My eyes opened, and I saw nothing but a blur.
Then the blur resolved itself in the fine weave of an unfamiliar fabric, and a wave of disorientation struck me.
My heart lurched, and I struggled upright, fighting off the blankets that had somehow gotten all tangled all around my arms and legs.
Stone was all around me, like the temple of Lathander, but it was not the temple, because it was far too small and the stone was the wrong color and the ceiling was a hard, close confusion of wooden beams.
Where-
Memory trickled back into my waking brain. It washed away some of my disorientation.
Oh.
I was not at home. I was in Hlaunga, in the midst of the Zhentarim, and everyone else I knew-
My unease blossomed into a sickening dizziness. Do not think of it, I thought sharply. I needed to be able to move. Thinking about the situation would paralyze me.
I scrubbed my hands over my face and pushed myself into a sitting position. My eyes felt as if sand had been poured into them by the bucketful. My mouth felt packed with wool. So, for that matter, did my head, which throbbed in a dull, hot sort of way.
I remembered dragging the blankets from that ridiculous outlander contraption they called a bed, because eventually the fire had burned down and the night had turned cold. I could not remember falling asleep. Obviously, my weariness had overwhelmed all my intentions. I could not imagine any other explanation for why I might find myself lying on this cold and inhospitable floor.
When I recovered my wits enough to make a move to stand, something metallic rolled from my lap and clinked to the floor.
Instinctively, I knelt back down to retrieve whatever had fallen. Years of habit made it inconceivable for me to leave some object lying untidily out of its proper place.
Then I actually looked at what I had, and unwelcome memory broke through the last few cobwebs of sleep.
I did not know what I had expected to find here - or rather, what I had expected Xanos to find. I had stayed in this room like a lump, fighting the urge to climb from the window and follow him to see what he was doing.
I had not done so. I never listened. My family had told me so time and again. This time, I had vowed, I would listen. I had to show faith in El Ma'ra. If I doubted his gift, he might become angry and take it away, and our tribe could not afford that.
So I had waited.
And, for my patience, I had been rewarded in the way of the spirits, who never gave a gift without taking something else away.
I would have known our mother's bracelets anywhere. The last I had seen of this one, it had been on her wrist. Now, it was in my hands, and she was nowhere to be seen.
Mother would never have given her gold up willingly. Therefore, someone had taken our mother's jewelry from her.
Someone had laid hands on my mother.
I realized that I was holding the cuff so hard that it was biting into my palm. That would not do. The gold was soft. I might damage it.
I forced my grip to loosen. Then, with unsteady fingers, I clasped my mother's bracelet around my wrist. Wearing it felt like sacrilege, in a way. In another way, though, it was comfort, as if I was only keeping it safe for her until I saw her again.
Silly dreams for a silly girl. I dismissed my daydreaming and hauled myself to my feet.
I very nearly fell over again when a pounding came from the door to the adjacent room. It took a panicked moment for me to recognize the voice behind the door, and to understand that it was both familiar to me and that it was swearing in a cadence which rose and fell with the kind of towering irritation.
Recovering myself, I combed my fingers through my hair to tame the worst of the tangles, twisted my robes around until they were decently arrayed, and hurried to the door, because I was certain that a man with the manners of a goat would not hesitate to break my door down no matter what state I happened to be in at the time.
When I yanked opened the door, it was to see Xanos standing there, scowling at me as if, with my delay, I had personally insulted him.
By way of further greeting, he shoved a bundle of cloth at my face. "Wear this," he commanded briskly. His eyes fell on my face. He frowned absently. "You look terrible," he observed critically. "Didn't I tell you to sleep?" Then he spun, his robes fluttering, and slammed the door without any further ado.
I stared at the door. The grain was very smooth. I would dearly have liked to bite it. Actually, I would have liked to bite him, but the door was in the way.
When I saw what he had given me, I thought I might bite through the door anyway, knob and wood and all.
I realized that I had al-Rashid's sword in my hand. I did not remember drawing it.
No matter. I would put the weapon to good use.
With the hilt of my scimitar, I banged on the door until it opened again.
The doorway revealed an irate sorcerer on the verge of some verbal explosion. I, however, did not wait to hear whatever offensive statement he had in mind to say. "I am not wearing this," I said flatly.
His lip curled, though I noticed that he kept glancing at my scimitar from the corners of his eyes. Good. He had best be wary, if he expected me to dress like a harlot. "Tymora's Tits," he growled. "Not this agai-"
I ignored his ranting and interrupted him in mid-sentence. "And stop swearing!" I growled back.
He stared at me. "Why?" he asked, his voice mystified.
I glared at him disapprovingly. "'Tis unmannerly," I spat.
He threw his hands in the air in an unnecessarily dramatic show of exasperation. "Ye gods, woman!" he cried. "Have you no mercy? You drive me to it!"
"I cannot drive you to rudeness," I pointed out scathingly. "You are already there."
"And you are driving me towards insanity with admirable haste, I might add."
"Good. Then perhaps you will make more sense once you are mad."
He reached out, convulsively grasping the empty air with his hands as if he wished it were my throat. "How?" he breathed. "How is Xanos not making sense?"
There were times when I doubted his claim that he was not yet insane. What he proposed was beyond unreasonable. "I cannot wear this," I protested, and brandished the unsettlingly small bundle of clothing at him accusingly.
The sorcerer lost his fight to keep his voice under control. "Why not?" he bellowed.
I slapped the doorframe with the flat of my free hand. "Because a respectable woman does not show her legs to all and sundry!" I snarled back.
That gave him pause. "No," he disagreed thoughtfully. "As a matter of fact, Xanos would nothing but respect for any woman who showed him her legs. I would consider her a kind and generous soul and offer her my sincerest thanks for giving me something pleasant to look at in this hideous hellscape you call a desert."
Blood rushed to my cheeks. "You-"
He cocked his head at me inquisitively. "I?" he asked in a dulcet undertone.
I spluttered. "You are indecent," I gasped.
He waved a bored hand. "And unmannerly, yes, yes, I know," he said. He arched an insolent eyebrow. "Was there anything else?" he drawled. He reached for the opening of his mantle. "Perhaps you would like me to take my clothes off to show solidarity? After all, if you are afraid of being noticed-"
I slammed the door on his infuriatingly smug and toothy grin. His laughter echoed from behind it.
Then, glumly I did as he had suggested. I had to trust in the wisdom El Ma'ra's gift – even if he did seem to have terrible ideas.
I would not, however, go about exposing that outlandish outfit unless it was absolutely necessary. On that point, I would concede nothing. As long as we were outside of any settlement, I would wear my robes over it, that was all. It would be hot, but better hot than exposed.
Even with the so-called clothing on, I did not understand how outlander women could wear such things. By what I had seen of outlander women in these places, the clothes did seem normal, but what they called normal, I called madness. The shirt was linen and far too thin for comfort and had laces in the front that risked showing far too much unless I pulled them tight – and if I did that, the fabric went far too taut across my breasts. As for the bottoms, perhaps they were not especially revealing, but they still showed enough of my legs to be uncomfortable, and if I turned around and craned my neck to look down and behind me, it was just possible to make out the shape of my…my…
I blushed and yanked my robes back over my head. I might die of heatstroke in so many layers of clothing, but that was a better death than one from humiliation.
When next the door connecting the two rooms opened, Xanos eyed me up and down and snorted, but said nothing. Perhaps he had grown wiser. Or perhaps it was the irate curl of my lip which dissuaded him. I thought my upper lip came close to touching the tip of my nose, so deep was my scowl.
He gestured. "Into the carpet with you," he commanded brusquely.
I obeyed reluctantly, feeling thoroughly ridiculous. "Do not jostle me so much this time," I muttered.
He sighed. "Complaints, complaints," he lamented, and stooped to throw the edge of the carpet over me. "All Xanos hears are complaints."
"Perhaps those are the echoes of your own voice you are hearing," I said acidly. "Stop speaking so loudly, and it might stop."
"You know, I am of half a mind to leave you in that carpet and sell you to the next caravan out of here."
"You would not dare," I tried to retort, but it came out muffled and a little strangled because he chose that moment to unceremoniously heft me up from the floor.
Of course he jostled me. I had asked him not to. Therefore, he could do no other than the exact opposite of what I had just asked. I wondered if all outlanders had such a contrary nature, or if I had just been particularly unlucky in my acquaintances.
When I get out of here, I thought darkly, I am going to hit him so hard that even his ancestors feel it.
My temper built to a seething simmer, there in my overly snug and stifling hideaway. There were voices outside, every so often, and the sound of movement. Each sound made my heart jump, which only made my temper fouler.
Gradually, though, rage gave way to guilt.
Was my sister half so comfortable? My mother? Fayid, if he was alive? I had no way of knowing. From what I had been told, they were most likely being tortured in some way. I had no right to lament any amount of discomfort.
I wished, with a desperation that hollowed out my gut and burned in my throat, that I knew where they were, so that I could go there and fight to free them without having to suffer through any more of this wondering and waiting.
On the heels of that wish came another - the wish that the spirits would let me die in the desert without ever finding out what had happened to my family. The truth might be worse than my imaginings. I was not certain that I wanted to know it.
After what seemed an eternity of ever-growing depression and increasingly suffocating heat, the jostling ended with a jarring thump.
Somehow, I thrust aside the carpet and staggered to my feet. The sunlight stung my eyes, and the cooler outside air made me shiver when it hit my sweaty skin.
Xanos looked down at me, rubbing his chin pensively. "I did not think it possible, but now you look even worse than you did this morning," he remarked. He thrust a waterskin at me. "Drink," he ordered.
I glared at him weakly, but I swiped the waterskin from his hands without a word. He was right. I needed water. I only wished that he would stop being right. It made his attitude especially aggravating, because then I could not justifiably call him an idiot.
The rustle of paper accompanied my drink. I heard a mutter that was barely audible. In it, I caught the words 'harlot', 'priestess', and 'west, which way is west?'.
I lowered the skin to see Xanos glaring at a piece of parchment. From the drawings on its face, it seemed to be a map. "What is it?" I asked, without much curiosity.
He transferred his glare to me and snorted. "Nothing," he said loftily, and rolled up his map. "Follow me," he added, and strode off with an air of great purpose.
Briefly, I wondered if he knew where he was going. Then I shrugged and trudged after him.
Relentlessly, my thoughts began to circle themselves once again.
Orofin was likely to be dangerous. Death was possible, if not probable. That was a problem. If I did die, my only hope was that I had given Ali enough information to follow the same path, and to succeed where I had failed. That was not a hope without hooks, however. If Ali went to find our family, he would have to take a large force of warriors and leave the oasis only scarcely guarded. Our oasis was well protected, our water precious. If we left it unguarded we might very well come back to find it claimed by another tribe. Then we would have to fight to get it back or, if we were too weak, find another place to live.
We are Bedine, I thought sternly to myself. We once wandered, just like the other tribes. We will again, if we must.
Yes, but it has been centuries, whispered an infuriating little dissent in my brain. Do we still remember how to survive out in the open desert? Or will we have to re-learn it? And if we do, can we re-learn it before our ignorance kills us all?
Nervously I gnawed my lip and turned my mother's bracelet around and around on my wrist, while what ifs and but thens and half-sketched fears chased one another around in my brain.
So preoccupied I was that I nearly jumped out of my skin when a deep - and deeply annoyed - voice interrupted my musings. "Have you no questions to ask?" it asked abruptly.
I turned my head to blink owlishly at the sorcerer. "What?"
He rolled his eyes. "All the way to Hlaunga, you would not stop peppering Xanos with questions," he said testily. "Have you none to annoy me with now?
I blinked. "Oh," I said vaguely. "No. That is all right." I fiddled with my mother's bracelet. In the frantic fog of my brain, a little light flickered. "Thank you," I added politely. He had, after all, just invited my questions, albeit in a very rude and roundabout sort of way.
We resumed walking. I returned to my brooding, paying only enough mind to the striding figure in front of me that I would not lose sight of him and become lost.
Eventually he spoke again. "It is just as I thought, then," he said grimly.
I felt a flicker of irritation. Did the man not understand that I was in no mood to be bothered? "What?" I asked tersely.
His tone was sweet, but his words were anything but. "You do not even have the wit to be curious about the world outside your little watering hole," he replied. He sighed, a mocking sound with nothing whatsoever of sympathy in it. "A pity. I had such high hopes-"
I stopped and spun, jerked out of my indifference by the sting of his words. "The Oasis of the Green Palm is not just a 'little a watering hole'," I snapped. "How dare you-"
"That insignificant puddle?" he interrupted me, and barked a laugh. "Hah! I have seen it. It was barely more than a streak of piss in the sand."
I sucked in an outraged breath. My nostrils flared. "You take that back," I demanded angrily.
He crossed his arms over his chest and grinned at me. "Make me," he taunted.
My hand flashed to the hilt of my sword. I did not care that he was my only help. I did not care if I painted the sand with his blood all the way from here to Orofin. He was insolent, and obnoxious, and-
Then I paused, reflecting.
What was the point? It was too hot for this, and I was too tired to argue, and my head would not stop throbbing.
I shook my head and turned away. "Never mind," I muttered.
He growled something which I did not understand. I did not think I even knew the language he said it in, which was fortunate, because no doubt he had said something offensive and I would be happier if I did not understand it.
Again, we resumed our trudge. Again, I resumed brooding.
It grew hotter. My head was spinning. Perhaps I had not slept enough. Actually, sleep seemed like an excellent idea. I was very tired. Perhaps if I-
A shockingly cool splatter of water hit the top of my head and yanked me out of my reverie with a shriek.
I reeled around to see Xanos holding a waterskin upside-down over the space where my head had been mere moments ago. Water dripped into my eyes. My hair stuck to my cheeks. I yanked it away so hard that my scalp stung, but I was too enraged to care. "What was that for?" I shouted.
"You should know better than to go so long without water," he snapped back. With his other hand, he reached beneath his mantle - it hid many things, that mantle, effectively obscuring much of his form in its colorful sweep - drew another waterskin out from what must have been his belt. He threw it to me. "You little twit," he added, rather gratuitously.
I caught the skin out of the air. A year or more of having Hammad throw my own scimitar at me had instilled that particular reflex so deeply in me that now I had to think in order not to catch things that were thrown at me. "Oh," I said lamely. My fingers fumbled at the stopper before finally managing to twist it out of the skin's neck. "Well…you could have said something. You should not have wasted perfectly good water on my head."
"It was the only way to get your attention," he growled. His brows snapped down forebodingly. "Of course, I could always let you die of heatstroke and leave your corpse to ripen in the sun until it bursts like an overripe melon-"
I took an absent-minded pull of the waterskin. The water was tepid, but it seemed sweet as honey, and soothed my aching throat. "Only the fresh ones do that," I croaked.
The sorcerer's brows reconfigured themselves into a perplexed frown. "What?"
"Only fresh corpses do that," I repeated patiently. I forced myself to take small sips, in between sentences."Zombies never did such things," I went on. Another sip. "I think Kel-Garas must have done something to them. I do not know if it was magic or if he just salted them like a side of lamb, but it was as if they had had all of the fluids drawn out of them after they died." I cleared my parched throat and took yet another careful sip. "Nobody ever agreed with me, but I thought they always smelled very strange," I added thoughtfully. "Not like normal corpses at all."
One of Xanos's eyebrows slowly climbed to his hairline, while the other remained where it was. I could not quite read the resulting expression. It conveyed either skepticism, or confoundment, or the growing suspicion that I was a link short of a string of sausages. "You have a wide experience with corpses?" he asked.
I blinked. The question was slightly perplexing. What was there to explain? Nevertheless, because he was an outlander and could not be expected to understand our ways, I tried to make him understand. "I am a Bedine woman," I said. "We prepare the dead for their pyres. We are the ones who bring our warriors into the world. It is only right that our hands be the ones to see them out again." I took another drink. "Our father was the worst," I went on thoughtfully. "The stinger who killed him was using a halberd. It had cut him in half." I made a face. "Mother had a terrible time putting him back together again for the pyre." Finally, I looked at Xanos. His expression had, if possible, gone even queerer. "What?" I asked uneasily. Suddenly, I regretted saying so much. My tongue was not normally so loose. The heat must have scrambled my brains more than I had thought. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
He shook his head, still wearing that bemused expression. "You would be right," he said abruptly. I noticed that he did not seem inclined to answer my question, instead switching the subject so swiftly that it might have made my head spin were my head not already spinning. "Necromancers often use particular alchemical brews to preserve corpses." Suddenly, he chuckled. "It is a necessity. It can get damnably difficult to conquer the world with an army of the undead if one's army keeps falling to pieces."
I frowned curiously. "Has that ever happened?"
"Yes," he answered promptly. "In eleven-ninety-two, one rather inadequate tharchion-
I interrupted him. "What is a tharchion?" I asked curiously.
He paused and cocked his head. "Thay is divided into provinces called tharchs," he said at last, with surprising patience. I would have expected him to snap my head off for the interruption, but he did not seem to begrudge my questioning. "Each is ruled by a man or woman known as a tharchion."
"Oh." I digested that. Then I recalled my manners and issued an automatic half-bow of apology. "I am sorry," I said politely. "I interrupted you. Please go on."
He blinked. "Er, yes…as I was saying," he said, seeming oddly nonplussed. He cleared his throat. He turned to continue walking, gesturing for me to walk with him. "This particular tharchion attempted an assault on another's stronghold in a neighboring tharch. He had a very narrow window of time to do it in, however, and in his rush he neglected to take a few key precautions before raising his undead legions."
He had very long legs and took commensurately large steps. I had to walk very fast to keep up with him. "What happened?" I asked, a little breathlessly. In the span of time it took me to ask the question, the answer had already struck me. "Oh! Did his warriors fall apart?"
His grin was maliciously delighted. "Oh, yes - some few hundred spans shy of his enemy's walls."
"Oh." I considered that. "That is a very inconvenient way to start a battle."
"Inconvenient, yes. Also fatal. The rival tharchion took the poor, stupid bastard to pieces along with his army. I think the people in that region still sing songs about it."
I considered that, too. My lips twitched. "I wonder," I said thoughtfully. "If we could have stolen whatever Kel-Garas used to make those preservatives, wouldn't that have made his army much easier to fight?"
"Undoubtedly."
"Oh." I imagined a skeleton, lashing out with its rusty sword only to have its arm fall off at the shoulder, hand and sword and all. Or perhaps a zombie might open its jaws to bite just to have its jawbone drop to the sand. I made a small noise that was certainly not a giggle. I bit my lip. "That would have brought us many victories. I wonder why no one ever thought of it?"
The sorcerer snorted derisively. "Because they were all far too stupid," he said.
I felt compelled to rise to the defense of my tribe. "Not all of them," I protested. Honesty made me pause, and then add, "Well, only my brothers. And some of the women." Honesty reared its ugly head again. "Um. Most of the women." I groped for something positive to say. "Our mother was very smart," I added hopefully. At the sound of my own words, my mood soured anew. "Is very smart," I corrected, much more quietly.
He grunted. "Are you done with that skin?" he asked suddenly.
I blinked. "What? Er. Oh, yes." I held the skin out to him awkwardly. " Here. Um-"
"Good." He took it from me, frowned at its now-scant weight, and pocketed it. "We should find some shade," he added gruffly.
It was very strange. When Xanos was not being rude, he was surprisingly agreeable to talk to. I wondered whether he was suffering from the heat, too, or if I had simply caught him in a rare moment of amiability."I suppose so. It is getting very hot," I agreed, bemused.
"Yes," he said. He sniffed the air. Something about the gesture did not seem entirely human."Also, I would like to find out who is following us, and that may be easier if we stop," he added.
