The Parched sea h-1 Page 11

  Lander forced himself to look away. The last thing he wished to do, now or ever, was contact his mother's spirit. She had chosen her new home, and to yield to her call would be to betray all that he had come to believe.

  The Sembian kept his good eye closed, clearing his mind by concentrating on nothing but his breathing. His mother had reached out from her grave once before, after he had joined the Harpers, and he knew from that experience a bitter contest of wills would follow if he allowed her a hold in his thoughts.

  At last Lander's stomach settled and his body relaxed. Sensing that his mother had retreated, the Sembian opened his eye. Once again the vulture was just a vulture, patiently circling the camp with its fellows. The Harper could not even tell which one had looked at him.

  Lander kept a close eye on the approach to their ridge for the rest of the afternoon. If his mother had found him through a vulture, then Cyric might also know where he was. If what the Zhentarim were doing in Anauroch was important enough to the evil god, and if Lander posed a big enough threat to his plans, it did not seem unlikely that the Prince of Lies would try to communicate that information to his followers at the base of the mountain.

  Twice Lander thought that a patrol was approaching the ridge, but each time the search party turned onto a different path. It appeared that either Cyric was not guiding the Zhentarim, or Rahalat had somehow turned them aside. Whatever the case, Lander was thankful. Fleeing during the heat of the day would have been hard on his wounded shoulder. If Ruha was sun-sick, he did not think it would do her any good either.

  Periodically rotating search parties, the Zhentarim continued to feast and rest all day. Several times, Kadumi volunteered to change places, but Lander did not accept the offer. It made no difference to the Harper whether he spent the day watching the Zhentarim or sitting with Ruha, and he suspected that the youth knew more about preventing sun-sickness than he did.

  When the sun dropped below the western horizon, both Kadumi and Ruha joined Lander. They all sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the birds of prey that nested on Rahalat's craggy slopes take wing with eerie silence. As the raptors spiraled down toward the spring, the cautious vultures widened their circle to give their ferocious cousins a wide berth.

  "We should sneak away under cover of darkness," Kadumi said at last. "There is no telling how long the Zhentarim will rest at this oasis."

  "Even in the dark, it is too dangerous to move until the invaders are gone," Ruha countered. "We would have to travel along the ridge all the way to the bottom of the mountain. Sooner or later, somebody would see our silhouettes."

  Both the widow and her young brother-in-law looked to Lander for his opinion. Before giving it, he glanced at the camp. Already, dusk had cloaked the site in purple shadows and the dark-robed Zhentarim had disappeared. The hundreds of campfires they had kept burning all day twinkled in the night like orange stars.

  "We have plenty of water and milk," Lander said. "Let's stay one more day. If the Zhentarim know we're still here, they'll be expecting us to leave in the dark."

  Ruha nodded. "I've been resting all day, so I'll take the first watch."

  After telling the widow to wake them if she felt weak before her watch ended, Lander and Kadumi agreed, then went down to sleep near the camels.

  The Harper did not wake until shortly after dawn. Ruha sat atop the ridge, and Kadumi was still lodged between the two boulders that he had claimed as his bed last night. Lander stretched his sore muscles, then climbed up the hill and sat next to the widow.

  "You should have wakened me," he said, taking a healing potion from his pocket.

  Ruha shrugged. "You seemed tired, and I had slept all day." She regarded the glass vial in his hand. "What's that?"

  "A potion for my shoulder," Lander explained. He opened the vial and drank the bitter contents in one swallow.

  "Magic?" Ruha asked, one eyebrow raised.

  Lander made a sour face and nodded. "Nothing else could taste that bad."

  The widow studied him with a shocked expression. "Don't let Kadumi see you drinking those," she said. "The Bedine think ill of those who use magic."

  Lander grimaced at his blunder, then slipped the empty vial back into his pocket. "You don't think magic is wrong, do you?"

  Ruha shook her head. "I understand, but no one else." She studied him with an uncertain expression in her eyes, then nodded her head as if making up her mind about something. "There is something I must tell you, but only if you swear not to tell Kadumi or anyone else."

  "Of course," Lander replied, wondering what the widow would tell him that she would not tell one of her own people.

  "Sometimes I see mirages from the future," Ruha began. "That is what happened yesterday, when you and Kadumi thought I was sun-sick."

  Lander nodded. "It did seem odd that you were affected and not me. What did you see?"

  Ruha looked away. "I'm not sure. Someone is going to try kill you," she said. "He will attack from behind, with a dagger. You will be wounded."

  Lander raised his eyebrow, unsure of how to take the news. "You're sure?"

  The widow met his gaze evenly. "It is my curse that what I see always happens."

  "Could you see what he looked like?" Lander asked.

  Ruha shook her head. "All I saw was a dagger slicing along your ribs. I don't know who was wielding it or what the outcome will be."

  "Or when it will happen?"

  The widow shook her head.

  The warning did not frighten Lander, for he had long lived with the idea that the Zhentarim might try to assassinate him. Still, knowing that such a thing would occur- without knowing when or where-made him feel rather helpless. While sobering, the knowledge that such an attack would occur contained no hint as to what should be done about it-if, indeed, anything could.

  "Thanks for the warning," Lander said. "I'll try to be careful about who I let behind me."

  "It will do no good," Ruha said. "No matter what, you will be cut."

  "At least you didn't see the dagger stuck in my heart," Lander said.

  "I just thought you should know," Ruha replied. "I didn't say this to upset you."

  "I know," the Harper replied, looking toward the base of the mountain and hoping to change the subject. In the growing dawn light, he saw a few wisps of smoke rising from a half-dozen dying fires, but otherwise the camp seemed empty and motionless. "Are they gone?"

  Ruha nodded. "Their fires died last night, but I thought they had just fallen asleep. I didn't realize they were gone until nobody stirred with the dawn."

  Lander studied the camp for a few minutes more. When he saw a vulture appear out of the east and drift straight into camp, he realized that there was no sign of the birds that had hovered below the ridge all day yesterday. The Zhentarim had, indeed, slipped away in the night.

  "If the vultures are bold enough to land, then they're gone." The Harper called, "Kadumi, wake up! It's time to go."

  As soon as the youth woke, the trio untethered the camels and led them down the mountain. By the time they reached the bottom, the sun had risen into the blue sky and the rosy morning light had faded to its usual white blaze. They paused at the spring to let the camels drink, then moved into the camp. Dozens of vultures took wing and hovered fifty feet overhead, watching the three companions with black, jealous eyes.

  As at El Ma'ra, the invaders had razed all the khreimas, and the odor of singed camel-hair still hung thick in the air near the charred tents. There were Zhentarim fire rings everywhere, many of them still smoldering, and every combustible thing in camp had been burned. The entire area was littered with the hides and bones of half-eaten camels, and it appeared that even one or two dogs had been roasted.

  The trio studied the ghastly scene in silence for several minutes before Ruha asked the question still troubling all three of them. "What happened to the bodies of the Mtair?"

  Lander shook his head without speaking, then walked toward the edge of the camp. After picking
up a waterskin to replace the one that had fallen off the mountainside with Kadumi's gelding, the widow and the youth followed with the camels. The companions soon found the spot where the Mtair warriors had made their stand. Crossbow quarrels, arrows, and broken-bladed weapons lay scattered along a quarter-mile battleline. Along the entire course, the sand was mottled with the brown stains of dried blood. Here and there lay camels or fleet-looking dogs unfortunate enough to have been caught in the crossfire, and Lander even found a golden jackal that had somehow gotten mixed up in the battle.

  There were no human corpses. At El Ma'ra, the Zhentarim had taken care not to leave any of their dead behind, so Lander had not expected to discover any Black Robes or their reptilian mercenaries. On the other hand, he had expected to find the Mtair Dhafir's dead warriors. Instead, all he saw here were shredded abas, blood-stained keffiyehs, and discarded jambiyas.

  "Look at this," Kadumi called, motioning for Lander to join him and Ruha.

  The youth had discovered a trail of long, splayed-toed tracks. "Good work," Lander said, recognizing the footprints as those of the Zhentarim's mercenaries.

  The trio followed the trail around to the north side of the mountain to a wadi they had not been able to see from their perch atop the ridge. As they approached the edge of the dry gulch, the thick odor of blood and entrails assaulted their nostrils, and all three of them nearly wretched. Lander motioned for the others to stand back, then stepped to the edge and peered down into the draw.

  The bodies of the Mtair Dhafir lay scattered along the bed of the gulch, dozens of vultures feasting on their remains. If Lander was sickened by the desecrations of the scavenger birds, he was outraged by the mutilations that had been performed upon the bodies before the vultures began their grisly feast. The entire khowwan looked as though it had been attacked by man-eating beasts. The soft parts of their bodies had been ripped open and savaged as he had seen Sembian bears do to deer and other large game.

  Kadumi and Ruha stepped to Lander's side.

  "What happened?" asked the widow.

  To Lander's surprise, his companions were not staggered by the sight. Their faces showed anger and outrage, but there was no sign of horror in either of their expressions.

  "The men ate the camels," Lander said, wondering if all Bedine were made of such stern stuff. "The reptilian sell-swords ate the men."

  "There must be over a thousand mercenaries with the Zhentarim," Kadumi said, studying the gruesome scene with a thoughtful air. "A few hundred could not have eaten so many."

  "True, but this points out the Zhentarim's weakness," Ruha said. "The invaders must be running low on their food. Perhaps they will starve, after all."

  "If that is going to happen," the Harper said. "We must reach the next tribe before the Zhentarim feed it to their mercenaries. Can we do it?"

  Ruha nodded. "Colored Waters is a week away. With Kadumi's extra camels, we should easily overtake the Zhentarim."

  The youth frowned at his sister-in-law. "Do you know who is camped at Colored Waters? Are they allies of the Mtair Dhafir?"

  Ruha shook her head.

  "Then perhaps it is not our place to go with the berrani," he said. "Even if they let us into camp, those camped at Colored Waters may not believe us."

  The widow shrugged. "I see no harm in helping Lander," she said. "Besides, it is our duty to avenge the slaughter of the Qahtan and the Mtair Dhafir, is it not?"

  Kadumi regarded the corpse-filled wadi for several moments, then nodded. "It is."

  "Good," Lander said. He glanced at the bodies uncomfortably. "Is there anything we should do?"

  Ruha shook her head. "N'asr's children took their spirits away last night," she said. "There is nothing we can do but reach Colored Waters as fast as we can."

  Lander did not understand what she meant, but he felt he should follow his own custom and warn the spirits about the dangers they faced in the Realm of the Dead. He stepped to the edge of the wadi, then called in a clear loud voice, "Dead ones, Cyric-er, N'asr-has denizens everywhere. Remember your gods and keep their faith. If you doubt your gods, you will suffer as surely as the wicked."

  When the Harper turned away from the gulch, Kadumi was openly smirking at him. Even Ruha's eyes were twinkling as she asked, "What did they answer?"

  "It's sort of a prayer," Lander explained.

  "It sounded like advice to me," Ruha countered. "Have you visited N'asr's camp?"

  "No, of course not."

  "Then how can you give advice to the dead?" demanded Kadumi, forcing his camel to kneel so he could mount it. "You don't know what they'll find."

  Lander started to explain that he had learned about how the Realm of the Dead worked from his Cyric-worshiping mother, then thought better of explaining his family history. Instead, forcing his own camel to kneel, he simply said, "It can't hurt."

  "That's right, Kadumi," Ruha said, also kneeling her camel. "After the vultures carry off the spirits of the dead, Lander can say whatever he likes to the corpses." She climbed into her camel's saddle, then added, "Now, if they start talking back, we'd better change our minds about riding with him."

  Lander flushed, uncertain as to whether or not the widow was poking fun at him, and uncomfortable in either event. He mounted his camel and urged it to its feet. "I told you, they never talk back."

  Kadumi laughed, then commanded his camel to rise and pointed the way into the desert.

  On the western side of Rahalat, the sand dunes grew smaller and more yellowish in color. Within two miles, they assumed the parallel, ridgelike pattern of transverse dunes. To Lander, the sands resembled nothing so much as a lake of golden waters on a breezy day. In the wide troughs between the dunes, the sand was no more than a few inches deep and the camels found the going quite easy.

  The dunes themselves rose no higher than thirty feet, with gentle slopes leading both up to and down from the crest. Where the Zhentarim had crossed them, the passage of so many thousands of feet had often pounded a small pass through the ridge. These passes made travel even easier, for they often reduced the height the Harper's small company had to climb by as much as ten feet.

  As he reached the summit of one of these passes, Lander paused between its ten-foot walls and looked over his shoulder. He saw that the ground had slowly been rising as they rode away from the Shunned Mountain. The great whaleback dunes on the eastern side of Rahalat lay in an immense basin. From this distance, they looked like a stormy ocean of ice. Remembering the effort it had required to struggle over one of those monstrous dunes, the Harper was grateful for the easy travel through these golden sands.

  When Kadumi and Ruha reached the summit of the little pass, Lander nodded toward the white sands. "It's like an ocean."

  Kadumi looked confused. "We call it the Bowl of Loneliness. What do you mean, 'ocean'?"

  Lander started to explain. "It's a pond of water so large-" A heap of sand sloughed off the northern wall of the pass, and the Harper stopped in midsentence.

  "What's wrong?" Ruha asked.

  Before Lander could answer, a black shroud burst out of the sand. At the same time, a swarthy voice called, "Show yourselves!"

  The voice was speaking Common, so Lander assumed it belonged to a Zhentarim. Reaching for his sword with one hand and using the reins to whip his mount with the other, the Harper yelled in Bedine, "Ambush! Get out of here!"

  Before the camel took two steps, a pair of crossbow quarrels sailed across Lander's path from the other side of the little pass. The Harper spun around to face the attack and found two men less then ten yards away. They held empty crossbows in their hands. Behind them, four more men were flinging the sand from their black burnooses and rising from their subsurface hiding places, crossbows cocked and ready to fire.

  "Move and you die!" warned the figure that had first burst from the sand. "Stay still and perhaps you will live."

  Lander reined his camel to a halt, then slipped his sword back into scabbard and turned to face the speaker. T
he invader wore the black burnoose the Zhentarim had adopted as their desert uniform. Narrow, steely eyes gazed out from beneath his furrowed brow. Behind him stood another five Zhentarim, sand running from their robes in yellow rivulets. That meant that there were a total of six men on each side of the pass.

  The Harper did not answer the leader's question, for if he showed that he understood their words, the Zhentarim would realize that he was no Bedine. He suspected that the ambushers already knew his identity-or would deduce it from his light skin soon enough-but he saw no reason to make the enemy's job simpler. Perhaps he might even confuse them long enough to plot an escape.

  "Dismount!" the Zhentarim demanded, still speaking Common. While his subordinates kept their weapons trained on the small party, the commander moved toward Lander and motioned for all three of his captives to kneel their camels.

  Kadumi started to pull his scimitar from its scabbard, but Lander motioned for the youth to keep his blade sheathed. Ruha was the first to obey the Black Robe's command, slipping out of her saddle and kneeling at her mount's side. The widow held the reins drawn tightly to her body, forcing the beast to crane its neck around at an awkward angle. Her mount roared its indignation, but she ignored it.

  Puzzled by Ruha's peculiar action, Lander also couched his own mount, then watched as Kadumi resentfully did likewise.

  The Zhentarim walked straight to Lander. "Where are you going? Why are you following us?"

  As he spoke, he reached for the Harper's aba, and Lander knew there was no use in trying to hide his identity. Beneath his aba, Lander still wore the harp and moon pin of the Harpers. After Bhadla had noticed its outline, he had taken care to keep that part of his outer clothing dirty enough to camouflage the pin beneath, but he had not removed the symbol. When Florin had fastened it on his breast, he had sworn to always wear the harp and moon over his heart.