as he could be,” Azni said, sitting back and watching the steam. “And he’s not as cold as he was, a few years ago. Something happened, along the way, to shake him badly. He’s changing, and that in itself is astonishing. And a bit dangerous. Ha’ra’hain don’t change their minds easily.” She lifted her gaze to Alyea. “And he is right, you know. Kathain are fairly well essential in the first few months of a desert lord’s new life.”

  “Did you—” Alyea stopped short, biting her lip, and looked away.

  “Of course,” the elderly woman said serenely. “About ten a day, in the beginning, if I recall; and later, there was Regav. . . .” Her voice faltered, then steadied. “He was a desert lord too, so that . . . was enough. And then . . . it stopped being an issue.”

  Alyea looked up in time to see Azni make an impatient motion with one hand, as though to push away the past.

  “Never mind,” Azni said, and leaned forward to fuss with the angle of the lid for a few moments. At last she sat back in her chair again and sighed. “You won’t be feeling the effects yet, I suppose. It took me a tenday or two once the final trial ended, I believe; but then, my final trial took months, not days. Unlike you, I stayed in isolation through the birth of my. . . .”

  Her voice faded; eyes filling with sudden tears, she pressed the back of one hand against her mouth.

  “Lord Azni,” Alyea said, feeling horribly inadequate. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Never mind,” Azni said again, wiping her eyes clear. “Done is done. And that was a long time ago.”

  Her determined attempt at brushing aside the past was denied by the shadow of an old, deep pain in her eyes. Clearly, she still hurt over giving away her first child; but courtesy forbade pressing the point. Azni was an elder, and of superior rank; Alyea had no right to explore painful areas just to get answers.

  Alyea looked down at her cup, frowning, and turned it round slowly. Somehow, the child she’d given hadn’t seemed real until now. She had barely experienced the pregnancy, after all, before the ha’rethe took it from her.

  When there’s as little time as you had, she remembered Deiq explaining, they have to take more. To sustain the child. And he’d expressed doubt as to whether she’d ever be able to have children again . . . She might have given away her only child.

  “High price to pay,” she muttered, and only realized she’d spoken aloud when Azni answered:

  “Yes. But it’s done, and we live with it.” Looking as though she didn’t believe her own words, Azni cleared her throat and took several sips of tea; an uncomfortable silence hung for a few breaths.

  “Will I ever see. . . .” Alyea couldn’t finish the question aloud, but
Azni seemed to understand.

  “I haven’t,” Azni said. “I don’t know of many who have. And many of the children from blood trials don’t survive, if I understand correctly. That’s why we’re not drowning in ha’ra’hain and their offspring. The ones who do survive tend to stay with their ha’reye parents.”

  She paused, as though she might say more; shook her head and went back to staring at her teacup with a brooding expression.

  “Why is Deiq walking around in human society, then?”

  “Ask him, not me,” Azni said a touch curtly. “And I believe I’d like to be alone now.”

  “Of course, Lord Azaniari,” Alyea said reflexively, setting her cup down and standing. “Gods hold—”

  Azni didn’t look up, and her voice was tart as she said, “Lord Alyea, I find polite formalities rather empty. And I’ve long hated that blessing, as I don’t believe in the Three, the Four, or any other nonsense religion. So please—just go.”

  Alyea swallowed hard, bowed, and retreated as hastily as was decent; but Lord Azni’s bleak expression haunted her steps for quite some time.

  Chapter Eleven

  Each Head of Family put his or her own mark on a fortress. The few times Deiq had seen, first-hand, a Family’s transition of leadership, he’d observed the rearrangements with intense curiosity. This unusual situation was the most interesting he’d ever seen; the staff were all temporary, loaned from the various Families attending the hastily-convened Conclave. Lord Scratha, rightfully, had little trust in most of them.

  The presence of a northern-raised numaina altered a number of the standard arrangements, right down to what was being prepared in the kitchens and what furniture was being hauled out from under dropcloths and dustjackets.