Sands (Sharani Series Book 1) (17 page)

A small beetle scuttled across the rock near him. Without thinking, Gavin reached out and grabbed it between two stiff fingers. The pain was excruciating, but he didn’t let go. He popped the insect into his mouth, ignoring the scuttling, flailing legs that kicked at his tongue. Chewing was painful, but he bit down on the hard shell, feeling a satisfying crunch as the bitter juices washed over his tongue. He’d never tasted anything quite so satisfying. He tried to stand up, but strength failed him. He needed rest and time to heal.

The sun rose and fell three times before Gavin had the strength to move with the speed and alacrity he was used to. There were plenty of beetles and small crab-like creatures to sustain him, though the diet was bland. Water came in shallow pools near the Oasis side of the walls. His hands had healed, so the pain was only a dull ache. The sun rose over the Forbiddence, barely visible from his current vantage, warming the rock.

He popped a beetle into his mouth and chewed.

He swallowed and pushed himself up to his feet, stifling a groan. His grandmother’s voice drifted across his memory, recounting the stories of his youth. It gave him strength. The wind whipped at his brown hair streaked with red, tossing it around his face where it wasn’t plastered to his scalp by dried blood and dirt. The wind smelled of dust and heat and blood.

He took a step forward and then stopped. On the other side of the Oasis walls, something glinted in the early morning light. An outcropping of rock jutted out from the otherwise flat surface of the plateau. Something glinted at its apex. How had he not noticed it before?

It took him the better part of the morning to circumnavigate the top of the Oasis wall, eyes constantly straining to try and make out what was reflecting the light. When he was close enough to see what it was, the sight made him halt. A sword was thrust into the rocks, part of the blade and the hilt remaining exposed to the elements. And there was something at its base. He resumed his walk, though more quickly than he’d gone before.

The dull white thing took shape as he neared. A skeleton, ancient and broken. It lay against the red sandstone, limbs sprawled out as if it had fallen from a great height. The blade was thrust through the broken ribs exactly where the heart would have been.

Gavin studied it, fascinated. The proportions were off. The person would have stood over seven feet tall and, judging from the thickness of the bones, been a massive behemoth of a man. And the skull was odd. The head was more narrow and pinched at the front than he had expected and the teeth—they had been filed to points, like the fangs of a genesauri.

“This can’t be Eldriean,” Gavin said aloud, wonderingly. He stepped closer, his movements coming more fluidly than they had been before. He reached out and laid a bloodstained hand on the sword’s hilt. The sword toppled free with a crunch of rock. Gavin struggled to catch it before it fell, his fingers protesting the abuse. He grabbed the sword hilt as the ground beneath his feet gave way, and he fell into darkness with a terrified scream.

He hit hard. He heard something break, though he couldn’t tell if it was one of his bones or his entire body. He coughed, spitting up blood and phlegm as dust poured down around him and chunks of broken rock hit the floor.

Somehow he’d maintained his grip on the sword. It seemed lighter than he had expected.

When the dust settled and the rocks stopped falling from the crumbling mess of sandstone above, Gavin used the sword like a cane to support himself. He struggled to his feet. Nothing felt broken, but beneath the pain from the wounds he had already sustained, it was altogether possible that he had broken any number of bones and simply couldn’t feel it. Regardless, nothing was damaged enough to keep him from walking, though his movements were slower again.

“This is for you, Nana,” he said, to give himself strength. “There
was
something up here. You were right . . . you were right.” His voice echoed strangely in the chamber.

He looked up, noting the distance he had fallen, only a few spans. The sword must have extended down into this hollow chamber beneath the skeleton, slowly weakening it until Gavin’s light touch on the hilt caused the whole section to collapse. Thankfully, the cliff itself hadn’t fallen.

He stepped forward and something crunched under his foot. Bones, he realized, looking down. The behemoth’s bones. That was what he had heard breaking. Ancient, brittle, and bleached by ages in the sun, the bones were now little more than dust and jagged white flecks mixed in with the red and grey sandstone.

He pressed his hands against the sides of the wall, searching for purchase, but found nothing. It was too smooth, too polished. Like glass.

It
was
glass. It lined the inner walls in a thin sheet. It was a startling discovery, one that made him re-assess the nature of this cave. This wasn’t a natural structure. It had been made by human hands.

That meant that there had to be an exit somewhere. He felt his pulse quicken. There was more here to be discovered. As he shuffled forward, coughing as dust entered his lungs, he wished that his grandmother and parents could have been here to discover this with him. They were still with him in memory, but he longed for their physical presence by his side.

Eventually, he found the expected exit, hidden in shadow at the far end of the chamber. He paused a moment to gain his strength, leaning against the greatsword, and then stepped into the darkness.

*              *              *

Beryl closed his eyes and reached out with his senses, selecting a large block of metal and pulling it toward him. The cold, grey lump of hardened steel rose out of the bin as if in defiance of gravity’s laws, floating through the air toward where Beryl waited. His eyes remained closed. He didn’t bother stoking the flames of the forge. He really didn’t need to, though at times the physical turmoil of forge work was a boon to his troubled, crowded mind. His work lay scattered across the desert, like the grains of the sand itself, but this weapon would be different. This weapon he made because
he
wanted to, not because he was bidden.

This girl, this Lhaurel—she was different. Khari and Makin Qays had visited him earlier, both congratulating themselves on another successful breaking. One of the voices told him they were wrong. It was the voice of someone he had once been, someone from long ago.

“They think the girl is broken,” he whispered in response to that voice. “The sandstorm, Kaiden, the trauma, it only widened the cracks. She’s not broken yet. No, it takes a more complex breaking to open up complex magic.”

He remembered his own breaking like a distant echo. Even after all the other memories had faded, that one was as fresh and poignant as if it had occurred just yesterday.

“How long must I be the weapons maker?” he asked.

He raised his hands before him, flecks of metal in his skin reflecting the light, and gestured at the block hovering in the air before him. It
shifted.
The metal began to elongate and flatten, manipulated by the will of one who was as old as the metal he worked and twice as hard.

“The curse.” He spat, willing the metal to thin more. “Why must they keep fighting? Isn’t there enough death? Why must I keep giving them more weaponry? Why don’t they ask where the weapons come from—where the fuel comes for the fires?”

He knew the answers.

“They were the dregs of society to begin with. And the slaves. They are the lesser children of a greater father.” He shuddered, memories playing through his mind like flashes of lightning in a storm.

The metal he was working shimmered and warped for a moment, but a simple gesture smoothed out the transmuted edge and the work continued.

How long would his torment continue? He’d been the first thrown into this desert, this eternal hell. He was the first of the lesser lords. The first magnetelorium. Did any of these remember their ancient heritage? No. Of course they didn’t. It was lost to them, lost in memory and legend. The outcasts, those crossbreed mutants now so interbred that the original purpose of the imprisonment was lost to them, they still told some of the stories. Twisted and warped versions of them, but at least that was something. But these Roterralar, those here to protect the others, they didn’t understand a hundredth part of what they thought they knew. Not even when they sat upon the very spot where it all began. Not even then. Thanks to Elyana and the genesauri.

“Oh Elyana,” he said, voice soft and eyes still closed.

The hilt formed on the sword, and the cross guard flattened and formed to separate the hilt from the blade.

“You will never know what you caused. When you created your
salvation
, did you understand what you were doing to this people? Did you know what effects it would have?”

Her cause had been just, and it had performed its intended purpose, though Beryl wondered if it was perhaps just a delaying of the inevitable. The enemy had been driven back, but a new one took its place. How was this any better? And when the current enemy was removed, how long before the old one returned? The Sharani were a doomed people, imprisoned in their desert without any idea of what went on beyond the Forbiddence that enclosed the sands. In truth, Beryl no longer remembered, either. Those memories were foggy things, lost to the annuls of time and history. Yet he had been here before the desert, been here before the crimson scourge had made a sport of this all.

Things were changing. Beryl could feel it. It had started with the genesauri shifting their hibernation pattern. But that was only a beginning. This was only a part of a larger whole. Things had been set in motion that were simply better left undone. The world was about to change. The girl, Lhaurel, she reminded him of times past.

Beryl closed his hands, blade finished, and the weapon dropped from the air to bury itself in the sand, point first. Another blade completed. Another sword made to kill Rahuli. He was about the task appointed him, the same task for which his life had been spared.

He laughed suddenly, a strange, short bark. It was the laughter of a broken man, a man whose existence and sanity danced on the edge of a knife. The laughter of a man doomed to eternal creation and eternal damnation. He was a bringer of death, a supplier of the implements of destruction.

A quick swipe crumpled the sword into a useless lump of metal once more, flinging it back into the bin.

The laughter that followed did little to hide the wet streak of a tear slipping down his cheek.

Then the metal lump rose and began forming itself into a sword again. He’d lost track of how many times he’d fashioned this sword. Maybe a dozen or so this morning. Twice as many yesterday.

He laughed and then shrugged, pushing aside the despair and emotion welling within him. For now, he would allow himself to be simply Beryl, the smith. For now, he could forget the pain and the madness. Beryl opened his eyes and pulled on the bellows, stoking the fire. This time he would do it the mundane way. Maybe he could ignore the voices then. Maybe this time he could ignore the small part of him that was screaming.

My work is taking a toll on me.  Sleep greets me with the echoes of children screaming.  When awake, the dreams linger, the echoes giving me an anxiety which slows the progress we so desperately need. But Briane was right.  The cause is worthy of the sacrifice.  I must fight on.

-From the Journals of Elyana

It had taken much more than a simple bribe to get Fahkiri to come down from his roost. By the time Lhaurel climbed up to him and not only apologized but also begged for him to come down, Khari was ready to simply leave her behind. But the aevian had eventually relented and allowed Lhaurel to saddle him and clip her own harness into place on his back. They had managed to launch from the eyrie’s cavernous opening an hour before sunset and wing their way southward.

Lhaurel loved the thrill of flight, but her racing heart was filled with a small measure of trepidation. Her harness was completely secured, but she rode more stiffly in the saddle now, clutched more tightly onto the pommel. She didn’t want to repeat the terrifying plummet that had happened earlier.

Khari’s aevian had been none other than Gwyanth, Fahkiri’s mother, though there didn’t seem to be any familiar love between the two anymore. Gwyanth was as cold and distant towards Fahkiri as her rider was to Lhaurel.

Khari pushed them hard through the blazing sun, though as high up as they were in the air, the heat was bearable, even in their long robes.

Lhaurel scanned the red sands below them. The evidence of sailfins passing was everywhere. Small piles and depressions dotted the sands, like pockmarks on an old man’s face. The wind was slowly filling them in, but even the relentless wind needed time to erase so many. Lhaurel shuddered at the memory of the Sidena Warren, destroyed by only a small sailfin pack.

She shifted her gaze as Fahkiri climbed a little higher on a gust of wind. Kaiden was right about where the monsters were headed. The pits and piles of sand pointed in the same direction they flew, straight toward the heart of the Sharani desert, the Oasis. Eventually the evidence stopped, showing where the sailfins had stopped to rest or whatever it was they did when they weren’t on the move.

Lhaurel scanned the  ground, hoping to spot a fin or two poking up out of the sand or evidence of a marsaisi—she’d never seen one, only heard the tales—and almost missed the large depression in the sand. A long, wide pit cut through the dunes, stretching for over a hundred spans in width and over twice that in length. A genesauri nest? She made a mental note to ask Khari when they landed.

Before too long, the high stone walls of the Oasis appeared on the horizon, and Khari signaled that they were to land with a sharp whistled pattern that she had taught Lhaurel in the Roterralar eyrie. Lhaurel held on tightly as they descended, though she felt Fahkiri shift before he dipped into his dive and was ready for the gut-wrenching fall and sudden stop. She still rocked forward at the sudden change of direction, but not far enough to snap the safety lead or slam her face into the pommel, which was already stained with her blood.

Lhaurel unclipped the harness and dropped to the sands, her feet sinking a few inches into the loose, red-grey terrain. They were still a hundred spans away from the Oasis. She’d forgotten how much she hated walking in the loose sands of the desert. The warren floors were all coated in a thin layer of sand, true, but beneath it was solid rock. In the dune fields and outside of the stoneways, the sand had nothing beneath it except for more sand, where each step forward also included several inches of sliding backwards and down.

“What was that massive depression back there?” Lhaurel asked, checking her sword.

Khari slid down off of Gwyanth’s back with more grace than Lhaurel could have ever mustered, though the woman’s face was dark and brooding. She landed and bent at the knees to absorb the blow, her red robes billowing up around her for a moment and exposing form-fitting tan leggings beneath. Khari checked her sword and divested herself of the leather riding harness before responding. “That is trouble.” She pulled out a waterskin and took a small mouthful. “The depression is made when a karundin, the third type of genesauri, breaks the surface of the sands.”

Lhaurel’s eyes widened. “
A
karundin?”

Khari glanced back over the sands where they had come. She rubbed the palms of her hands against the sides of her robes, shoulders hunched. “There’s only the one. That point where the two paths crossed—we see them from time to time during Migrations. From what we can tell, the karundin eats the sailfins.”

“The whole pack?”

“In one go.”

Lhaurel swallowed, her mouth dry. Something that large could devour an entire clan. Something that large could destroy the Oasis on a whim. Maybe the Roterralar were right to remain hidden.

“What’s it look like?”

Khari shrugged and turned back to face Lhaurel, expression more firm. “No one knows. We’ve never been able to see it, just the evidence of its passing.”

Lhaurel swallowed vainly again and then took out her waterskin and took a small sip. “So what now?”

“Now we head into the Oasis, where I’ll meet with my contacts. I’ll tell Makin Qays about the karundin when we return. We’ll be gone from here first thing in the morning.” Khari tossed her harness up Gwyanth’s back and attached some of the leads to keep it in place. As she did so, the sleeve of her robes pulled back, exposing the tattoos on her wrists and forearms. Lhaurel puzzled over them as she copied Khari’s actions, removing her harness and stowing it on Fahkiri’s back. Lhaurel wondered whom the woman had lost.

The short woman took a few steps back in the sand, cursing softly as she stumbled on the loose footing. Lhaurel walked up next to her and the woman let out a shrill dismissive whistle. Their two aevians launched into the air, winging their way toward the setting sun.

“I’ll call them when we’re ready to leave in the morning,” Khari said, and she turned to walk toward the Oasis. Lhaurel hurried after her, half tempted to take out her sword to use as a walking staff to aide her in climbing the slippery sides of the dunes. The thought was discarded as quickly as it entered her mind. The sword, even a loaned one, was worth far more than any discomfort she experienced walking through sand.

Khari seemed to have almost no trouble at all moving through the sands. Her steps were light and springy, barely leaving an impression on the sand. By comparison, Lhaurel moved with the grace of a sailfin.

“Why are we doing this, Khari?” Lhaurel called.

“We protect the clans as best we can. That’s our job. We assail the genesauri, protect them during the Migration, etc.”

“So I’ve been told,” Lhaurel said.

“Well, that’s only part of it. We also watch out to make sure that the clans survive themselves
and
the desert. There wouldn’t be much use for us if the only things we could do for the clans were during the Migration. We try and help steer them politically and, when necessary, we help them find places to live and ways to adapt to this ever-changing environment. In a way, we are their guardians and protectors.”

“Yes, as if the Roterralar are the parents of all the clans,” Lhaurel interjected.

“In some things, perhaps, but in many ways we are more like the child than the parent. The Roterralar are formed from the other seven clans. They are a part of us and we are a part of them. You, for example, were once part of the Sidena.” Khari paused for a moment and hiked up one of her sleeves. The banded tattoos stood out on her skin, though all were older, faded. “Just as many small streams joining together form a river, so too do the seven clans join together in us.”

“What does that have to do with the tattoos?”

“Even those of us who were born a Roterralar have relatives or ancestors who were once a part of the seven clans. They are our fallen family. When we swear fealty to the Roterralar, we renounce our ties to the clan that gave us birth and we cement our ties to all the clans. Each color represents a particular clan, the width of the band the number lost. When we go out to protect and defend, we remember those who we were unable to save. Each member of the party has at least one new band to add. We track back and count the number of the dead each time. None of them are forgotten if we can help it.

“Makin told me what you said to him. How you called us all cowards. Perhaps we are, but not for the reasons that you called us such. If we are cowards it is because we do not have the strength to let them survive as nature and fate see fit. Perhaps we are cowards because we seek to postpone that which is inevitable.”

Lhaurel rankled at the words, slogging through the sand to grab Khari by the shoulder and spin her around. “Nothing is inevitable if you fight it. Yes, the clans fear the genesauri Migration, and there are those who die. But our people die defending them, allowing them the freedom to live as best they can.”

Khari smiled, ignoring Lhaurel’s grip on her shoulder. “That, Lhaurel, is called duty. Often the price of freedom is someone else doing their duty. These bands,” she said, holding up her arms and shaking the sleeves down to show the tattoos, “remind us why we get up every morning to do our duty and protect this people. Even if those who find out about us think us cowards.” She softened the last remark with a wink and then firmly removed Lhaurel’s grip from her shoulder and resumed her walk.

Lhaurel stood still a moment, lost in thought, before hurrying after Khari. There was still much about the Roterralar that Lhaurel didn’t fully understand or agree with, but she was beginning to realize that much of what they did was steeped in rich traditionalism and duty. They were a people fighting to protect as best they could with the resources that they had available. She wasn’t sure if she agreed with or even understood why they kept themselves aloof from those they were protecting, but they were doing what they did for a reason. They weren’t overtly unkind; they were simply performing their duty in the best way they knew how. And that, above all else, was something that Lhaurel could understand.

The walls of the Oasis grew larger as they neared. Lhaurel had been inside the protective embrace of those enormous walls, but something was different this time. She could sense something coming from the walls. Almost a presence, like she could feel off the Roterralar except with Kaiden and Khari on occasion, but somehow
different.

As they neared the cliffs, the sense intensified. There was something ominous to it, something not quite right. It made the hair along her arms stand on end and sent shivers through her bottom lip. She bit it to keep the quivering from showing.

They approached the narrow canyon that led into the hidden lushness of the Oasis. Lhaurel cringed away from the sickly sweetness that exuded from the walls.

Khari turned to her. “Pull your hood up,” she whispered. “And stay quiet. No matter what.”

When Lhaurel had done so, the matron of the Roterralar entered the narrow opening without any trace of hesitation in her step.

Lhaurel followed much more slowly. It wasn’t just the feeling of wrongness that came from off the walls. The pathway they walked was narrow, barely wide enough for them to walk through without their shoulders touching the rough sandstone. Lhaurel remembered years where some of the cattle, large, well-fed beeves that had grown fat in the relative safety of the warrens, had been unable to fit through some of the narrow passageways and had to be slaughtered and carried through in pieces.

It was a hard enough passage in full daylight, with the sudden twists and turns. It was twice as difficult a task in the semidarkness. There was something else, too, besides the cloying claustrophobia of the narrow canyon. Lhaurel, suddenly free to do many of the things she had wanted so desperately to accomplish in her youth, was walking back into the arms of her original tormentors. People who had literally sentenced her to death.

Ahead of her, Khari cursed. “Damn rashelta.”

Lhaurel paused when another voice, a deep male one, spoke up in response to the outburst. She hadn’t sensed his presence beneath the overwhelming sense of foreboding that surrounded her.

“Halt! Identify yourself!”

Flint sparked in the darkness, and a torch crackled to life. The flickering orange flame threw the speaker, an older man bearing a large spear and with a sword girded at his waist, into sudden relief. He stood directly in their path, blocking their way. He squinted at them, unable to make out much until his eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness. His furrowed brow stuck out over his eyes like fronds on a coconut tree.

“Oh, you,” he said when his eyes had adjusted fully. “What do you want? We ain’t had any wandering types here in the Oasis in seven years. What is going on now? Bringing more ill tidings, are you? Come on now, speak up.”

“We come seeking shelter. That is all,” Khari said. “We will be gone in the morning.”

“A woman?” the old man said, voice incredulous. “Well, I’ll be a sun-crazed fool. I never seen a woman Roterralar afore. Shelter, you say? Well, I reckon that won’t be too hard to find around here. So long as you don’t go stealing anything during the night.”

“You can’t let Roterralar into the Oasis.” another voice cut in from behind the old man. “We’ve bad enough luck as it is without bringing in the bad fortune they will give us.”

The first man turned, shouting back at the other guard behind him. “They’re women. What harm will it do? I’m letting them in, so get outta the way back there.”