For a time, Kall-Su lost track of himself. The essence of Ramlah that he had taken inside himself corrupted him. Though not to the extent that the master of the Black March might have hoped, it still had an effect not unlike extreme inebriation. He lost touch with time and place and self, having only the vague awareness of hands supporting him and of magic swirling about him like wind.
He shook it off overlooking a parched village in the desert. He hadn't a notion how he'd gotten there, on the dunes overlooking a bone dry collection of stone huts. There were camels clustered to one side, and a string of small, fine boned horses. A few robed figures shuffled about in the heat, but that was the extent of the activity.
The heat was abominable. He felt as if he were being suffocated by it. He hated the voluminous robes that were a necessity here. He hated the feel of sweat and grime on his skin.
There was an arm loosely about his waist. In his disorientation and his discomfort from heavy robes and heat, he'd hardly noticed. He was also on a horse -- if one could call the demon spawned beasts which carried the March horses. He stiffened, reflexively searching for the strands of power that might feed his magics, then fought down the urge, remembering that they had taken him unto themselves. Hardly fitting for him to lash out at mere close contact.
It wasn't Ramlah who shared a mount with him. He was grateful of that. It was merely one of the faceless others. He wondered if they were all as human appearing as their dark lord under the helms. He hoped as much. He'd an abhorrence for familiarity with demons. He would conquer them, and use them to his ends, but he'd no fondness for fraternization. Hypocritical perhaps, considering his heritage and his profession -- if one could call being a wizard a profession. He'd given up his right to be liege lord. He wasn't sure he wanted it back.
The horse under him shifted, goaded in action by some unseen and unfelt signal from the helmed rider. The March was a line across the ridge of the dune. They flowed forward like sand rolling down the slope. The horses seemed to meld and shift with the very granules. It was odd, that lack of proper horse gait.
God, he thought, they're going to destroy this village. He remembered what they had done to the town outside the ruins where they had been resurrected, what they had done to the palace brothel and very likely the surrounding city before the djinni had whisked them away.
But no destructive magic swept over the village. The March descended, but they did no more than that. Men came out from the thick stone huts, robed and suspicious, hands on curved swords and hostility in their eyes. A few others -- softer, less dangerous looking huddled in the doorways, watching. The armed ones did not dwell here, Kall-Su thought. They belonged to the horses and the camels. Nomads perhaps, stopping in this small village for the precious gift of water.
It was clear they were baffled at the appearance of such armored riders. Of such fiercesom beasts. Hands twitched at the hilts of numerous swords.
Ramlah urged his mount forward. He'd put his helm back on and was a most impressive, frightening creature, perched in the saddle of his red eyed steed, gauntleted hands crossed on the saddle bow. The air crackled with power around him. The nomads grew restive and exchanged uncertain looks. Fingers gripped swords. Afraid they might be, but these were not men that let fear rule them.
Ramlah spoke and when he did, the power seeped out. Kall-Su almost cringed with the excessive waste of it. Even mortal, mundane men might feel it and be impressed. The words were foreign, evidencing a trace of the tongue that Kall had absorbed, but unintelligible to him nonetheless. Ritual words perhaps. Whether the nomads understood or not was questionable. They shifted nervously, exchanging wary glances, murmuring among themselves.
"Sons of the desert," This time Ramlah spoke words that Kall-Su could understand. "To whom do you hold legion?"
"Legion?" A dark robed man stepped forward, weather beaten face, that looked older than the voice that issued forth from his mouth. The sun did that to a man. Sucked the vitality right out. "We hold legion to no one, great lord." There was wary respect. These men were no more fools than they were cowards. The aspect of the Black March was in no way subtle in its manifestation of power.
"No king, or pharaoh? No great war leader?"
The nomad shook his head. "There are no kings or pharaoh's here anymore. Not since Allah took his great vengeance and caused the Cleansing."
One might assume the Cleansing to be destruction wrought by Ansasla some three hundred years past.
"Then it is a truly wondrous thing that the Black March has returned to bring greatness back to the lands."
A great deal of shifting and whispering then. A great deal of uneasy exchanged looks.
"Al-Zahif Al-Asouad?" The spokesman for the nomads said, his voice trembling with reverence.
Ramlah inclined his head. The March was a steady line of black coiled destruction behind him.
The nomads quite abruptly folded to their knees in the hard packed earth of the village, whispering honorariums. The people that dwelled in the village had long since scurried into hidy holes.
The March had no interest in the village. Ramlah's interest lay in the nomads. Ramlah's interest it seemed, was in the gaining of followers and these hardened son's of the desert appeared to appeal to him. They had a temporary camp set up some twenty miles from the little village. A handful of tents staked out under the merciless sun. A few children tended the animals. Veiled and robed women looked after the camp. An entire nomadic tribe. Twenty men, warriors all from the harsh look in their black eyes. Perhaps half that many women and half again that many children. Not a large tribe by any means. But it seemed a beginning.
Their leader made a quiet ceremony of offering Ramlah the hospitality of his tent. The largest of the five tents. Despite the diminutive number of this tribe, Ramlah afforded the offering respect. He inclined his head and invited the chief into his own tent to parlay. The woman looked on silently, while the men settled about the communal center of camp, drinking from skeins, solemnly offering wine to the ominous members of the March. Kall-Su was surprised when some of them accepted. He had begun to believe they had no human weaknesses. The young boys were eager to see after the great black horses and the March let them.
Kall had no real notion what to do with himself, in the midst of these people, in the company of the March. The lot of them cast him curious, speculative glances, clearly as uncertain of him, as he was of them. So he lingered at the fringe, half listening to the talk, immersed in his own quandary. He wondered if he dare ask any of the nomads if they knew the location of the city the old sheik had promised Lily had last been. He sat with his back against the canvas wall of a tent and wondered if she were still even alive. She was, he thought, she was not weak. She had survived a lifetime of slavery, the ordeal of being in the prophet's care and so much more. She would not shatter, but she could be hurt and he had nightmares about the things that might be happening to her. Things that he doubted she would ever admit to him, because she did not think him capable of understanding and accepting. Perhaps she was right. When he had pressed her about her past life and she had reluctantly told him tales of some of her former masters -- of abuse suffered -- he had reacted -- badly. Quite badly. He was still determined to extinguish the life of one particular master if ever he had the opportunity. She said it was bygones and that vengeance would accomplish nothing. He was of a different mind. They agreed to disagree. She politely avoided the details of her life as a slave and he avoided the promise of death and destruction upon the men that had inflicted it upon her within her hearing.
It was an amenable enough arrangement, though frustrating. Having been reared by Schneider, forgiveness for insults and wrongs was hardly high on his list of priorities.
The sun was setting. The strange cool that came over the desert began to slink over the land. There were foods prepared by the veiled women and even the members of the March cautiously tasted what had not passed their lips in many millennia. Some of them. Others remained silent and stoic, never removing their fiercesom helms. Upon closer inspection -- a careful magical probe sent out to lightly brush the auras of Ramlah's dark followers -- Kall discovered that some were very close to human, while others quite alarmingly far from it. The ones that stood at the outskirts of the fire, dark and silent, were the most alien. The most powerful. Or perhaps they merely made no efforts to curb the stench of the otherworld that still clung so strongly to them, while the others, the majority, really, were curious of this new world they found themselves in. Curious of the new followers their master had recruited. Under their helms they were as dark as the nomads, and as weather worn. They seemed normal men almost, until one sensed the underlying magic.
The nomads seemed in awe of them, and rightly so. They were as careful of him. The March might exude power, but they were of the same land, of the same features and coloring. He was foreign. Starkly, obviously foreign. They cast glances at him and whispered. The women giggled behind their hands. He ignored them. He blocked them out, blocked out thoughts of Lily and misery over Schneider and retreated to that calm place that he had found within himself where he could heal. Where he could assess what strengths he had available to and hoard away power. He did not delude himself into thinking he could overcome Ramlah, or the conglomeration that was the March, but he needed the comfort of being able to hold his own.
A young girl crept up to him, holding out a bowl of whatever aromatic food the nomad women had created. She might have been twelve, her face was small and brown and her eyes intensely curious, but holding the fearlessness of the very young. She went veiless, not yet considered a woman.
"You don't look like them." She cast her glance back at the dark figures lurking about the tribal fire, then back to him.
"No." He agreed. He had no appetite, the smell of the food made his stomach vaguely uneasy. He took the bowl from her small hands anyway, compelled by politeness. She produced a small skein that smelled of wine when she uncapped it. That he could tolerate. It was watered down, but sweet and thirst-quenching.
"Why do you stare?" He finally asked, uneasy under her avid gaze.
"I've never seen anyone like you before."
"And you've seen the likes of them?" he indicated the March.
She shrugged. "Sahir's. Very old ones. But they look like we do. You are pale and soft."
"Soft?" he lifted a brow in surprise, never having thought of himself as such.
The girl touched her own skin. Even so young, the sun had toughened her. No wrinkles yet, but she had lived under this harsh sun day after day for all of her young life.
He looked away from her, not willing to discuss the state of their differences. Not a willing participant for company of any sort. The girl went away. The sun dipped below the edge of the horizon and the nomads eventually sought their beds. The March did not. They remained mostly silent among themselves, awake and aware. He wondered if they slept at all.
He came awake with a start. Disorientation assaulted him. A sense of unreality and un-self. His body felt -- odd. There was a certain lingering sense of pain. A certain vague sense of memory that made his brow wrinkle in perplexity. He wondered if he were dead and thought that if he were it was not a sort of death he was familiar with. He was an old hand at it by now -- passing over into the other side -- and this did not feel like it had before. This felt -- strangely euphoric.
He felt his lips curve upwards in a smile. He felt the urge to laugh and fought it, lying there -- he was certain he was lying prone upon something -- in a state of not quite feeling, not quite not feeling. It took an effort to open his eyes. He blinked, dazed, surrounded by a kaleidoscope of brilliant color. Like a thousand little chips of stained glass that made up the ceiling to his world, all reflecting a different hue of light down upon him. It was beautiful. It surrounded him. After a while he began to feel trapped by it. He forced his body to move and gasped in pain when he turned to his side. The pain was reality. The pain brought him back to himself. It felt as if his body had been ripped apart and haphazardly glued back together. It felt as if integral parts had been left out. He spent a moment trying to organize his thoughts and his magics, healing himself cognizantly, while before his body had done it out of animal instinct. The magic felt odd when it came. The healing left him strangely lightheaded.
He pushed himself into a sitting position, hands sinking into the plush cushions he had been lying upon. It took a moment for the unreality to sink in. There were walls that were not walls surrounding him. The softness that supported him was insubstantial. It was a mimicry of a room, but in truth it was more than that. It was a prison. He discovered that as he thrust out a mental probe and had it absorbed. Completely, utterly swallowed. There was nothing of the reality he had known in this place.
He cursed and surged up, slamming body and magic against the multi-hued barrier. He might as well have been an gnat beating against the solid immensity of a cliff face.
He cursed again, more fluently and finally called out for succor.
Kall. Kall, can you hear me? He screamed it in voice and mind and had no answer No slightest sense of awareness. It did not so much rebuff him as ignore him. Infuriating. For a while after he had exhausted himself he simmered in a fit of rage.
After that he began to worry. He was not dead. He was increasingly certain of that fact. And if he were not, then he had a nasty suspicion of where he might be. He beat against the walls of his prison to no avail and collapsed exhausted back into the soft embrace of the pillows. Were there more of them now? And were they more of a color and pattern to his liking than they had been before? Was there the slightest hint of jasmine in the air? A favorite scent of his, the scent that Yoko poured in her bathwater. It was as if the prison subtly changed to suit him. Interesting.
But , it didn't matter. If he was trapped here, then his enemy was still without. And Kall-Su was without, which was not a pleasant thought.
He rallied and sent his magics against the walls of the prison again, and failed. He remembered the amazing things the djinni had been capable of doing and for millennia she had been trapped in a bottle, unable to free herself of confinement. The djinni herself dwindled in amazement when one considered the power of the bottle that had held her. That now held him.
There was a scream in the nomad camp. It came with the dawn, as the sun started its laborious journey across the harsh desert yet one more time. Kall-Su had wondered if these creatures of the Black March were wholly human -- if they had human needs such as sleep and food -- he found out that morning that they most certainly retained human desires.
He jerked out of the light doze he'd allowed himself, and blinked disorientation and slumber out of his eyes. The scream repeated, more of a frightened whimper this time. The starkness of it against the silence of the camp was eerie. He rose, tense and wary, gaze drawn this way and that to the mostly reclined figures of the Black March. Some of them had stretched out upon the sand. Others still sat in quiet groups about the burned out fire. A few of the natives also had made their beds outside. None of them seemed to care about the cries. Even the nomads only shifted, afraid perhaps to risk the displeasure of their esteemed guests by running to see what was about. Or perhaps they knew.
Kall stepped cautiously into the camp, ignoring the sedate one's -- looking for the cause of the disturbance. There, movement by the line that held the horses. It was the young girl that had spoken to him the night before. She was in the process of taking two desperate steps in flight when a great dark hand reached out and caught her by the black braid trailing down her back. One of the March. Helmless, dark eyes showing the first sign of life Kall had seen out of any of them save Ramlah himself. There were gold rings through his nose, and more lining his ears. There were a series of tribal scaring down one side of the man's dark face. There was very clear lust on his face.
The girl was terrified. She squealed and twisted in his grip, young enough to be slippery for even a grown man to hold. So he stopped trying. He yanked her back and lashed out at her with the back of one gauntleted hand. She stopped crying. She thumped to her knees in the hard packed, dry earth and sat there, dazed.
She was twelve. And she had been friendly to him, which was more than he could say of anyone else he'd met in this wretched land. He was of a mind to prevent a rape if he could, having so recently entertained the miserable thoughts of the same thing happening to Lily.
"Stop." He stalked forward, and the warrior wizard paused in hauling the girl off towards whatever private place he planned to use her in. If he planned a private place at all.
Those dark eyes fixed on Kall-Su. The dark head tilted just a bit in interest.
"You will not have this child." He subtly gathered power as he said it, expecting his declaration not to be accepted passively.
"No child, this." The man said, giving the listing girl a shake. "Will you take her place, Sahir bil-Jaleed?"
Kall drew his lips back in a snarl. The Warrior wizard threw the girl at him, and on her heels the ripping destruction of a spell. It cut up the ground under her feet, trailed her all the way into Kall's arms where it halted, rebuffed by his hastily erected shield. It was the wrong spell to send at him. It wasn't elemental, just destructive energy that without a strictly governing hand could be redirected by a subtler caster. He was more adroit than the man who had created it. He took the reins effortlessly and sent the thing crashing back to its sender. The wizard hadn't been expecting that. Wasn't prepared to repel it. It hit him and sent him crashing backwards and into the flimsy obstacle of a canvas tent wall. Man and tent went down in a huff of dust and cries of surprise.
It had been the women's tent and their screams. The struggling figures could be discerned from beneath the collapsed canvas. The girl cowered behind Kall, clutching at his robes, pressing her face into his arm.
The dark warrior sprang up, shaking off the effects of the blast, face now impassioned by anger rather than lust. He was not alone. Where his comrades had ignored his assault upon the girl, they did not ignore Kall's retaliation. They gathered, some helmed still, others not, like a silent pack of hunting wolves.
The one, he might have dealt with. The lot of them were beyond his capabilities. He pushed the girl away from him. Her fingers clung to his sleeve.
"You do not want to be here now, little one." He said softly. She shuddered, but she was wise enough to back away. The March had no interest in her. Their attention was fixed upon the outsider in their midst. Ramlah had gathered him in, like he had gathered these nomads. A tool to use in the construction of whatever powerbase he sought. But he was little more than that at the moment, little more than the first in the Lord of the Black March's collection of followers. He was not of the March and the March had no hesitation in preying upon him. As they had no hesitation in preying upon the innocents of this tribe that Ramlah had gathered in.
He took one careful step back, assessing his options. The notion of flight irked him -- a ridiculous prideful habit that he supposed had rubbed off from too many years association with Schneider. The desert would have taken him anyway, even had he attempted it. He was too well aware of his disadvantages in this place. He had no talent for surviving in such an environment. Drying up in the desert, he thought, would be a particularly unpleasant method of demise.
The air was static with power. Theirs, his own. Theirs mostly. He thought perhaps his wisest choice of action might be to throw all his strength into defense. The majority of his offensive arsenal was elemental and there was damned little chance of drawing any of the ones aligned with his ice based magic to this place. And damned little water under the dry earth to use his non elemental ice magics. Which left a handful of destructive magics that were both taxing on himself and more than likely too easily recoverable to these ancient wizards.
"What is this?" The aura of gathering power was swept aside, dwindling in the presence of a greater force. Ramlah strode towards the assemblage, loose black robes adorning a body devoid of the heavy armor. It hardly made him seem less intimidating. More so with the realization that even without it he radiated a frightening amount of energy. The March stood down like obedient dogs at the sound of their master's voice. Kall did not so easily let go the power he'd gathered. He no more trusted Ramlah than he did his minions.
Ramlah's dark eyes took in the scene. Swept across the impassive faces of his March, then settled upon Kall-Su.
"Do you cause strife?" He asked. It was an ominously pleasant tone of voice.
Kall lifted his chin, holding back anger and tempering his voice with respect. At the edges of the camp, the nomads had gathered. The woman had extracted themselves from the tent and watched with even more interest than the men. He thought he saw the girl clutched to the bosom of one veiled, matronly female.
"You take these people under your protection and yet you will allow the rape of their children?" He waved a hand towards the girl. Ramlah's eyes followed his gesture. The master of the March tilted his head curiously.
"That is no child. Girls this age were married and bearing young in the days of old."
"Then shall we arrange a marriage? Rape is another matter altogether and honorless." Some of the respect left his tone, replaced by frustration. He was uneasy over that loss of cold rational. There had been a time when he'd been the most passionless of negotiators. He'd had to be to smooth over Schneider's utter lack of tact.
Ramlah's lips pulled back in a humorless smile. His straight fine hair was loose about his face, falling to his broad shoulders. It was so dark that it almost blended with the material of his robes.
"Nur-ili," he did not quite look at the pierced wizard who had attacked the girl. "The Sahir bil-Jaleed has a valid point. These people have pledged to Me and should be afforded My protection. Take no congress where it is not welcome."
The wizard, Nur-ili, inclined his dark head. Ramlah swept a hand to disperse them, then fixed his level gaze upon Kall-Su.
"Come with me, Sahir bil-Jaleed." He said simply and turned, gliding over the sand with his long robes fluttering about him, towards the tent he had taken.
Reluctantly, Kall followed. There was little choice in the matter. He supposed there would be retaliation for his display. For his affrontage to the March. That he was still alive gave him the hope that death was not to be the choice of punishment. So he squared his shoulders and ducked under the flap of the tent.
It had been the leader of this tribe's domain. The man and his women and his children had moved out in favor of Ramlah. He'd seen them carrying their personal possessions into other tents the prior evening. There had been vows taken. Vows similar to the ones that had been forced on him. Not so much magic enveloped. These people were not wizards and there was little need to shackle them with bonds of blood magic. Bonds of blood were quite enough for these fiercely honor bound folk.
It was not a rich tent. But it had its comforts. A brazier and thick rugs to cover the ground, a divided area towards the back were pillows and thick blankets made up the sleeping area. Ramlah's armor sat neatly next to the his horse's tack.
The master of the March stopped in the center of his new abode and asked without turning about to face Kall-Su. "Do you seek to make me lose face?"
"No." He was on dangerous ground. He would have been with any powerful lord that had been forced to back down due to actions of his. If a subordinate of his had done the same to him, he would have reacted -- badly.
"You show a certain lack for respect." Still Ramlah did not turn. "Perhaps it is the way with your people." He turned then, the look in his dark gaze assessing, considering. "I'll grant you the grace of allowing it this one time. Again and I will show no mercy."
There was something in his gaze that made Kall flinch, that made him wish to put distance between Ramlah and himself. The man spoke of mercy, yet there was very little of it in his eyes.
"I understand."
"Do you? I think your former master was remiss. I think he was as derelict in the rituals of respect as you. More so. I think you speak pretty words to suit you, those you think I want to hear, but that you do not understand at all. Let me show you."
"No ---" he shook his head, fighting the reflexive urge to summon protective shields, knowing that if he did it would be taken as offense. Ramlah closed the distance between them. He did not quite lay a hand on him, but he raised it.
With no magic to protect him the attack shot into him with ease, like a knife sliding through the unresisting surface of a calm pool. The pain took his senses away. It ran the circuit of his nerves and scraped them raw. He was no stranger to suffering. He had endured more of it recently than he cared to recall, but a body never really got used to it.
He found himself on his knees, his mouth full of blood where he'd bitten his tongue, hands shaking so badly that he could hardly use them to support himself. Ramlah crouched over him, elbows on knees. One big hand reached out, caught the back of his hair and jerked his head back. It was an awkward position, on his knees and forced backwards, with nothing to support him but Ramlah's fist in his hair.
"You, little wizard, are bound to me as a vassal, do you understand?" Ramlah leaned so close that Kall could feel the whisper of his breath on his face. "If you attack what is mine, I will kill you. If you speak against me ever again, I will kill you. If you so much as hesitate when I command you, I will kill you. And it will not be an easy death. Do you understand this?"
He could not nod, the hand at his neck held him too securely.
"Yes." He mouthed the word, hating himself for the capitulation. Hating Schneider for putting him into this position with his stubbornness.
Ramlah shifted, forcing him further backwards. Kall had to put a hand out behind him to try and catch himself. Ramlah swung a leg across him to straddle his knees and the other hand came up to brush his face.
He shut his eyes for a moment in sheerest panic, at a loss as to how he might deal with this.
"You have the skin of a child." Ramlah said. "As soft as a newborn babe. Is it so everywhere?" the hand on his face stole down his throat, slid down the front of his robes seeking entrance.
"My lord --- please --" he said hoarsely, dread making his heart thud in his chest and his breath come harsh. "There is no honor -- in this."
Ramlah used his position and his weight to press Kall against the rough weave of the rug. His legs were bent painfully under their combined weights. The master of the March worked a hand within the front of his robes. The rough skin of his palms grazed over Kall's ribs. A callused thumb brushed his nipple.
The urge to release the surge of fear induced power that coiled within him was hard to fight back.
"Please --" he heard his voice break. "I've taken vows of allegiance to you, if you demand I honor them, then afford me no less protection than you would these nomads." His thoughts were becoming chaotic. Flashes of memory of another time, of other unwanted hands upon him assaulted his minds eye.
Please god, please god, please god ---
There is no god for you. God hates you ---
Ramlah hesitated. Ramlah stared down at him, frowning. "Already you defy me." But there was little real threat in his voice. There was most certainly a great deal of interest.
"No, no. I will honor my vow. But you did not have me take it for --- this." Oh, he hoped dearly that he was correct in that.
"You would not, to please your master, be my faajir?"
A whore. He shook his head carefully. "It is not my --- nature. Anything else, you may have of me, I swear."
"You swear. I find your word to be highly -- flexible." Ramlah laughed and rose off of him. Kall scrambled up hastily, stomach churning with relief. "All right. You may have your honor now. I'm in the mood for charity at the moment. Perhaps we shall bargain for it later when I'm of another mood, hmm?"
He fled from the tent, with Ramlah's laughter following him. He took himself to the edge of camp, feeling the urge to vomit. He needed escape from this place and these people. Vow or not, he would take the option if it offered itself. He was desperate for it, but at the moment, nothing stared back at him but the relentless expanse of desert.