Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles Book 2) (14 page)

“You have many mages here?” As the words leave my mouth, I realize how abrupt the question sounds.

Huda shakes her head. “No. In our tribe, we have not had a mage come back to us since Sheikha Noora. She returned to God three summers ago.”

“Come back?” I echo, since it is easier than pulling together my own words.

“When we find a Promise among our children, we keep them with us until the age of seven. Then, when they leave, they are old enough to understand that they must return to their family and tribe. Mages born in the desert always come back to the desert. It is our way.”

Except my father had not. “What if one does not come back?”

Huda considers this. “There was a mage from the lands we will pass through who did not return. Or rather, he came back to say that he could not remain in the desert.” Huda shakes her head, but I cannot tell if it is disgust or merely disapproval. “He loved a— a woman not of the desert. And he wished for power among the mages. So he left. His brother was also a mage, and he married as he was meant to, and lives with his tribe now.”

I cross my arms over my chest, holding myself. There cannot be that many desert mages who married across cultures and moved up the ranks of mages. “What happened to the one who left?”

“He died. We didn’t hear much of that. His family did not mourn him. He was already dead to them.”

“Oh,” I manage. She twists to glance at me, and I quickly drop my hands to my thighs. “What happened to his wife? Children?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. They’re our enemies, after all. We hear what the wind brings us, the stories shared in markets. Once we knew that they would have one less mage amongst them, we did not ask further.”

“Yes,” I agree. It makes sense, of course. But the faint hope I nursed, the possibility of a family that would greet me with pleasure, slips into darkness. Even if my father isn’t the same mage Huda speaks of, he too didn’t return to the desert or marry a desert dweller. He’ll be dead to his family as well. There’s no one here for me.

Huda looks at me a moment longer, as if she holds a question on the tip of her tongue. Then she turns back to watch the camel slowly pick its way through a flow of rocks. Where they are tall enough to throw shadows, it’s almost impossible to see the ground clearly.

It’s odd Huda hasn’t used a glowstone yet. Or is it? Her tribe doesn’t have a mage. Charms must be precious, conserved to last as long as possible.

“Here.” I offer my glowstone to Huda. It brightens with light, a gentle star cocooned in my hand. She exclaims with delight, taking it and quickly fixing it into a leather strap that hangs by her knee. It is the work of a moment to pass the strap around the camel’s neck and fasten it to the other side of the saddle, so the stone shines from the base of the camel’s neck. It casts enough light to ease our passage without creating shadows that might startle the creature.

“Thank you,” she says as she sits back, balanced effortlessly on her knees.

“You do not have?” I ask hesitantly. Surely, they should be able to trade easily for so simple a charm.

“Ours are old. We keep them for when we must use them. They are not half as bright as this! In three months’ time when we travel north to Wadi Qadeema, we will take them to the mage there to strengthen.”

At least I’ve found one thing I can give her to repay some part of her kindness.

We make camp near dawn. The hills have grown steadily higher, the stone they are built upon jutting out at angles here and there, and the valleys slightly more hospitable to growing things — at least as far as I can tell in the moonlight. As we come around the final hill to our destination, a faint, eerie whistling drifts across the hilltops toward us.

I tense, shifting as I try to make out its direction.

“The howling caves,” Huda tells me. “It’s just the wind. Nothing to fear.”

Her explanation doesn’t stop the hair at the back of my neck from prickling. I’ve seen enough strange things in the last day that such a sound is hardly comforting.

Thankfully, Huda leads us in a different direction from the whistling cries to what is clearly a well-established campsite, with a wide, flat area cleared of rocks and stones, two fire pits, and a well off to the side. The well is small but deep, surrounded by a low wall and covered over by a flat, circular stone. I help Huda push it aside and wait as she lowers her leather bucket down, down, down until it grows heavy in her hand and she lifts it out again. We refill the leather water bags, then offer a drink to the camel, who downs three bucketfuls before moving away.

Huda spreads a blanket on the ground for us and, after a quick meal of bread and dates, we lie down to rest. I glance at her, the keening of the wind sounding faintly in my ears. She raises her eyebrows in question. I offer her a faint smile and roll on my side, facing away.

She has no wards. Of course she doesn’t. If magic is so hard to come by as to make glowstones a treasured charm, wards would only be used in the most serious need, and young girls who are merely goatherds may not have access to them at all.

I could use the string of wards I’ve made, but it would hardly stretch around the whole of the blanket. If I removed the beads from their cord, I’d have to adjust the spells, and Huda would learn my secret.

I close my eyes.
I’m being foolish
, I tell myself firmly. Huda would not rest so easily if she feared for our safety, nor would she choose a dangerous camp.

But it still takes me a while to drift off to sleep, the howling of the wind echoing faintly in my ears.

Huda makes a thin flatbread on a curious, upward-curved pan, her newly made fire crackling merrily. I prop myself up on my arm, blinking at her groggily as the bread slaps against the pan. The sun is high in the sky — late morning or early afternoon? I’m a little too muzzy on my directions to be able to tell. I rub my face, look back at Huda.

“We’ll start when you are ready,” she tells me. “It’s cool enough to travel through the afternoon, and our enemies will be resting then. By evening we should have crossed most of their lands.”

I nod, sitting up, and she brings the bread on a platter piled with cheese. We eat quickly, and by the time we’re done, I’ve woken sufficiently to realize she’s allowed us barely three or four hours of sleep. I fold the blankets while Huda stows away the food, and in a matter of minutes we are ready to leave.

Huda guides the camel around the side of the hill we had sheltered against, then stops, studying the desert.

“We leave your lands here?” I hazard. I hadn’t expected us to camp quite so close to enemy territory.

“Yes,” she says, gesturing past the valley before us. “Beyond those hills, our lands end.” With a trace of wryness she adds, “The well we used tonight has changed hands between our tribes a few times.”

“You’re not worried?”

“No,” she assures me, but I can read the tension in her shoulders, the tightness with which she grips the reins.

“We can go a different way,” I suggest, not at all sure the fastest route is the best anymore.

Huda shakes her head and clicks her tongue at the camel. “There is no need for you to worry,” she says, as if that decides it. I study the back of her scarf, wishing I could understand the way her mind works, the way honor works here in the desert. How very strange it seems to hold even a little faith in the honor of your enemies.

“It would be different,” Huda says suddenly, “if we were not just two women traveling together. If we had men with us there would be bloodshed. That’s why I am grateful my milk-brother was away when you stepped forth from the Burnt Lands. He would have insisted on coming, and then if we met with anyone,” she shakes her head. “Someone would surely die.”

“But women are safe?” It seems absurd at best — that the men would kill each other and the women might pass through unscathed.

A slight pause. “Yes,” she says. “And you, as a traveler and guest, are guaranteed safety. For you there is nothing to fear at all.”

We remain vigilant through what’s left of the morning. Huda dismounts to study the tracks we come across, checking how fresh they are. Each time we crest a hill, or pass from one valley to the next, we slow so Huda can scan the land before urging the camel forward again.

But halfway across a wide, scrub-brush valley with nowhere to take cover, Huda tenses. “There.” She nods toward the hills continuing to the north. “A patrol, I think.”

I squint against the early afternoon sun, and make out a line of riders paused at the top of a hill. “They see us,” I say flatly.

“Yes.”

Huda neither stops our camel nor urges her on. We continue at a walk across the valley. The riders, however, press their camels into a run, expertly navigating the rocky hills. As they reach the valley floor, they begin to whoop and shout, their camels lengthening their stride until they seem to fly across the land.

Huda tightens her grip on the reins, turning the camel’s head toward the riders.

“How do they know we are not from their tribe?” I ask, since it’s clear Huda has no intention of running.

“I wear the colors of the women of the Bani Saqr,” she says, her voice tight. “But they will not attack us.”

They sure look like they’re attacking. Perhaps it’s merely a show of strength, but I still reach out with my senses, gathering the burning energy of the sun falling around me, the dry force of the wind. I wish there were something other than sunlight to draw on. I will have to use it with care, transform it into something less deadly.

The riders fan out as they reach us, reining in their mounts to form a semicircle with us at their center. In the resulting quiet, the shuffle and panting of the camels seems unnaturally loud. A grizzled warrior urges his mount forward from their midst. He is tall, broadly built, with thick hands and shrewd eyes. Over his flowing, sand-colored robes he wears a sword strapped to his side. A quiver of arrows rests by his knee, alongside his bow.

“Peace be upon you,” Huda says, her voice clear and carrying. “I guide a traveler to Fidanya. Have you come to add your escort to mine?”

The warrior’s eyes flick from Huda to me, taking in my half-desert features, my foreign dress. His men trade uncertain glances. All except for one, a young man whose cloth
kufiyah
sits slightly askew over his brow and whose grin is even more aslant.

“And upon you, peace,” the warrior returns, his voice deep and not unfriendly. “To assist a traveler is, indeed, a high honor.”

I let my breath out through barely parted lips, easing my hold on my magic but not letting go completely. The men voice their assent, though most don’t look too happy about it. Before me, Huda remains still, only her shoulders relaxing a fraction.

The warrior knees his mount forward, riding along one side of the semicircle toward us. “We cannot all accompany you, I fear. But I shall leave you enough guards that no harm may befall you.” He reaches the end of the line and turns to study his men. “Who will aid these travelers through our land?”

I am hardly surprised when the young man with the crooked grin sets his camel padding forward three steps. “It will be my honor,” he says, his face serious now.

Five other men push their mounts forward almost as one, moving so quickly that I nearly miss the frown that flits over their leader’s face. I don’t catch their words, layered as they are on top of each others’, but I can’t miss the meaning. As two more men come forward, the old warrior raises his hand, “Enough, my brothers. An escort of six men will suffice.”

He dips his head to Huda. “We are grateful that the women of your tribe do not take up arms,” he says, his eyes glinting with — humor? Or respect? “With such bravery as yours, we would surely be driven from our lands.”

Huda inclines her head in response, making me wish I could see her face. But she says only, “I am honored.”

The young man’s grin is back, and more than a few of the other men are smiling as well. Whatever their enmity, they seem to have a good sense of humor.

“I leave you my son, Laith,” the warrior says, gesturing to the young man. “And five more of my finest blades.” He tells us their names, but I barely manage to catch one before we are on to the next. In the end I can only be sure that the man in his thirties who sits beside Laith, with a narrow nose and fine lips, is called Faris the son of someone.