“You are troubled.” Adahab softly interrupted Gareth’s rumination. With a jerk of his chin, he indicated the way they had come.
Gareth nodded and downed the last of the tisane, barely tasting it.
“Shainsa’imyn!” Adahab gestured with his left hand in a way Gareth gathered was extremely derogatory.
It took Gareth a moment to understand Adahab’s meaning, that just as there were conflicts and differences between Domains and between city and country folk, these villagers who lived under the harshest conditions scorned the city dwellers, or at least the great lords.
“They think themselves masters of the sand but know nothing of the true desert,” Adahab said.
“I would not dismiss them lightly,” Gareth said. “They may not be as wise as your people in the ways of these dry lands, but they have weapons and know how to use them.”
“Swords and whips, the tools of the kifurgh—what are they against sun and open sand? Can they force water from stone? Or friendship from the village tribes?”
“Yet your people helped us at the request of Cyrillon, and he is a man of Carthon.”
“Cyrillon is a trader, yes, but throughout the Sands of the Sun, he is also known as a man of honor and a true friend. He pays his debts, unlike the Shainsa’imyn, who take what is not for sale.” He lowered his voice, glancing surreptitiously at Rahelle, who had busied herself scouring the dishes with sand and then wiping them with a cloth. “Water, goats . . . children. Where do you think the slave markets in Ardcarran get them? My cousin,” meaning Korllen, “brings the money Cyrillon pays him. And we in turn pay off the raiders who would take our little ones.”
Gareth met Adahab’s fierce blue gaze. If Dayan’s men did arrive in the village, they would receive a polite welcome but not a hint that Rivoth had seen, let alone given aid to, two travelers. Nor, Gareth suspected, would any of the other villages on the border of the Sands of the Sun. They would take special pride in deceiving the intruders. He wondered if the Federation agents, whom he remembered as arrogant and closed-minded, would fare any better.
For four nights they traversed the sands, arriving each dawn at a hidden oasis. One was nearly dry, another befouled by the twisted, desiccated carcass of a small wild oudrakhi, or what the desert kyorebni had left of it. They drank and watered the animals from the contents of their leather sacks and rested as best they could in the shade.
On the sixth day, the first light revealed the land rising into a series of ridges. Gareth was no geologist, but the stone looked as if it had once been a volcanic flow, rare on Darkover, that over uncounted millennia had bleached to the color of ashes. Along the base of the ridges, dark green clusters gathered like beads on a string. A haze blurred their outlines. He reckoned there to be a half dozen such oases, some no more than a few scrub bushes, others the size of villages.
“Nuriya.” Adahab pointed to one of the larger spots, filling a gap in the ridge. He clapped his heels to the sides of his oudrakhi. Without a protest, the decrepit-looking beast quickened its pace. The horses, too, seemed eager to press on, although they had traveled many miles that night. They must smell water and fresh forage ahead.
Gareth nodded to Rahelle as she reined her horse beside his. She gave him a tentative smile. “Nuriya, I take it, is the name of that village,” he said. “Do you know it?”
“Only by name. I’ve never been farther than Kharsalla. That’s as deep into the desert as my fa—as Cyrillon ventures, and then only for Korllen’s sake.”
“I think they owe a great deal to Cyrillon. He is an extraordinary man.”
“He has always revered the virtue of charity. We in the Dry Towns speak of the compassion of Nebran, but we do not practice it overmuch.” Absently, she transferred the reins to one hand and rubbed her wrist with the other. “Kihar is for men, so kindliness is left for the gods.”
“And justice? And compassion?”
“These things can be sought, but are they to be found in the world of men? Or is it folly to even try? My father believes we must, but what can he do? Give a little alms here and there, employ a desert man who sends his pay home to his family? Send bits of information, tales and half-truths, to Thendara? What good does that do?”
In her voice, Gareth heard the resonances of outrage, of desperation. What of the children taken from their homes to be scullions and playthings? she seemed to ask. What of the people left broken and starving so that great lords like Dayan or Evallar of Ardcarran can live in luxury?
And I, he asked himself, I who have never known anything but privilege and ease, I who have done nothing to earn it, what is my part in all this?
The answer lay before him, shimmering slightly as the risen sun heated the sand.
“Is justice to be had?” he said aloud. “I do not know, but if we do not try, it will not happen.”
“And you are the one to do it?”
For that, he had no answer.
As they neared Nuriya, Gareth noticed bright pennons rippling from poles and a team of men unloading lengths of milled wood from oudrakhi. They dismounted and led their beasts to a watering hole with a painted emblem indicating it was for animals only. A man, as weathered and wind-burned as any desert dweller, was watering a pair of oudrakhi, their saddles gleaming and clearly new, their halters bedecked with gaudy tassels and bits of faceted colored glass. He grinned at them in a friendly manner, revealing a gap between his discolored teeth.
When the oudrakhi drover led his beasts away, Rahelle edged up to Gareth, pretending to adjust the girth on the roan. “Where would villagers this far out get the money for saddles and banners, not to mention wood?”
“There’s new wealth here, that’s sure,” he murmured in reply.
Adahab’s gaze flickered over the same unusual details. “Come, my friends. If your horses have finished, let us go and drink. Then I will introduce you to the headman . . . if he still is headman here.”
Gareth and Rahelle followed him to the stone well designated for human use. A handful of children and a couple of women surrounded it, dipping out jars of water. The children were thin and round-bellied, clad in knee-length shirts worn to the color of mud. They darted away as Gareth and the others approached, eyes huge in their pinched faces. One of the women was gray haired and bent, and the cords attached to her wrists were so frayed, they looked as if the merest tug would snap them. The second woman, barely out of her teens, tossed her head and glared at the new arrivals. Her cheeks gleamed as if her face had been oiled. With insolent languor, she balanced her jar against one hip. Water sloshed over the copper-inlaid rim. As she strode away, her chains clashed as they slipped through the ring on her metal-link belt.
Adahab took out his cup and offered it to Gareth. The water was cool enough, but the now familiar acrid tinge rankled. Whatever was going on in this village did not lessen the plight of those most in need.
They passed into the open square at the heart of the village, where Adahab stopped in front of a hut. It was larger and looked to be of better construction than many of the others, although there were no signs of repairs.
“The headman here is Cuinn,” Adahab told Gareth. “He knew my father long ago, but they have not had any dealings since before I was born. Still, loyalty and mutual obligation endure long in the desert.”
A man emerged, spare in frame but with an air of authority. His hair had a dull sheen that suggested it had been bright as polished gold in his youth, before the years had darkened it. The skin around his eyes tightened when he spied the strangers.
Adahab presented greetings from his father. As the headman listened, his features relaxed, reflecting an innate good humor. “Yes, yes, by Lhupan the Compassionate, who walks the sands in a stranger’s guise, we open our guest dwelling to you.”
Gareth made a gesture of respect. “The generosity of your people is an ornament to the heavens.”
“Hospitality is ordained by the gods as a blessing to those who give as well as those who receive.”
They exchanged a few more salutations along those lines, and then Cuinn himself conducted Adahab and his party to the guest dwelling. This turned out to be a hut of sun-baked bricks much like the others, providing protection against sun and wind. Adjacent to it was a pen and shed for livestock, both quite dilapidated.
The interior of the hut consisted of a single room with a dirt floor. There was no means of heat or cooking, except for a circle of blackened stones outside the door. Once Gareth would have scorned such accommodations as being unworthy of even a donkey, but now, when he expressed his thanks to Cuinn, the depth of his own gratitude surprised him. Such a village, existing on the very margins of civilization, had devoted a portion of its scant resources to maintaining a shelter for the needs of strangers.
Once they had unloaded the horses and brought the blankets and saddlebags into the hut, Adahab turned to Gareth. “My friend, here I take my leave of you. I shall return in five days to guide you back across the Sands of the Sun, unless you send word to me at Duruhl-ya that I am needed later. Or sooner.”
Startled, Gareth returned the gesture of leave-taking. He could not mistake the glint of eagerness in Adahab’s eyes as the younger man swept from the hut. A moment later, Adahab mounted his decrepit gray oudrakhi and kicked the animal into a reluctant trot.
“I take it Duruhl-ya is a neighboring village,” Gareth asked Rahelle, who was arranging their bedding on either side of the hut.
“Yes. The name means ‘unfailing dew.’” Rahelle did not look up. “I think he is courting a woman there.”
The hut suddenly seemed too small. Although they had shared a campsite many times on the trail, sleeping within the same walls carried a new degree of intimacy. Anxious to break the tension, Gareth suggested that they begin their search by touring the village. Maybe they’d hear something about the water seller story.
Surrounded by a cortege of curious children, they strolled through the village. Women sat under awnings in front of their huts, weaving or pounding grain. Some had the same shy curiosity as the children, but others were narrow-eyed. All wore some form of chains.
They had almost completed a circuit of the village when a party of riders approached from the direction of the Sands of the Sun.
“Yi-yi-yi!” came their ululating cry.
The children ran up, shrieking with excitement. The leader rode a horse so scrubby and stunted, it was barely the size of a chervine. The carcass of an animal was slung across the horse’s withers. Gareth had seen that white and tan pattern, although from afar. This must be a desert antelope.
“No horse can catch them,” Rahelle had said.
The lead rider laughed, wheeling his horse to show off his prize. The legs of the antelope flopped against the horse’s shoulders. The sun gleamed on its hide, except for the swath across its forequarters, where the skin was raw and blackened.
Gareth had seen injuries like those, but never in real life. Tri-vid tapes from the Federation Headquarters, the ones Tío Danilo had insisted he watch, had pictured just such wounds.
The rider reached into his sash and held an object overhead—a short handle, a blunt but unmistakable barrel. Sun glinted on polished durasteel.
A blaster.
16
What in the name of all the gods was the Federation thinking? Had they completely abandoned the Compact? Or did Sandra Nagy and her Expansionist Party intend to leave behind all respect for local law and custom?
It is ill done to chain a dragon to roast your meat, ran the old proverb.
As ill done as to give devices of such destructive power to those who had no tradition or training in their wise use.
The smell of the charred flesh filled Gareth’s nostrils. The blast had scorched the antelope’s bones. He felt the utter chill where its life spark had been. It had been extinguished so quickly, yet in such a conflagration of searing pain, that the instant of agony lingered still.
Gareth had assumed, had come prepared to confirm, that the Federation had been careless in its display of its weaponry. It had not occurred to him that carelessness might extend so far as to give those same armaments to the villagers.
“I must speak with Cuinn immediately,” Gareth said to Rahelle. “He must know where the Federation landed, where the blasters came from.”
“He will not tell you.” She sounded utterly certain. When he gave her a questioning look, she curled her lip. “You? A stranger from Carthon? Look at this place! Can’t you see the link between these Terranan devices and the recent improvements? Why would these people share the source of their wealth?”
“If they will not tell me freely, they will find Lord Dayan’s men far less understanding.”
The rider with the antelope moved off toward the center of the village. The sounds of celebration receded.
“Men can be violent,” Rahelle agreed, “but not as harsh as the desert these people battle every day of their lives.”
Images flashed across Gareth’s mind—men in sand-pale rags scrambling over dunes . . . an eruption of dust rising so high it blanketed the crimson sun . . . sand melting like wax, fusing into sheets of opalescent glass as far as the eye could trace . . . the village going up in plumes of greasy smoke, the hills melting into piles of cinder-dark slag. . . .
He blinked, and the pictures dissolved. Around him lay a living village, huts and goats and children, looms and firepits.
“Then I’ll have to persuade them,” he said.
Cuinn listened, his face impassive, as Gareth presented his case. “Lord Dayan’s men are only a day or two behind us,” Gareth concluded. “They want these weapons, and they mean to seize them if necessary. For this reason alone they have crossed the Sands of the Sun.”
Cuinn’s expression was even more guarded than before. “We are not afraid of them.”
You should be! Gareth thought, but held back the words.
“Perhaps it is you and not the sun-weapons that put Nuriya in danger,” Cuinn added darkly.
“I did not lead Lord Dayan’s men here!” Gareth said so hotly that Rahelle put out a restraining hand, as no apprentice boy would dare to do.
“If they come, we will deal with them.” Cuinn added in a less belligerent tone, “You meant well by your warning, man of Carthon. Your intentions are honorable, even if you have little understanding of the desert and the strength of its people. We are not easily deceived,” he used the phrase that implied cheated in contests of wit and wiles.
Cuinn’s gaze flickered to the hills, then returned to Gareth. “Be at ease with us tonight. The law of guest hospitality still holds in these lands. Tomorrow you had best return to where you belong, since you find these men of Shainsa so intimidating.”
Gareth knew when he had been summarily dismissed. He bowed, touching his fist to his belly, heart, and forehead, and withdrew. Rahelle followed closely. When they were out of earshot, he turned to her. “Any idea what to do now?”
“It would be unwise to attempt to go back across the Sands of the Sun without Adahab to guide us, and he said he would not return for another five days. We should make our way to one of the other villages and find out if they too have these Terranan weapons.”
Rahelle’s practicality made sense, but Gareth felt a tremendous resistance to moving on. There might or might not be Federation weapons elsewhere, but he knew for certain such devices were here.
Cuinn had glanced up at the hills, no more than a tiny jerk of his eyes, but enough to betray his thoughts. For all his confident words, the headman had looked worried.
The Federation base is up there, Gareth thought. And he had a single night to find it.
After the men finished skinning and preparing the antelope carcass, removing certain veins and tendons according to custom, the women rubbed the meat
with spices and set it in a stone-lined pit. The roasting was accompanied by a frenzy of preparation, chopping and soaking and grinding and mixing, all of it unfamiliar to Gareth. He didn’t recognize any of the dishes. If Rahelle did, she said nothing as they took their places with the other men in the wide circle.
The women carried out the roasted meat, carved into thick slices and surrounded by mounds of dark dried fruit, some kind of slimy-looking vegetable paste, and balls of sticky boiled grain. They laid the platters on the ground and took their places behind the men. The circle fell silent. With painful slowness, an elderly man rose to his feet, assisted by two youths. He raised his voice, and in a dialect so archaic that Gareth could barely understand it, chanted a prayer of thanksgiving.
Cuinn signaled for the meal to begin. Around the circle, groups of five or six men clustered around each platter. Cuinn and the other villagers took out their own personal knives to slice off slivers of meat. Gareth followed their example. Placing a morsel of antelope meat in his mouth, he found it tough but intensely flavorful. The balls of grain were firm enough to be easily picked up, but the vegetables were too spicy for comfort.
About halfway through the meal, Cuinn stood up and began a song-chant, deftly improvised around a fixed structure. In it, he extolled the virtues of the hunters and their prowess at arms. Hoots of approval from the audience punctuated his delivery. With each repetition of the refrain, the villagers roared even more enthusiastically.
“We are the men of the sun, of the sand!
Red is the dawn, and red the river!
Our strength is a knife honed by drought and storm!
Like the god of the well, we will rise again!”
Red the river . . . red the blood of their enemies . . . Gareth did not like the sound of that at all. The god of the well must be Nebran. Toads were said to survive dry seasons by burrowing beneath the mud. The rest of the verse needed no translation.