The Heart of the Sands, Book 3 of The Gods Within (5 page)

“Aye,” the man said. “The
iron mine is farther up the mountain. The coal feeds the smelters and the
cokers, and together they trade coke and soft iron and pig iron to the clans.”

Rhianne learned that the couple grew vegetables on their
small farm, and traded with the miners for other goods.

The peasant couple
lived in a mud and wattle hut with one cow, several chickens, two pigs, and
their two children: a boy and a girl. The boy looked to be about sixteen, the
girl about fourteen, and while none of the family were well fed, it was obvious
the girl got only what was left after feeding the couple, their son, and their
animals. Daughters were evidently of little value to a peasant family, though
it occurred to Rhianne that even among the clans, daughters were only
considered of value if they could be married off to a rich or powerful family.

The cow was quite ill,
running some sort of fever. Rhianne had never been taught about the healing of
animals, so she must depend almost wholly upon her magic in this. But she didn’t
want word to spread that a powerful witch had taken up residence in the small
village, so she played down the magical aspects of her efforts.

She turned to the
peasant woman. “Your cow is quite ill. Clear the hut so I can work
alone with the animal without interruption. It would be best if you and your
animals took shelter elsewhere.”

“Yes,
milady,” the woman said obediently.

“Wait,”
her husband said. “First, what’s yer price? If it’s
too high I’d do just as well to butcher the animal.”

Rhianne shook her
head. They really couldn’t pay the price of magic, but she had to
charge them something. She had to survive, and she couldn’t afford
the reputation of not demanding fair payment. “Oh,”
she said. “I’ll take a couple of chickens.”

It was an extremely
fair price, considering the value of the cow, but the man’s eyes
narrowed in a calculating way. “I’ll give you one
chicken and me daughter.”

The daughter gasped,
and her mother pleaded, “No!”

That the man would
consider his daughter of less worth than a chicken stunned Rhianne. And if she
took the girl on, she’d have two mouths to feed. The girl started
crying. “Shut up,” her father said, and he raised a
hand to cuff her into silence.

“Hold,”
Rhianne shouted, and the man halted with his hand in the air. “She
belongs to me now, so you’ll not strike her without my permission.”

“Then we’ve
a deal?” the man asked.

Damn!
Rhianne swore inwardly. But she nodded and said, “We have a
deal. Now clear out, all of you.”

The young girl’s
name was Braunye, a stick-thin waif of a child. Late that day Rhianne led her back to Norlakton. The deal she
struck with Fat John was that Braunye’s room and board would not
cost Rhianne extra, and Braunye would sleep on a mat at the foot of her bed.

The poor girl was
terrified of Rhianne, and seemed unable to adopt any expression but eyes wide
and mouth open with fear. She jumped at every word Rhianne spoke, and constantly
trembled like a frightened rabbit.

Rhianne retrieved the
shirt and breeches she’d acquired, took the girl to a stream near
town where Rhianne herself bathed frequently, made the girl strip, and
instructed her to bathe herself. It was then that Rhianne discovered the girl
didn’t know how to bathe, so Rhianne joined her in the icy water
and showed her. Then she told her to wash her clothing, which was little better
than rags, and made her put on the shirt and breeches. Only then did they
return to the inn where they hung her clothes to dry.

Rhianne had a hot
dinner brought up to her room, though it took some coaxing to get Braunye to
eat. But once begun, she gobbled the food down with blinding speed and no
regard for the quantity she ate and the size of her shrunken stomach. Rhianne
stopped her before she made herself sick all over the room.

Later, while Rhianne
lay in bed waiting for sleep, with Braunye curled up in her blanket on the
floor, Rhianne heard the young girl sobbing quietly. “What’s
wrong, Braunye?” Rhianne asked.

The girl jumped at the
sound of her voice, but she didn’t answer.

“Come
now, Braunye. Answer me. Why are you crying?”

The girl spluttered
and sobbed, then in a tearful voice said, “Please don’t
eat me. I’m not more than skin and bones anyway. Please.”

“Oh dear!”
Rhianne sighed. “Very well, Braunye. I won’t eat you.
You can be my servant instead. How does that sound?”

“Oh thank
you, milady. Thank you.”

The room grew quiet
with the end of Braunye’s tears, and Rhianne hungered for a
dreamless sleep. Her dreams were normal, and like most dreams, strange and
inexplicable, but the sword hovered ever in the background. It wanted something
from her, wanted it desperately, and like an infant it constantly cried and
begged for her to satisfy it. But like that same infant, it didn’t
know how to tell her what it wanted. After such a night she would climb out of
bed exhausted, and struggle through the day yawning and nodding off here and
there.

~~~

Morgin dreamt of
water touching his lips, washing away the thirst and the heat. And he dreamt of
the Benesh’ere giants, lifting him, carrying him away to a place
of tree-lined groves and large, pavilion-like tents. He dreamt that someone
forced him to eat foul tasting herbs, to drink warm, meaty broth, and water
with the chill of winter to it. And then he snapped awake and realized it wasn’t
a dream, that Harriok’s people must have found them.

The sun had just
risen, and when he sat up he found that the leather debt-ring about his neck
had been tied to a stake in the ground by a length of rope. In every direction,
for as far as the eye could see, small Benesh’ere tents dotted the
dunes, with the occasional large pavilion nestled among them.

He stood with great
care, testing each muscle before putting it to use, though he discovered the
rope was much too short to stand fully erect. He felt reasonably good, a little
wobbly at the knees, but otherwise in relatively good shape. Twice now, that
oven of sand had tried to take his life.

A bandage covered the
claw marks on the back of his shoulder. He sat down in the shade of the lean-to
and tried to peel back an edge to get a look at the wound, but it was too far
back to see anything clearly.

“Now
leave that alone,” a young girl snapped at him. He looked up,
found her standing over him holding a tray, noticed that, like him, she wore a
leather debt-ring braided about her neck, though her skin was the white of the
Benesh’ere and she wore one of those broad-brimmed straw hats with
the hood thrown back. She couldn’t be more than sixteen, though if
he’d been standing she’d stand as tall as him.

“Feels
nearly healed to me,” he said.

She answered him with
a sneer, put the tray down on the sand nearby, lifted a knife off the tray,
stood behind him and began cutting away the bandage. Her hands were not gentle.

“Who are
you?” he asked.

“My name
is Yim,” she said, “And yes, it is nearly healed. I
think you can do without a bandage now.”

Morgin looked over his
shoulder at her face. “How is Harriok?” he asked.

Her eyes darkened. “Lord
Harriok,” she corrected him, “is very ill. You were
lucky. You were not touched by the sixth claw.” She frowned for a
moment and looked at the wound on the back of his shoulder carefully. “There
is a sixth mark here.” She probed at it, but it was numb to her
touch. “But it’s long since healed, an old scar. No,
you were not touched by that claw.”

Morgin had been
touched by the sixth claw; of that he was almost certain. The sixth wound had
been open and fresh the morning after Shebasha’s attack. But all he
said now was, “Will he live?”

She shook her head. “We
don’t know. He should be dead by now.”

She lifted a cup of
steaming liquid off the tray and handed it to him. “Drink this,
and you look strong enough for food. Let me see what I can find.” She
picked up her tray. “And Lord Harriok’s father,
Jerst, will want to question you.” The girl turned and walked away
before Morgin could protest.

Jerst! Morgin
struggled to remember where he’d heard that name before. How many
times had he seen Benesh’ere in this life? His memories were all
confused with those of Morddon in the far past. But then he had it: Jerst was
warmaster of the Benesh’ere, and Morgin had insulted him and his
hot-blooded daughter Blesset shortly before the battle at Csairne Glen, and
Jerst had sworn that when next they met, he’d kill Morgin.

Morgin began fumbling
at the knot connecting the rope to the debt-ring about his neck, but as he did
so a shadow blocked the ever-bright sunlight. Blesset stood over him with her
hands on her hips. “Go ahead,” she said calmly. “Untie
the knot. Free yourself. And you’ll also free me to kill you here
and now.”

Morgin knew he could
not match the fighting prowess of a Benesh’ere warrior, male or
female. And for some reason the debt-ring stopped her from killing him, so he
carefully lowered his hands from the knot.

“At least
you’re not stupid,” she said. “It is
fortuitous the sands have chosen to put you in our hands. My only sorrow is
that you owe my brother a debt, so I cannot kill you until it’s
repaid. But that time will come, Elhiyne. Either he’ll heal, and
grant me permission to kill you, or he’ll die, and his wife will
inherit your debt and she’ll gladly allow it. Yes, that time will
come.”

Chapter 4: The Jest of a Name

The oasis was a large
strip of fertile land somewhere near the western edge of the Munjarro. Sand
still covered almost everything, but the oasis contained a large lagoon with
open water, and a great many shrubs and trees with broad-bladed leaves that
cast shadows everywhere. Hundreds of the white-faced giants moved about, with
quite a number of tents both large and small pitched among the trees.

Harriok had told
Morgin that out on the sands the tribe broke up into smaller clans and family
units. But each year, with the coming of spring, they all converged on Aelldie
and waited there until the last had arrived.

Word had spread that
Morgin was to be mistreated by everyone. Whitefaces passing by spat on him, or
kicked sand at him. As the morning
progressed the mistreatment ratcheted up a notch; they not only spat on him,
but occasionally gave him a healthy kick, though the punishment never grew to
the point of serious harm. By nightfall his body felt as if it had become one giant bruise.

As the sun set the
camp filled with the smells of cooking, and while the Benesh’ere
ate, Morgin sat alone and the torment abated. Then, for a while, many of them
congregated around several of the fires where they talked in low tones, until
one by one they retreated to their tents and the camp grew quiet. Yim brought him
a bowl of table scraps and a blanket. “Thank you,” he
said gratefully.

“Don’t
thank me,” she snapped. “If it were up to me I’d
cut your throat myself. But Lord Jerst wants you healthy so he can kill you
himself.”

“Why
doesn’t he just kill me now? I’m here for the
killing.”

She frowned at him as
if she thought him an idiot. “Why, that would dishonor him. You
have to repay the debt first.” She turned her back on him and
walked away.

Morgin sat on the
ground and wrapped the blanket tightly around his shoulders. He gnawed on the
table scraps and tried to clean every last bit of meat from the bones. He could
easily untie his leash, but where would he go? Aelldie lay too deep in the
Munjarro, and without the Benesh’ere to help him he would quickly
die.

As the last of the
whitefaces disappeared into their tents, the camp and the night grew quiet and still. Morgin sat on the ground
and watched the glowing embers of the many cooking fires slowly die, and he
tried to understand how he’d come to this. It seemed ironic to
have gone from guttersnipe, to prince, to outlaw, to debtor, and now a man
under sentence of death.

The night was warm,
the air still and the camp silent. But in the distance Morgin noticed three men
walking his way, weaving their way among the tents. He could tell by their
relative heights that one was not Benesh’ere. Only when they were
within a short stone’s throw did Morgin realize the shorter man
was Val accompanied by two Benesh’ere warriors. “Val!”
he called. He jumped to his feet, was jerked painfully to a halt by his leash
and forced to remain in a crouch.

The two warriors
walked on either side of Val, watching him closely as if guarding him. Val
approached warily, stopped about five paces away and said, “I dare
not come closer. Jerst is allowing me to speak to you only because I told him I
have very bad news for you. Rhianne is dead.”

It took Morgin a
moment to hear Val’s words, to let them punch a hole in his heart.

“No,”
he pleaded. “It can’t be.”

Val continued. “She
rode out of Durin following you. She went after you in some misguided hope of
helping you, or saving you, or something. She rode out ahead of the skree, and
they caught up with her before they got to you. They left nothing for us to
bury.”

Morgin’s
heart lurched, and as his eyes welled with tears he closed them and sat down in
the sand. He pictured once again what the skree had left of the old mare, just
a smear of blood on the grass of a field. They would have left nothing more of
his beautiful Rhianne, just another smear of blood on the grass of another
field. He recalled again the night she’d kissed him in the stables
what seemed an eternity ago, and the way that untamed lock of hair always
escaped the tangle of tresses atop her head. That kiss, the only truly
passionate moment they’d ever shared, that kiss had held such a
promise of happiness for them, a promise that now would never be fulfilled.

With tears streaming
down his cheeks, he opened his eyes and said, “I’m
going to kill Valso. I’m going to kill him with my bare hands.”

Val said, “I
would enjoy helping you.”

Morgin didn’t
want to think of Rhianne, not with Val and two Benesh’ere looking
on to watch him cry. He asked, “What are you doing here?”

“Once all
of Decouix had your scent they left us alone. We took Tulellcoe south to
Yestmark where Cort has some friends. When he was doing better she and he
decided to take up residence near a pretty lake, and since I was close to the
Munjarro I thought I’d come and see some old whiteface friends.”

Val held up his hands,
and Morgin finally saw that his wrists were tied together by a length of rope. “Apparently,
anyone who was with you the night you insulted Jerst is guilty by association.”

“Enough,”
one of the Benesh’ere guards growled. “Jerst said you
could give him the bad news about his wife. You’ve done so. Now
end it.”

Still holding his tied
wrists out, Val said, “I do hope you can mend the situation with
Jerst.”

Morgin watched the two
warriors lead Val off toward the center of camp. Rhianne had died because of
him, and it appeared that Val would soon die because of him as well.

Morgin lay down on the
sand and pulled his blanket tightly about his shoulders. He’d
learned that nights on the desert took on a decided chill, though this night it was the chill in his heart that kept him
awake.

~~~

Brandon stood on the parapets of Elhiyne and watched
Olivia and her retinue approach the castle. Morgin dead! Rhianne dead! Olivia
had sent riders ahead with the news, which by now had spread throughout the
valley.

Standing beside him, NickoLot said, “I don’t
believe he’s dead. He can’t be dead.”

Brandon turned and looked at her carefully. In her late
teens, of marriageable age, she was still a tiny thing, stood barely chest high
to Brandon; and rail thin, she was light as a feather. But she’d
gone to wierding after Valso and his Kulls had occupied Elhiyne and the
Tulalane had tried to rape her. She’d taken to wearing only black,
and always obscured the features of her face in the shadows of a dark veil. It
was a lovely face, almost childish—until one looked deeply into
her eyes, and there, one might glimpse the power within her soul, a frightening
thing at best. In the last two years she had grown from a middling witch, to
one of the most powerful in the clan, rivaling even AnnaRail and Olivia in that
respect.

Brandon asked. “What about Rhianne?”

She didn’t move; just stood there staring out
at the train of horses and carts and carriages. “No, nor her. They
can’t be dead.”

“But grandmother wrote that, even with
AnnaRail’s help, she can find no trace of their souls in mortal
life.”

She didn’t answer him, but stood there
silently staring out over the distant fields.

“Nicki, answer me, please.”

She turned to look at him, and beneath the veil he caught
a glimpse of her eyes and had to look away. “I don’t
care what grandmother thinks. I don’t believe they’re
dead.” She turned away from him and began walking.

“Nicki, wait. Please.”

She stopped and turned to face him.

As much as Morgin and Rhianne’s deaths hurt
them all, he feared Nicki would harm herself further by living in denial. “I’m
sorry, but they are dead. You have to accept it.”

She stared at him for the longest moment, didn’t
acknowledge his words in any way. Then she turned and walked away.

~~~

Morgin opened his
eyes slowly, but lay there without moving, for something arcane had awakened
him. The sun had yet to rise, but a hint of light in the sky told him dawn waited just over the horizon. He sensed
netherlife hovering close at hand. He closed his eyes again, listened to the
stillness about him, heard the sound of someone shifting his weight nearby.

Morgin rolled over
quickly, fearing one of the whitefaces had decided to give him a kick. He rose
into a crouch, ready to defend himself, found one of them sitting with his legs
crossed a few paces away, staring silently at him.

Like most Benesh’ere
men and women, the fellow wore loose-fitting, sand-colored breeches made of a
coarse cloth and tucked into knee-high or calf-length boots. He also wore a
knee-length robe made of the same material, gathered at the waist with a belt
of intricately woven cord and strips of leather, a hood thrown over his head,
formed into that triangular tent-like affair by the broad brimmed hat made of
woven straw.

The fellow threw the
hood back, then removed the hat and laid it to one side in the sand; now Morgin
could see that he was quite old. His hair had long since turned a white to
match that of his skin, and while the top of his head was bald and shiny, a
thick mane of it still grew out of the sides and back of his head to cascade
down over his shoulders. His face remained expressionless, his eyes boring
silently into Morgin’s soul.

Morgin took a seat
facing him, waiting for him to speak, but the old man seemed content to just
sit and stare. Finally, Morgin’s impatience got the better of him.
“What do you want?”

Slowly, a smile formed
on the old man’s lips, but still he did not speak.

Morgin looked straight
into his eyes, refused to be intimidated by his damn stare. “What
do you want, old man?”

The old man nodded, as
if he’d seen something, or come to some decision. He spoke slowly.
“My name is not
old man
; it is Toke, and I’ve come to see
if you can see.”

Morgin shrugged,
couldn’t put the feeling aside there was something magical here. “Well
I’m not blind, if that’s what you mean.”

The old man’s
smile broadened. “We’re all blind in one way or
another, boy. I find you interesting because you see all, and yet you see
nothing.”

Morgin had once
threatened to kill Tulellcoe if his uncle again called him “boy.”
But to this old man everyone was probably a child.

“I
brought a friend,” Toke said. “It’s
curious about you.” He looked to one side as if someone sat next
to him. “Aren’t you, old friend?”

Morgin saw nothing
there, but his instincts told him to look closely, and for just an instant he
caught the telltale shimmer of a netherdemon holding contact with this world,
and he understood then why his sense of magic had been aroused. “You’re
a sorcerer then?” Morgin asked.

Toke frowned. “Ah,
what I would give to taste true power. But alas! No, in that I am blind.”

The demon hovering
near Toke’s shoulder gave off a familiar nether scent. “But
you’ve summoned life from the netherworld.”

Toke shook his head. “No.
The
namegiver
is an old friend of mine, and often seeks me out.”

“The
namegiver
?”
Morgin asked. “You mean ElkenSkul?”

Toke turned to the
demon. “He remembers you, friend.” He cocked his head
slightly as if listening to something, then nodded. “Yes,”
he said to the demon. “He is, but he’ll learn.”

Again, Toke appeared
to listen to something. He laughed softly for a moment and asked, “Really?”
Then he reached down, and with the palm of his hand he smoothed over a small
area of sand. A moment later the demon scratched something in the sand. Morgin
craned his neck and tried to see what the demon wrote, but his leash wouldn’t
allow that, and dawn was still too
far off, and the light too dim for him to see the marks clearly.

When the demon
finished Toke looked carefully at what it had written, then threw back his head
and cried out with laughter. “Oh that is good,
namegiver
. That is
a wonderful joke. Truly wonderful!”

Sitting on the sand,
Morgin couldn’t see the
namegiver’s
scratchings. He climbed to his feet, leaned out
to the maximum extent his leash would allow, peered down at the small area of
sand where the demon had written its message. As the sun broke over the flat
horizon of the desert he saw that the demon had scratched the symbol of the
sunset king with the two crossed lines beneath it. It had added the two extra
lines that made it appear to be Aethon’s name with crossed swords
beneath it, the extra lines no one but Morgin had seen.

As a young boy he’d
put those extra lines out of his thoughts, put them away and forgotten them,
thought of them rarely, if at all. How would he have explained to Olivia what
he’d seen and she hadn’t? Attempting to do so would
only have focused her attention on him even more. Perhaps this old man could
tell him what those extra lines meant, tell him his real name.

Morgin sat down at the
limit of his leash. “Why do you find my name so funny?”

“I don’t
find it funny.”

“But the
demon wrote it in the sand, and you just laughed at it.”

“But I
wasn’t laughing at your name.”

“Then
what were you laughing at?”

Toke smiled mischievously.
“It likes to play jokes, especially on demanding old women who
summon it with so much arrogance.”

Morgin recognized the
reference to Olivia. “What kind of jokes?”

Toke’s
smile broadened until it split his face, and his eyes glinted with mischief. “It
likes to mislead.”

Morgin shook his head
angrily. “It tells lies then? But I thought it couldn’t
lie about a name.”

Toke nodded his
agreement and turned to the demon. “Did you hear that, friend? He
thinks the only way to deceive is to lie outright.” Toke listened
for a moment, as if the demon spoke to him, then he threw his head back and
laughed uproariously. “Yes. But we’re all stupid that
way.”