Part 11 (1/2)

The only creatures that thrived in the parched badlands were the carrion-eating kes'trekels, always circling high overhead, vigilant for opportunity. Maybe the druids were lost. Maybe they'd realized there wasn't enough water to get them where they were going. Maybe Akas.h.i.+a and Ruari would hold their hands over him as he slept, and he'd never wake up again.

He resisted sleep until the moons, Ral and Guthay, were both above the eastern horizon and his companions were snoring softly. Then, remembering that the kank had not suffered, he let his eyes close. He wandered alone through a dreamless sleep and was still alive when morning came. The druids were alive, too, though their expressions were as bleak as the land around them.

As he'd done on the other mornings, he helped Yohan secure the dwindling number of full jugs onto the cargo harness. Out of sight and earshot, on the far side of the huge soldier-kank, he asked the dwarf where they were going and when they'd get there. The dwarf answered: Quraite, and added nothing more. In frustration and rising fear, he asked Akas.h.i.+a the same question and got no answer at all, though Ruari, typically, had snarled an ominous: ”You'll see when you get there, templar. If If you get there. If the Fist of the Sun doesn't squeeze the life out of you first.” you get there. If the Fist of the Sun doesn't squeeze the life out of you first.”

They started riding, Yohan on one of the rider-kanks, Ruari behind Akas.h.i.+a on the other, and Pavek alone on the cargo platform. Hot was hot, dry was dry, and the clatter of kank-claws over rock-hard dirt was not worth the hearing. Around midday he slipped into the senseless drowse that was a sane man's refuge on the badlands. A testament to the thought-addling power of heat and light, water-wasting tears streamed down his cheeks before he noticed that anything had changed.

They'd left the badlands for something worse: a natural pavement of dazzling white that extended from the claws of their kanks to every horizon. The plain was featureless, except for glittering powder swirls, fueled by the sun and darting through the utterly still air. The spirals collapsed without a sound or warning, as suddenly they'd appeared.

One pa.s.sed close, spattering Pavek's face with sharp-edged grains. His tongue touched his cracked lips and tasted salt.

Yohan and the druids covered their faces with thong-tied chitin s.h.i.+elds. Each s.h.i.+eld had a narrow slit over the eyes to reduce the glare and a chin-length veil that blocked some of the stinging dust. Pavek a.s.sumed the otherwise careful druids would have packed an extra s.h.i.+eld somewhere, but Ruari insisted that there were none to spare. Neither Yohan nor Akas.h.i.+a corrected him. So he raked his hair forward and pulled his s.h.i.+rt up over his head.

Heat wrapped itself around him. Even the kes'trekels shunned this place: the Fist of the Sun. Precious moisture leached through every pore of his itching skin. He thought he might die and feared the druids would abandon him here with the soldier-kank, whose flesh was inedible, and a few jugs of water. All water would buy him was a few days of ever-increasing agony before he died.

When the air cooled, he thought that he had died, but it was only the sun setting.

They watered the kanks, ate the last of the journey-break, and filled the waterskins that Akas.h.i.+a, Ruari, and Yohan carried with them on their smaller kanks, leaving the last water-jug half-empty. Then, as the first bright stars appeared in the lavender twilight, they remounted and continued their trek. Pavek didn't need to ask why they hadn't made camp on the salt plain: either they escaped the Fist of the Sun before it rose again, or they died. He cradled the last water-jug in his lap, listening to the precious liquid slap against the clay, a counter-point to the six-beat rhythm of the kanks' claws and the pounding of his heart.

Pale silver Ral and golden Guthay made their nightly journey through the stars. The faintest stars faded, the eastern horizon took on an ominous glow, and the crusty salt plain still stretched endlessly in all directions. He allowed himself two sips from the jug before pulling his s.h.i.+rt over his head.

He wished he'd stayed in Urik: King Hamanu's wrath could be no worse than the next few hours would be. He prayed that his mind died before his body. Then his mind emptied, and he waited to die.

”As ever and always-a sight to make your heart sing in your breast!”

Yohan's voice drifted through the emptiness. The heat was gone, and with it, the scrunch of salt beneath the kanks' claws. Had his final wish been granted? Had his parched spirit slipped through the cracks in the Sun's Fist? But, surely, the veteran dwarf would not have chosen to accompany him into the trackless afterlife.

Shrugging his s.h.i.+rt back to his shoulders, he shook the hair from his eyes, looked up, blinked and blinked again. Scrublands with their dusty gra.s.ses and waxy, thick-leaved shrubs had never looked so vibrant, and full of life, but the scrub paled before a swathe of rich, deep green directly ahead of them, as large, he guessed, as mighty Urik and crowned with clouds. clouds. Not the ugly, mottled harbingers of a Tyr-storm, but rounded hills as white as the salt plain behind them. Or was it behind them? Not the ugly, mottled harbingers of a Tyr-storm, but rounded hills as white as the salt plain behind them. Or was it behind them?

The forbidding waste was nowhere to be seen on either side or straight behind, and the sun, s.h.i.+ning bright but mild, though in the right place overhead, seemed scarcely familiar. Reflexively, he clutched the empty s.p.a.ce beneath his s.h.i.+rt where King Hamanu's medallion had hung.

”Quraite?” he whispered, rubbing his eyes and expecting to see something altogether different when he reopened them.

Akas.h.i.+a, riding behind Ruari now, heard his disbelief and turned around with a smile. ”Home.”

Carefully tended fields of grain marked Quraite's perimeter. Brick wells with wooden windla.s.ses stood in the center of each field. The druids' oasis sat atop a reservoir large enough, reliable enough to send water to individual fields.

Within the fields a ring of trees grew to such density that whatever lay at the center remained hidden.

Trees.

In Urik, during the Festival of Flowers at the start of Rising Sun, ordinary citizens were permitted onto the streets of the royal quarter. Winding in long, slow lines, they'd wait all day for a chance to peek through the iron gates of King Hamanu's palatial garden where the fabled Trees of Life unfurled fragrant, short-lived blossoms. At other odd times during the years the fruit-trees nurtured in the atrium recesses of their wealthy houses would send clouds of perfume onto the nearby streets. Sometimes the aromas incited riots among those who would never savor sweet nectar on their tongues.

Templars ate fruit regularly-it was one of their many privileges. But in all his life, Pavek had never seen a tree that was not surrounded by guards and walls.

The druids might call Quraite their home, but to Pavek, dizzy from heat, thirst, and days of traveling, it had the look of paradise.

Breezes s.h.i.+vered the surface of a clear-flowing stream. Each ripple reflected the sky, creating a vast herd of cloud-creatures that raced westward, toward the setting sun. Telhami swirled her hand through the water, destroying the image. Every sunset, no matter how beautiful, was a moment of dying, and she did not like to dream of death. She moved her dream to the ever-growing gra.s.s on the stream bank.

A delicate flower the color of sunrise-bright yellow blushed with pink and amber-poked through the gra.s.s. Drops of nectar s.h.i.+mmered in its heart.

Long ago, the flower had had a name. Now it bloomed only in her dreams where memory ruled and names were unnecessary.

A crimson bee whirred out of nowhere. It drank the s.h.i.+mmering nectar, then rode the breeze to Telhami's ear.

”Akas.h.i.+a returns,” it whispered. ”She's got a stranger stranger with her!” with her!”

The dreamscape vanished, replaced by a dry wind: the best Athas had to offer anymore, even here in guarded Quraite where druid spellcraft held the land and memory together.

”Grandmother, did you hear me? Are you awake?”

The voice belonged to a child, not a bee.

”Yes, I heard you, little one,” Telhami replied, her eyes still closed. ”Go fetch me a bowl of water. I'll be awake when you return.”

She heard the light patter of bare feet running to the well. Children ran, grown folk walked, and she, herself, made the simple journey from dreams to wakefulness no faster than a tree grew. Then again, she'd made the journey so many times that it was no longer simple.

Everyone who dwelt in Quraite called her Grandmother, Grandmother, as had their parents before them. She'd been as had their parents before them. She'd been Grandmother Grandmother to their grandmothers and though she was not as old as Quraite, she remembered the scents of vanished, nameless yellow flowers better than she remembered the loves and laughter of her youth. to their grandmothers and though she was not as old as Quraite, she remembered the scents of vanished, nameless yellow flowers better than she remembered the loves and laughter of her youth.

She wasn't condemned to frailty. Druid lore offered many detours around the vicissitudes of aging, and many druids availed themselves of restorative spellcraft both directly and through the strength of their followers. In the misty years between then and now, Telhami had purged years, even decades, in a single moonlit night of spellcasting-until she'd acquired wisdom to understand that the way of life was age and, eventually, death. Pursuing immortality would eventually leave her no different than a Dragon or a sorcerer-king, and so, finally, she'd let the years acc.u.mulate.

Still, Quraite sustained her as she sustained, guarded, and protected Quraite. She was frail and tired easily. But she was also the master of her small, green world and grateful to be alive.

”I've brought your water, Grandmother. Are you awake yet? Are you ready to sit up?”

The folk of Quraite, including a dusky girl-child with solemn, watchful eyes and a translucent alabaster bowl carefully balanced on her outstretched palm, tended her, their beloved Grandmother, as carefully as she tended Quraite. ”Yes, little one, I'm ready. How far away are they?”

Nothing within Quraite's perimeter was beyond her ken. She could have determined Akas.h.i.+a's location with little effort. But a little effort was more than she wished to expend, especially when the child was near-bursting with the answer.

”They're among the fields. One of the kanks is gone, and-Grandmother-the stranger stranger is a great ugly and dirty man with snarly hair. He's dressed in rags.” is a great ugly and dirty man with snarly hair. He's dressed in rags.”

”Is he?” she said, smiling. ”Well, then we'll have to give him clean clothes and teach him to bathe, won't we?”

She swung her legs over the edge of the woven-reed sleeping platform.

Kas.h.i.+'s mind had been full of the stranger some nights' past when she'd sent her thoughts ahead of the storm, seeking guidance. The impression Telhami'd gotten then had been considerably different from child's description now. Her curiosity was piqued, and she took the translucent bowl firmly in both hands.

Strangers came infrequently to Quraite. Some found it on their own, others needed a.s.sistance. Either way, strangers were welcome to stay as long as they wished, or forever. For though strangers came to Quraite, strangers did not leave. The precise location of the verdant land Telhami guarded was too great a temptation to entrust to anyone who would not dedicate her or his life to its preservation. More than one hesitant stranger rested among the twisted roots of the ancient trees in her private grove.

But, mostly, those strangers who came to Quraite had been searching for it, and surrendered willingly to its spirit. During her guardians.h.i.+p, the green lands of Quraite had spread measurably across barren waste far to the northeast of Urik. When she arrived, there were only a dozen great trees left in an isolated grove, now there were more than a dozen interconnected groves, each nurtured by a man or woman who'd started out a stranger, or a stranger's child.

Of course, nurturing a druid grove required innate talents. At any time) the greater number of the oasis's inhabitants were ordinary folk who worked the fields, tended the animals, or provided a brawny escort when Quraite needed to trade with the Lion-King in Urik.

Without prying, which she had not done during the storm and would not do now, there was no guessing why Kas.h.i.+ had wanted to bring a Urikite stranger home to Quraite. Perhaps she'd succ.u.mbed to some rough-hewn city-bred allure. Druids certainly weren't immune to reckless pa.s.sion: They venerated the wilder aspects of nature. They took risks, sometimes foolishly.

And Kas.h.i.+ was a young, vigorous woman who looked upon the men of Quraite as brothers, not suitors. It was only natural that she might stumble upon her first love in Urik. That was, after all, no small part of the reason why Telhami sent her there in the first place-With Yohan, of course, to watch over her. Two or three human generations ago, the veteran dwarf had been a stranger in Quraite himself. He strode out of the salt barrens in the heat of the day, alone and afoot, guided, he'd said, by an emptiness in his heart, From that first moment she'd trusted his dedication as she'd trusted few others. She bared the mysteries of her grove to him by moonlight but, try as he might, poor Yohan couldn't grow weeds behind an erdlu-pen. The druids' path was closed to him.