Guardians of the Desert (Children of the Desert)

by Leona Wisoker

  She nodded mutely, unable to speak her revulsion aloud.

  “The answer is pretty much the same for all those questions,” he said. “It keeps those who follow it on top of the stack. It’s all about power, Alyea; human ambition, human greed, human desires. The desert Families wouldn’t even have viable homes if not for the ha’reye and ha’ra’hain meddling with underground rivers and pushing water up into the Fortress wells. The desert lords wouldn’t have crowds simply melt away in front of them, everywhere they go; and if you haven’t had that happen to you yet, just wait. It’s a horribly exhilarating feeling, and damned seductive.

  “You weren’t told; nobody is, anymore. I didn’t know.” His face wrinkled as though with painful memory. “Remember, there aren’t many true ha’ra’hain walking the surface. Other than the initial encounter during the trial of Ishrai, most desert lords these days go through their lives without ever seeing another ha’ra’ha or ha’rethe other than the one their Fortress hosts, which is probably the one who went through the trials with them.

  “And with so much mixed blood in each fortress, the resident ha’rethe or ha’ra’ha can just . . . skim a bit here and there. Nobody even notices. I guarantee it was happening during Scratha Conclave, but you wouldn’t even have felt a tickle.”

  Alyea shut her eyes and put a hand over her mouth, feeling deeply ill.

  “Deiq hates it,” Eredion said. “He loathes it. I’ve met ha’ra’hain who think nothing of it, who take the milk, so to speak, without any compassion for the cow. Deiq would rather starve himself than take without permission, even though desert lords, by implication, have already given that consent. He insists on personal permission from each and all; but since most desert lords don’t even know the truth about this, getting permission usually means explaining first, and he hates the explanation almost as much as the need. If he’d been at full strength, the tath-shinn’s blow would have been like a mosquito bite to him. He would have sensed her coming half a mile away.

  “He’s starving, Alyea. He’s been refusing to feed for a long damn time; I’m guessing for over fifty years. I’ve helped him a little bit over the last few days, but he won’t take enough because he doesn’t like inflicting pain, and it hurts if only one target is used. Even a small draw would kill an ordinary human.”

  The silence seemed like a living thing writhing in her chest.

  “So what. . . .” she said at last, thickly, “What am I supposed to do? Let

  him. . . .” She stopped, nausea rising in her throat, and breathed hard through her nose until it subsided. “It’s obscene.”

  Eredion sighed. “It is what it is,” he said. “One of the changes desert lords normally go through is an increased libido. Yes—I see someone did talk to you about that. Well, that’s tied in to this. As . . . compensation, you might say. Or incentive. Or coercion. Whatever you want to call it, it tends to . . . flare up when a ha’ra’ha is nearby. Especially a hungry or wounded one. And it masks—at least somewhat—the pain from the draw.” He paused, regarding her with a worried frown. “Only you don’t seem to be responding properly.”

  She felt her face flare into hot color at a sudden memory: Deiq, his hands on her hips, looking up with what she’d taken for a fever-sparkle in his eyes. Then Eredion had shown up without announcement and chased her out—

  “Oh,” she said, comprehension slamming like a brick into her stomach. “You—”

  Eredion winced but kept eye contact.

  “Yes. I stepped in that day because he asked me to. Because he didn’t want to hurt you. And I already knew . . . what he needed. He’s been trying to protect you from that. He wants to find a way to stop it from hurting so much.”

  He paused with a grimace, as though remembering the pain; Alyea felt a hot stab of astonished guilt. Eredion had put himself in harm’s way—for her? And Deiq had asked him to?

  “That’s what I mean,” Eredion went on, “when I say he cares. No other ha’ra’hain would even think of asking first, or of shorting themselves to save a human—or desert lord—pain. And until Deiq understands why you’re not leaping to offer what he needs, he won’t touch you. Because without that . . . that driven response, he’d probably hurt you more than normal. And he finds normal too high a price already.”

  He drew a deep breath, let it out in a long sigh, and stood.

  “That’s the end of that long speech, and all the explanations I have for you right now,” he told her. “I’ll leave you to think it over. And—” He hesitated, then cleared his throat. “If you want to talk to Deiq later, I think—he did drop a hint. I think you might find him on the west side of town. At the Northern Church Tower.”

  Alyea shut her eyes and dropped her head into her hands. Of all the places in the world she did not want to enter, that was top on the list. Deiq had to know that.

  Eredion made a noncommittal sound, then cleared his throat again and said, “I also have to warn you: your mother’s not taking this whole situation well at all, so be ready for her to come in, frothing at the mouth, soon after I leave. I’m going back to my suite at the palace; I don’t think you need me here any longer.”

  He let himself out quietly, not looking back.

  Alyea stared at the tiny puddles and drops of tea on the tabletop, her mind alternately spinning furiously and drifting blankly among the abstract patterns of moisture. At last the sound of the outer door to her suite opening shook her from her thoughts; she looked up to find her mother, white-faced and grim, regarding her from the doorway.

  “I think we need to talk about just who is in charge in this household,” her mother said.

  “Yes,” Alyea said, “I think we do, too.” She stood up. “But not right now. I have a more important conversation waiting first.”

  “More important than me?” Her mother moved at an angle to block the doorway, her tone and expression outraged.

  Alyea drew in a hard breath, stared into her mother’s eyes, and said, with flat certainty, “You will move out of my way, and let me leave. When I return, we will talk about the reality that I am in charge, and what that means for you. Right now, I am leaving.”

  Lady Peysimun took two steps sideways, her face bone-white and her eyes wide with real fear. Alyea passed her without pause, and slammed the door behind.

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  The Northern Church had long ago built a tall tower, wanting to look out over the whole of the city in what others had later named arrogance. Deiq rather liked the tower. The view over the city and the ocean could be stunning on a clear day; and when the rain and sea-mists came in, the tower felt isolated and alone, cast loose in a grey land of emptiness. Today was the former, and he watched the rebuilding of the western docks, which Rosin had long ago ordered destroyed—ostensibly due to smuggling activity. But like everything else in the world, there were many more layers to that story.

  Distance turned the workers into scurrying ants swarming over structures much larger than themselves. Deiq smiled, seeing a metaphor there as well: of humans hurrying to conquer issues far too large for them to properly comprehend, building structures that would be swept away again under the first real storm.

  Oruen had been typically human in his reactions: charging into the new day with a determination to erase the old, refusing to see anything beyond the short-term pain the priests had caused. Even Oruen’s understanding of the why, the manipulations that lay behind the cruelties, hadn’t eased his anger with the men; he’d emptied the Northern Church Tower with an edict that sent a wave of discontented priests back to their northern brethren.

  Deiq had tried to point out the foolishness of sending men touched by the edges of a deep madness out of easy watching range, especially ones carrying a fierce sense of misunderstood pique along with them. Oruen hadn’t listened, even before the disastrous audience that put the Tower in Deiq’s hands. The king had never trusted Deiq, certainly not enough to listen. Like all humans who found out what Deiq really was, Oruen saw only
Deiq’s mistakes; focused on the biased stories; listened to fear instead of looking at what really stood before him.

  Meer had been one of the very few over the years to see Deiq with clear eyes—accepting and forgiving Deiq’s nature in hopes that his own faith would help Deiq change from monster to—what? To a saint of some sort? Deiq snorted sourly. It was too late to try for that, and he was tired of fighting himself for no good result.

  Eredion would never get past remembering the pain Deiq had caused him. Alyea would never trust Deiq’s judgment again, after what she’d gone through. Her first reaction to his voice had been a blinding rage, and she hadn’t exactly insisted on seeing him after that. She wouldn’t come find him, not after Eredion explained about feeding. Desert lords were still human, and he knew how human reactions worked by now.

  She would find excuses: she would busy herself with handling her mother, and attending to the king, and Eredion would take up her teaching. Nobody would bother to look for Deiq until it was far too late, and even then, wouldn’t look here.

  Deiq had been caught for too long between the worlds of ha’rethe and human, both sides regarding him with distrust and fear. The abandoned priest’s tower felt, symbolically, like his spot, a place filled with the restless ghosts of men pushed into situations they’d never expected. He felt oddly welcome here, in the emptiness; he could still feel Meer’s prayers humming through the air, sent with the honest intent of healing and love. He focused his memory-vision and listened, sorting out his favorite echo:

  To the gods who shelter us

  From the gods who feed us

  Through the gods who raise us

  With the gods who praise us

  We move through the dark, through the pain,

  We move though, we move on,

  We overcome and heal

  We turn, we reach

  We give to those who come behind.

  He sighed. Usually the song reassured him; today, it only deepened his bleak mood. So many of the priests had fought to stop Rosin Weatherweaver in his endless plots. Some of the most sadistic priests had been killed by their own fellows. But the humans didn’t want to know about that. Deiq’s few attempts to point it out, to explain, had been met with such fury that he’d abandoned the argument.

  Humans always needed someone to blame. The Northern Church had only been the most recent target. Deiq could sense the cycle steadily drawing around to needing another enemy; change always brought problems, and problems needed enemies.

  He knew, from centuries of experience, how things would go: Oruen would find some way to effectively ban him from the city in order to have a clear path toward seducing Alyea. Eredion, consciously or not, would find ways of dragging Deiq into the middle of some trouble or other, because now he knew the guilt spots to press. Lady Peysimun would certainly campaign against Deiq with all her shallow strength, even without understanding what she was dealing with, because Deiq was less suitable a match than the king.

  Going south again meant getting drawn into a different madness; hearing the ghost-whispers of the deaths he’d caused everywhere, the whining hum of his kin, insistent whenever he came within range: Why do you fight what you are? Why? Why? Come back to us, come back, leave the tharr. They probably wouldn’t kill him; not even after what he’d done. But they’d see, sooner or later, the secrets he’d been so foolishly trusted with over the years; and then there would be no humanity left to worry about.

  Weariness racked through him, every bone, every muscle, every bit of his brain and hair and nails, as he considered the final piece behind his decision.

  Tevin’s brutality, and Tanavin’s memories, had reminded him of a stark truth: humans could commit cruelties that the worst of the mad ha’ra’hain had never even imagined. He couldn’t face seeing that again, couldn’t face knowing another victim was suffering through that sort of torture; and sure as humans bred like flies, it was happening somewhere, to someone, right now. Living in the midst of that potential while fighting his own darkness had become too much.

  Far too much.

  He sat quietly, contemplating the odor of drying paint as it steadily faded from the air. The hunger he’d been denying gnawed hard and deep, but somehow weaker than before.

  His thoughts wandered over the last time he’d felt that twisted strain: remembering the people who had trusted his word and had died as a result. That mistake had cost him so much over the years; but at the same time, it had recently resulted in the key he needed to solve one final puzzle. The teyanain, of all people, had provided half the solution; and Kippin the other.

  A small and tremendously expensive vial of stibik oil mixed with esthit stood on the table in front of him.

  Drinking it wouldn’t kill him.

  But it would block the ability to regenerate through sleep. It would block the blood-rage. It would effectively paralyze him, and he’d be forced further into the hunger until it began to rip energy from his own cells for sustenance.

  That would kill him. Agonizingly.

  He really didn’t care.

  This seemed a good place to die. With the last task he’d really cared about complete at last, everything else could just . . . take care of itself. They didn’t need him any longer.

  They never actually had.

  He hummed softly, listening to the music held in the walls, and let the weakness grow just a little more, distantly amused by the feeling.

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Alyea stood looking up at the tower, still unable to believe Deiq was here, of all places. She almost turned and walked away, furious at his gall, his cruelty. How typical of him, to choose as sanctuary the one remaining spot in all of Bright Bay that held the most horror for her.

  The tower was set high on thick pillars, like most of the western buildings. A round core section in the center protected stairs leading to the basements beneath, where Rosin’s torturers had worked on their victims. Where Tevin had worked. . . .

  She shuddered, the phantom smell of rosemary and garlic suddenly strong in her nose; shut her eyes, breathing hard against a surge of nausea. She couldn’t go into the Tower—gods! How could he have come here?

  Shadows filled the flood-space between basement and first floor; the darkness seemed to writhe, like the ghost-screams of the tormented rising in smoky distortions from below.

  This isn’t a damn game, Deiq, she thought, her lips tight, and stared at the ornate door with utter loathing. She’d never been in the tower, or even come this close before. The stench of evil that seemed to hang over it, her now-intimate knowledge of what Tevin had enjoyed doing to his helpless victims, repelled her.

  To steady the trembling in her knees, she thought about Oruen ripping down the original Great Hall, burning and salting the ground to ease the agonized spirits whose blood had soaked into the tiles before the former throne. He’d banished the priests from the city, emptied the tower, refused to grant any audiences with the dispossessed priests regardless of pleading.

  But he’d utterly refused to tear down their tower. It turned into one of the few raging fights they’d had after he took the throne. She’d seen it as symbolic of Ninnic’s evil, and something the common people would be relieved to have gone from the landscape of their lives.

  He’d simply, without explanation, refused. Eventually she’d given up and, like most of the city, stopped looking at it. Stopped noticing it. Blocked it from her perceptions completely, like a giant blank spot.

  And this was where Deiq had retreated? She knew he was up there. She could feel him, could even feel his passage across the city as though she’d acquired an asp-jacau’s tracking ability.

  “Gods damn you,” she muttered, not sure if she meant her mother, for making a difficult situation worse; or Deiq, for choosing this place to run away to; or even herself, for following him here. But damned if I’ll let fear run my life, she thought. I won’t let that bastard win so easily.

  She went up the steps and pushed roughly through the u
nlocked door.

  As the door swung shut behind her, latching with a faintly ominous click, she stared around in utter astonishment. She’d expected grey, dark, noisome walls; instead, brightly painted murals against a cheery white background took her breath away.

  To her left, a field of tall flowers, painted with the detailed attention of a master’s hand, stretched unbroken to a doorway several feet ahead. On the right, an equally careful skill had laid out a green field that faded to a range of mountains, hazy in the far distance. The windows overhead let in sun at just the right angle to allow the illusion life; she almost smelled the grass and felt the wind tossing her hair.

  She walked forward slowly, studying the artwork, unable to believe that the same people who had tortured so many could have created anything so beautiful. In no hurry now to climb the stairs and find Deiq, she prowled through room after astounding room of simplicity and clean colors. Not all the walls bore murals, but everywhere lay the unmistakable marks of people who had used their surroundings to bring as much laughter, color, and joy to their daily lives as possible.

  And she’d begged Oruen to rip down this tower . . . never knowing what lay inside the hated walls. All of her grousing thoughts on the way here suddenly seemed trivial, juvenile, and stupid; parts of a wall that had never really needed to be built in the first place.

  She didn’t quite dare go to the basement, though. Seeing that laid out in such beauty would be obscene. She could—barely—accept the notion that the priests in the main tower had been capable of focusing on purity at some point; she remembered the brown-robed priest at her whipping who had intervened to stop Rosin from killing her outright. And then there was that group of priests at the edge of the city—not far away from here, really—who Eredion had said worked to repair the damages of their fellows.