Sandstorm (31 page)

“So, he decided to become another anonymous ranger. The North is full of them. But it turned out—and I suppose this is something that might have proven valuable if he had actually followed through—it turned out that Mattias Farseer was destined to be the greatest archer the world has ever seen.

“You think you have seen him shoot? In Berdusk, they sing a song about the flight of a single arrow he loosed when he was nineteen years old.

“But he was a fool, as I said, and chose a lesser path.

“These northland rangers, you see, in the main they train as swordsmen or archers, but some among them set those ways aside in favor of the companionship of animals, can you believe it? Even Mattias wasn’t fool enough to hold such an intention, but, that shot out of legend? The one from the song? He felled a striking wyvern from a thousand paces away. The beast was feeding off a village’s sheep herd and they hired him to save their spring lambs.

“He took less gold than he deserved and headed home. On the way, he heard a cry in the forest. There was a nest, and a single fledgling wyvern. When she saw him, she attacked. No larger than a dog, but she was all claws and teeth. He could have shot her dead, of course,
but remember this is a story about a fool. She ripped open his belly and shattered his hips, and he never even drew his dagger.

“And they both lived, somehow. He sewed up his own guts and survived the fire in the blood that comes with that kind of wound. He brought her a roebuck to feed on when he finally managed to take one down. His aim was off, because of the fever, I suppose, or the deer could hear him dragging himself through the woods.

“But they both lived. And after they could travel, they found that they had to move farther and farther south. Farther and farther away from civilized people who wanted nothing to do with a wyvern. Farther from woodlands that had no place for a crippled ranger.

“And do you know, that even after all that, he managed to do something even more foolish? Do you know what he did?

“He joined the circus.”

In her workroom, Munaa yr Oma el Jhotos, High Vizar of Almraiven, collapsed onto a couch. Drawing in the demon’s leash had proven far more difficult than she anticipated.

She held no illusions about her own powers. She might be counted among the mighty in a city famous for its mages, but the making of the leash was far beyond her. It had been very nearly outside her ability to hold it.

But the demon was once again imprisoned in the apostoleum beneath the plain. Her grandfather’s bindings were woven anew. She was confident they would hold.

She considered whether the risk had been worth the taking. The el Jhotos heir had escaped, along with her grandfather’s former assassin and one or two others.

Pouring the last of the wine she’d brought from the WeavePasha’s sanctum, she decided that, on balance, the night must be judged a success. She had not managed the death of the one her grandfather thought might one day be a threat, but she had managed the death of the one he feared.

Exhausted, she raised the glass to her lips, then spit out the wine.

It had gone bitter.

T
HE DESERT HAD A VOICE, AND IT WAS BOTH WIND AND
earth.

Sometime in the last hours of the night, between Corvus’s unacknowledged eulogy of Mattias and the rising of the sun at their backs, the ground they trudged across changed in character, as spell-warped stone gave way to salt and sand.

The wind rose with the sun, and when he heard it, Cephas looked to Ariella, seeking confirmation that it carried a strangeness on it. But the woman did not raise her head. Like the others, she walked forward with a drawn face and an exhausted gait. If she heard anything unusual in the air, she did not speak of it.

They all heard the first cracks from the ground, though. As he had been since Trill left them, Corvus was at the front of their ragged line. He stumbled backward, falling
into Shan when the sharp series of staccato blasts sounded from the ground before him. A sheet of sand flew up, marking the path of a fissure that appeared with the threatening noise.

The ground beneath them shifted, and Cephas caught Ariella’s hand, the two of them clinging to each other for balance. After a moment more of rumbling, the trembling in the ground subsided, followed by a hissing sound as fine white sand rushed down a slope into the crack that broke the exposed bedrock.

“An earthquake,” said Ariella. “They are common along the southern coasts of the Sea of Fallen Stars. The tectonic force of the earthsouled, but on a tremendous scale.”

Cephas took a water skin proffered by Shan and nodded thanks. “Natural then,” he said, passing the water to Ariella. “Elder Lin’s Old Mother waking to greet the day.”

Corvus waved Shan away when she brought the water to him. He had a kerchief of homespun cloth in one hand, and he knotted it into a headpiece that hooded his eyes.

“Not natural,” he croaked, taking up the slow pace once more. “Not here.”

Exhaustion and grief kept Cephas quiet throughout the endless morning. Time was hard to measure when the sun loomed so large, but it was high in the sky, and the last signs of the badlands had disappeared behind them, when he decided to remind Corvus of Mattias’s assurances to them.

“This is the morning Corvus Nightfeather finally tells the whole truth about something,” Cephas said, surprised by the bitter tone in his voice.

Corvus came to an immediate halt, and in that instant,
Cephas realized the kenku frightened him like no other person or beast he had ever known.

“No, Shan,” said Corvus, without turning.

Cephas looked down and saw that the halfling woman’s parrying knife lay along the inside of his thigh, its wicked edge pressing a furrow into his silver skin along the major artery there. Shan was not watching him, but he could see there was no expression on her face beyond exhaustion.

He stayed still and counted three heartbeats pulsing against the knife’s edge before she rolled the blade over the back of her hand, crisply sheathed it, and walked on, passing Corvus to take the lead.

She paused when Ariella spoke. All three of the others, Corvus joining Shan and Cephas, turned when Ariella said, “Adept.” The swordmage’s blade was out of its scabbard, the pure white light coiling about it visible even in the highsun glare. “You would have died with him.”

Shan raised her gaze to meet Ariella’s, still expressionless. If any communication passed between the women, Cephas did not understand it. Shan simply turned and walked on.

“Wait,” said Corvus. “Cephas is right. The old man meant to buy more than time, and I owe him an attempt at honesty.”

Shan stopped, but did not turn around. She stood, her stance wavering slightly, staring west. I have never seen anyone so tired, thought Cephas. He realized, as he thought it, that he was ignoring Corvus’s words. Perhaps it was already too late. Perhaps the dawn was the only time for such a telling, coming as it did between the darkest part of the night and the first glimmers of light. A time of shadows.

“The WeavePasha, on my advice, meant to make a weapon of you,” said Corvus.

Cephas thought, I am already a weapon. He thought this as he pulled his double flail from the clips on his armored shoulders, diving to one side, because he saw that Shan was not wavering as he’d thought. The halfling woman was not trembling in exhaustion but in preparation, seeing what he did; the giant, fiery warriors striding toward them from the west.

“No!” shouted Corvus, as Ariella, too, made ready for battle, casting a glamour on her sword and calling the wind, rising into the air. “These are the ones we expected, the guardians I told you would come!”

Even Shan was confused by the kenku’s words, shooting him a questioning look and hesitating, darts at the ready. Cephas counted six crimson-skinned brutes who doubled him in height, and at least that many smaller figures among them, one of whom floated on a pillar of fire. Ariella shouted, “Those are efreet coming! Not djinn!”

A deep voice came from above. “The djinn, little sister, are already here.”

And they were, descending on every side by the dozen.

The djinn outnumbered the efreet, but the huge warriors among the fiery elementals did not appear concerned. Bare-chested and sporting gleaming white horns, unarmored except for brass rings woven into their kilts, the efreet, acting as bodyguards to the one they called the cinderlord, wielded massive bronze tulwars, weapons so huge that Cephas doubted even Tobin could lift one. Thinking of the goliath and his likely fate, Cephas grimaced.

The cinderlord was the smallest among the efreet, but he was the only one whose clothing and accoutrement
came close to matching the finery that even the djinni soldiers wore.

Unlike the efreet, the djinn appeared to have no legs. The silver and blue skin of their bared torsos gave way to whirling cyclones of the same colors. There were swordsmen among them, and staff-wielding magi, and three women with metallic bows who stayed high above the makeshift meeting ground where Cephas and his companions stood, disarmed and immobilized by magic.

“Why aren’t they battling?” asked Cephas.

For the first time since he met her, Ariella spit. “Because the kenku has no plans to honor his friend’s last wishes, is my guess.”

Corvus must have heard her, though he did not respond. He had not spoken since the parties of elemental entities surrounded them, setting the companions up like pieces on a game board. Shan heard, but her reaction was not directed at Ariella. She leveled a troubled stare at the back of the kenku’s head.

“Last wishes?” said the cinderlord, hissing like steam from wet wood thrown on a hot fire. “Are you granting wishes again, Shahrokh? First, I wish that all mine come out the way I imagine them. That is one.”

The laughter of the other efreet was like a forest fire.

Shahrokh, the huge djinn man who had announced their presence to Ariella, waited for the efreet to quiet before he responded. “My little sister speaks of the late Mattias Farseer, son of fire. This last night, he fell to the demon that rules the Plain of Stone Spiders.”