Chapter Ten: Zara
They had ridden hard and deep into the southern sands over many days. All that was about them to see were hills and valleys of yellow grains. Durim was spying so many tracks along the roads that he had pulled them from it to travel directly upon the sands. She did not question him. She knew better than to question sand eyes.
Once he stopped them short and motioned to the weasels, who ran ahead to scout. Durim motioned again for Zara to move back, which she did at once. The weasels flushed out a basilisk from around the next hill, and Durim buried an arrow through its mouth open to hiss. They went around the hill and found a den with three massive basilisk eggs. Zara put arrows through all of them. Only one emerged still alive, a scrawny, half-grown thing, and the weasels finished it off.
Basilisks lived by vibrations, and Zara suspected that they were learning to stalk the roads from what they felt beneath them. Vibrations from the sands could be anything, other basilisks or creatures like kai, not necessarily humans. But a steady vibration from the roads meant one thing and one thing only. Pair that with the vibration of voices . . .
Though they were not on the roads, Durim and Zara spoke only when necessary. That was not at all. The bows were always at hand, the quivers ever on their backs. She watched the sands for movement. Attack could come from any direction and at any moment. At times her mind wandered away to other matters. It was hard to be watchful when nothing was happening hour after hour. Sternly she cast a net to drag her thoughts back to her immediate present. This was not the moment to think about giants or her brothers, or some other annoyance in her life. When they traded watch at night, Durim kissed the back of her hand and she kissed his in the handfast ritual. It was all they allowed themselves, a quick sweetness so they did not feel so distant from this silence and stress.
Only in wayfares did they speak. In Ul'guru, Zara voiced her fear about the roads over their meal. Durim said, "I conclude the same." They would soon be impassable.
Both were still listening and watching that night in the inn, even though there were obviously no basilisks in this fine room. The innkeeper had been shocked to receive a visit from a princess of the Ryme, and had filled a table with presents while they bathed. It was the finest the region had to offer, painted fans and filmy clothes, other trinkets that Zara could not take along on this expedition.
Once in bed, she wanted to take comfort in the hard body beside her, yet her mind and body were still on alert. It took a long time to calm down enough for rest. Then she woke to him in the windowseat, where he was watching below. Wrapping the blanket around herself, she curled up between his legs to watch with her head upon his chest. Instead she fell asleep quite deeply and woke to sunlight.
"I am slovenly," she said, both about the drool she had slicked down his chest, and having fallen asleep at all.
"You are too hard on yourself," Durim said.
"Ul women are hard," Zara retorted.
"No. Like Ul men, Ul women know that there is a time for hardness and a time for softness. Out on the sand calls for hardness. Last night called for softness."
"Then why were you in the window keeping watch?"
"I was thinking of what my eyes are reading upon the sands, and what it means. The tracks I see, Zara, they go every way save south." His hand was upon her shoulder blade. She forced herself away and he pulled her back. "The kai must rest this day, and so must we after a week of half-rations in sleep. This afternoon I will speak to the Boole of this wayfare to learn of anything we should know about the terrain immediately south and away from the roads."
Even if they found nothing on this journey, killing four basilisks had rendered it worthwhile. So often the sables did the work while she signed papers in her office. Through a sleepy morning, she thought of how many people would be spared with the deaths of those four. Basilisks were not long-lived creatures, yet the destruction they could wreak in a short lifespan was incredible. Three of those four had yet to cause a single scream, and she drowsed in triumph.
In the afternoon, Durim went to meet with the Boole. It was polite for Zara to go through her gifts and make use of what she could to please the innkeeper, so she did. The wine and edibles they could enjoy tonight. The skirt was beautiful, a deep blue with golden jingles sewn to the hem. She pulled it on, along with the thin matching wrap for a top, and looked in the mirror. This was more to her liking than the complicated creations that Ryme women wore.
The door opened suddenly and she said, "That was fast."
Durim's mouth had been open to speak, yet no words came from his throat. Dark eyes traveled up and down her body. In no time, she was bent over the back of the sofa with the skirt hiked up to her waist and the top torn off. With every thrust, the skirt jingled. She reminded herself that this was a time for softness and let herself cry out when his fingers worked between her thighs.
"Nava," he groaned at his climax, the Ul word for wife. She had already taken her pleasure, but found one of another kind at being called nava. Never did she worry about children, since Cretta the Prophet said long ago that Zara would birth none. He sagged against her back and kissed her shoulder. When he pulled away, the skirt fell with a cascade of jingles. "It suits you."
"I see that it does, though I had not intended for you to see it," Zara said. She reached for the top and he snatched it away. "And of Boole?" Smiling, she fell bare-breasted onto the sofa to rest.
He flung the top across the room and sat opposite her. "Dead, along with his apprentice. They scouted south and were killed by basilisks. The new Boole has not even left the wayfare, so his knowledge is little." As he spoke, he withdrew a crude, hand-drawn map from his pocket and gave it over for her inspection.
She unfolded it. Here was the wayfare in the crease along the upper side of the page, and down at the bottom were the two-sided triangles of mountains. Cobweb lines sprawled across the parchment to represent roads, and fat bundles like trapped flies represented wayfares. Since they were avoiding the roads, she looked over a shaded portion that they would have to travel instead. "What is that?"
"It is called the Valley, and it is four days' south," Durim said. "Great dunes rise up all around it, and within is nothing but a stretch of sand. Basilisks are spotted in the Valley now and then."
"I have never received requests for sables to come to this Valley," Zara said.
"These are not heavily trafficked roads, which reduces the opportunities to attack. The wayfares south of this point are small and of no consequence; some prefer to keep to themselves and do not even let peddlers within the walls. We will go with care through the Valley and press on."
They ate and drank and slept. Dawn found them back on the kai and pushing out of the wayfare. Her mind did not want to be netted, and she drew it back kicking and screaming to work. Here was where she had to be, not preparing for the showdown with her brother-king in the future. It was terrible to consider taking this plea to the people, showing up her brother publicly for a fool . . . again she cast out the net to retrieve herself from what did not matter at this moment.
During her nightly watches, she stood stock-still to give basilisks no vibrations to track. Ru-ru took watch with her, pulling his basket from the tent and sitting inside it with his dark eyes looking out over the sands. The kai were also still, their knees locked as they slept standing up. They came across no more basilisks over the days to the Valley, although the look on Durim's face gave Zara no cause to rejoice. Over and over, he straightened to peer down at the sands. Zara wished that she could see as he could, to be able to tell what groove below was simply formed of wind and what had been the passage of a basilisk. Her sables had killed so many, yet still there were more.
In the evening, he held up his finger to keep her from dismounting. Softly he slid down to the sands and then he came to her kai to lift her down. The intent in his eyes was for her to stand still like she did on watch, and she did as he set up camp. His moves were quick and soundless. Had her eyes been closed, she would have thought that she was alone.
For four hours she slept. They traded and she listened to nothingness. Even in the morning, he made her stand still while he took apart their camp. Then he lifted her back up to the kai. Despite his care to make no sound, his shifting in the saddle to look down, she was taking some heart. They had not come across more clutches of eggs anywhere.
The terrain had been changing, from flatness to small dunes, from small dunes to medium dunes, and from medium dunes now to massive ones. They rose well over Zara's head, some growing thin greenish plants and others barren of life. The bones of a kai were dry and yellow on the sands between two of these great dunes. It had lain here for a very long time, possibly a decade or more, so there was nothing to fear.
At midday they came to the shaded portion of the map made real. Zara's heart stopped to look down, and until her lungs demanded it, she feared to exhale. She did not need sand eyes to see the writhing tangles of basilisks below. What should have been a stretch of yellow sand was a sea of grayish-green bodies.
Hundreds, no, thousands of them were down there, laying out in the sun and hissing as they slithered around heaps of bones and broken wagons. A live kai was being dragged around another dune, and a dozen necks lifted to strike. In some places the snakes were so thickly in a nest that she could not even count how many were there. She and Durim looked at one another in horror. The captured kai screamed and died.
Were this to descend upon the Ryme, no force in creation could stop it. No magic, no arms, nothing could stopper this tide. She felt like she was looking at the end of the world.
They backed away slowly and quietly. Since they could not speak, she had no way to know why Durim was choosing the path east that he did. Perhaps because the nearest road was west, and that was where the basilisks would expect to find their prey. Even when the Valley was long behind them, he continued east. Their vibrations must not pass through the sands to the inhabitants of that Valley. The massive dunes shrank to medium and small, and then flattered out to nothing by night. The moon was full in the sky and still he rode with Zara following. And she could not think! This was not the time to plan her next move yet her mind was desperate to work out this problem.
A dark form leaped between her kai and Durim's. She jerked her bow around and shot it through the head as her kai reeled back. A second arrow flew from Durim's bow and the weasels leaped down to bite through the creature's throat. Then they scattered out to look for more.
"You did not . . ." Zara whispered, "You did not see that one?"
"It was not there when I passed," Durim whispered.
She could not withhold the hysteria from her voice. "By the time the giants come, if they do, there will be no soul left alive in all the Ryme!"
The weasels came back, having found no more. Durim pressed his head to hers and did not answer, since there was nothing he could say.