There was a crumbling landslide of sand. Grasping fingers made their way up out of the dry earth into only marginally less dry air. With the passage pierced, more sand cascaded down, falling into darkness below and uncovering the turban headed figure of a man. A small, wiry form that scrambled desperately out of the mostly buried remains of a long forgotten tomb and into the desolate afternoon of a barren landscape.
The little guide, Abu, stood on shaky legs, clutching the empty water skein to his side, shading his haunted eyes from the sun as he surveyed the land. Nothing. As far as the eye could see nothing but sand and pale desert sky and the shimmery waves of heat that only emphasized how desperate a place this was to be. He'd gotten here by magic means, and the magic that had carried him here was gone. Everything was gone. And he was alone and lost. The last of the water consumed a day ago as he'd worked to claw his way out of the reburied tomb.
He'd laid hidden in a crevice when the ominous figures of Al-Zahif Al-Asouad had come inside. When his own Kajir Djinn had wisely chosen to bend knee to the conquerors. What choice with the silver haired one gone? With the shapely Djinni reduced to dust before them all? He feared the Black March and he regretted ever having worked to bring them back to this world. His former master the Moulay had been a fool. A dead fool, which was the worst type.
Now Abu himself was lost. The desert would suck him dry in short order for his folly. Three days digging his way out of the tomb. Already he was tired and weak. He doubted he'd last another under the merciless rays of the sun. But he was stubborn, was Abu the guide. So he began walking. Sometimes those that had faith were rewarded.
A half hour of trudging through the sand and he doubted if he could last the day. The sand sucked at his boots and made his legs leaden. He wiped sweat out of his eyes with the end of his turban, cursing his body for riding itself of even so small an amount of fluids. He lost his footing on the downside of a sloping dune and sand cascading down with him as he fell. Something else did. A bottle. Colored glass encrusted with precious metals. He recognized it as the one the Silver haired demon had stolen from the Moulay. It was stoppered. For a moment a wild hope sprang up in him. The djinni had retreated to her bottle. She could save him. If he freed her, he would be her master. It was the way of such things.
With shaking fingers he unstopped the cork. Nothing happened. In dismay he shook the bottle, then pressed his eye to the mouth. Nothing but dark, tinted glass within. With a sobbing curse, he tossed it aside, sitting there half buried in sand bemoaning his terrible luck. Then something happened. Light sprang forth from the discarded bottle. A strong breeze stirred the sand. A crackle of static made Abu's hair stand on end. The female djinni had exited her prison in a cloud of colorful smoke. This one burst forth like a strike of lightening.
Abu cried out and huddled away, shielding his eyes from the light. When he dared look up again, the silver haired demon stood spray legged in the sand, bloody and torn and very much worse for the wear. White hair tangled about his face and shoulders and from beneath it, dark blue eyes glittered with a dangerous passion. Magic radiated from him. Abu could feel it in his bones. Perhaps, he thought, his luck was not so bad after all. One djinn was as good as the next he supposed. Although Malice might have served him in other ways as well.
"Djinn?" Abu spoke up hesitantly and those blue eyes swung his way. Abu took heart. "I have freed you. Will --- will you serve me now?" He supposed he ought not to have asked. When one was the master of a djinn, one ought to portray confidence, other wise a djinn might think it could get away with disobedience.
One black brow rose. The eyes widened just a fraction - - in surprise perhaps - - before narrowing. "Serve you as what?" The silver haired demon asked. "Roast desert rat?"
"Ummm -- no. No." Perhaps the foreign djinn did not understand the ways of the world. Abu cleared his dry throat and explained it to him. "Don't you know, that when a man frees a djinn that the djinn must serve the man?"
"Really? And you want me to serve you?"
"Like -- like the female -- like Malice served you?" Abu was beginning to feel a bit of uncertainty. He rather wanted to crawl into the bottle himself. There was a particularly unsavory look on the Silver haired demon's face.
"Where the hell is she?"
"Gone. He killed her."
"Are you sure?" Interest now. The djinn bent over him, hair falling between them like a tangled silver veil.
"Y-yes. I saw it. I order you to take me out of here."
"I don't do orders." The djinn said matter of factly. "Where's Kall?"
"He's gone too."
The djinn froze for a breath, then reached out and snatched Abu up so fast the little man never saw it coming.
"Dead?"
"No! No, not dead. He went with them. They took him away."
"Where? Took him where?"
"I don't know. Put me down, I command you."
"I'm going to break every bone in your body if you don't stop trying to give me orders. What happened. Get it straight, because if I don't like what I hear, I may break you into little pieces anyway."
Schneider was not in a good mood. He kicked the bottle long and far, when a lightening strike wouldn't shatter it. The only thing the bottle had been good for was the fact that it had helped him heal himself in record time. With the beating he'd taken, it would have been more than the few days the guide claimed had passed before he was able to gain his power back. The little man huddled in fear on the side of the dune while he stalked about throwing a fit of sheerest frustration.
He had been defeated. The humiliation of that did not stand to be dwelled upon. He only spent long enough on it to convince himself that it had not been fair -- that they'd ganged up on him and that next time he faced them he'd damn sure make certain not to take them on as a group. Gangbangs were most certainly not a favorite pastime of his. Not when he was the focal point of the effort.
And Damnit, they'd taken off to parts unknown with Kall-Su in tow, a fact that made his temple's throb and his blood boil. Not only did the bastards trounce him unfairly, they stole from him as well.
Finding them was the bitch. He didn't know this land and he couldn't pick up a sense of them unless they decided to perform some major magic. He might be able to discern Kall if he practiced a spell. If it were him, and he were trying to raise an army, which was what it sounded like Ramlah was trying to do to him, if forcing a vow out of Kall-Su was any indication, he'd head in the direction of the nearest populated spot.
"Which way is the closest city or large village?" He asked the little guide.
"That way, master. I think." The little man stammered, lifting an arm. Schneider had gotten the matter of just who was master and who was not straight.
"Okay. How far?"
"I don't know. I don't know exactly where we are."
"Thrilling." He kicked at the sand. He was thirsty. He was hot. He was dirty and tired. He didn't know if he could cover a vast amount of distance without remedying at least two out of the four complaints. The djinni had been damned useful to have around. The mere magic of creating food out of thin air was amazing. He could do clothes, but he couldn't eat clothes, and besides, he was not creating matter, he was merely converting existing matter into something more useful to him.
"You better be right." He muttered warningly to Abu, following the threat with the whispered words of a Raven spell. It would take more effort to cart the guide along with him, but he thought he might need the little man's local knowledge, so was hesitant to leave him here to rot.
The Black March rode east and gathered an army as they did. A week and they had drawn the sons of the desert that they passed, the wondering nomadic tribes that proudly owed allegiance to no city bound lord to them. To Ramlah, who exuded power and some dangerous personality that these harsh desert men found appealing. There were perhaps four hundred mortals in his wake now. And a handful of men that were slightly more than that. There was magic in the desert. There were shamans and magicians who practiced what arts they could. Some of them were wild eyed fanatics who traveled with the nomads, others Ramlah had found living at the fringes of the small towns they passed. He drew them to him and well. And those of magical bearing he made pledge the oath of blood and magic. It worked more thoroughly on mortal men than it had on Kall, with his demon blood. Those dark skinned shamans looked upon Ramlah with unshakable devotion after the return of their senses.
The March looked upon them as contemptible tools that were to be endured, but not respected. They used the women and the boys that were willing, true to the word that Kall had managed to squeeze out of Ramlah. They took their more savage pleasures out on the inhabitants of the villages they passed, who's people Ramlah had no use for. They often left destruction in their wake.
What prompted Ramlah to spare a town and what prompted him to raze it was baffling to Kall-Su. He could find little difference between one sorry little village and the next. The people all cowered in fear. They all would have given their last drop of water, and their last crumb of bread to the army of the Black March. Only sometimes all Ramlah wanted was their screams.
They didn't use true magic to destroy a town until they reached the river. For some time the land had began to grow less harsh. And then as if some invisible boundary had been crossed, there was greenery. And life. And a great city that had sprung up in the fertile lands fed by the fresh water of a great river.
The nomads and the Black March alike spoke the same name. The Nile. The name of the city was inconsequential. It was not an old city. It had grown after the coming of Ansasla, from the looks of it. Ramlah said it was inhabited by the descendants of his enemies.
Kall heard and bit his tongue on asking how he knew. How he could possibly tell from viewing it from afar. Ramlah would not have taken the question well. Ramlah's patience with him was a short and changeable thing. Kall did his best to avoid him.
The melee began with the blood of dawn streaking the morning sky. There might have been several thousand souls living in that sturdy city by the shores of the river. Certainly none of them were equipped with the magic to repel what the March send down upon them.
The desert was Ramlah's ally and he sent it to destroy his enemies. Building's shattered as a sandstorm swept in out of nowhere to smash against the outer structures. A hurricane in from the sea might have been less destructive. The startling cries of a city awakened from slumber were faint whispers past the storm. Ramlah broke the city in that first massive pass of his desert summoned magic, and when the survivors struggled out of the destruction the March employed more mundane magics to strike them down.
Women, children, the aged. They held no mercy. Kall was no stranger to the atrocities of war -- he had waged them himself once upon a time. He had killed without hesitation. Brutally and unforgivingly. But never gleefully. And somewhere beyond the shields shown to the world, he had held remorse for all the countless deaths. There was no remorse here. There was a stark, glimmering --- appreciation -- for the slaughter in Ramlah's eyes that surpassed Schneider at his worst. Schneider had always had a soft spot for women. Ramlah cut them down hideously.
There were boats on the river, everything from small rafts to larger merchanteer vessels. Kall was given a task. Destroy them. Destroy the only means of escape that the desert affiliated March might not pursue. A handful of the March were already wreaking havoc to the docks. Destroying those vessels close enough to shore to hit with missiles of destructive magic. The water close to docks was red with blood and bodies bobbed gruesomely in the debris filled waves.
There were several boats that the current had carried out towards the middle of the broad river. One of the helmed figures stabbed a finger towards them, and uttered one word.
"Destroy."
He was sworn to Ramlah's service. To refuse would have meant his death. Even here where his powers swelled with so much fresh water to fuel his ice based magic, he had no illusions about his ability to escape the fate that would come with disobedience.
So he did it. He distanced himself from the act, pushing emotion away to that place where it had always hid when he had carried out the deeds that had gained him his reputation as the dreaded high king of ice. He took the air with a whispered command to the air spirits that were so playfully attentive here. It took only a little effort to summon the ice elementals to perform the task he wished. They balked at the heat, and would not last long in this climate, but they were capable of the chore. They had the fuel at hand for what he required them to do. He called two lesser ones to carry out his magic and sent them zipping along the surface of the river to find the solids that floated atop the waves. And when they did, the boats turned to ice. Crystals started at the hulls and rapidly worked their way up the deck, freezing everything in their path. Wood, metal, flesh. It made no difference. The weight made the now glimmering white vessels flounder in the water. First one capsized, then the next, until they were all being drawn beneath the surface. Then they were gone and maybe fifty or a hundred souls were gone with them. All in a few breaths time.
He kept to the air for a while after that, detached from the violence taking place in the city below. The desecration of a place that had slept in peace not so long ago. The faint sound of screams rose from the narrow streets as the survivors of the arcane storm that had taken the outer rim of the city fell prey to the mortal as well as immortal minions of the Black March. He destroyed another large boat that sluggishly tried to break away from the city. He let a smaller one, a mere canoe housing several small, huddled forms, slip away through the reeds close to the shore line.
A small rebellion and a small mercy.
When he did touch ground again it was full day. The looks he got from the few members of the March that had seen the ease with which he had destroyed the ships and the totally foreign method, were -- calculating. Calculating and peculiar, as if he had proved to be a creature completely different than what they had first assumed. They made way for him, whispering at the flurry of lesser elementals that still flocked about him, drawn by the aura of power he had exuded. The nomad shamans hissed at him and made signs against evil. They spat on the ground that he walked and called him an unbeliever and a foreign devil. He'd heard both terms applied to himself before, but not with signs of witchery to back them up. Where the Black March were silent apparitions of hidden power, these native wizards were impassioned fanatics, who had no fear of death or the sense to back down from a greater sorcerer. He wondered if Ramlah would take offense if he killed one of them? The discourtesies they afforded him were beginning to wear thin.
By the time evening approached, Kall-Su was sickened. No matter what atrocities he had participated in within the tangled skein of his past, he found he had little stomach for the brutalities that took place in the dusty, crumbled remains of the city now. There was a hate working here that he did not understand. He thought perhaps that the inhabitants of this were of a different faith than the nomads. He heard enough vile desacrations of the victim's beliefs before they were killed. He could not imagine Ramlah shared the same faith -- the time frame was too far removed. With the March it was ethnic. The people here hailed from some place or people that had been at odds at one time with the powers that had summoned the March. Or perhaps they were just different. Perhaps their ancestors had never been at odds at all with Ramlah's people. Perhaps they were simply not of Ramlah's origin and therefore deserved to die.
Kall-Su didn't ask and no one offered the information. The hoarse screams of women being raped and eviscerated, of men burned while they still lived, of children skinned by both magic and mundane methods -- all of it made him seek solitude elsewhere. It made him wish that Lily was far far distant from this river and this madness. He'd rather the desert swallow him and the Black March up, before they ever journeyed close to where she might be.
One of them found him in the deepening dusk at the edge of the city, where stone buildings had been reduced to nothing more than dust and sand. One of the silent members of the March who never removed his armor and helm as some of the more human of them did.
"Ramlah." One word spoken. The creature waited ominously while Kall-Su collected himself enough to follow. He'd not found himself in Ramlah's presence in many days. Had avoided it meticulously. Ramlah had let him. Ramlah wanted him now and he clenched and unclenched his fists on the walk towards the interior of the city where Ramlah had set up his base camp.
The fires burned bright around the master of the march's conquered domain. The screams had worn down to nothing but the sound of flesh crackling in the flames. The city smelled of blood and cooked meat. The sand and dust absorbed the former, the later would cling for days yet. There was a building still mostly standing. That was where he was directed. In the outer chamber some of the March loitered. There were bodies there among them, being used in various ways. Whether they still lived Kall did not know. He focused his gaze away from their activities, through the beaded curtain that partially hid the inner chamber.
Ramlah was there. Reclined in a pillow laden chair, with a young boy at his feet holding a decanter of wine. Ramlah held a goblet in his one hand, the other idly twined in the boys dark hair. One of the nomad younglings. Kall had seen him among the growing following of the Black March. The boy looked pleased with the stature of serving personally the master of the March. It was no doubt a great honor to serve Ramlah's wine and whatever else Ramlah might wish. There were others. Dark, faceless minions of the March, a few of the robed nomads. A handful of the wild eyed shamans. They were speaking of the slaughter. Speaking of the righteousness of the act, of the glory of it. Ramlah sat in silence while his mortal minions discussed the day's events. They spoke of other places where the unfaithful or the unjust or the foreign, dwelled. A great swell of humanity, it seemed dwelled along the shores of this river. Countless bodies to fuel the fires of their individual hates.
They hesitated in their conversation upon his entrance, a dozen pairs of dark eyes turned his way. The outsider among them. The anomaly that Ramlah had chosen to make serve him rather than destroy as he destroyed the other alien things they encountered. He paused in the beaded doorway, trailing strands colorful glass suspended over his shoulder, snared by their hostile silence and their harsh stares. The approval of Ramlah's mortal minions meant nothing to him. He ignored them. It was harder to ignore the March, for the power beaded upon their aura's like water upon a sweating goblet. But still, they did not frighten him. Not singly, at any rate. Ramlah made his nerves twine. Ramlah's assessing stare made him want to turn tail and retreat. Ramlah wanted things of him other than the ordinary obedience of a vassal to lord.
"You wished my presence?" he bowed slightly, a showing of respect, avoiding Ramlah's eyes, avoiding looking at the boy, who looked smug and hateful. He had to say something in the midst of the silence. He kept his voice neutrally cold. He did not want to be here. He most dearly did not.
"I did." Ramlah drawled. "I have heard you performed great foreign magics on the river."
"It was your order." Kall responded flatly.
There was a murmur of conversation from the nomads and shamans. Ramlah lifted a hand and the casual gesture gained him silence and the rapt attention of his followers.
"Yes." He purred in agreement. "The harshness of the desert drained you of your powers. Does this lush and fertile strip of land bring them back?"
"It -- it is more beneficial to my methods, yes." Kall agreed slowly, warily.
"The Nile givith life, does it not? Yet her great depths of water stifle the power of the desert. She does not stifle you, does she? She fuels you. Will you seek to break your vow to me now that your magics have swollen with the power of the Nile, Sahir bil-Jaleed? Do you think you can?"
"No." Kall -Su said softly, disliking the malice in Ramlah's tone, disliking that he brought up the possibility of such a challenge to his authority in the presence of his minions, both mortal and immortal. The cruel jest in his eyes that reminded Kall of a cat torturing its much smaller prey before it tore off its head. It was a test of some sort, to see how well Kall had learned the dangers of showing him disrespect. He had not forgotten, it seemed, the loss of face at that first nomad camp they had stopped at.
"No?" A dark brow lifted.
"No -- my lord. I do not believe, even now, that I can break with you."
"Come closer." Ramlah lazily lifted a hand and beckoned. Kall drew a breath and stepped forward. Close enough to touch. Close enough to feel the electric pulse of power that always seemed to exude from Ramlah.
"Have you changed your mind?"
The fingers drifted up the side of his arm. The touch made his stomach clench. Ramlah's lazy smile did. Repulsive. The master of the March was high on the slaughter. The passing of so many souls had made him sanguine and hungry. He'd seen Schneider that way sometimes, after a victory, drunk almost off of the magic and the atmosphere and a bloodlust quenched. Kall blinked in shock, unprepared under the eyes of so many, to have that question posed him.
"No --- my lord. Have you?" He answered quietly, fighting to keep himself from stepping back out of reach.
"Perhaps." Ramlah said softly, he rubbed the back of his knuckles across his closely bearded chin in thought. "Perhaps honor has no meaning to those not of the People. Perhaps your presence in this land is an abomination. Perhaps the thought of taking your white body is wicked. Do you think it wicked little Imil?" he asked of the boy.
"He's a foreign devil, oh lord. Wicked. Wicked."
"Yes, wicked. But who shall judge me?"
"None shall judge you, mighty Ramlah." One of the shaman's cried. "Unbelievers are nothing in the eyes of the people."
"Rid the world of them all." One of the more rabid of the shaman darted in and hissed at Kall-Su. He lifted his chin and stared emotionlessly down at that dark, sun creased face. Ramlah laughed and shooed the man away.
"The Sahir Bil-jaheed denies me and will cry that honor is befouled if I choose to force the issue." Casually said.
"Kill the creature." A shaman screeched.
"Sit him among the fires that blackens the flesh of the other unbelievers." Another suggested. They gathered closer around him. He did not want them close at his back, but he dared not turn away from Ramlah. Dared not have that threat out of his line of sight.
Of a sudden, Ramlah rose, so close that his black robes brushed Kall-Su's legs. Reflexively he began to step back, his personal space sorely violated. Ramlah caught him by the lapel before he could, and drew him forward.
"I prefer your flesh not to be blackened and crisped. It would hinder my usage of you." A very soft whisper against his ear. Kall took a breath and found it lodged in his throat. He felt light headed and didn't know if it was from fear or magic's making.
"Not," he said quietly, absolutely certain it was true. "While I am alive."
"What?" Ramlah lifted an amused black brow. "Will you abandon your woman, then? Leave her to the whim of fate -- or me -- because your ego will now allow you to bend?"
Shock that Ramlah spoke of the fear that ate at the depths of his heart. Shock that Ramlah was right -- that for a moment, for pride's sake -- he would have forgotten Lily to protect himself. He blinked and took a step backwards, breaking out of the lax grip on his robes. He shook his head, at a loss for words. Not knowing his own mind in this sudden onslaught of guilt and panic.
Ramlah laughed at him. He waved a dark hand at him in dismissal.
"Flee for now, Sahir bil-Jaleed. I'll find you later when the mood strikes, fear you not."
He did not hesitate. He forced himself to keep a dignified pace, forced himself not to look at the faces as he passed, to ignore the bodies that did not move for him, that he had to veer around or use his weight to shove past. Forced himself to stride through the ante-chamber with nary a look at the other members of the March who were very obviously looking at him. And when he got outside he headed back into the darkness. When he'd cleared the fires, called the air spirits to lift him into the air and take him towards the river, where the air was moist and cool and he could think.
How ironic that the lushness of this strip of river fed lad bolstered his magic and his power and yet with a few words Ramlah stripped the strength from him leaving him shaking. Perhaps it was magic. Perhaps the magic and blood vow that the lord of the Black March had forced upon him had indeed taken root within him somehow. It felt that way. It felt as if he had no control over the apprehension that welled inside him.
Perhaps that was exactly what Ramlah wanted. His uncertainty.
God. DS, why did you have to leave me mired in this alone? He sent a petulant, frustrated spike of concussive energy out of the water. The waves surged and sprayed white foam into the air, then settled back down. If Ramlah persisted in his torments, he did not know if he could endure it. Not again. He wasn't as strong now as he used to be. The Prophet had seen to that. The Prophet had puts cracks in his armor that might never be hammered out. The Prophet had put a fear into him that he had never known before and Ramlah eased his way through the seams of it as if he'd been privy to the making.
Lily, he thought miserably, If I die here -- and it was becoming a more plausible possibility each day -- forgive me. Please forgive me.