The Phoenix Endangered (4 page)

T
HEIR TENTS WERE
struck within hours, every trace of their presence here erased. That was the job of the youngest children; a child of the Nalzindar barely old enough to walk was still old enough to drag around a brush of desert grass to sweep the sand smooth, to pick up any of the droppings of the
shotors
that others had overlooked and carry them to the storage baskets. They did not do this only because now they feared pursuit; the Nalzindar had always moved through the world as if they were the wind upon the sand, taking only what they needed to survive and leaving no trace behind. Now this custom would serve them well.

Shaiara had not yet said where she was leading them; not even to Kamar, brother of her father, had she confided their destination. Her people loved her, and trusted her absolutely—in the bare handspan of years since her father’s death, there had been none to dispute that she must guide them in Darak’s place, and her decisions had always been wise ones, good for the Nalzindar—but the way to this refuge would be a harder path than any they had ever walked, and she wished to gather the right words in her mind before she spoke to them of it.

Were this any normal journey from one hunting-ground to the next they would have gone first to Sapthiruk for water. Many turns of the seasons ago, at a Gathering of the tribes, Shaiara had heard a tale that the People of the Great Cold thought their
shotors
ungainly and ugly, with their slim curved necks, long slender legs, and short round bodies with their thick humps of stored fat. But a
shotor
was
riding beast and pack beast and wool beast and shelter from the Sandwind and sometimes even food; faster than the fastest horse over the shifting sands of the Deep Desert, and once one had drunk its fill, it could go a sennight with ease without drinking again, and longer if food was plentiful. And this was vital, for in the desert, the path between one place and the next was not measured in the straightness as of an arrow’s flight, but was a matter of going where the water was, always, until at last one arrived at the place one sought to be.

But now, Sapthiruk was the last place they could possibly go; they must begin their journey without proper preparations. A sennight’s passage over the sand would see them at Rutharanda Oasis; a difficult trek, but possible.

The tribe traveled through the rest of the day, and through the night as well. In the desert, few creatures were active in the heat of the day; the life of the Nalzindar tents was conducted at dawn and twilight. They were well-used to sleeping through the heat of the day, and doing the work of the camp, including its packing and moving, by night. Such an extended journey was little hardship to them, for the Nalzindar lived by hunting, taking their prey with spear and arrow and sling-stone and the aid of hawk and
ikulas
-hound. The narrow-headed long-bodied beasts were their greatest ally and tool, wise and clever, and though there was neither mercy nor charity between Sand and Star, many a Nalzindar, in hard times, had given up his or her last drop of water to the four-legged companion who had shared their sleeping mat since puppyhood. Though it would be difficult enough to find water for themselves upon the way they were to walk, no one suggested slaying the
ikulas
and making the journey without them. The
ikulas
were Nalzindar, and while hard choices must always be made with open eyes and open hands, only a fool called the future into his tent.

The children of the tribe too young to walk slept as easily slung from a
shotor’
s pack-saddle as they did on their sleeping-mats in their mother’s tents: in fact, they were far
more used to the slings and the saddle, for the Nalzindar never lingered long in one place.
Until now
, Shaiara thought grimly.
Now we must go to ground as if we were the
sheshu
pursued by the
fenec,
and pray that
this fenec
is not wily enough to dig us out of our burrow.

As dawn broke over the sky the little caravan stopped and made the sketchiest of hunter’s camps—only one tent erected to shelter them from the fierce light of the sun, and the
shotors
were made to kneel in a circle so that their bodies would shield the light of the small cookfires from the eyes of those who passed. Flour, the small sour desert plums, and dried meat were mixed together with water to make the flatcakes that were the Nalzindar’s chief sustenance when the tribe was on the move.

Once the
kaffiyeh
that signaled the end of the meal had twice been brought to a boil and poured out into small clay cups, the children went off to their sleeping mats and the adults of the tribe gathered silently to hear Shaiara’s words. Though the Nalzindar were a taciturn people, Shaiara knew that this was, as never before, a time for words.

“You know that I have said I believe Bisochim to be Shadow-touched. He gathers the tribes to him. He speaks of armies coming from the Great Cold to enslave us. This is madness, and I will not give my throat—or yours—to the yoke of madness. Time must burn out this fever. Until it does, I take us to where his sickness cannot reach us. To Abi’Abadshar.”

None of the circle of watchers uttered a sound as they absorbed this news, as shocking in its own way as the knowledge that a Wildmage had been Shadow-touched. To most of the Isvaieni the city just-named was no more than an ancient legend; if the desertfolk had believed in ghosts or spirits or things of that nature, they would certainly have believed it was haunted, because those same legends that told of Abi’Abadshar’s existence told that it had been built by creatures of the Endarkened countless thousands of years ago for some unknown purpose. Of all the peoples of
the Isvai, only the Nalzindar knew that Abi’Abadshar was both legend—and a place as real and mundane as any of the
Iteru
-cities.

At last, after many long moments of silence, Kamar drew breath to speak. “The way to Abi’Abadshar is long,” he said.

“It is,” Shaiara agreed.

In truth, she was not absolutely certain how long the way was, for she had never been there, nor had her father, nor his father, back through many generations of the Nalzindar. Once, so long ago that the years could not be easily counted, a hunter of her tribe, driven far from Nalzindar tents by the Sandwind, had wandered many days in the Isvai, barely clinging to life, before he had stumbled upon the bones of the ancient city. There he had remained for a moonturn, recovering his strength, before finding his way back to the tribe. Rausi had brought with him the knowledge that Abi’Abadshar was more than myth, and that the way to it was arid and perilous. The rest of the Nalzindar, being a practical people, had seen no reason to go and see for themselves, but had passed Rausi’s words carefully down through the generations, hoarded against a time of need.

“I tell you truthfully that all who begin the journey may not end it.” Shaiara said nothing more. There was no need to. And when night came again, the
shotors
were saddled and laden, and the Nalzindar continued their flight.

As the Isvai was to the Madiran, so the Barahileth was to the Isvai: hotter, more arid, and even more devoid of life. Though the Nalzindar knew the location of every oasis in the Isvai, they knew of none within the Barahileth. Not even the Nalzindar dared attempt to explore its fastness—it was madness even to try. Water was life, and no one knew of any source of water within the Barahileth.

Save one.

Rausi had spoken of a deep
iteru
of sweet water that lay concealed within the ruins that were all that remained of
Abi’Abadshar. If they could reach it—if it was still there—the Nalzindar would survive.

Though Abi’Abadshar was only on the outskirts of the Barahileth—had it been any deeper within that region, Rausi could not have survived his journey back to the tents of the Nalzindar so many generations before—it was still a fortnight and no one knew how much more beyond the last water to be found upon the course which led to it. At Kannanatha
Iteru
, the last true water to be found before they reached (if they
did
reach) Abi’Abadshar, the Nalzindar first scouted carefully for enemies—and anyone they saw was now their enemy; they could believe nothing else and be safe—and then filled every waterskin they had. The
shotors
drank until they could hold no more, but Shaiara knew that would not be enough—if the refuge she sought for her people could be so easily reached, it would have been discovered long ago. On the next leg of their journey, some would die. She accepted that with desert-bred stoicism and set the thought aside.

The Isvaieni kept few books. Every child learned to read and to write and do sums—for in the desert, an accurate count must be kept of many things—but the only book most of the Isvaieni ever saw was the
Book of the Light
, which contained teaching stories of saints and heroes, and the Nalzindar did not possess even that, for they carried nothing with them on their travels that was not immediately useful. Yet they kept a record of the important events in the life of the tribe, and of the history of all the tribes, woven into songs and stories, and though the Nalzindar were known throughout the Isvai as the Silent People, their store of songs and tales was as large as any other’s. Rausi’s journey and all that he had learned on it had been woven into one such tale. From it, Shaiara had gleaned the knowledge of the direction in which to lead her people, and generations of Nalzindar ancestry told her what must be done to reach their destination alive. To lead the Nalzindar required much more than right of birth: it required the
ability to husband the desert’s meager gifts in ways that might seem miraculous to lesser souls. But it would take all that she knew, all that she was, to bring her people to safe haven.

At Kannanatha, Shaiara told her people to abandon all but what they would need to keep them alive and sheltered upon the journey. If Rausi’s song was true, both water and shelter awaited them at the end of their journey. If it was not, then it did not matter, for they would never survive the return trip.

All but one of their tents they cut into pieces, leaving the desert winds to carry the strips of dun
shotor-hair
cloth where it chose. The wooden tent-poles they broke into pieces, scattering those that they did not use as fuel that day. Sun and scavengers would render the pieces unrecognizable within a moonturn. Shaiara was ruthless in her winnowing of the tribe’s scant possessions—better to destroy more than was necessary here, than to have to abandon it later and leave a trail of detritus that would lead the enemy directly to their hiding place.

Even now it felt wrong to think of her fellow Isvaieni as her enemy, as those her people might have to fight in order to survive. Of course there was conflict between the tribes, even—sometimes—raiding and blood-feuds. But what the Nalzindar faced now was no matter that could be brought before a Council of Elders at the Gathering of the tribes, to be settled there if it was deemed to have gotten out of hand. This was something a thousand times worse: war. And Shaiara wanted no part of it. Better to risk everything on this desperate gamble than to allow her people to fall beneath the influence of the Shadow.

And so, in the hour before sunset, the Nalzindar did all that they could to erase the evidence of their presence from Kannanatha
Iteru
, and Shaiara led her people into the Barahileth.

They had camped two days at Kannanatha, not only to make themselves and their
shotors
as water-fat as they could, but so that Shaiara’s hunters and scouts could ride
forth a day ahead of the tribe, for this was the last part of her plan to get her people to Abi’Abadshar alive.

Their store of grain and fruit must go to feed the
shotors
, for the hardy animals were being taken far from their usual forage, and though Shaiara did not think that all the beasts would survive the journey, it was important to keep them alive as long as possible. Without those supplies, the tribe must rely entirely upon what it could catch—and game of any kind would certainly be all-but-nonexistent within the inhospitable furnace of the Barahileth.

A more pressing need even than food was water, and while there were no wells, and certainly no oases, on the path ahead, the desert held more sources of water than these, and Shaiara’s people knew how to find them all.

The hardest part of the journey began.

As they advanced into the Barahileth, Shaiara’s hunters scoured the desert for anything edible in a way that flew in the face of every teaching the Nalzindar held dear, for Shaiara’s people not only kept the Balance, they
lived
it. There were no
sheshu
in the Barahileth, for the desert hare made its home in the roots of thornbush and daggerplant, but there were mice, and adders, and scorpions, and all could be eaten if one’s hunger were sharp enough, and one knew the secret of preparing them.

Such an insult to the desert’s balance would take more than one turn of the seasons to repair, but if Sand and Star was kind, the Nalzindar would never pass this way again, and the desert would have time to heal.

They rationed the water from Kannanatha
Iteru
ruthlessly, eking it out with what their scouts found—sometimes nothing more than a seep that had to be scraped clear of precious moisture and which collected only a few precious sips of water at a time. They spread cloths upon the ground to collect the scant desert dew, and set up little sun-stills to get more water out of their own urine. And when the time came—as Shaiara had known it must—for them to slaughter two of the
shotors
for food, they drank their blood as well.

If her people had not loved and trusted her absolutely,
there would surely have been rebellion long before they drew within a sennight of their destination. It was only upon her word that they were making this terrible journey into the Barahileth at all. Not one of them had seen what she had seen. They had followed her because she had told them they must.