Sanctuary ee-1 Page 5

  Continuing upward, he reached an arched opening, low enough that he had to stoop to pass through. Outside, a breeze whistled around the tops of the spires. The air was remarkably cold, and it refreshed him like a draft of new wine after the rank odor of the interior.

  From ground level it had appeared the tops of the four shorter spires touched the central column. In fact, there was a gap of some six feet between Shobbat’s perch and the central column. Bridging the gap was a slab of black granite. It was barely wider than Shobbat’s two feet, but he wobbled across, both arms held out to maintain his balance. He had not come so far to be stopped by his dislike of high places.

  On the other side a round opening penetrated the central pinnacle. He halted at the opening and brought the lamp in close. Two lines of writing were chiseled into the gray rock, curving around the top edge of the entrance. Although the spelling was archaic, the words were in the Common tongue:

  The roots of the Tree are deep. I shall live again.

  It made little sense to Shobbat, but echoed what the scholars in Khuri-Khan had translated from the tablet.

  He stepped through the opening and found himself in a large cave. The floor was paved with a polished black stone; the walls and distant ceiling were gray granite. As far as he could tell, the chamber was empty.

  He shouted a few times, without visible result. Wind gusted against his back, sending his hat winging away and extinguishing his lamp. He wavered, off-balance in the sudden blackness.

  “Enter, visitor.”

  Shobbat pivoted in a full circle, but could not find the source of the low voice. “Who’s there?” he called.

  “The one you came to find,” said the voice, then added a lilting phrase in a language Shobbat did not understand.

  Brilliant light flooded the cave, blinding the prince. With a cry, he dropped both knife and lamp and covered his aching eyes. A sound no desert-dweller could mistake came to his ears, the beguiling splash of water. He lowered his hands. Blinking, squinting, he beheld an impossible scene.

  The cavern was lit as brightly as noonday in the desert, but the air was cool and fresh. Even more astonishing, a fine tree towered over Shobbat, its branches spreading to the high roof of the cave. Knowing only the palms and succulents of Khur, the prince could not identify it. Its trunk was at least three feet in diameter, the bark gray-green and rough. Its dark green leaves were shaped like the shields carried by nomad warriors-long and narrow, rounded on one end and pointed on the other.

  Shobbat stood staring dumbly upward. He had never seen such a tree before, and it was plainly impossible for its like to grow inside a closed cavern, shut off from the sun.

  “No one has sought me out in an age. Your question must be grave.”

  Shobbat’s gaze dropped from the magnificent tree to the old man sitting cross-legged at its base. He was thin, draped in linen rags the color of old parchment. White hair, fine as floss, hung to his shoulders. His skin was lined and darkened by time and the elements. He was obviously blind, his closed eyelids shriveled and sunken.

  “Are you the Oracle of the Tree?” asked the prince.

  Long, bony fingers gestured to the empty air. “There is no other.”

  A breeze set the tree’s leaves to shivering. In the periphery of the cave, Shobbat saw movement, but when he turned to look in that direction, there was no one to be seen. Alarmed, he retrieved the dagger he had dropped and demanded to know who else was present.

  The ancient turned his head slightly left and right, then shrugged. “We are alone.” Shobbat insisted he’d seen movement. “Those are images of the past and future, not living beings.”

  The dismissive tone infuriated Shobbat. The haughty prince drew himself up, announcing his name and rank. The old man was not impressed.

  “Makes no difference who you are. In any event, I’ve been expecting you.”

  “Expecting me? How?”

  “I am not fixed in time like mortal men. I live equally in past, present, and future. Thus, I know you seek the throne of your father, Sahim-Khan of Khur.”

  Shobbat snorted. “What prince doesn’t? Is that the extent of your augury?”

  “You need do nothing to achieve your goal, Prince of Khur. Outlive your father, and the throne is yours.”

  “Bah! He intends to live forever!” Shobbat’s petulant expression became harder, more resolute, and he added, “He treats with Nerakans, ogres, and minotaurs, seeking to enlarge his realm, and he allows foreigners to enter our country. All he sees is the gold and steel they bring, but his dalliances will destroy Khur. He does not deserve the throne!”

  The prince again saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Again, when he looked directly at it, it vanished. He shifted from one foot to the other, gripping the hilt of his dagger nervously.

  “My father has granted asylum to the exiled elves,” he said. “He intends to use them as pawns to limit the influence of the Knights of Neraka. I need to know-will he succeed?”

  “The Knights will not rule in Khur.”

  Shobbat blinked in surprise. He had expected a more cryptic response, but this was welcome clarity.

  “Yet your house will not rule long, son of Sahim, if the children of Kith-Kanan are permitted to remain in Khur.”

  That too was plain-speaking, yet not so welcome.

  Heedless of his audience’s reaction, the oracle continued, “The elder race can win this land. Not with sword and fire, but by greening the desert.” He opened his left hand, revealing a green shoot sprouting from his palm. “It is their peculiar gift to bring life to lifelessness.”

  Shobbat’s dark eyes narrowed, a flush of fury mantling his face above his beard. “I will not allow it! Khur does not belong to the laddad. The throne will be mine!”

  “So it will be, noble prince. For nine and ninety days. That will be the length of your reign.”

  Shobbat stalked forward, determined to wring a different fate from the scrawny old prophet. He reached out for the oracle’s neck, then froze in horror. Before his eyes, the sage’s skin became translucent. Muscle, bone, and vein stood out clearly. And the face was no longer human. The jaw had narrowed, grown pointed. The cheeks were hollow, the eye sockets high and arched. The prince recoiled from the ghastly sight, his anger freezing into fear.

  “What are you, old seer?” he whispered.

  The oracle ignored the question. Empty eye sockets turning to stare directly at the prince, he said, “Life has branches, like the Great Tree, and each choice represents a fork. You have one chance, Prince of Khur. It is vital that you keep the children of Kith-Kanan out of the Valley of the Blue Sands. If you do, their seed will wither in the wasteland.”

  Shobbat shook his head, wondering whether he had heard properly. The Valley of the Blue Sands was nothing more than a child’s fable. What could such a myth have to do with the laddad, or with his success as khan? The burning need to know overcame his fear and he lifted his dagger, demanding an explanation.

  “The word has been given. Twill say no more,” the oracle told him. “Go.”

  The final command echoed through the cavern as the sage vanished in a pulse of white light. When the glare subsided to a bearable level, the half-seen figures in the far edges of the cave solidified, and Shobbat could finally see them for what they were. Horrified, backing hastily away, he stabbed at them with his dagger. It was no use. They crowded in upon him, hands outstretched, claws gleaming, mouths agape. Shobbat screamed.

  Outside, seated on the sand, Wapah heard the cry. A cloud of bats poured from one of the black granite towers. The horses snorted and pawed the ground. As the bats chittered overhead, weaving and dodging, debris fell around the nomad, landing lightly on the sand. Wapah picked up one of the fragments.

  It was a leaf, dark and supple. Such leaves did not come from any tree Wapah had ever seen growing in Khur, yet the sand below the flying bats was littered with them, and more continued to flutter down like green rain.

  Wapah pressed the
leaf between his palms and begged Anthor the Hermit to protect him from the fell magic that obviously inhabited this place. A somber and solitary deity, Anthor nonetheless favored his desert children. They lived on the hard edges, where men and gods could see eye to eye.

  * * * * *

  The task Gilthas had given Kerian was straightforward enough: pay a call on Sa’ida, high priestess of the Temple of Elir-Sana in Khuri-Khan. However, his insistence that she leave Eagle Eye behind precipitated another argument. He didn’t wish his wife to draw unnecessary attention to herself by arriving at the temple door astride a royal Silvanesti griffon. For her part, Kerian believed that the awe Eagle Eye inspired in humans prevented a lot of needless wrangling with guards and petty officials.

  The bickering continued until Gilthas flatly ordered her to ride a horse. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately-ending their disagreements by issuing peremptory, royal commands. Tight-lipped, the Lioness obeyed.

  She took as her sole companion Captain Hytanthas Ambrodel. Gilthas viewed this as yet another sign of her contrariness. He certainly did not expect her to go without an appropriate escort. Lord Taranath and the balance of the army had not yet returned to Khurinost, but a suitable complement could have been found. The Lioness refused, citing Gilthas’s own stricture about not alarming the Khurs, and he could hardly argue against his own logic. Elves were generally accepted in Khuri-Khan (as was any cash customer). Lone elves sometimes earned glares, especially outside the broad-minded venues of the city markets, but nothing beyond that.

  Gilthas had matters of state to attend to, but delayed long enough to watch his wife depart with young Ambrodel at her side. Clad in fresh tunic and trews, Kerian had disdained Khurish attire, preferring her own Wilder garb over the more comfortable local fashion. Captain Ambrodel was more practical. He wore a white geb over fawn-colored Qualinesti trousers, carefully arranging the folds of the desert garment to conceal the hilt of his sword.

  The midafternoon sun bathed Kerian’s blonde head in a nimbus of white fire. As always, Gilthas could not help but be struck by her beauty, yet her grim expression was strikingly at odds with her loveliness. Her mood had grown worse since her return. It wasn’t only their clashes that accounted for this. The loss of her command and her humiliation at the hands of the bull-men still gnawed at her. She’d not told anyone else what had happened, and rumors had begun to circulate in camp. The Lioness’s courage was well known, but it could only be seen as odd that she had returned apparently unscathed from a battle in which all of her command had been lost.

  Perhaps she was deep in thought, pondering the mission he’d given her, or perhaps she was concentrating on guiding her mount through the perils of the crowded tent city. Whatever the reason, although Gilthas waited, Kerian never glanced back at him. When, at last, she was lost to sight around a bend in the lane, he returned to his tent. Scouts from Taranath’s command had arrived in advance of the main body of the army, and they had much news to impart.

  As Kerian and her aide passed through the tumult of the tent city, each noticed very different things. Hytanthas saw courage-common people struggling to live in a hostile, foreign place, and beginning to succeed. The Lioness saw only injustice-the most ancient race in the world forced from their rightful homes and made to suffer ignominiously in this terrible wilderness.

  Like the roots of a tree, the environs of Khurinost were tangled, having grown haphazardly according to the lay of the land and the whims of its builders. Sahim-Khan had given the elves permission to set up a camp outside his capital; he had given them little else. Exhausted, sick, sunburned, and parched, the elves cobbled together whatever shelter they could, making tents out of everything from silken cloth to horse blankets to canvas sails formerly used by ships plying the Bay of Balifor.

  Desert winds and errant embers from cookfires had taken a steady toll on the makeshift habitations, but as days became months and months grew into years, the elves learned to do better. The flimsy tents acquired wooden doorways, brass fireboxes and chimneys, and carpets to cover the sand. Wide, central streets were left open to the broiling sun, to allow carts and mounted elves to pass and to bring in fresh air, but the rest, the miles of narrow, twisting passages between tents great and small, were roofed with rush mats woven from the knife-edged grass that grew along the seaside below the city. The result was a warren no stranger could hope to navigate, the very antithesis of the elven love of order and beauty. But the confusing maze of streets and passages also served as an effective defense against interlopers.

  Ahead, some forty yards beyond the edge of Khurinost, the wall of Khuri-Khan rose, its western face washed by the afternoon sun. Kerian lifted her gaze from the tent-city and studied the wall.

  Sahim-Khan’s first priority after the fall of Malystryx was to rebuild his city’s defenses. Until these were complete his capital was vulnerable. The northern and western sectors had been repaired first. In those directions lay the greatest threats: the Knights of Neraka and the ogres of Kern. The elves lived under Sahim’s watchful eye, penned in by the city wall on one side and the pitiless desert on the other. The Lioness recognized Sahim-Khan’s sanctuary as both a gift and a trap. If the elves’ enemies moved against them now, there would be no escape for the Firstborn.

  “Trapped,” she muttered.

  “General?” Hytanthas asked, but she only shook her head.

  A sextet of heavily armed humans guarded the west gate. They wore broad-brimmed helmets styled after the sun hats worn by nomads, but wrought in iron. Their cuirasses, cuisses, and greaves were of Nerakan pattern. For many years, Khurish soldiers had hired themselves out as mercenaries to the Knights. The soldiers also wore a coiled dragon device on their breastplates, marking them as members of the Khur tribe.

  Although the Khurs had given their name to the country, they were only one of the Seven Tribes of the desert, named for the seven sons of Keja, who had first united the desert-dwellers into a single nation. Centered on the natural fortress of Khuri-Khan, the Khur tribe had come to dominate the others both in war and trade. All the khans of Khur had begun as princes of the Khur tribe.

  The guards had no trouble recognizing the elf general. Dressed in Kagonesti leathers, golden head bare to the brilliant sun, Kerianseray was hard to miss. The tallest Khur sketched an awkward salute. It was a Nerakan habit they had not fully mastered. Kerian acknowledged the gesture with a slight nod and kept moving, plunging into the heavy shadow of the gate. The gate was enormously thick, a full sixteen feet of stone. Compared to the blazing desert outside, the tunnel was black as a dragon’s heart, and the Lioness blinked rapidly, her eyes adjusting to the sudden loss of light.

  The Khurs had nothing with which to build but crumbly sandstone, and soft limestone from the cliffs overlooking the Bay of Balifor. To protect this weak stone they applied a veneer of large glazed tiles to the inner and outer surfaces of their walls. When maintained, this coating strengthened the stone and made it impervious to wind and rain. Many buildings were covered by tiles glazed in creamy or golden tones, but some were quite colorful, in bold primary hues or multicolored hues like patchwork quilts.

  At the other end of the tunnel, the two elves were greeted by a riotous mix of colors, sounds, and smells that was utterly foreign. This was the Fabazz, or Lesser Souk, the city’s market for spices, incense, and foodstuffs. Streams of smoke from charcoal grills mingled with the odors of freshly butchered meat, sizzling fat, and drying herbs. The aromas were not unpleasant but to an elf, with senses far keener than any human’s, the sensations of the Fabazz could be torturous.

  The soukats, or merchants, converged on the newcomers, waving samples of their wares. The soukats of Khur had welcomed the elves even more than their khan. To them the world was divided into buyers and sellers; whether the buyer was elf or human concerned them not at all. All steel was equal, and equally sought.

  Had they been on foot, Kerian and Hytanthas might easily have been overwhelmed. Khurish traders were not note
d for their reticence, and in the Fabazz their approach was practically an attack. Most of the merchandise here was perishable. What wasn’t sold today would have to be marked down for sale tomorrow (or worse, cast off).

  “Great lady!” A soukat shoved a small bundle toward the Lioness, its smell so sharp that her horse sidestepped quickly. “Buy these spices! The burning they bring to the tongue will be matched by the burning they incite in the heart of the one you love!”

  “Ignore him, lady!” boomed another soukat. “Mushra sells only street sweepings! Kandar has the best spices, oils, and resins in Khur! Buy from Kandar, who weighs his goods honestly!”

  “Kandar is an infamous liar, noble lady! Only Teffik weighs truly, and handpicks his spices each morning from the Delphon caravans!”

  When Kerian showed no sign of stopping, the soukats redoubled their efforts. Soon her horse was rendered immobile by the gesticulating merchants. Hytanthas could make no headway either.

  A live chicken, squawking loudly and wings flapping, was suddenly thrust in Kerian’s face. Recoiling, she planted a foot against the poulterer’s chest and shoved with all her strength. The unlucky man was flung back against his fellows. All of them crashed into their carts and went down in a clatter of tin pans and a flurry of squawking chickens.

  Wails of protest rose up from the soukats. This was not how things were done! In the Fabazz, a little shoving was commonplace, but nothing this rough. A number of soukats hefted pieces of the broken carts, waving the staves at the elves. The Lioness ostentatiously drew her sword. Reluctant but loyal, the captain did the same. The Khurs parted ranks and allowed the armed elves to pass.

  By the time they emerged on the other side of the market, ascending the stepped street there, the Lioness’s face wore a fierce grimace, and not for the altercation with the poulterer. That she had found rather invigorating. No, her distaste was for the stench that now saturated her clothing. The reek of the Fabazz seemed to permeate her very skin. She longed for a fountain so she might wash her hands and face, but this was a vain hope. Khuri-Khan did not waste water on such displays.