She laughed. “I’ll die before I submit to you.”
The king raised one eyebrow. “You could have thrown yourself on that spear point,” he said. “But you didn’t.”
Loor gnashed her teeth. He had a point. As a rule, Loor disliked clever people. “The time was not right,” she said.
“Mm…” The king seemed unpersuaded. “Among my people pointless death is not considered honorable. If one is going to give one’s life, it ought to be for a purpose.”
Loor didn’t answer. One could talk all day about such things and never come to any conclusions. Battle was the only place where anything was really ever solved.
The king rose. “Come,” he said. “Join me.”
He walked toward the door. Having nothing better to do, Loor followed him. Clearly now was not the time to attack this man. She would bide her time, wait for the right moment. Then she would strike.
Like all the other Zafir she had seen so far, the king moved with a slow, graceful stride, not wasting any energy. It was quite different from Xhaxhu, where everyone was expected to move quickly and decisively at all times. To the Batu, slow movement was a sign of weakness.
As the king walked past his subjects, they placed their hands over their hearts. But there were no bowed heads, no obvious signs of subservience. And the king returned their greetings as though they were friends.
It didn’t take long to reach the outskirts of the tent city. As they did, King Allon turned to his guards and said, “Leave us.”
The men nodded. King Allon walked on, heading slowly toward the shore of the immense lake.
“You must have great confidence in your skills as a fighter,” she said.
“Oh?”
“Well, I am one of the most dangerous warriors in Xhaxhu. If you think you can best me in one-armed combat…” She shrugged.
The king smiled. “In the long run,” he said, “I cannot very well have a queen whom I fear. At a certain point, I simply have to trust you.”
Loor was astonished. She suspected a trick. Maybe he had some kind of dangerous weapon hidden in his robe. “Then you are a fool,” she snapped.
“Mm…” He trailed off.
“Each summer for a thousand generations my people have come to this lake to fatten our sheep. During fall, winter, and spring we are scattered like seeds across the whole desert. We are a fierce and warlike people. During the rest of the year, the various tribes that make up my nation are in constant war with one another. They engage in feuds that go back generations. But here? This is called the ‘Lake of Peace.’ For the three months we are here, there are no quarrels, no fights, no voices raised in anger. To break that law is to die on the spot. No matter what the cause or provocation.”
“Why?” Loor said.
“This.” The king stopped and made a sweeping gesture with his hands, encompassing the huge lake. Loor looked out at the water. It was impossibly blue. She had never seen so much water, not in her entire life. She amazed to find that she could actually smell it. “If we, as a people, are to survive the hot months,” King Allon said, “we must fatten our sheep. Our sheep are our lifeblood. We eat their flesh and weave out clothes and tents from their wool. This place is our source. If war and hatred and fear and vengeance are allowed to enter this valley, we all will suffer. In the end we all will starve, and our people will vanish from the earth. So…here peace reigns.”
“We have an arrangement much like that,” Loor said. “The Batu and the Rokador do not like each other very much. But they provide us with water. And we provide them with food and protection.”
The king surveyed the land. As he did, he spotted the hindor flying in the distance. “That is a great omen,” he said. “Among our people, the hindor is considered the greatest of birds.”
“Yes,” she said. “We too prize it for its fierceness and strength.”
“That is not why we revere it,” the king said. “We worship the hindor because it can smell water from miles and miles away. Follow a hindor’s flight, and eventually you will reach water.”
“That one followed me all the way here,” Loor said.
King Allon’s eyebrows went up. “All the way across the desert?”
She nodded.
“Astonishing.” He smiled. “You will bring us great fortune.”
Loor said nothing. The king picked up a rock, skipped it across the water. It must have skipped seven or eight times. “Try it,” he said.
She picked up a rock from the bank, threw it in the water. It went plooop! and sank immediately.
“No,” he said. “Like this.” He showed her the way he threw it.
She tried it. The stone skipped twice and sank. “Yes!” the king said. “You see!” He smiled, apparently happy as a child. “I used to do this all the time when we came here in the summer. I’d herd my father’s flock way off over there. Then I would throw stones for hours!”
He threw another one, then clapped his hands joyously. “Only six that time,” he said.
“I will beat you,” she said. She picked up a rock and hurled it as hard as she could. Two skips and a violent splash.
He laughed again. “Not so hard. Gently!” He searched for a stone until he found one he liked. On this throw it skipped so many times she couldn’t even count them. The king seemed to find this hilarious.
Loor tried to envision old King Khalek a Zinj doing something like this. It was impossible even to imagine. A thing like this was beneath his dignity.
She searched for a flat rock like the one he’d used. She tried her best to imitate the low arc he used in throwing his stones. This time her rock seemed to dance across the water. It only made about four skips. But still. “Yes!” she shouted, raising her hands above her head.
“Good! Good!” the king shouted. Then he put his arm around her shoulder and gave her a quick hug. It seemed a simple and genuine—almost brotherly—acknowledgment of her accomplishment in this little game. But she could feel his muscles beneath the robe. He was stronger than he looked.
Loor felt a strange glow spread through her. It took her a moment to realize what it was. She liked this man. A lot.
A terrible thought ran through her mind. She had no way of getting back across the desert. She had no friends here. And this man, whom she was beginning to like, wanted her to stay forever. A frightening notion—and it was only a notion—flitted through her mind. What if I just gave in? What if I just stayed?
Her entire life had been nothing but struggle. Training, fighting, striving, working—it was nothing but pain and sacrifice.
All along the banks of the great lake, she saw flocks of sheep munching peacefully on the grass. Shepherds sat around here and there, some by themselves, some laughing and joking in small groups. Small brooks babbled, pouring water into the lake.
In Batu mythology there was a paradise from which all humanity had originally come. In Loor’s mind it looked exactly like this.
King Allon stood beside her still, his arm draped across her shoulder.
Loor froze. What am I thinking? she asked herself.
The next moment her blade was in her hand.
The young king twisted sharply—but not before her knife had entered the folds of his robe. And then his powerful hands clamped around hers. She was unable to move.
“Just because I throw stones into a lake does not mean I am a fool,” he said softly. Then his face lit up with another mysterious smile. He pushed the knife back out of the fold of his robe. With a quick snap of his hands, he applied excruciating pain to her wrist. Her knife fell to the ground. He kicked it into the water.
Loor felt a torrent of shame run through her. He’d evaded her knife effortlessly. She’d punctured nothing but cloth. She was sure her aim had been perfect. It was not normal for Loor to feel helpless. But right now she felt completely helpless.
“I cannot be your friend,” she said. “I cannot be your wife. I cannot be one of your people.”
The king waved his han
d as though none of this was very important. “We have a saying, ‘There is much time in the desert.’”
“Which means what?”
“Things happen. Circumstances change. What seems right today may seem wrong tomorrow.” He looked at the sun, which was starting to sink toward the horizon. “Are you hungry, Loor?”
“I suppose so.”
“Let us go eat,” he said.
They began walking silently toward the crimson pennant over his distant tent.
“Where does all the water go?” she asked as they approached the cluster of brightly colored tents.
“From the lake, you mean?” he said.
She pointed around the margins of the lake. “I see all this water coming in. But there’s no river going out.”
“They say that once there was a river,” King Allon said. “But then one day it just stopped flowing. Like that.” He snapped his fingers, then shrugged. “The world is full of mysteries.”
They walked silently.
When they had finally reached their tent, the young king stopped and turned to her. “We are free people,” he said. “I will not keep you here against your will.”
“Then I will leave right now,” she said.
“I will not send anyone to escort you home, either,” he said. He pointed toward the mountains, their peaks a fiery red as they reflected the blaze of the setting sun. “Those peaks rise twenty thousand feet into the air. To the north and south lies a plateau where there is not a tree or leaf or blade of grass. To the east, between here and Xhaxhu, is only desert sand. There are no maps but the ones in our heads.” He tapped his temple. “If you leave this place, you will die.” He stroked the side of her face. “And I will be very sad for you.”
The king’s retainers spotted them and began walking briskly toward them. “Your Highness!” one of them said, pointing at the king’s midsection.
The king looked down at the large red stain that was spreading slowly down the front of his robe.
“It is nothing,” King Allon said. “Send word to my cook to bring out the food. Loor and I will eat by the lake.”
FIVE
It wasn’t nothing though. By the time that Loor had finished eating, the red stain had grown to cover much of King Allon’s lap. The young king’s face was pale and drawn. It was obvious that his men were alarmed at all the blood. But none of them said a word about it. So she had been correct, her aim had been true. But this man, this kind man, was strong of both body and will.
In fact, King Allon continued to talk with her as though nothing at all had happened. His conversation was lively and interesting—tough, realistic, yet generous and wise. She had an odd realization: Batu boys bored her. They seemed so obvious, so loud, so tedious. Batu boys were always telling you how great they were, how strong, how fearless. But Allon, he hadn’t talked about himself even for a second.
“Look,” she said finally, waving at all the blood, “you have to do something about that. You will die if you keep bleeding.”
“Is that not what you want?” he said.
Loor said nothing.
King Allon smiled his mysterious smile. “Well then, if you have eaten your fill, I think I might take a little rest.”
That night Loor was left all alone in the tent. A simple woolen mat lay in the center for her to sleep on. Next to it was a woolen robe, as white and pure as the king’s.
After the sun went down, Loor lay down on the mat and stared up at the tent roof. She could feel the robe lying there. The air had grown cold. She had nothing to wear but her Batu combat gear.
What if I just went ahead and put it on? she thought.
She couldn’t sleep. All she could think about was the king, sitting there talking with her as his blood slowly drained onto the floor.
“Never make the first move.” Wasn’t that what the one-eyed man’s son had said? She had made a move before she’d thought everything through. And now she was sorry.
Loor felt her eyes sting as she stared up into the air. She’d failed in her mission, failed in her attempt to kill her captor, failed in everything. Why hadn’t they picked someone else to come out here? I am too young, she thought. They should have chosen someone else.
And then, suddenly, she knew what she needed to do. It was time to stop feeling sorry for herself. She stood, pulled the robe over body, let it slip down over her bare skin. It was an odd sensation. She wasn’t used to wearing things like this.
Then she gathered what she would need and walked out of the tent, continuing past the other silent tents. A dog barked, then went quiet. She walked toward the lake. A thin wedge of moon illuminated it. The surface was still and black. Today it had looked beautiful. Now it looked terrifying, like some dark force that might suck her down and destroy her.
Hesitantly she approached the lake. Loor knelt and looked down. She could see her face reflected in the dark water. Only her eyes were visible.
Finally she leaned over and drank, drank until her belly was full. Then she stood and waded into the water.
It was so frigid that she gasped. She had never been in water before, nothing deeper than a two-inch-deep bath. She had heard the Rokador actually had pools that they swam in. But water was too precious in Xhaxhu for such frivolous use.
A band of fear closed around her chest. But she forced herself to walk out farther into the water. She could feel the pebbles shifting under her feet. Deeper and deeper she went, her heart pounding as the cold black water surrounded her. With each step she grew more frightened. She had not been frightened at all when she had been fighting for her life the other day. But this—this was terrifying.
She was up to her neck in the water. A few more strides and she would sink beneath the water and drown.
She took a deep breath. And waited.
“There is much time in the desert,” she said, speaking the words out loud. “There is much time in the desert. There is much time in the desert.”
And then she felt something strange around her, something moving inside her robe.
She smiled. Yes! It was working!
Every Zafir robe was constructed with tiny bladders of a substance that absorbed water. Any water that came in contact with it would be filtered and sucked into the bladders, where it would remain until you opened them to drink.
It was these ingeniously constructed robes that allowed the Zafir to move through the desert for days on end without dying of thirst.
Loor walked slowly out of the water. The robe was amazingly heavy now that it was full of water. No wonder the Zafir walk so slowly, she thought. This is heavy as lead!
An hour later she was walking into the dark, silent dunes.
SIX
Loor was not the sort of person to doubt herself. But now that she was out in the desert, she realized how foolish she had been. Xhaxhu was to the east of the Elzehe’er Mountains. But simply plodding toward the rising sun was no way to get through hundreds of miles of shifting sand. There were no landmarks, no roads, no signs—nothing to indicate precisely where to go. Compared to the massive desert, the mighty city of Xhaxhu was just a speck on the map. She could easily miss it and wander right on into the deserts to the west of the city.
Plus, the robe with its pockets full of water was heavy and hot. Even though she knew that it helped her conserve water and guarded her skin from the sun, it still felt constricting and awkward. She knew that her progress was much slower than it would have been without the robe.
By noon on the first day, she was feeling light-headed from the heat. With the heavy robe around her, her body built up heat unmercifully.
Loor was a strong girl. Years of grueling training had toughened her mind and body. But one of the things you learned through years of hard physical labor was that every body, no matter how hard it had been trained, had limits. When you crossed those limits, the machine broke down. The toll of three days in the desert had robbed her body of fluids and minerals that one evening of eating and drinking had not qui
te replenished.
It wasn’t her body that seemed to be taking it the hardest, though. She knew she could push her body further. She had water and a little food that she’d brought with her. But her mind just didn’t feel sharp.
She found herself fixating on things in the distance, imagining things on the horizon, staggering toward them without thinking. One time she realized she had gone for hours without thinking anything at all. And as she did so, her path had started curving off in the wrong direction. North. She looked back and saw her tracks in the sand. She’d been walking north instead of east for what might have been several miles. And she hadn’t even known it!
Concentrate! Loor told herself. But still, her mind felt fuzzy and weak.
She started seeing things that weren’t there. People on the horizon. Trees. An oasis. They were all mirages—just figments of her imagination. With nothing to see but sand and empty sky, her mind was putting things out there that didn’t exist.
And this was only the first day! What would it be like by the third or fourth day, when she started running low on water?
But there was nothing she could do now. She could only plod on and hope for the best.
Eventually the sun got so high in the sky that she couldn’t tell what was east and what was west based on the sun. She decided to stop, rest, and eat.
She pulled the rubber tube out of the neck of the robe and sucked on it. To her surprise the tube simply gurgled. No water came out. She knew the robe was capable of holding several days’ worth of water, so it was obviously a problem with the tube. She checked it for leaks. Nothing. She sat on the hot sand and squeezed the robe. This forced water up into the tube. She drank deeply. It was hot, but pure. She sighed with contentment and nibbled on the dried lamb she’d brought with her.
A wave of exhaustion poured over her as she sat. She knew that conserving her strength was as important as conserving her water. Deciding that a nap might be a good idea, Loor bunched up her hood to form a pillow, lay down in a ball, and fell asleep.