The Parched Sea (29 page)

The widow removed a pinch of clay from her pocket and cast it into the breeze, at the same time speaking her incantation. The sound of Sa’ar’s blade striking the tent pole faded to silence, but everyone could see the sheikh swing several more times.

The Mahwai stopped and frowned at Ruha, angrily asking a question that no one could hear. Several of the sheikhs chuckled.

“This is all very funny;” said Didaji, “and I can see why no one was awakened by sounds of struggle. But there is still the matter of sight. Even in the night, the asabis would not be invisible:”

“‘They might be,” Lander said. “Remember the ring I brought to Elah’zad:’

Utaiba brow rose in alarm. “How many of those could they have?”

“Not many,” the Harper replied. “But there are spells that do the same thing for a short time:’

Utaiba looked at Ruha with renewed respect. “Can you do that?” he asked.

“I cannot make people invisible;’ she replied, “but I can conceal them in the darkness:’

The sheikh nodded thoughtfully. “Then I am glad the gods have blessed you with their favor;” he said. “We shall have to make a list of your other talents:’

The comment sent a wave of contentment through Ruha’s veins, and she was surprised at how good it felt to be needed.

Sa’ar interrupted her satisfaction by stepping to her side. “What did you do to-?” The burly sheikh stopped speaking in midsentence, astounded to hear his own voice again.

Ruha chuckled at his astonishment. “I didn’t do anything to you;’ she said. “I did it to the pole you were hitting. It was a spell that absorbs sound from everything within a few feet of its target:’

Flushing with embarrassment, Sa’ar sheathed his scimi

tar and turned to his companions. “What are we waiting for?” he asked, waving at the campsite. “This changes nothing. Let us go to battle:’

“No;’ Lander replied, walking toward one of the Ruwaldi tents. “That’s what the Zhentarim want, so we’d better come up with another plan:’

“What do you mean?” asked Yatagan, a toothless man with a wizened face. In contrast to the abas of the other Bedine, he wore billowing, brightly colored trousers and a loose shirt covered by a green vest.

“The Zhentarim’s leader is trying to be sure that we attack, otherwise he wouldn’t have sent his mercenaries to commit this atrocity,” the Harper explained. “To me, that suggests that he’s picked his ground carefully and prepared a few surprises. I think we’d be wiser to change our plans:’ He peered into a tent and made a disgusted face, then withdrew his head and looked toward the sheikhs. “That’s only a suggestion, of course:’

Utaiba nodded, then said, “There is truth to the Harper’s words. Let us discuss them in my camp:’

“After we send someone to wash and bury the dead,” Yatagan added.

Sa’ar and several others grumbled at the delay, but they were outnumbered and had no choice but to agree to the council. They descended the hill without inviting either Lander or Ruha to join them. It was, the widow realized, a diplomatic omission. With the warriors anxious for battle, it would be better if it appeared that neither she nor Lander were responsible for delaying the fight.

Once the sheikhs were gone, Lander began moving from tent to tent, repeating the peculiar warning that Ruha heard him speak to any dead he encountered. “Dead ones, you will meet N’asr’s denizens everywhere. Remember your gods and keep their faith, or you will suffer as surety as the wicked:’ Ruha followed a few steps behind, peering into the khreimas as Lander spoke to the corpses. The scene was always similar. In the back of the tent was a large gash, apparently cut by the attackers. Six sleeping carpets lay in a rough circle in the center of the tent. At the head of each carpet lay the kuerabiche that had been serving as the warrior’s pillow when he was decapitated. In some of the tents, the six headless corpses had each been dragged into a corner, as if by a greedy dog, and the soft parts of the body had been devoured.

When she could stand looking at the grisly scenes no longer, Ruha took the Harper’s arm and stopped him. “I have seen enough of Yhekal’s work;’ she said. “Why don’t you tell me what it is that you’re doing?”

“The camp of the dead is filled with N’asr’s evil servants. They hunt the spirits of those who lose their faith or those who never had any;” he explained. “So I’m warning the dead to remember their gods. As long as they don’t lose conviction in their gods, they’ll be safe:’

“How do you know all this?”

The Harper flushed, but he did not look away. “My mother worshiped Cyric, who is N’asr to the Bedine;’ the Harper explained. “This is what she learned from her priests:’

“And you really think the dead will remember what you say?” Ruha asked.

Lander shrugged. “I’m not even sure they can hear me;’ he said. “The warning can’t do any harm, though:’

Ruha nodded. “That’s true;’ she said. “Go ahead and finish:’

As the Harper returned to his task, the first of the burial detail arrived. The widow allowed them a few minutes of disgust and outrage, then directed them toward the dead to whom Lander had already spoken.

By the time the Harper had finished his task, At’ar was

two spans above the horizon and the day was already beginning to grow warm. Realizing that neither she nor Lander had eaten anything since last night, Ruha suggested they return to her khreima for breakfast.

As they walked toward Sa’ar’s camp, Lander’s face seemed vacant and weary Recalling the effect that viewing even a few of the tents had had upon her, the widow decided that the Harper might not want to eat. Her own emotions were torn between elation at the feeling of acceptance she had experienced that morning and revulsion at what the Zhentarim had done to the Ruwald.

“Perhaps you’re not hungry” she suggested. “Maybe you would prefer to find someplace to graze our camels:’ Lander smiled gratefully, but he said, “I’m not very hungry, but we should try to eat anyway. If the sheikhs decide to attack after all, it could be a long time before our next meal:’

“You seem to know a lot about fighting battles;’ she observed.

Lander shook his head. “Not any more than any other Harper;” he said. “I think we have more of them in the rest of the world than here in Anauroch:’

“That wouldn’t be hard,” the widow replied. “This is the first true war the Bedine have had since the Scattering:’ Lander’s gaze dropped to the ground. “I’m afraid it won’t be the last. Even if we defeat Yhekal’s army, the Zhentarim will send another.”

The pair reached a gnarled frankincense tree at the base of Sa’ar’s knoll. Before starting up the hill, Lander paused and looked into Ruha’s eyes. “When the next army comes, the Bedine will need your magic as much as they need it now, perhaps even more. Are you sure you want to go to Sembia?”

The widow’s heart sank, and she felt as though the Harper had struck her. “You don’t want me to go to Sembia, do you?” Before he could answer, she turned away and climbed the hill.

Lander scrambled after her. “Wait!”

Ruha ignored him and rushed past a group of astonished warriors, then went into her tent. The Harper’s question had hurt her more than she cared to admit, for she did want to go to Sembia-though now she had a different reason than at first.

Lander rushed into the tent two steps behind her. “Let me finish-“

“Leave me!” the widow snapped, turning away to hide the tears welling in her eyes.

The Harper kneeled at her side and grabbed her shoulders. The touch of his firm grip sent Ruha’s blood racing. She could not stop herself from throwing her arms around his neck and burying her head in his shoulder.

“I didn’t mean that I want you to stay,” he whispered, “only that now there is a place for you with the Bedine. After the war, surety Utaiba or Sa’ar-“

Ruha touched her hand to his lips. “After the war, my place is with you:’

Lander gently pried her arms from his neck, then held her a few inches from his body and stared directly into her eyes. His touch sent waves of passion through her body. Ruha knew then that she had never wanted anything as much as she wanted to fold herself into his embrace.

“And what of your vision? What if I die?”

As he asked his question, a feeling of horror crept over the widow. The vision flashed through her memory again, and she closed her arms around the Harper. Placing her face next to his ear, Ruha reached up and removed her veil. “We cannot know what my vision means, so there is nothing to be gained by thinking of it;’ the widow whispered. “I want to share whatever the future brings you:’

The Harper grabbed her shoulders and held them tightly,

drinking in the nakedness of her face. His hands were trembling, and he seemed on the brink of yielding to the desire burning in his blue eye.

Lander leaned down to kiss her, then someone shuffed into the entrance of the khreima. “Pack your things!” commanded a warrior’s voice. “The sheikhs have decided that it is a bad time to fight:’

Sixteen

The young witch sat in her saddle, impatiently squinting at the cracked ground beneath her camel’s feet. A The sun reflected off the white clay, as blinding and as hot as the merciless goddess herself, and Ruha felt

as though she were sitting in a kiln. Along with rest of the Bedine, she was in the bottom of a tiny mamlahah no more than two miles across. The small, flat-bottomed valley was surrounded by a cluster of low mountains. The canyons running out of the peaks were steep and short, with walls as sheer as ramparts. Within the last century, Kozah had raged mightily in the mountains, and the gorges had poured torrents of water into the mamlahah and created a shallow lake. Over the decades, At’ar had undone her husband’s work, drying up the lake, baking the moisture from the clay-rich soil, and leaving in its place a plain of irregular, alabaster pentagons fired to ceramic hardness. In the middle of the plain sat all that remained of the lake, a muddy pond surrounded by a copse of acacia trees.

The area around the pond was dotted with black scars from Zhentarim cooking fires. Hundreds of shallow pits had been scratched into the hard ground where asabis had dug the holes in which they hid from the punishing heat of the day. In a circle around the pond, at distances ranging from two hundred to three hundred yards, lay the bodies of thirty Zhentarim sentries.

The guards had been killed yesterday by small parties of Bedine warriors using hit-and-run tactics. Twenty or thirty would ride into bow range and launch a volley at a few of the guards, then flee before the Zhentarim could counterattack. Sometimes two or three groups assaulted from different directions at the same time, but they always fled before the enemy could respond in force.

It was the same tactic the Bedine had been using since the destruction of Haushi’s tribe. In daylight hours, the Zhentarim had to camp so their asabis could burrow into the ground and hide from At’ar. During this time, Bedine war parties lurked in a circle around the Zhentarim camp, firing their arrows whenever the opportunity to hit a target arose.

The invaders, handicapped by the necessity to protect their asabis, could not chase the war parties without leaving the sleeping mercenaries vulnerable to an attack by the main body of warriors. If the Zhentarim sent out a smaller patrol to attack a war party, the Bedine simply gathered enough force to wipe it out. The enemy had no choice but to accept the casualties and counterattack at night.

Even that had proven difficult for the invaders. When dusk came, the Bedine mounted and scattered into the desert, camping in small, widely dispersed groups. The Zhentarim could occasionally hunt down and destroy two or three war parties, but then they had to spend all night fighting instead of traveling-which could cause them even more trouble. The invaders had to find fresh pasturage almost daily, for the thousands of camels in their army decimated the foliage around their small campsites within a matter of minutes. In the end, the Zhentarim were left with only two choices: take the casualties inflicted by the war parties, or starve their camels and counterattack. So far, they had chosen to accept the casualties.

Unfortunately, it appeared to Ruha that they were trying a new tactic. Scattered around the muddy oasis were the contorted bodies of dozens of hares, a pack of jackals, and even a pair of ostriches that had come to drink after the Zhentarim departed last night. All of the animals had died within fifty yards of the pond. For the past few minutes, the Bedine army, which had gathered in a large crowd around the pond, had been staring at the scene with a mixture of outrage and disbelief.

As of yet, Lander was the only one who had dismounted. He was kneeling next to a jackal, using his dagger to pry the animal’s mouth open. “This one bit its own tongue in two;’ the Harper said. “I’d say they all died of some sort of seizure:’

“Poison;’ Sa’ar hissed, staring at the bodies of the other dead animals.

For several moments, no one said anything else. The warriors and the sheikhs just stared at the poisoned water, unable to comprehend the malevolence of men who would commit such a profane act.

At last Utaiba said, “It would have been bitter water anyway. Standing ponds always are:’

“Bitter or not, it was an oasis, and it is a blasphemy to foul it;’ said Kabina, Sa’ar’s burly warrior. He pointed toward the mountains. “They shall pay for this atrocity with their blood:’

“Especially the Ju’ur Dai;’ said Sa’ar. “For a Bedine tribe to do this . . :’ The burly sheikh shook his head, unable to find the words to express his outrage. “No punish

ment can be too terrible. Let us find them today!”

A chorus of agreement rose from the throats of hundreds of thirsty warriors, but Lander shook his head. Sheathing his dagger, he approached Utaiba and the other sheikhs, saying, “That’s what the Zhentarim want. In the past three weeks, you’ve killed more than five hundred of them without losing even a hundred Bedine. Yhekal poisoned the well because you’re winning this war. He’s trying to force you into making a mistake. Don’t fall for his ruse:’

Utaiba regarded the Harper thoughtfully, then nodded. “What you say is true-“

“Truth doesn’t put water in our skins,” Sa’ar interrupted. “If Yhekal is trying to push us into action, he has succeeded. Our camels are thirsty and our waterskins are nearly empty. The only oasis within five days of here is on the other side of those mountains:’ The stout sheikh thrust his finger in the same direction that Kabina had pointed earlier. “We cannot reach it without going through the same pass that the Zhentarim are in now. Our only choices are to attack or to return to the last oasis and let the invaders escape:’