Guardians of the Desert (Children of the Desert)

by Leona Wisoker

  “This is making my guards very uncomfortable,” he noted. “I’d like to continue this conversation later, however. Perhaps after tonight’s celebration?”

  “Celebration? I thought we were hunting—”

  Oruen’s tone lost some of its tautness as the talk moved back onto safer ground. “There are plenty of people handling the tath-shinn problem already. And your mother sent me an invitation to a ‘small welcome-home dinner’ at Peysimun Mansion. I suspect she’s already invited two dozen other notables, and you are the guest of honor; you can’t duck out of the dinner completely. She’d have your head on a platter, and rightly so.”

  “Oh, gods,” Alyea said in real dismay, covering her mouth with one hand. “I’d forgotten about that—You’re attending?”

  “I had intended to, as a courtesy to you,” he said. “Would you rather I didn’t?”

  “Yes, I’d rather,” she said passionately. “My mother’s already insufferable. Make some polite excuse, please. I’ll have to go—you’re right, I can’t avoid that—but I’ll return to my Palace apartment afterwards, and I’ll come back to speak with you tomorrow. Here. Not at Peysimun Mansion.”

  “She’ll be furious.” He smiled, amused—and, she thought, a little relieved.

  “Good.”

  Relative Life Spans

  (excerpt)

  One item of grave importance, on which you may not have been fully informed, Lord Oruen, is the matter of differing life spans; especially as relating to the desert Families. While commoners, north to south, have the same life expectancy, desert Families tend to be very different. Desert lords, in particular, live for upwards of a hundred years; their children tend to live rather longer than commoners. Over the years, this tendency has created a sturdy and long-lived group of people. There are desert lords alive today who remember meeting Initin the Red, not to mention the infamous Dusty Rose.

  It also means that feuds between individuals or Families can go on for a very long time indeed, and take on infinitely subtle complexities. There is no possible way you could avoid tripping over them. It would take a lifetime of study to understand the first third of the underground battles throughout the southlands.

  Your previous advisor on southland matters, Chacerly, thought himself wise but had no more knowledge than that. Additionally, his understanding was flawed by his personal biases and background as a Darden supporter. Much of what he taught you will likely only get you into deep trouble with southern ambassadors. I strongly suggest attempting to recruit a southern lore-master as an advisor, but that will require significant negotiation and a strong incentive based on offered benefits, not threats.

  Such negotiations can easily take years. The southlands, given their longer life spans, see urgency very differently than northerns. I counsel patience and tolerance; and in the meanwhile, listening to what Deiq of Stass has to say might well benefit you, as his knowledge of southern custom is unequaled. Offending him would be a grave mistake, for a number of reasons.

  From the collection

  Letters to a Northern King of Merit

  penned by Lord Cafad Scratha during the reign of King Oruen

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Deiq led Idisio outside, into one of the least-used palace gardens: one composed largely of deep-southern plants, which held little interest for the northern court as a rule. He’d brought or arranged for most of the plants himself over the years, in fact; not he expected anyone to remember that, these days. He’d built the garden a long time ago, and in typical desert fashion it flourished even when neglected.

  Dawn had moved into a brilliant, glittering daylight. The heavy rain of the night before, and the lingering dew of early morning, brought out the best in the garden. Morning-trumpet vines, heavily laden with gigantic white blossoms, swirled up lattices and trellises in a fragrant confusion of color; stubby totobo cacti spread ruffled, vibrantly red blooms at their tops. Desert ginger splayed oval leaves up woody stalks, festooned with clusters of berry-like white flowers, reaching higher than Deiq’s head.

  Insects rose and fell in clouds among the wealth of newly-available pollen. Deiq gently deflected bugs from his path as he steered Idisio towards the central portion of the garden, a sand-and-rock meditation area he’d taken particular pride in designing.

  The recent upheaval seemed to have left this entire garden untouched; he relaxed as he walked among the familiar plants, feeling more at ease than he’d been for some time.

  Idisio said nothing as they walked, his thoughts visibly turned inward, barely seeming to notice their surroundings. When they reached the inner garden, he slumped onto a bench and put his face in his hands. Deiq remained standing, looking over the black, white, and grey rocks stacked in groupings of three, six, and nine with a sense of deep satisfaction. Some of the stacks had been moved or rearranged, but they remained in multiples of three, so it hadn’t disrupted the harmony of the pattern. The open patch of black sand to the right and the white sand to the left both looked freshly raked; the stepping-stone path was brushed clear of leaves and debris. Someone was still maintaining the place, even now: that set a warmth into his chest and eased a worry he hadn’t even known was there.

  “I should have stayed on the streets,” Idisio said, his voice muffled.

  “You’d be dead by now,” Deiq said without any sympathy. “Not knowing what was happening when the changes began, you’d have done something stupid, and been killed.”

  “I never had anything weird happen before I ran into Lord Scratha!”

  “Really? And what weird thing happened then?”

  Idisio didn’t answer right away. He looked out over the inner garden, his sullen expression slowly lifting into a vague interest. “That’s nice,” he said. “It’s . . . quiet.”

  “Thank you.”

  Idisio shot him a startled glance. “You did this?”

  “Some time ago. Yes. What weird thing happened to you when you met Lord Scratha?”

  Idisio stared out at the meditation area again; Deiq waited patiently. At last Idisio said, “There’s this vision I kept having. I never had it before I met Lord Scratha; well, I don’t know. I think now that I might have dreamed it sometimes, and not thought anything of it. But it never—Anyway. I kept seeing this boy. This red-haired boy, about my age, maybe a little older. And he was

  so . . . so angry. And so deeply, deeply hurt. And so . . . dangerous.” He fell silent.

  “And?” Deiq prompted.

  “That’s all,” Idisio said, looking up at Deiq, his expression honestly bewildered. “I don’t understand it. But it felt so terribly important, every time, as though this was a boy I knew, or should know, or would know. And I started to wonder. . . .” He looked out over the garden again, frowning as though trying to sort out the right words. “There was this sailor. On the way south from Sandlaen Port. A big, red-headed sailor, called Red. He was looking for his son. When we stopped in Agyaer I went with him as company on his search, but the boy was gone . . . and the boy’s mother was dead.”

  Deiq waited patiently, understanding that this had troubled Idisio for some time and that the younger needed to talk it out before being reassured of its unimportance.

  “And I thought, how strange, that he’s looking for his son and I keep having these visions of a boy with red hair . . . I wondered if I’d met the boy before, but that seemed like too much coincidence to believe. We received word, later, that the boy had been found; somehow or another, Aerthraim Family had adopted him.”

  Deiq’s breath caught in his chest as pieces connected in his head; he barely kept his expression neutral. Not unimportant at all; Idisio had no idea what a dangerous chain of coincidence he’d stepped into. Apparently oblivious to Deiq’s reaction, Idisio continued:

  “And I remember that I did meet a red-headed boy, back before Ninnic died, on the streets. He stayed with me a day or two . . . useless as a pickpocket, worse with locks. I told him to look up the Freewarrior’s Guild, as he was big
and strong already. And now I keep wondering . . . if that was the same boy. But that’s ridiculous, right? It’s not possible.”

  “Not likely, but not totally impossible,” Deiq said, carefully bland. “Was that, maybe, just before Ninnic died?”

  Idisio shot him a suspicious look. “Yeah.”

  Deiq looked up at a nearby featherleaf tree, watching the pale purple blossoms swinging in a light breeze, and sighed. Of all the times to have this conversation . . . Well, at least it hadn’t come out at Scratha Fortress. There was that small mercy.

  “Ha’ra’hain tend to gather coincidences to themselves,” he said. “I’ve never understood it, but no matter how hard you try to stay out of the center of the picture, something always drags you back in.”

  “You’re saying it was the same boy?” Fear and astonishment warred in Idisio’s voice.

  “I don’t know,” Deiq lied. “Remember the mad ha’ra’ha under Bright Bay that Eredion was just talking about? The one who was controlling Ninnic?”

  “Yes,” Idisio said in a suddenly muted voice; glancing down at him, Deiq saw a haunted fear in the boy’s grey eyes.

  Distracted by that reaction, Deiq paused to consider what had caused it. After sorting through several possibilities, he settled on the most likely and said, “You’re lake-born, Idisio. You’re not born of Ninnic’s child, nor are you brother, son, or anything closer than distant cousin. Madness is not heavy in your genetics, and you’re completely stable as far as I can tell. You’re not going mad. All the changes you’re going through, however strange they may feel, are normal.”

  Idisio let out a hard breath and flung an arm over his face to hide the tears welling in his eyes; a sobbing gasp escaped him. “How the hells do you do that?”

  Deiq smiled and turned his back on Idisio, giving him time to recover. After a while, when he heard Idisio’s breathing steady, he went on.

  “It’s very hard to kill an adult ha’ra’ha, and this one was . . . stronger than most. The ha’rethe parent was . . . unusual. Old. And powerful.”

  Yellow eyes and a scream that went on . . . and on . . . and on. . . .

  He cleared his throat, pushing memory back into silence, and said, “It’s even harder to sneak up on a ha’ra’ha, especially one that lives in a state of paranoid high alert. There were several attempts . . . mainly focused on Ninnic, if I understand correctly, because at first nobody really understood what was happening. But the Aerthraim figured it out first, and put together a plan to attack Ninnic’s child instead. . . .”

  Deiq swallowed hard, his words feeling like acid in his mouth, and thought again about the stibik powder the teyanain had thrown, and which Eredion had apparently laid in a supply of; remembered endless agony and writhing in darkness: and couldn’t blame any of them.

  He’d have done the same thing in their place; he should have done the same thing. But he’d been a coward: fled rather than face that pain again, leaving the humans to deal with the mad ha’rethe and, later, Ninnic’s child, on their own.

  “I thought the Aerthraim don’t have desert lords. Well, besides Lord Azni,” Idisio said, visibly puzzled.

  “They don’t. But ha’reye and ha’ra’hain can sense a desert lord’s presence.” He drew in and let out a long breath. “To get close, they needed . . . a distraction. And as I understand it, the boy had some small natural ability—unusual strength of will, or some such thing. I really never asked for details.”

  Given that the ending had been a dead ha’ra’ha—however valid the reasons for it—the less he knew about the event, the safer everyone would be. Especially if he failed in his promise and had to return to the Qisani.

  “So what . . . The boy?” Idisio’s voice shook into a rough gasp. “They used him as bait? Just like they’re using me!”

  “Not quite the same,” Deiq said carefully. He hesitated, then made himself say it: “You’re likely to survive.”

  “You’re a bunch of bastards!”

  Deiq rose and walked away, out into the middle of the sand pattern, and knelt, leaning forward just enough to touch his fingertips to the ground on either side of himself. He sat very still, breathing evenly, until his chest loosened and the urge to destroy something passed.

  “The boy’s sacrifice saved this entire city, Idisio,” he said at last. “I’m sure you remember how bad things were back then.”

  “Did he even know?”

  “Probably not,” Deiq admitted. “It would have been too risky to tell him his true purpose. Ninnic’s child would have pulled it from his mind and the whole point would have been lost.”

  “But you told me. Or have you?” Idisio’s voice wavered with sudden suspicion. “Are you using me, too?”

  “No,” Deiq said. “You know everything about this situation.”

  Idisio rose abruptly and left the garden at a near-trot.

  Deiq stayed still, focused on the particles of sand under his fingertips, and narrowed his focus further, shutting his eyes in fierce concentration, until he was able to count how many grains he was touching.

  It took a long time.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Alyea listened to the rain hammering down outside and felt a guilty sense of relief at having a valid excuse not to join the hunt for the tath-shinn. Bright Bay’s rainy season could be brutal, especially when the back streets began to flood, and this weather seemed unusually determined to swamp the entire city straight into the Kingsea.

  Wind howled, broke something loose, and slammed it against an outer wall with a great crash. Alyea winced; her mother jumped, face pale. High-pitched, chittering complaints came from the nearby aviary: her mother’s collection of white finches always had noisy, messy nervous fits during bad weather. The guests wouldn’t be shown that room tonight.

  Alyea remembered overhearing the servants of her childhood drawing straws to see who was cursed with cleaning up the Peysimun bird rooms. She doubted the new, status-conscious set would be any happier over the duty.

  “I’m beginning to wonder who’s brave enough to come through this madness for a party,” Alyea noted. “Or maybe I should say, who’s mad enough to brave this party?”

  Her mother shot her a sour glare, still clearly unhappy. She’d had an entire closet of fancy dresses laid out when Alyea returned from the Palace. Alyea had brought her own outfit, a simple one similar to what she’d worn to the morning’s audience with Oruen. Only Alyea’s iron determination not to lose her temper had kept her mother safe during the resulting fight.

  “They’ll come,” her mother said thinly. “I told them all King Oruen had agreed to attend. You can explain why he didn’t show up.”

  Alyea sighed, regretting the harsh words they’d exchanged over the course of the day, and tried to think of some way to make her mother understand. Nothing came to mind.

  “How’s Kam?” she asked instead.

  “Awake,” her mother said, frowning. She gave Alyea a suspicious look. “Says he feels like a giant hammer’s been hitting him all over. Serves him right for drinking so much.”

  “At least he’s alive,” Alyea said. “Maybe he won’t be so quick to insult me next time.” It sounded childish even as she said it, and she winced, wishing she could call the words back.

  “Alyea Peysimun,” her mother said sharply, “Stop that nonsense right now! You’ve surely gotten some foolish ideas in your travels. And speaking of your travels, a letter came in I’ve been meaning to speak to you about. Something about you swearing us liable for a debt?”

  Alyea stared blankly for a moment, then remembered. “Oh,” she said. “Yes, I met a northern women whose son had been—”

  “You do not have the authority to put a debt of this sort against our name!” her mother interrupted severely.

  Alyea looked at the spots of color high on her mother’s pale face and said, “I wish you’d had the chance to meet Halla, mother. I think you two would have gotten along well.”

  Her mother glared. “I won’t
hear of you assigning debts to our house,” she said. “I’ve allowed it the once, but now you’ve been told, and you’re not to do this again!”

  Alyea decided to sidetrack the conversation. The previous topic was looking more attractive by the moment. “But we were talking about Kam,” she said innocently. “What were you about to say?”

  Her mother easily moved onto the new path. No doubt she’d come back around to complaining about the debt later, but for now she was willing to go with complaining about Kam.

  “I was going to say that the southlands are filled with mystical nonsense,” her mother declared. “You’ve been around them too long. Kam fainted, Alyea. He’d had too much to drink, and it muddled his blood. You didn’t knock him unconcious! Taking blame on yourself is just—it’s ridiculous!”

  Alyea gave up for the moment. Clearly, her cousin had spun the story sideways, no doubt too embarrassed to admit a girl had laid him out with a slap. She was only surprised he hadn’t laid the blame at Deiq’s hand, but he wasn’t entirely stupid; he must have realized Deiq was more trouble than he needed to take on.

  “I think someone just came into the carriage-house,” she said.

  Clearly relieved at the diversion, her mother hurried off to check on the incoming guest. Alyea sank into a chair against the wall and stared at nothing, suddenly deeply depressed.

  She couldn’t blame her mother for not understanding. Before Oruen sent her to the desert, before she found out about the world behind what she thought was real, she wouldn’t have believed it, either. Even now, it seemed incredible. Blame Ninnic’s madness on some underground creature manipulating his actions? Credit the desert lords with strange and deadly powers? Impossible. Ludicrous. Insane.

  She wished she could tell her mother that she’d probably been responsible for the deaths of over a dozen innocents at the Qisani, and ask for some sort of comfort or absolution; but her mother would never be able to understand that whole situation properly. Any forgiveness would be based on the fact that “heathens” had been involved.