Guardians of the Desert (Children of the Desert)

by Leona Wisoker

  She’s lost. I can’t reach her, if she’s gone that far into the madness. I can only kill her. He couldn’t tell if he’d sent that thought to Eredion or held it to himself.

  Eredion said nothing; didn’t even flicker a glance Deiq’s way, which meant centuries of restraint had—probably—managed to keep the thought private after all. Then again, Eredion was good at keeping his own reactions hidden.

  Unable to conceal his own revulsion, Deiq made himself stagger to the nearest stone bench, muttering imprecations in a long-dead language.

  “What kind of creature—” On her knees, Alyea wiped her mouth with Eredion’s handkerchief, then wadded it up and held it against her mouth for a few moments. “Does something like that?”

  Deiq’s nerves, keyed high enough to pick up the wingbeats of a passing bird, easily picked up on the pre-echo of Eredion’s words: The kind sitting right next to you.

  Deiq turned a fierce glare on Eredion and laid a binding across his tongue before the words had a chance to emerge. Eredion’s mouth snapped shut and tightened just as Alyea looked up.

  Eredion looked away and said, “Go back to the palace. I’ll clean up here. It won’t be the first time I’ve—”

  Again, pre-echo alerted Deiq to the coming words: cleaned up a ha’ra’ha’s mess. Just as promptly as before, he slammed the man’s vocal cords still.

  Eredion almost choked this time, caught between breath and swallow; Deiq released him in time to turn the gag into a hard cough.

  “Damn it.” Eredion blinked hard, his eyes damp, and refused to look at either of them. “Get out of here. Both of you. Go!”

  Deiq lurched to his feet, drew a deep breath, and steadied. He looked down at Eredion and said, Do you want me to stay and help? It was the closest to an apology he would allow himself at the moment.

  No. I handled worse, in the tunnels under the city. Eredion’s tone was curt and unforgiving. But you need to get away from here, so go already, and give her the godsdamned answers she needs!

  Eredion was right this time: Deiq tugged Alyea to her feet. Still grey around the edges, she offered no resistance as he steered her away from the cottage.

  Alyea did deserve an answer to her question; deserved to know what had caused the splattered horror inside the grave-keeper’s cottage. But not yet. Not while she was still shaking from the sight.

  Not while he was still shaking.

  He made it as far as the palace steps before his energy began to flag again; caught himself against a wall as his knees went weak, warding off Alyea’s instinctive move of support with his other hand.

  “No,” he said roughly. “Don’t. Not right now.”

  The hunger, raked high by injury and what he’d just seen, was compounded by years of deliberate deprivation, aggravated by knowing this was a new desert lord standing within reach, even though the change hadn’t entirely hit yet. He shut his eyes and drew a deep breath through his nose, then shoved himself to his feet again and almost threw himself into motion.

  Never again. Never.

  The agony they went through wasn’t worth it. Until and unless he found a way for it not to hurt so godsdamned much. . . .

  “Deiq—”

  “Shut up.” He kept his attention on moving forward. Anything in his path he simply shoved aside. He heard a few startled, angry cries; then he sensed Alyea moving in front of him to clear the path.

  He followed her gratefully, his vision almost gone under the haze; fighting back hunger with thoughts of Meer and what had once been a female grave-keeper. Whispers invaded his resolve: Foolishness. Why do you fight what you are? Why? Why? The whining complaint dissolved into a hoarse chorus of crow-caws; he blinked hard and kept moving.

  Because I won’t do that, won’t be like that, he tried to say; realized he was talking to ghost-memories, not live voices, and stopped.

  At last the door to his suite loomed up, and Alyea opened it. He staggered inside with a low moan.

  “Get out,” he ordered. “Out!”

  “You’re welcome,” she said blackly, and slammed the door behind her.

  Barely aware of moving, he found the bed coming up under him seconds later; collapsed onto it, burying his face into the blankets, gripping great handfuls of pillow: and shook for a very long time.

  On The Matter of Ha’reye and Ha’ra’hain

  (excerpt)

  I mentioned, in an earlier letter, the extreme life span of desert lords and their offspring as compared to the general population. This is as nothing when compared to the ha’ra’hain, the mixed-blood descendants of ha’reye and humans. The progression of generations has likely never been explained to you, Lord Oruen, as the Loremaster Council has declared it information to be withheld from northern rulers. Again, I strongly suggest hiding this letter in the most secure possible place, if not burning it altogether once you finish reading.

  The ha’reye have not been seen in hundreds if not thousands of years; if, indeed, they were ever actually, physically beheld by human eyes. There is doubt on that score.

  Their first round of offspring, called First Born, were extremely unstable and had to be almost entirely destroyed. I believe, after extensive research, that the ha’ra’ha under Bright Bay, which tormented your city for so many years, was one such; the difference between the generations has much less to do with genetics than upbringing, from what I have been able to discover. The First Born were given far too much power, then left without the necessary assistance to reconcile their two disparate heritages. There is only one exception to this that I personally know of, and so there is only one surviving First Born in today’s world; for which we should all, perhaps, be infinitely grateful.

  After the First Born, ha’ra’hain were given less power and provided a more structured upbringing, and while they also displayed a tendency for cruelty and instability, they were much more reasonably disposed than the First Born. Ha’ra’hain born of human/ha’reye crosses after the First Born have come to be called “first generation”. The children of first generation ha’ra’hain and humans—usually desert lords—came to be known as second generation, and like their predecessors prefer to live in damp underground environments or in deep water, and occasionally among their ha’reye and ha’ra’hain kin. It is extremely uncommon for any of the ha’reye-kin to live above ground for any amount of time, or to involve themselves in human affairs to any degree whatsoever; which, perhaps, explains how in a relatively short time all knowledge of them has shifted into the realm of myth and fable among northerners.

  From the collection

  Letters to a Northern King of Merit

  penned by Lord Cafad Scratha during the reign of King Oruen

  Chapter Forty-four

  Deiq woke from uneasy dreams of regret to the sound of someone hammering on the outer door of the suite. He rolled from the bed and trotted, half-mazed, to answer. Eredion would have simply entered, and servants wouldn’t knock with such urgency. The visitor had to be Alyea: and it was, taut-faced and shivering with something between panic and shock, a grubby note in one hand.

  He stepped clear of the door, unwilling to touch her until he’d woken completely, and pointed her to one of the severely plain chairs around the small tea table. As she obeyed, he glanced into the hallway out of long-established reflex: a skinny servant in the grey and blue striped tunic of the chamberlain’s staff was just ducking out of sight around a corner. Deiq repressed a sigh, not in the least surprised, and shut the door without comment.

  At least the king hadn’t tried setting his Hidden to watch the room itself. A ha’ra’ha’s sleeping area was as close to sacred as the concept would translate for humans; and while Deiq had allowed a number of changes to how humans treated him over the years, that custom he insisted on keeping inviolable.

  He rubbed his eyes clear and studied Alyea for a moment, focusing his attention to full alertness, then said, “What is it?”

  She laid the note on the table and pushed at it a little, as t
hough that would release the contents to his eyes.

  “Idisio sent us a letter,” she said.

  He crossed the room at that, and sat down across from her, frowning at the stained piece of coarse paper. She prodded it again, then picked it up and offered it to him; he motioned her to put it back down again, a thin dread growing in his stomach. There was a smell to the paper, an aura of oily smoke at the edges: he didn’t want to touch it.

  “What does it say?”

  She flipped it open and read words that had no relation to anything Idisio would have used, phrases the younger ha’ra’ha hadn’t crafted on his own:

  I have met my mother and left you. Her name is Ellemoa. I am going home and I do not want to be bothered. I want you to leave me alone, and leave my mother alone. I do not want you any more. I do not want your company, and we will hurt you if you follow us. Leave us alone. We are going home and you do not want to follow us. I do not belong to you any more. Go away and leave me alone.

  -Idisio

  Impatiently, she slapped the note down facing him, as though insisting that he look for himself. He studied the writing without moving, tracing with his eyes where the writing faltered, where it smudged; that told him as much as the words themselves.

  Apparently the tath-shinn couldn’t read or write. Deiq found that deeply peculiar.

  He picked up the note with deep reluctance; even though he was prepared for it, the oily aura spread halfway up his hands in a heartbeat. He grimaced and dropped the note to the table, flicking his fingers hard to disperse the unpleasant energy. Alyea stared at him as though he’d gone mad; he ignored her, too busy fighting the rush of images to explain something he didn’t have words for anyway.

  Rot-filled darkness and ravening hunger . . . thin, cruel laughter; something soft and wet shredding under her teeth and fingers . . . and an unsteady female voice whispering to itself in the darkness: My son. My son. My son. . . .

  Deiq dry-washed his hands, squeezing shut his own eyes and teeth, until the agonizing waves of hunger and madness faded; then drew a shaky breath, well aware how close that had been. The foul memories that overlaid the paper had very nearly tipped him into losing control himself. Gods, she was strong, and that had, without question, been a warning—or trap—left just for him. Apparently Ninnic’s child had taught her more than how to play with the weather.

  The bitter taste of real fear crossed the back of his tongue for a moment; long reflex prompted him to retreat behind an unemotional shield. No point in letting Alyea see him rattled.

  “At least we know he’s alive,” he said. “And not in the city any longer. I’ll tell Eredion to call off the search.”

  “I don’t believe Idisio would write any such thing,” Alyea said. She began to reach for the note again. Deiq flicked a finger against her wrist as though popping an intrusive asp-jacau nose. She jerked her hand back with an injured expression; he managed a small smile at that.

  “Oh, he wrote it,” Deiq said, and leaned back in his chair, pushing hair out of his face. Sometime in his sleep, he’d pulled out the ties and the braids, as usual; a habit he’d been fighting since his first steps in the human world.

  Alyea’s expression changed as she looked at him, and he realized she’d rarely seen his hair down. Mildly curious, he took advantage of the moment’s distraction to slide his perception behind hers, just to see what she saw: loose, braid-waved dark hair softened the planes of his face and eased the impact of his stare; sleep-creased clothes did nothing to bring back his dignity. He looked entirely human: a little tired, a little cranky; vulnerable. Approachable.

  He withdrew before she could sense the intrusion. Bemused, he sat quietly for a moment, thinking it through; then looked up at her. She held his gaze for a bare heartbeat, then dropped her stare to the letter between them, her hands fisting in her lap and tension winding through her shoulders again. He let the moment pass, resolving to try vulnerable next time he really needed to get her attention. Idisio would have had no trouble with her at all.

  He looked back at the letter on the table, his amusement fading, and said, “I don’t think he knew what he was writing. Look at how the note was addressed.”

  It had dropped face-down, revealing an unsteady scrawl across the backside: To those lords as who travlered with Idisio. He frowned at that, thinking it over; from the pattern, she’d written it herself, probably drawing the basic information on how from Idisio’s mind. That told him she learned fast, adapted quickly; Idisio was in real trouble. He wasn’t nearly experienced enough to handle this situation.

  Deciding against saying any of that aloud, Deiq settled for observing, “He’d have used our names if he were in full control of his wits. But the tath-shinn was controlling him.”

  She regarded him skeptically. “How can you tell that?”

  He sat back and looked up at her. Not answering the question directly, he said, “The tath-shinn is stronger than I expected, and much more dangerous.”

  “So it—she, if the letter is from the tath-shinn—”

  “It is.”

  “So she’s stronger than you are?”

  He looked away, surprised to feel embarrassment spreading warmth across his face. “At the moment—yes.”

  The silence hung for a few breaths; at last, Alyea said, a little hoarsely, “Deiq, I think it’s about time you told me what I ought to be expecting of you.”

  Not at all sure how she’d gone from one point to another, he frowned at her.

  “I’m not a complete idiot,” she went on when he said nothing. “This tath-shinn is a ha’ra’ha. The mad child under Bright Bay was a ha’ra’ha. You’re—”

  Ah. That was the connection.

  “Yes,” he interrupted, bemusement melting into annoyance. “I’m a ha’ra’ha. Obvious parallel. Good job seeing that.”

  He rose and paced the small sitting room to shake off his irritation, reminding himself that her ignorance was his own damn fault; he was supposed to be teaching her these things. She watched him without speaking. His legs began to wobble under him; he sank into the chair again, silently cursing himself for a fool. He ought to send her away, and that damned trap-letter with her, and get himself in hand before talking to her again.

  “I don’t think you’re a monster,” she said, the quiet words shattering his half-formed intent to order her from the room.

  “Thanks for that much,” he said bleakly. Not that you know the half of it, he added to himself.

  She ignored his comment and went on, “But I do think you’re not telling me the truth about yourself. About a lot of things. And I think it’s time you did.”

  No sending her away after that challenge, even though she clearly didn’t understand that was what she had issued. Deiq shook his head slowly and held up a hand, breathing evenly, his eyes half-shut, until he felt aggravation fade to simpler irritation.

  “I haven’t been able to tell you much,” he said at last. “Alyea, most desert lords study years just to get to the trials. And then for years more to get what you’ve already learned. You’re getting a lot of sensitive information without any supporting background context.”

  “That sounds like an excuse to me,” she said.

  He grinned without any humor. “True enough, from your perspective, I suppose.” He shut his eyes, sighed, then sat forward carefully and looked at her straight on. “Ninnic hurt a lot of people,” he said. “Are all humans like Ninnic?”

  She hesitated, frowning, and stared at her hands. He let her be, watching thoughts flit across her expression like ghostly moths.

  “I think,” she said after a few moments, “I think we all have the potential to be.”

  He nodded and leaned back again. “Exactly. Same with ha’ra’hain, same with ha’reye. That’s the easiest way I can put it.”

  “So what didn’t you want Eredion to tell me, at the grave-keeper’s cottage?”

  He startled at that, and found himself confronted with an implacable black stare; he
dropped his own gaze fast, before he could respond to her expression as a challenge. Damn it, she was not making this easy.

  “What makes you think—”

  “Deiq,” she said sharply.

  He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, then gathered his hair back and began braiding it into one thick weave. The time for being vulnerable had definitely passed.

  “It’s not easy to explain, Alyea.”

  “Try.”

  He looped the completed braid over his left shoulder and sat back in his chair, lips thin.

  “Ha’ra’hain are two races in one,” he said. “You ever think about what that means? Human and ha’rethe. It’s . . . something of an uneasy mixture at the best of times. The two races are very different. Really different.”

  He paused, considering words.

  “It’s like . . . like an asp-jacau cross-breeding with a sea turtle. The asp-jacau eats meat, the sea turtle eats kelp and small fish. They live in two different environments. They think differently. They breed differently.” He made a helpless gesture with both hands. “They need different things. The asp-jacau would never understand why a sea-turtle likes kelp. The sea-turtle—”

  “I get it,” Alyea cut him off, impatient as a child. “The point?”

  He grunted softly, annoyed; but the best explanation in the world did no good if she wasn’t listening. He tried to condense the answer to something she’d hear clearly. “It’s a delicate balance, keeping both sides straight,” he said. “Sometimes . . . the balance tips. And you get . . . what you saw at the cottage.”

  “What exactly tipped the balance in this case?” she demanded. A murky anxiety passed across her expression for a moment, then cleared; Deiq suspected she’d been wondering if he’d ever lost control as badly as the tath-shinn.

  He hoped she’d never ask that aloud, as he really didn’t want to give her the answer.