Under the Crimson Sun (the abyssal plague)

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Karalith chuckled. Feena had mind-magic-what those who were trained in it called “the Way”-which was often helpful when they played the game on someone. It was particularly useful for the tougher players, but Belrik was sufficiently predictable-thanks to what Lyd told them-that Feena’s extra help wasn’t needed.

  Sometimes Karalith wondered how Feena’s life might have differed had she been born to a class that would have enabled her to study at a school teaching the Way. Such schools were all over Athas, and they trained people who went on to advise businesses, merchants, nobles, and monarchs.

  They’d never know, of course, but Feena was already fairly skilled with her abilities just from what she taught herself. Had she been properly trained in the Way, she probably would have blossomed into a force to be reckoned with.

  Of course, had circumstances permitted that, Karalith probably never would have met Feena or her brother.

  “Fine, go on,” Torthal said to Feena and Tricht’tha, “but try to get back before the lunch crowd arrives.”

  “Of course,” Feena said.

  “And,” Torthal added, “you’ve still got to take those spices to that family at midday.”

  “Yes, of course.” Feena and Tricht’tha had already started walking toward the gate in the Raam city wall that would lead them to the Coins Quarter and the small house that Lyd could no longer afford to rent since Belrik blacklisted her. With the five hundred gold, though, she’d be able to start over somewhere beyond Belrik’s reach.

  Karalith, meanwhile, went back to the carriage, having extracted the remaining five hundred gold in ceramic coins from the pouch, letting Tricht’tha and Feena take Belrik’s pouch to Lyd.

  The thing was a mess, as usual. It drove Karalith mad, it really did, to see clothing and bedclothes tossed about all over the place, parchments piled haphazardly, and spare merchandise unsorted. The bazaars tended to be frantic affairs, and the off-hours were usually spent recovering from being at the table all day. Karalith understood that Shira and Torthal weren’t as young as they used to be, but that excuse didn’t hold for Feena, Zabaj, or Karalith’s brother.

  Tricht’tha had her own excuse, of course-thri-kreens’ sense of neatness differed widely from that of most other people.

  But when the bazaar ended in three days, they were going to waste hours cleaning up the carriage in order to secure everything for travel.

  Finally, after tossing aside several piles of clothing-which made the mess worse, a bit of hypocrisy that Karalith chose to ignore-she finally liberated the strongbox. Shira and Karalith had the only keys to the box. For years, Shira had insisted on having the only key, but these days, Shira and Torthal usually only worked for about half the day at the table. When they were gone, Karalith and Komir were in charge, and one of them had to have access to the strongbox.

  There were moments when Karalith was worried about what would happen when her parents finally died. It was going to happen sooner or later-particularly Shira. Elves lived longer, but Torthal was also still proportionally as old for an elf as Shira was for a human. Even though he had fifty years on her, they were in many ways the same age.

  The strongbox was probably more valuable than its contents. Made from iron and oak, materials that were virtually impossible to find anymore, the ornately designed box was large enough to hold all of their coins. And if the emporium ever was in trouble, they could always sell the box …

  Inside the box were several compartments, and Karalith counted out two hundred in gold-stamped coins to put in the small corner compartment for coins owed, with the remaining three hundred going into the center compartment for the emporium’s own profits.

  Karalith smiled as she saw how much was in that center compartment. After what they did to Belrik, it was possible that they wouldn’t be able to come back to Raam for at least another couple of years. Prior to running the game on him, she would have considered that an acceptable loss, especially given the declining state of Raam these days, but this season they were actually doing decently here, for once.

  But she was willing to live with it-and so were the rest of them. Lyd was a friend, and you didn’t do what Belrik did to the Serthlara Emporium’s friends. Not without retribution, anyway.

  “All put away?”

  Karalith turned around to see her twin brother Komir. Like her, Komir had the slight points to his ears that indicated their mixed heritage, but that was the only similarity. He had the ordinary sunken cheekbones and thin shoulders of a human, and the wide eyes of an elf. The best indicator, though, that he was Torthal Serthlara’s son was the same as Karalith’s: the sea green eyes.

  Another non-elf trait was that Komir had shaved his head. The sweat got to him, he said, and he found it easier to survive under Athas’s crimson sun without any hair in the way. It was a pity, as his hair was thick, lustrous, and shining-but Karalith knew the value of practicality. And the round, bald head gave her brother a rugged look that sometimes aided in the game.

  “Yes,” she said in response to her brother’s query. “I set aside the two hundred for Gash, and Tricht’tha and Feena are taking the five hundred to Lyd now.”

  “Excellent. Lyd doesn’t deserve to have that sandscraper blacklisting her.”

  Karalith nodded. Lyd hadn’t even been able to get a table at this season’s bazaar because Belrik had soiled her reputation. Nobody in Raam would buy her wares anymore, all because he misunderstood the description of her burlap, confusing it with her raw silk supply.

  “That five hundred,” Komir continued, “should be enough to get her to some other city where Belrik’s good name won’t sully hers.”

  Grinning, Karalith said, “I don’t think Belrik’s name will be all that good after he digs around the wastes for months looking for a treasure that isn’t there.”

  “You don’t feel sorry for the little bastard, do you, Lith?”

  Karalith glared at her brother. “I’m not even going to dignify that with a response, Ko. You said it best-he’s a sandscraper. I wouldn’t let him clean my sandals.”

  Komir snorted. “He wouldn’t know how. Still, I hope that Feena’s brother doesn’t take too long to get here. I’d just as soon be away from Raam as fast as possible.”

  “Agreed.” She wrapped one arm around her brother’s shoulder. “So let us go sell as much as possible so we won’t ever have to come back …”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Rol really, really had to pee.

  There were a lot of reasons he was sorry that Fehrd was dead, but right now the one foremost in his mind-and in his bladder-was the fact that, with only two of them, the overnight shifts on guard duty were longer. This had happened on other occasions where only two of them worked a job, or one of them was injured and couldn’t pull guard duty. In fact, it happened every time: the final hour of Rol’s shift involved a lot of jumping up and down waiting for Fehrd or Gan to relieve him so he could relieve himself.

  The night had been fairly quiet. The caravan had torches that were placed at the perimeter to keep some of the nocturnal creatures away. It didn’t always work if they were hungry enough, but generally they stuck with prey that wouldn’t require them to blind themselves in order to capture it.

  Rol tried to distract himself by thinking about Tirana. At least, he was pretty sure that was her name. He had always had trouble remembering women’s names. Gan had expressed opinions as to what that meant, but Rol mostly ignored them. Ignoring Gan was the only way to properly tolerate being in his presence half the time.

  Tirana was the daughter of the slave trader, whose charm was in inverse proportion to that of her father. Generally, people assumed slavers to be utter bastards with no redeeming social value, but in Rol’s experience, they were generally quite calm and sensible. They were businessmen, mostly, and treated their slaves precisely the way they would any other merchandise. Often that meant they were well cared for.

  However, Tirana’s father, Calbit, fell into the utter-bastard stereotype. In f
act, he was the first one Rol had met who did. He had-according to his daughter-a collection of fighters from all over who he’d purchased on behalf of his partner back in Urik.

  Rol had always been grateful that he’d managed to avoid having to fight in the arenas. Gladiatorial fights were the most popular sport going, and Rol had seen a few from the cheap seats in arenas all over Athas. Mostly he came away from them thanking powers greater than him that he wasn’t down on the combat stage. He preferred to fight for fun or for profit. Doing it by force just took all the fun out of it.

  He contemplated whether or not it was worth tempting Calbit’s wrath by waking his daughter and having some fun with her before going to sleep. Of greater concern was tempting Tirana’s wrath, as annoying her would not lead to the result he was hoping for.

  At least, not that night.

  Then again, he didn’t have much longer to go. They’d reach the Dragon’s Bowl fork some time the next day, and then the slavers would continue on the Great Road to Urik while the rest of them veered off to Raam. So it might well have been his only chance, if he thought about it.

  Not that he was truly thinking straight, as he hopped back and forth on the shifting sands.

  The best part was that she’d come to him, initially. She expressed sorrow over Fehrd’s death, for which Rol thanked her and then quickly changed the subject. Death, he felt, never really suited the mood of a conversation with a woman. So every time she tried to bring Fehrd up, he changed the subject to something that was more conducive to his endgame.

  “Finally,” he bellowed when he saw Gan approach his position on the perimeter of the caravan, the torchlight combining with his eye patch to cast odd blacks onto his face. “What took you so long? My back teeth are floating.”

  “You know, seriously, you can just relieve yourself while you’re on duty.”

  “That’s not what I do.” Rol had a work ethic, after all, and Gan knew that. “The last thing I want is to have to take on bandits with the family jewels hanging out.”

  Gan rolled his eye, which looked ridiculous with the patch. “You don’t even know your family.”

  “Hardly the point, and you know it.” Rol shook his head. “Anyway, it’s been quiet. A few lizards here and there, but nothing big enough to eat, much less be a danger.”

  Nodding, Gan pulled out Fehrd’s staff. Or, rather, Fehrd’s father’s staff.

  Rol asked Gan the same question he’d asked when Gan had removed it from Fehrd’s corpse. “You do know how to use that thing, right?”

  “Fehrd gave me lessons,” Gan said.

  With a sigh, Rol said, “Fehrd gave you one lesson, three months ago.”

  “I’m a quick study.”

  Rol opened his mouth to argue the point-in fact, there were several points worth arguing with Gan about-but he decided not to in favor of finally emptying his bladder. “I’ll be at the slaver carriage if you need me,” Rol said. Even if Tirana-or whatever her name was-wasn’t awake nor to be awakened, he liked the idea of waking up in her carriage.

  Then, recalling something he’d meant to tell Gan, but had forgotten in the mental anguish of not being able to pee, he turned and said, “By the way, I saw some dead aguardi cacti around.”

  “So your comment about anakores turned out not to be a joke?” Gan asked.

  “Maybe not. Keep your eye open.”

  “Will do,” Gan said as Rol walked toward a sand dune. When he got over to the other side of that, he could urinate in private.

  As he adjusted his breeches so he could finally relieve himself, he thought about where in the caravan he might have his liaison with the slaver’s daughter. Privacy was, after all, hard to come by in a group of three dozen travelers (and that wasn’t even counting the slaves in the stone cart).

  The next sound he heard was not one he expected. His urine hitting the sand, the howl of the wind, even the flickering of the nearest of the torches-all of them hovered in the background.

  But suddenly, he found himself compelled.

  In some ways it reminded him of the Way-Rol and the others had done some security work for more than one wizard in their time-but this didn’t quite match how he’d felt when mages worked their mind-craft on him.

  He was overcome with an urge to stop what he was doing and walk toward-something to his left.

  “Do you mind, I’m a little busy here,” he muttered, waving an arm past his ear, as if that would help. “Look, unless you’re a good-looking woman-or, frip, even a bad-looking one-I’m going to be very put out when I beat you into submission for interrupting my-”

  Suddenly, Rol couldn’t move.

  For all his life, Rol had prided himself on being in tune with his body. If you were going to make a living at physical violence, you needed to be in control of your movements and be fully aware of what you were capable of. You had to know your own strength down to the last iota. This was useful not only when he was beating up bandits or killing an anakore, but also in his dealings with women, who appreciated his strength and self-control.

  So to find himself suddenly unable to control his limbs pissed him right off.

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t even shout his outrage to the skies-or even to Gan, who wasn’t all that far away-because the control extended to his mouth.

  His legs awkwardly started to amble across the sand to his left, farther from the dune where he’d been relieving himself. More than once he fell forward, only to clamber clumsily to his feet.

  It was magic of some kind, that was painfully obvious. Rol had been on the receiving end of the Way before. But that usually had some impact on the thoughts of the person being affected. More than one mage had subsumed Rol’s will to his own, but on those occasions, Rol only had the vaguest recollection of the time he was controlled.

  This, though, was wholly different. He was fully aware of what was happening. If this was the Way, it was a kind Rol had never encountered before.

  And that, quite frankly, was pretty damned unlikely.

  Whatever controlled him didn’t seem to know how the human body worked. About six years back, Rol had been injured in his left leg so badly that he couldn’t walk for months. Gan and Fehrd had managed to find a healing potion that cured him-a nobleman’s son couldn’t actually pay for services rendered, but he was able to get his hands on the potion-but after being bedridden for so long, he had to virtually relearn the simple act of walking.

  Even then, though, he did better than whatever controlled him was capable of making him do.

  After a few more minutes of ridiculous walking, Rol found himself standing before the corpse of a creature unlike any he’d seen in this or any other part of the desert. It was gray-at least the parts of its skin that were still intact-with four legs in varying degrees of decay and destruction. Bones jutted through cracked, desiccated flesh, rotted organs dotted about.

  Rol barely registered any of that, because his eyes were forced to be focused upon a tiny pool of crimson and silver flecked liquid in the chest cavity. For several seconds, he just stared at it. Rol wondered what it was. It was the wrong consistency to be blood …

  Then it started to roil and bubble, and Rol heard a voice that was at once everywhere and nowhere.

  You will be mine. You are the first. You will not be the last. We will spread throughout this new world and fulfill our master’s purpose. Tharizdun’s will be done.

  Rol had all of about two seconds to wonder who the frip Tharizdun was before the liquid shot upward like a waterspout to his face.

  It covered his visage, blinding him, leaving him unable to breathe.

  Then it began to ooze into every opening: his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his ears. All at once, his eyes stung, he gagged, he suffocated …

  Hot knives of pain sliced through his mind as he tried desperately to scream, but he couldn’t even breathe, nor even attempt to draw breath.

  He collapsed face first onto the sand, thinking that this was a really stupid way to die …

/>   Gan was rather surprised when Rol walked right past him without acknowledging his presence.

  He was even more surprised to realize that he hadn’t closed his breeches.

  “Rol, what’re you doing?”

  “Hm?” Rol stopped and stared at Gan as if he’d never seen him before. “What?”

  Gan just pointed at his groin.

  Looking down, Rol said, “Oi! Sorry about that.” Quickly, he adjusted his clothes.

  “After your whole ‘family jewels’ nonsense, I can’t believe you’d just wander around like that.”

  “Sorry,” Rol said, “I was distracted.”

  Gan frowned. “You feeling all right?”

  “Of course. I feel great, why?”

  “Rol, I’ve known you for ten years, and this is the first time you’ve ever apologized for anything.”

  Rol shrugged and again said, “Sorry.”

  That was twice Rol used that word in the last minute and also in Gan’s lifetime. “Rol, what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. I just had to pee. Gonna go get some sleep.”

  As Rol walked past him, Gan called out, “Aren’t you gonna try to sleep with Tirana?”

  Rol ignored him and kept walking.

  Gan assumed he was just refusing to rise to the bait. He rarely did, truth be told, which was one of Rol’s more annoying qualities. Especially since Gan always allowed himself to be baited by the other two.

  Turning, he continued his walk around the caravan perimeter. He had seen the same dead cacti that Rol mentioned, and that meant that there might be anakores nearby. The nomadic creatures tended to burrow underground and eat roots, leaving the plants above to wither.

  Of course, the creature could have come through days before. Gan certainly hoped so-anakores were pains in the ass.

  Naturally, that meant that one leaped out of the sand right toward him.

  Gan barely had a chance to slash at the creature with his bone knife before it was on top of him. Weighing in at somewhere around three hundred pounds, the creature had Gan pinned to the sandy ground before he consciously knew what was happening, the anakore’s clawed hands holding him down, rendering him unable to take a second swipe with his knife.