Sands (Sharani Series Book 1) (26 page)

“I’ll teach you to stick your nose where it doesn’t belong,” the soldier said, sending another kick into her side which threw her even further across the sand. “I’ll teach you how to respect a man.”

He kicked her again.

Saralhn blinked rapidly, a vain effort to banish the splotches of blackness that were crossing her vision. She looked up into the faces of the silent crowd around her. She noticed an old woman, face wrinkled and hair as grey as the errant wisp of cloud high above the desert, look down at her with pursed lips. She frowned down at Saralhn as if she were angry at her for even attempting to stand up to a man. It was a face of ingrained tradition and resignation. A defeated face.

Saralhn blinked to clear away the fog. There was something deep within the woman’s eyes. Hope. Shame. Guilt. Pride. So disparate from the expression on the woman’s face.

She glanced over to the next person. A man, yet a young man, clutching the hand of a woman who wore a yellow
shufari
. His expression mirrored hers. Expressions of grim acceptance of a way of life that had always been that way. Condemnation of what she had done and mild indignation. Yet their eyes showed the truth of it. They took pride in what she had done. But they would not help her.

She looked from face to face, marking each expression, looking deeply into all the eyes. They were all the same. Each face bore a mask. Each pair of eyes spoke the truth. Mostly women, but among them were a few younger men. Saralhn felt a mild note of surprise at this, which cut through the pain. She blinked again. Where was the next kick?

Her ears suddenly started working, and she heard a familiar voice filled with iron resolve crack like a whip.

“I said that was enough!”

Saralhn turned and grit her teeth against the pain.

Maryn stood between her and the soldier, short stature suddenly seeming larger. The ends of her purple
shufari
fluttered in the vagrant breeze.

The soldier scowled at her, scar crinkling his eye again. His hands remained in fists, but there was a hesitancy about his movements, as if he were unsure how to handle the older, stern-faced woman.

“Why should I listen to you?” he spat.

“Because, you dolt, I said so. My husband could kill you without breaking a sweat. If you touch her again, you’ll have to move me aside to do it. If you touch me, my husband will kill you. Slowly.”

The soldier seemed to lose some of his bluster. The scowl never left his face, but his fists slowly unclenched. Saralhn coughed and got to her feet, choking off a scream of pain as her ribs creaked and grated against one another. No one offered to help her.

“Fine.” The soldier bent down and picked up his spear. “I’ve wasted enough time on the little wench anyway. Just watch yourself, woman. Next time I’ll just stick my spear in you and be done with it.”

Saralhn didn’t know if he was talking to her or to Maryn, but the older woman responded anyway. “I’d say you’re out of practice with your spear work. It may be a little dull, too. I’d be careful where you try and stick it if a little wisp of a girl can take it from you like that.”

This brought a murmur of noise from the assembled watchers, and the soldier’s face flushed. His knuckles grew white on the haft of his spear, but he simply scowled and walked away, shoving through the crowd with more force than was necessary.

Saralhn sighed and sank down into the sand, clutching her ribs. The crowd dispersed, a low hum of noise accompanying them as they left. The sound was a comfort after the deafening silence.

“Did you even know that girl?” Maryn asked. Her voice sounded weary.

Saralhn looked up at her, blinking, and shook her head. The motion made waves of dizziness wash over her like the cool waters of the salt spring back in the Sidena Warren. The thought made her smile as memories surfaced. Lhaurel would be proud of her.

*              *              *

Inside the walls of the Oasis, Lhaurel walked slowly behind Kaiden, sore muscles protesting the relentless pace. It was dark in the passages, and the sandy floors were slippery. Lhaurel struggled to keep her balance, her arms pinned awkwardly in front of her by metal shackles. She stumbled, but before she lost her balance, she felt a tug on the shackles and she righted. Even in the darkness, the reddish-grey mist surrounded Kaiden each time he pulled her back up.

“Come now, Lhaurel. Quit playing games,” Kaiden said without looking back. “We both know you have better balance than this. I’ve seen you in the training circle, remember?”

She ignored him, though inwardly she cursed the long days spent letting him watch her spar with Khari or simply practice the forms. She’d been a fool to ever start trusting him. Hadn’t he shown his true colors often enough? He had betrayed her to the Sidena, had been the cause of all the pain and suffering she’d experienced among the Roterralar. He’d shown how he would kill mercilessly simply to prove a point. How had she ever trusted him?

She knew it was more than that, but in the face of everything that had come to light, she was too ashamed to dwell on the truth.

Kaiden led her to a dead-end chamber, large and spacious in its expanse, filled with wide pillars carved in dull grey stone. Except, as Lhaurel leaned against one, she realized that it wasn’t stone at all, but pure, solid metal. She noticed, absently, that drying blood pooled in one corner of the room, long smeared streaks leading away toward the entrance. This had to be the place where Kaiden brought those he wanted to kill. A torture chamber of sorts.

Kaiden walked to the center of the room and stood with his arms outstretched, his eyes closed and his head tilted back. His back was to the chamber’s entrance. Behind him, a figure Lhaurel recognized entered the room. Sarial.

“You too, huh? I should have known,” Lhaurel said, despairing.

Sarial grinned down at her with barely masked contempt. “I don’t know why you’re still alive, girl,” she said. “We took care of the other fools who wouldn’t join us.”

“Your own brother? You killed Tieran?” Lhaurel said.

Sarial extended a hand, and white energy crackled along its length. She approached Lhaurel, arm outstretched. “Don’t ever say his name again. I told you to stay away from Kaiden. You didn’t listen. Now you can watch as we bring down the walls and let the genesauri in. You can watch while we destroy the Roterralar and I rule at his side.”

Sarial turned away from Lhaurel, walking to one of the pillars and placing both hands on it.

“It’s time,” Kaiden said. “Freedom awaits.”

Reddish-grey mist surrounded him. An instant later, Sarial was enveloped in a cloud of reddish-white, and crackling energy burst from her fingers to wrap around the metal pillars. Kaiden’s face hardened in concentration, and Sarial started groaning. The energy swirled up the pillar, coming in stronger and stronger waves.

The ground began to shake. Lhaurel curled into a ball as stones were knocked loose from the ceiling, falling to the ground near her.

Kaiden screamed, falling to his knees.

The walls shook and trembled and then, with a sound like thunder multiplied a dozen times over, fell away, tumbling outward in a shower of dust and rock and sand.

My new assistant is missing. Again on the eve of success. The enemy must have spies among the mystics. Maybe she was one of them. I never thought she was trustworthy. I can no longer trust any of them. The enemy is set upon stopping my work—they are afraid of me, as well they should be. My new creations are growing—already triple the size of their older brethren. Tomorrow I will embark on the last of my quests—the final weapon against the enemy. They will pay for what they have done to me. They will suffer for what they have done to Briane. Briane. Even awake now I can hear it. The sound of a girl child screaming.

-From the Journals of Elyana

“You’re saying Taren is in league with the Roterralar and that they are planning to kill us all?” Saralhn asked. The skepticism in her voice was thick and apparent.

Maryn flicked her head to the side and sniffed. “No, I’m saying that Cobb followed Taren into the walls. They’re hollow, and they’re planning to lure the Roterralar here and kill them all. It’s a trap. And it involves us and the genesauri. People are going to die.”

“What can we do about it?”

“They’re holding someone captive up there. Cobb heard them talking. He’s going back up to see what he can do. I’ll go gather the other women, but you need to rally the people here. Get them to believe.”

Saralhn snorted, but a look from Maryn silenced her and made her swallow the words she was about to say. She was serious.

“I’m going in to free the woman. Maybe she can make some sense of all this. You are going to ready the clans. And if you see the Roterralar anywhere, warn them.”

Saralhn blinked in confusion. “Me? But I can’t . . .”

“The woman I just saw had the support of everyone watching. Word of what you did will spread. Strange things are happening. Tradition and law are crumbling to dust and being blown away on the wind. They need someone to look up to.”

“I can’t lead,” Saralhn protested.

Maryn reached out and grabbed a handful of Saralhn’s robes and pulled her forward so that they were only a few inches apart. Saralhn was so startled that she didn’t even struggle.

“I’ll tell you a secret, Saralhn,” Maryn said. “The clans are not ruled by men. The men are figureheads. Their wives are the ones who make sure there is food to be eaten and clothes to be warmed. We women know what it is like to follow. And only by following can we understand the motivation it takes to lead someone. Now stand up.”

Saralhn tripped as Maryn released her and stumbled backward. Pain lanced through her side, and she bent wrong trying to catch herself. Her ribs creaked together. She sucked in a breath and opened her mouth—

The earth shook.

It trembled and rumbled and jerked up and down in a rapid shaking movement that knocked both women to the ground. They bounced and jostled with the rumbling earth. A massive cracking sound rent the air, followed by another, and then an enormous cascading avalanche of falling stone and sand billowed out from one of the Oasis walls right near the main entryway. Between bounces, Saralhn twisted enough to see the cascade tumble outward in a billowing cloud of dust.

A gaping hole over a hundred spans wide lay in in its place. Above the tumultuous noise of falling rock and stone, though, another noise could be heard, one that turned Saralhn’s blood to ice. It was the high-pitched keening of tight flesh against the wind. A cacophonous, intertwining symphony of hundreds upon hundreds of sailfins.

*              *              *

Khari was the first to spot the billowing cloud of dust rising over the Oasis. Her breathing quickened, and sweat broke out on her forehead. Something was terribly wrong. They would not survive this encounter with the genesauri. She knew it with cold certainty. But perhaps some of the clans would survive. At least then the death would be meaningful.

Old age would not be what brought her to the funeral pyre. The thought brought a small smile to her lips.

She whistled sharply, two notes close together, one pitched higher than the other and gestured ahead of her. The message was relayed until all forty warriors could see the rising plume. Above her, at the head of his flight, Makin Qays whistled a sharp command. Fly straight. Kill genesauri. Duty. Goodbye.

Adjusting the grip on her lance, Khari grit her teeth and urged Gwyanth to fly faster.

*              *              *

Lhaurel coughed and spat. The dust filled her nose and wedged into the small spaces between her teeth. No matter how much she spat out, she couldn’t get the salty taste to go away, nor could she escape the stinging in her eyes or the ringing in her ears. Sound returned in bits and pieces, broken rumblings and the silent echoes of what could have once been a conversation but was now simply fragmented words and vague periphery noises.

Someone touched her arm. “Come with me,” Kaiden shouted in her ear, though it sounded like a whisper.

He pulled her to her feet, though she sensed he was unsteady. Lhaurel stumbled after him, unable to do much more than simply follow. Somehow, amidst the twists and turns they followed and the encompassing field of dust and gloom, Lhaurel sensed they were moving upward. Light broke through the gloom as they reached an opening.

Kaiden paused there for a long moment, hands on his knees. Lhaurel thought about trying to make a run for it, but her hands were still bound, and she couldn’t muster the strength. Kaiden pushed her up the ladder after a moment, and Lhaurel hurriedly clambered up, gulping in the clear air. Kaiden moved up behind her and scrambled onto the rocky plateau. He pressed a waterskin into her hands. She drank gratefully as Taren appeared from down below and walked up to the edge.

Her fatigue and the ringing passed from her in a rush. In its wake, feeling and sensations returned. Death reigned below. She passed through the deaths in tandem with those below. She stumbled forward in a sudden wave of dizziness, her eyes drawn downward to the chaos and death below.

No!
Lhaurel dropped to her knees, hands clasped over her mouth in complete and utter horror.

The genesauri poured through the breach in the Oasis walls, descending upon men, women, and children without discrimination. Sailfins dove through the sand in long graceful arcs, dragging souls down to hell with them. Marsaisi skimmed the surface of the sands, flesh nigh impervious to the swords, arrows, and spears launched at their massive bulk. And where the massive genesauri passed, death was left in their wake. And building in the sand came a massive, enormous berm, rolling forward like a giant wave. The karundin. Lhaurel screamed a scream of pure, unadulterated terror.

The Roterralar swooped down through the sky, defending what they could, but the sheer numbers of genesauri were more than they could handle. They didn’t stand a chance. They fell almost as quickly as the other Rahuli. The sounds of death and despair reached them even atop the cliffs.

Kaiden stood atop a broken pinnacle near her, hands clasped behind his back, expression wan, though his gaze was intense.
Unite or die.
The words echoed in Lhaurel’s mind from the council meeting she had spied on. Words that Kaiden had shouted in angry defiance.
We must unite or die.
Then it had sounded like an omen. Now it sounded like what it really was. A threat.

Kaiden’s skin seemed to glitter in the sunlight. It took Lhaurel a long moment to realize that bits of metal showed through his skin like they did on Beryl. The smith had been right. There was a cost for using magic.

A rock skittered across the stone. She reached out, sensing Taren approach even before he spoke.

“All those we would save are away, sir.” Taren came into view, his sword stained red with dripping blood. “We met some resistance in the caves down below, but I took care of it.”

Blood. Blood everywhere. Dripping into the sands from Taren’s sword. Dripping into the sands from the bodies down below. Sands stained red with blood. Blood coursing through Kaiden and Taren’s veins. One a sign of death, the other of life. A blood red sunset, and a crimson sunrise.

The wind whipped up around her, tossing her robes and hair around her thin frame. Taren steadied himself against the gust, though Kaiden ignored it, turning back to the battle below.

Lhaurel felt her heartbeat, sensed the flow of her blood, in and out. Down below people screamed. They died. Spilled blood into the sands. Her heart beat.

Taren grinned and stepped up next to Kaiden at the edge of the plateau. Aevians died. A group of women ceased to exist as a marsaisi fell among them, jaws flashing. Lhaurel felt it. By the seven hells she felt them all! The genesauri, the clans, the people, the aevians, Kaiden, Taren—she could feel all of them. Felt the lifeblood pumping through their veins, felt it being stolen away as they died. She knew it, experienced it with them. She felt their pain. The wind howled.

Her muscles seized up, her back arched, and from her depth a primal, primitive scream ripped from her trembling lips.

*              *              *

Saralhn scrambled to her feet amidst the chaos, pains forgotten beneath layers of terror and pure horror at the death and slaughter around her. The spear she had tripped over skittered across the sand and then came to a rest. Maryn had disappeared, and she absently wondered what had become of her. A woman covered in blood and missing a hand ran in front of her, the dust making her appear wraithlike

A sailfin burst out of the sand. Teeth gleamed.

Terror melted in the face of instinct. Saralhn dove aside and tucked into a roll, coming up with her hands wrapped around the haft of the spear. The sailfin twisted in midair and came at her with a sound that was halfway between a growl and a hiss. Saralhn clutched the spear in sweaty palms and licked her lips. Blood pounded in her ears. Time seemed to slow.

Glistening teeth bristled in front of her. The smell that issued from the creature’s gaping maw was that of death, decay, and rot. Saralhn felt sick. Then the beast was upon her. It slammed into her and took her to the ground. The spear was wrenched from her fingers, and she screamed as a billowing cloud of dust rose into the air around her. Heavy, coiled muscles writhed and twitched above her.

Is this what death feels like?
She had thought there would be more pain involved. Not this surreal sense of detachment. People described death as a cold embrace, but this was far from that. This was hot and dusty and . . .

Still.

It took her a moment to realize the writhing coils above her had stopped moving. The pressure on her chest was simply that of massive weight threatening to flatten her, not the crushing embrace of sailfin jaws. Flailing, she kicked herself free and scrambled to her feet.

A foot of broken wood stuck out of back of the sailfin’s body, piercing the fin and slick with its blood. Its eyes were clouded over in death. Saralhn felt wetness on her cheeks and realized that she was crying, tears of helplessness and fear and a euphoric sense of relief. She didn’t remember killing the beast, but it was dead all the same. It must have rammed itself onto her spear. She had aided its suicide.

Saralhn laughed at the thought, a crazed broken laugh that held little humor in it. But it cut off as quickly as it had begun, and the reality returned to her in the form of another sailfin bursting up and spraying her with earth. A shriek rent the air. For a moment Saralhn thought it was the sound of another sailfin coming from behind her, but then a large bird appeared out of the sky, rider on its back and long spear held out in front of it. The spear pinned the sailfin to the ground as the bird’s rider released the spear, and the bird pulled out of the stunning, majestic dive. The rider saluted her with a raised fist as the bird winged back into the sky.

Saralhn blinked. She knew that face. It was the Roterralar woman, Khari. Lhaurel’s friend.

Saralhn rushed forward and wrenched Khari’s spear free from the dead genesauri, mind racing. Lhaurel was somewhere among them. She hefted the spear. It was light despite its cumbersome length. She had an idea.

*              *              *

Kaiden didn’t even look over his shoulder at the sound of Lhaurel’s scream. His gaze was focused downward on the battle below. Aevians fought and battled genesauri. People screamed and died. Yet the Roterralar fought hard to form a wall of death between the broiling mass of sailfins and the people of the clans. Few escaped the line, but those that did wreaked havoc amongst the unprepared people.

“You’re just going to let them die?” Lhaurel said, crawling up to the edge of the plateau and watching in revulsion as people died, as a part of her died with them.

Kaiden didn’t turn his head. “Those who deserve to live are not here. Those worth saving have been saved. If any survive this fight, then they will have earned their place among the sands. I will give them a world free of genesauri, but they must earn it. They must have the requisite strength to survive the descent of the enemy.”

“But you told me we need more numbers,” she said, mustering everything she could to try and make her voice sound persuasive. “How can you unite them if they are all dead? How can you hope to stave off the genesauri without enough warriors?”

At this, Kaiden did look over, a wry grin on his face. “You know so little. I called the genesauri here. I can drive them away. They are nothing but the crucible within which the dross is consumed. I unite those worthy of being united. After today, there will be no Roterralar and no clans. There will simply be the tribe.”