Sands (Sharani Series Book 1) (8 page)

That night she died.

The pressure is taking its toll. My bones ache, eyes droop. I feel that the clans are beginning to understand that there will be no escape from this. They begin to understand the enormity of my task. And I am coming to accept it, as well. I will continue, for there is no other cause left to me, but I know now that I may be proceeding in vain.

-From the Journals of Elyana

Lhaurel woke with stiff muscles screaming protest at the abuse. She stretched to ease some of the soreness and rolled over, unsettling the thin wool blanket she’d found in the room they’d given her.

“You know, you talk in your sleep.”

Lhaurel jumped, head swiveling toward the voice. Kaiden stood just inside the doorway, leaning against the red sandstone wall, sword belted at his waist.

Lhaurel grabbed the blanket and pulled it up to her chin. He’d seen her in her smallclothes before, but this was different. This was her
room.
After the events of the previous day, she’d been given her own room to sleep in, which was far preferable to the eyrie floor.

“It’s polite to knock.”

Kaiden laughed. “I tried that, but you didn’t hear me, obviously. Get dressed. Makin Qays wants Tieran and I to take you out today.”

“Who?”

“You’ll meet them soon enough.” His smile said he was enjoying her discomfort.

Infuriating man.

“Wait for me outside, please,” Lhaurel said, with a pointed look at the door.

Kaiden laughed again but did as she asked.

Lhaurel dressed quickly, wishing she’d had time to get her clothes cleaned. They still smelled of aevian and sweat, an extremely pungent combination. After fastening the last button, curiosity trumping her soreness, she opened the door and stepped out into sunlight.

The room was almost as large as the eyrie but open to the sky in the center with a far more utilitarian purpose. Dozens of smaller caverns opened up along the walls at floor level. Above each of these smaller caverns ran a ledge that spiraled upward to form rows and rows of interconnecting tiers that ran up to the large, irregularly-shaped hole in the ceiling. There must have been over a hundred rooms and a dozen other passages, the former marked by thick wooden doors or curtains. Between the openings were etchings on the walls, faded and worn, that had tugged at Lhaurel’s memory when they’d brought her up here.

There was an overwhelming vastness to it that left Lhaurel in awe. She could have fit the entire Sidena clan three times over within them. It spoke of something ancient and powerful, something that predated the world that she currently walked.

“You ready, then?” Kaiden asked.

Lhaurel nodded and followed him around the ledge and down the ramp to the main floor. She only saw a few people busying themselves around the room. A pair of women was spinning yarn from a basket of raw wool very near the end of the ramp, whispering to each other and pointedly ignoring everything around them. She noted the lack of
shufari
curiously since she hadn’t bothered to find herself a new one. A handful of men sparred in a large ring marked in the stone near the middle of the chamber, swords ringing faintly as they came together. Looking closer, Lhaurel realized that one of the combatants was, in fact, a woman. Not just any woman, either.

“Is that—?” she began, but Kaiden, following her gaze, interrupted her before she could finish.

“That’s Khari, yes,” Kaiden said. “One of the finest swordsmen we have in the Roterralar, and a mystic, too.”

“Mystic?”

Kaiden chuckled and gestured for her to turn down a side passage leading away from the greatroom. “You’ll find out soon enough, I’m sure.”

Lhaurel bit off a response, annoyed with the vague answer, but let it go. She most likely would find out eventually. They were letting her be a part of the clan when they could have just as easily left her to die in the Oasis. She could give them a little more time, even if they
had
tried to trick her into escaping.

They turned down another passage, one that seemed vaguely familiar.

“Where are we going?”

“The eyrie.”

Lhaurel smiled, picking up her pace as recognition dawned on her. At the end of the passage, she turned right, passing Kaiden and pushing the door open. The familiar smells and sights of the eyrie greeted her, and a chorus of aevian voices sounded recognition. There was a soft thump of wings, and the fledgling dropped onto the sand near her, chirping softly.

“How are you, boy?” Lhaurel asked, reaching up to gently stroke the aevian’s beak. He chirped again and then scuttled away.

Aevians cried and chirped above and around them. A group of younger women were at work near them, butchering sailfin carcasses. Lhaurel wrinkled her nose against the smell of rust and mildew.

Kaiden walked up beside her, taking her arm in a firm grip and tugging her toward the eyrie’s cavernous opening. Lhaurel pulled her arm free but continued to walk alongside him.

Lhaurel looked in the direction they were heading and noticed Tieran putting harnesses on a pair of aevians. She recognized one of them. Kaiden’s aevian, Skree-lar, scratched at the rock with one foot, adjusting his wings around the harness and saddle Tieran had just put on his back. The other was probably Tieran’s. It was larger than Skree-lar and had a deep sandy-white coloring.

Tieran noticed their approach and gave a mock little bow. “Ah now, a pretty smile for a pretty face,” Tieran said, noticing her slow smile.

Lhaurel let the smile slip slightly, becoming a mere shadow of a grin. “Where’s mine?”

“Come on, little miss. I think we can find you something far softer to sit on.” His grin widened as if he’d said something funny.

“You’ll ride with me, Lhaurel,” Kaiden said brusquely. He pulled a pair of harnesses from a bin off to one side. Tieran chuckled and gave Lhaurel a wink before going over to the bin and pulling out a harness for himself.

Kaiden handed Lhaurel one of the harnesses and showed her how to put it on. Lhaurel had seen several of the other warriors putting harnesses on in the weeks she’d been in the eyrie on her own, but she hadn’t paid close enough attention to know where all the straps and buckles went. Kaiden had to reach out and correct her several times.

When the harness was finally attached to Kaiden’s satisfaction, and with many side comments from Tieran, which Lhaurel mostly ignored, Kaiden gave a low whistle, and Skree-lar lowered himself to the ground. Kaiden vaulted up onto the creature’s back and affixed two leads to the thick saddle there before turning back to Lhaurel and offering her a hand.

Tieran mounted his own aevian.

Lhaurel licked her lips. The last flight on Skree-lar’s back had been exhilarating. It was an experience she desperately wanted to repeat. But it had also ended very badly. She wasn’t sure she wholly trusted any of the Roterralar yet, and being up in the air would leave her little options.

“Are you coming or not?” Kaiden asked.

“Maybe she’d be more comfortable over here with me,” Tieran said with a laugh. “Maybe you scared her last time.”

Kaiden rolled his eyes.

Lhaurel hesitated a moment and then accepted Kaiden’s hand, allowing him to pull her up behind him. He attached several of her leads to the saddle and then nodded to her. Lhaurel took a deep breath and wrapped an arm around his waist.

Flying was every bit as wonderful as it had been the first time. The takeoff was terrifying, but the sheer joy of flight quickly overcame the fear. Lhaurel whooped with delight as Skree-lar banked into a strong gust of wind and started to climb higher into the sky.

Tieran, a few spans above them, laughed.

“Where are we going?” Lhaurel shouted into the wind.

Skree-lar’s wings hummed as they pushed them higher.

“You’ll see,” Kaiden shouted back.

Lhaurel groaned inwardly but allowed herself to relax into the joys of flight. Tieran took the lead, turning northward. Lhaurel studied the desert below her as they flew. Dunes of red sand moved across the desert below her, carried by the wind in an endless progression. Every now and then a bit of stoneway would appear to rise out of the sand like a silent testament of a forgotten time. Lhaurel glanced westward to where she could just make out the walls of the Oasis.

Saralhn.

The thought passed through her mind with a weight, dampening the joy of flight like a wet blanket over a fire.

Tieran whistled sharply from above them, and Skree-lar pulled his wings inward, turning into a steep dive. Lhaurel squealed, but the sound was ripped from her throat by the rushing wind. Her eyes watered, and she squeezed them tight. Her grip tightened around Kaiden’s waist in anticipation of what she knew would be coming next. Her stomach heaved when Skree-lar pulled out of the dive and landed on a rocky surface, judging by the sound made by Skree-lar’s talons.

Lhaurel opened her eyes. Recognition rolled over her immediately, her mind going numb. Kaiden unbuckled her harness from the saddle, but Lhaurel barely noticed. The cave-like entrance to the Sidena Warren lay before them. Memories of flashing teeth, pain, and death swam through her mind.

“What are we doing here?” she asked, slipping from Skree-lar’s back before Kaiden had un-hooked himself.

Tieran dropped to the ground near her.

“We’re here to see what the genesauri left behind.”

Lhaurel swallowed and ran her tongue over dry lips.

Kaiden dropped to the ground next to her, sending sand and dust into the air. “Well, come on, then,” he said, striding forward.

Lhaurel followed, letting Tieran come behind. There was evidence of the sailfins’ passing all around them. Little piles and bursts of sand dotted the ground. Lhaurel was careful to avoid those. The passing of a sailfin left loose pockets a person could fall into if not careful. These were old and already mostly filled in, but she wasn’t going to take any chances.

The rock around the cavern’s mouth was scoured as if by long claws, though Lhaurel knew it was made by the passage of hundreds of sailfin spines. She shuddered at the thought of the writhing, swarming, monstrous bodies fighting for entrance into the warren.

They found the first skeleton a few spans into the passageway, metallic ribs glinting in the light filtering in from the cave’s mouth. Only the bones remained, two and half spans from skull to tail. Even the spines were gone.

“They eat each other?”

Tieran grunted from behind her, and Kaiden paused momentarily, looking down at the massive skeleton.

“What do you think they eat when they can’t get Rahuli?”

Lhaurel felt bile rise in the back of her throat. “But wouldn’t they have killed themselves off by now, doing that?”

Tieran chuckled. The lack of humor unnerved her. “They only eat their own if they get injured. It’s the blood. This one probably got cut on a rock or something, which started the frenzy. We’ll find others, I’m sure.”

“Besides,” Kaiden called back from deeper in the caves, “they breed much too quickly for the ones they eat to make much of a difference. There’s another one up here.”

Several ribs were broken on this skeleton, as if something heavy had crashed into it. The broken ends were jagged and stained dark.

They moved on, finding three more skeletons before they even made it out of the main passage. Lhaurel steeled herself when they got to the offshoot. To the left were the hot springs, where she’d bathed before her wedding. A little further down and to the right, the passage opened up into the greatroom. The passage was dark, hiding the beads of nervous sweat on her forehead.

“Go that way, Tieran,” Kaiden said, gesturing to the left. “We’ll go this way to the greatroom. Meet us there when you’re done.”

Tieran nodded, though his expression was bleak. He smiled at Lhaurel as he passed, but it didn’t reach his eyes. His shoulders were slumped, his posture limp.

Kaiden nodded to Lhaurel before turning down the passage on the right. Lhaurel bit her bottom lip and followed.

The greatroom was the picture of chaos and destruction. Lhaurel dropped to her knees only a few feet from where the passage opened up, ignorant of the darkened sand beneath her knees. New holes in the ceiling bathed the room in sunlight, illuminating the broken rock and metallic skeletons of dozens of dead sailfins strewn about the room. Broken baskets, furniture, and pieces of the ceiling lay amidst the dead, like cairns marking mass graves.

There were no human bodies left, not even skeletons. No, Lhaurel knew from how they’d left the hard skeletons of their own behind that there’d be nothing left of any human body. Only blood. Pools of it stained the sand. Splashes of it made the walls look wounded in a hundred different places. It smelled of death, rust, rot, and decay.

Lhaurel tried holding her breath, but she couldn’t force herself to hold in the foul air for very long. Instead, she cupped a hand over her mouth and nose to try and filter the smell. It didn’t help much.

“They were lucky here,” Kaiden said softly. “I was able to warn them in time. Some of the others were hit harder.”

“
This
is lucky?”