The Sea of Time

IX Into the Wastes

The caravan was scheduled to depart on the first of Winter, ten days in the future. Meanwhile, Kothifir seethed like a kicked ants’ nest, getting ready. Couriers came and went between the city and the western training field where the wagons met. Every day, more joined those already there. Many of the latter had never traveled the Wastes before and were more eager to join in the potential profit than knowledgeable about the risks.

“They say it’s not only the biggest convoy ever,” said Timmon, “but also possibly the last.”

He, Jame, and Gorbel had met at the canteen after a day of maneuvers to share a cask of the Ardeth Lordan’s private wine stock. Gorbel probably had his own. Jame didn’t, not having thought to lay in such a supply. She sipped, trying not to make a face. Fine vintages were probably wasted on her anyway, if this was one of them.

Then too, her head still hammered from the previous night’s dreams.

Bang, bang, bang . . .

“I do with my own flesh what I choose!”

Damn you, Father, and poor Tori, to have such a monster caged inside your skull.

If he didn’t treat Kindrie properly, though, she would have something to say on her own, and he would damn well listen to her.

Timmon nudged her. “Are you all right?”

“Right enough.” Jame rubbed her forehead and brought her mind back to the matter at hand.

A mixture of seasoned randon, third-year cadets and second-years were going on the expedition, mostly those who had never previously had the opportunity. Timmon was one of them, to his delight. Gorbel, to his disgust, was not, nor were any other Caineron: Lord Caldane had made his interest in discovering the caravan’s destination entirely too obvious. Gorbel had told them about his father’s private explorations into the Wastes, to the vast, glistening pan of the Great Salt Sea and beyond.

“All they found were ruins half buried in the sand,” he had said in disgust. “Those, and the shell of a Kencyr temple.”

That last had surprised Jame. “What, one of the missing five?”

“Kothifir, Karkinaroth, Tai-tastigon . . .” Timmon had counted on his fingers.

“Tai-than, perhaps.” Jame wondered what Canden’s expedition had found. Trinity, how long ago it seemed since she and Dally had seen their friend off from Tai-tastigon’s walls.

“Kencyr prisoners at Urakarn claim to have sighted one there too,” Gorbel had said.

“At Urakarn, in the enemy camp?” That idea had truly startled Jame.

G’ah, too many mysteries, too few answers.

She now asked, “Do they say why this might be the last caravan?”

“No,” said Timmon with a grimace. “I’ve been among the drivers, buying them wine, listening for gossip, but they’re so scared this expedition will fail that there’s no loosening their tongues. King Krothen has enough wealth to last a lifetime—and to pay for his pet hobby, the Southern Host. He already has two treasure towers full of the finest trade silk. However, many merchants are gambling their fortunes and futures. It will be a hard time for Kothifir if this venture fails.”

Jame wondered if that was true for Gaudaric. His principal capital lay in his talent, but the mission must be important or he wouldn’t be sending his son-in-law.

Gorbel grunted. No doubt he had also tried to gather information, presumably without success. Jame could guess how hard his father must be pushing him.

“Will you take Bel-tairi with you, and that bloody rathorn?” he asked.

“I think not.” Other horses still made her uneasy, but she would rather risk riding them into the desert than her own unlikely pair. “Bel is too valuable—remember, she’s a Whinno-hir, hundreds if not thousands of years old—and Death’s-head burns too easily.”

“I had wondered,” said Timmon. “With those red eyes, he’s an albino, isn’t he?”

“Yes. A rathorn mare’s last foal often is, and an outcast too, poor boy. Others of his kind have black or gray coats, but still white manes, tails, and ivory. Speaking of which, in the desert he would not only have to carry all that weight but broil in it as well. I just hope I can get both of them to stay here.”

Gorbel gave a snort of laughter. “Still can’t manage the brutes, eh?”

“Bel, yes, and she’s a lady, I’ll thank you to remember, not a brute. Death’s-head, maybe. If she stays, though, he probably will too. Jorin goes with me.”

“Waugh,” said the ounce from under the table, as if in agreement. Jame rubbed his back with her foot.

“Ten more days,” Timmon said with a sigh, as if he were speaking of years. Jame wondered if he would be as enthusiastic deep in the desert.

As she left the canteen some time later, movement in the shadows to one side caught Jame’s attention. Her hand brushed her knife’s hilt, then drifted away. What should she fear here in the camp? Darkness resolved itself into Shade, muffled to the eyes in a cloak.

“Ran Awl has disappeared,” she said.

Jame felt her heart skip a beat, as if at the opening move of some dire game. “You’re sure?” Of course Shade was; she would have looked everywhere, questioned everyone. “What does Commander Frost say?”

“She suggests that, finding nothing wrong, Awl went home. But she wouldn’t without telling her staff. Without telling me.”

Jame recognized the tone. Bastard, half-Kendar daughter of a lord, shunned by most of her house, Shade had finally found someone to believe in, only to have her mentor disappear. Frost had only hinted at a cause. To be more explicit, especially if she knew better, would be the death of her honor. How much a Kencyr could get away with by simply not telling a direct lie. “It might be . . . perhaps . . . it seems . . .” G’ah. The bland smile, the easy evasion—was that all that honor had come to mean to her people?

Shade was watching her intently. She wants something from me; some validation, some protection . . .

The Randir opened her cloak at the neck. Within, golden scales shifted.

“Oh no,” said Jame, stepping back. “Every time I take Addy into my care, you go off and try to get yourself killed.” It suddenly occurred to her what Shade’s soul-image might be. For a nascent changer, what better than a snake with its supple, ever-changing form? “Truly, protect her and she will protect you.”

Shade considered this, then closed her cloak. “You understand more than I do, perhaps. So be it.”

She stepped back.

“Wait! Promise me that we’ll speak again before I leave.”

The other nodded and faded into the shadows.

The days passed, full of exercises and bustle as the senior randon prepared their juniors for the trials to come. Jame heard much of the desert’s threats and denizens, of sinksand and mirages, of hostile tribesmen and things beneath the sand, of thirst, hunger, and delirium. A lovely time they were all going to have, she thought, but still her spirits leaped at the thought.

Winter’s Eve arrived. Despite the farewell festivities held throughout the camp, Jame waited in her apartment for Shade, but the Randir didn’t appear.

Then it was Winter’s Day.

“Whoa there! Wait your turn!”

The caravan ground was chaos. Drivers jockeyed into their prescribed positions, surrounded by clusters of family and well-wishers with hands outstretched as if to hold them back. Horses neighed and stomped. Oxen bellowed. Donkeys brayed. Brass bands bounced about the margin of the field, playing discordant melodies. Dogs fought. Every form of transport seemed to crowd the field from wind carts to ten-mule teams, from high-riding buggies to wagons with wheels rimmed by inflated rhi-sar intestines. Perhaps only a third had risked the Wastes before and knew what to expect there. Among the veteran traders, all drove flat-bottomed wagons with upturned prows, drawn by horse teams that would be switched to something more appropriate when they reached the desert proper.

“My place is forward,” said Timmon to Jame. “See you tonight.”

As he rode off with his ten-command, Char followed with his own of Knorth third-years, shooting a glower at Jame in passing. As far as she knew, all challenges had stopped in the Knorth barracks with her order, as sourly as Char had received it. Ran Onyx-eyed hadn’t seemed to care one way or the other, but then how was anyone supposed to read that bland face? She was also with the caravan as second-in-command.

Jame saw Gaudaric standing by one of the flat-bottomed wagons while his daughter Evensong bade good-bye to her husband. As Ean mounted the vehicle, she retreated in tears to her father’s arms.

“Byrne?” the latter called, cradling her, craning to look over the mob. “Come help with your mother. Curse it, where is that boy?”

Jame’s ten-command took their assigned position a quarter of the way down the line of march, near Ean’s wagon. Evensong greeted her with near hysteria, reaching up to clutch her hand.

“You’ll take care of my beloved, won’t you? Promise!”

“There now.” Gaudaric patted her back. “I’m sure the lass has enough to manage already.” But his eyes pleaded, for the sake of his daughter.

“I promise,” said Jame, adding prudently, “to the extent that I can.”

“True, you’ve a challenging trek ahead. I went once, when I was young. Now it’s Ean’s turn. Don’t let the monotony of the desert seduce you into carelessness. It holds unexpected threats.”

Now he tells me?

He read her expression and slapped her raw-boned bay on the shoulder, making the excited gelding hop sideways, nearly stepping on Jorin. The ounce crouched, sprang up onto the wagon, and burrowed under its tarpaulin, leaving only the white tip of his tail atwitch in the open. Something there caught his attention, but Jame was too busy to notice.

“Truly,” Gaudaric was saying, “I would have told you more if I could, but everything that happens in the Wastes lies under King Krothen’s oath of secrecy. I haven’t even been able to tell my own son-in-law as much as I would have liked, although I’ve given him hints. Your seniors will have shared with you what they know. Note, though, that they are only allowed to travel with the caravan so far. If anything happens beyond that point, it’s no longer under your control, and precious little will be before that.”

The assistant wagon masters were shouting through trumpets, down the line. It was a big caravan—one hundred and fifty wagons carrying trade goods, water, food, fodder, and fuel. Each trader was expected to provide the latter four items for his own team and crew. The first lurched off down the southern road. Standing in her stirrups, Jame saw that it carried the middle-aged, blond seeker whom she had last seen during the raid on the small caravan during the summer. An old woman sat next to her on the high seat, rail-thin and white-haired. The other wagons followed one by one, like pulling out a skein of knobby yarn. Now Ean was maneuvering into position with many shouts at his team interspersed with farewells called to his wife.

Evensong collapsed against her father’s chest.

“Byrne!” he shouted, holding her, still scanning the turbulent crowd, now in motion. “Byrne!”

“Good-bye! Good-bye!” people cried, drowning him out.

The travelers passed through the South Gate, out between the fields, dust roiling up under thousands of hooves and wheels. Ahead rose the dusky mountains, and beyond that, as yet unseen, the open desert.

That first night, they camped halfway up the Apollynes, the terraced slopes stretching down behind them to the dark valley floor. Level with them were the distant lights of Kothifir, sparkling as if in imitation of the stars above. Some gazed longingly back. Most thought only of what lay ahead.

The next day they reached Icon Pass, with much scrambling up the steep road. This time the lights shone above them among the peaks where the fortress known as Mountain Station overlooked both flanks of the range. Snow crowned the heights and the air was frosty. Campfires blossomed beside the wagons. Jame and Timmon played a game of Gen in her tent before she turned him out, protesting, into the night.

On the third day the travelers crossed the pass. Horses leaned back on their hocks against the downward slope and the weight pressing close behind them. Stones rattled down the steep incline. Switchbacks helped for a while, then were left behind. Streams plunged past, fed by the beginning of the rainy season, and the sloping meadows were green. Goatherders watched them pass while edging their flocks out of reach, but the travelers still had plentiful supplies of their own and only laughed at such caution.

On the fourth day they continued to descend through the mountains’ southern foothills, then through date palm groves fed by the Apollynes’ largesse of streams. The desert itself enfolded them almost by stealth. The land flattened into a rock-studded plain with diminishing vegetation and waterways disappearing underground. The monotony Gaudaric had warned about lay on all sides, broken only by silently dancing dust devils and the occasional bush. It was much hotter by day, but when the sun set, the temperature dropped sharply. Jorin hunted by night, usually returning before daybreak with cold paws which he kneaded against Jame’s stomach, claws retracted, under their shared blanket. So it went for several days as the caravan followed the ancient, subterranean stream with its occasional, increasingly gritty wells and stands of dusty palm trees.

Riding behind Ean’s wagon, Jame noticed that it was dribbling water. When she called this to his attention, he untied the tarpaulin, threw it back, and discovered Byrne curled up in a snug hollow that he had made by partaking freely of their supplies. The water came from the wagon’s reserve tank which the boy had tapped and insufficiently closed, with the result that a quarter of it had drained away.

Ean clutched at his curly hair. “What am I going to do with you?” he demanded, distraught, of his young son. “Your mother must be frantic, and your grandfather too!”

“I’m here, Papa,” said the boy with implacable logic and a dimpled, self-satisfied smile. “Now you have to take me with you.”

Indeed, Ean had no choice. He couldn’t turn back himself, given what his father-in-law had staked on this expedition, and no one else would, however much he offered to pay them.

On the tenth day, they came to the last oasis, set in the dusty trading town of Sashwar on the edge of rolling sand dunes.

“How long do we stay here?” Jame asked.

“Long enough to prepare for the deep desert,” said Ean.

He extracted a pot from his load, broke the seal and began to smear its contents on the sloping front of his wagon.

“What’s that stuff?” asked Dar as the trader worked his way to the boards underneath. Byrne crawled after him, as usual getting in the way. Other veterans were performing similar work on their rigs, watched with amusement by the less-experienced drivers.

Ean held up a glistening glob. “I don’t know exactly. Gaudaric brought it back from the heart of the Wastes years ago on his one trip there, but it feels, smells, and tastes—ugh—like congealed fish oil.”

While he worked, Jame took Byrne to explore the town, such as it was. Her ten-command came too. A clutch of drivers whistled after pretty Mint, who made a flirtatious show of ignoring them.

Damson snorted.

“One of these days,” Jame said, “you’re going to get into trouble.”

“I like trouble,” said Mint, pouting, “the right sort, at least.”

At a primitive inn they ate fried locust on toast and goat cheese curds, washed down with bitter tea. Jame noted the women’s veils, reminiscent of the Kencyr Women’s World, and the men’s cheches, out of which tufts of hair poked like a furry fringe around their faces. She wondered if the latter were the ends of braids. Under her own head covering, her hair was also tightly woven Merikit style, those strands on the left side for men she had killed, those on the right for children she had supposedly sired as the Earth Wife’s male Favorite. Did the desert tribes follow a similar code? Whom did they worship anyway? The Four or their desert equivalents? Urakarn’s Dark Prophet or the Witch King of Nekrien? There were even rumors of a tribe sworn to the Three-Faced God, rather to the embarrassment of his Kencyr followers who would hardly have wished him (or her, or it) on anyone else.

After dinner, they went to inspect the extensive animal pens. The horses would be left here tomorrow, giving way to beasts better suited to the deep desert. The selection was wide, ranging from giant armadillos to hyenas the size of ponies to burly, long-legged woms to web-footed birds at least eight feet high at the shoulder.

“Which are ours?” asked Byrne, poking at the hyenas with a stick. Brier snatched him back barely before the powerful snap of jaws.

“I don’t know,” said Jame. “Hopefully not those.”

Dawn came with a vivid smear of color across an endless horizon. To the southeast and southwest floated the mirages of distant mountains—the Tenebrae Range and the Uraks respectively.

Ean had unloaded his wagon the day before. Now the wheels and axles were removed, reducing it to a sledge. The goods were reloaded. Out of the growing light came two handlers leading a pair of huge beasts, some ten feet in length with correspondingly long legs and necks.

“Lambas,” said Ean, pleased. “Gaudaric reserved a team of them for us by courier.”

Jame noted their splayed, three-toed feet but even more their short, prehensile trunks. Fur-fringed, slit nostrils opened on either side of the latter, situated on the tops of their small heads. Their bodies, by contrast, seemed swollen.

“They have three stomachs,” she was told. “The biggest one stores up to thirty gallons of water.”

“So what do we ride?” asked Dar. “Oh no.”

Brier had appeared out of the growing light, leading a flock of reddish-brown birds that towered over her.

“Moas,” she said, “good to ride or to eat, if things get rough. Watch out for their teeth; they’re omnivores and have a nasty bite. And make sure the girths are tight.”

Each had a saddle on its back, secured around the rib cage before the long legs. Jame reached up to tug on a strap. The bird squawked in protest and snapped at her. She punched it in the beak.

“Now make them kneel.”

“How?”

“Kick them in the knee, of course.”

Jame gingerly nudged her bird. It folded with a glare and a whistling hiss, bringing the saddle within reach. She stepped on its leg and swung her own over its back. It rose with a forward jolt that nearly dislodged her.

“All right,” she murmured as its head bobbed high above her own on its long stalk of a neck. “Your name is Lurcher, and don’t you dare throw me off.”

The caravan set forth. First went the sledge, formerly the wagon, that carried the seekers. It dragged roughly to begin with, but when it hit the sand it began to slide. A skin of water formed under it where the fish oil met the sand and a remnant of the old sea returned. The next sledge deepened the effect and so on. When Ean’s vehicle joined the line, it skimmed forward behind the lambas who walked on either side of the shallow, watery pathway. The other traders followed, lumbering through the drifts, their laughter dying.

Riding a moas wasn’t too different than riding a horse, if one discounted the loss of two feet and the distance to the ground. Lurcher had a tendency to sway, perhaps because it had drunk half its own weight at the oasis and so was a bit top-heavy. Jame surged back and forth from stirrup to stirrup, glad (not for the first time) that she didn’t tend toward seasickness.

Jorin crouched and sprang up on the sledge where Byrne greeted him with a crow of delight. Trust a cat to spare its paws on the hot ground.

Soon they were deep in the rolling golden sand dunes under an achingly blue sky. For the most part, they tried to follow the dips that exposed the hard desert floor, but often they had to climb over the dunes’ shoulders. The lambas plodded steadily ahead, occasionally hooting companionably from team to team:

Are you still there? Yes, I am. Are you?

Other beasts were soon struggling and falling behind. Most caught up that night, but late and exhausted. Some had already turned back.

“Bet you only the sledges make it,” said Timmon. “We’re down to just over one hundred travelers already.”

They began to pass ruins, jutting out of the sand. Jame remembered that these worn walls were said to travel about beneath the sand, according to the wind. Some presented markets with bread that turned to dust at the touch. Others offered fruits and vegetables that looked whole but crumbled if breathed upon. The dust raised figures to wander about the stalls, in and out of sight. This must once have been a fertile realm, but its inhabitants had long since fled. Lizards watched the caravan go by from the stubs of walls, frilled collars flaring red, gold, and blue in the wind.

“Lesser rhi-sar,” said one of the Kendar. “Useful, but nothing compared to their ancestors.”

That night Jame walked among the tents to stretch her legs after a day of riding. Most traders had settled in the lee of dunes with a haze of sand whistling off the crests over them, but not so close as to be in danger of avalanches. The dunes, after all, were always in subtle motion, and drummed as they shifted slowly forward under the wind’s whip. A storm was building. The lambas’ tufted tails sparked and crackled with electricity. Moas crouched down, hiding their heads under their rudimentary wings. Neither stars nor moon shone, and in the distance thunder rumbled.

She came to a fire leaping high into the troubled night. Around it sat Kothifirans, listening to an old desert woman. Like her sisters in Sashwar, she wore a veil, but made no attempt to anchor it as the rising wind whipped it about her wizened face. When she saw Jame, she broke off her current story and gestured to her with a gap-toothed grin.

“Welcome, my friend, you who seek the truth! Sit with us and I will tell you of the desert gods.”

The others readily made way. Jame sank cross-legged onto the ribbed sand and gazed across the dancing campfire at her ragged hostess.

“Once everything for days in all directions belonged to the Sea of Time. Ah, consider how much of the present floats atop the past. When the Sea died, or seemed to, so did its attendants and all that lived in it. But something that large and powerful never completely goes away. Desert sledge still calls to the memory of water, as you have learned, have you not?”

Most of the carters murmured agreement. Those without sledges looked glum.

“Beneath the Sea is Stone. Stone remembers and endures. He seldom speaks but always tells the truth, because silence is never a lie. If you can get his attention, you will learn much. Take care, however, that you can bear the force of the answer.”

Someone offered her a goatskin of wine. She paused to drink, wrinkled throat bobbing. The fire flared sideways in a gust of wind, then leaped up straight again.

“On top of Stone creeps Dune. The cry of the jackal and the laugh of the hyena, the singing sand, the crash of ghostly wave on vanished shores and the rasp of Sandstorm are its voice. Dune reveals with one hand and covers with the other. It may lure you to your doom or tell you truths. Dune knows, but says both no and yes.

“And then there is Salt, the Eternal, the Spiritless, the Soulless. When the Sea died, that which could not be purified became Salt. It is a mystery even to the other Gods. It is not Earth or Air or Fire or Water. It is not That-Which-Creates or Preserves or Destroys—yes, girl, I know the attributes of your god and of the Four. The Gods of which I speak came after them but may well outlast them. Hah’rum! Salt is That-Which-Remains, the Sea Within us. That is why to this day salt merchants smuggle their wares throughout Rathillien and take their time at it. They know Salt will remain even if King Krothen will or won’t.

“Where Stone is honest and Dune equivocates, Mirage always lies and lies without purpose. If you are not careful, Mirage can kill you or steal your soul. She is a dancer and a shapeshifter. Do I worship Mirage? Certainly not! My lies carry truths that fact’s spindly legs cannot.

“Ah, but Sandstorm is the raging place of wind and Dune. It is destruction, but it is not always bad. It clears away and scours clean. Sometimes it buries things which should not walk on the Earth. And it smashes through Mirage’s illusions in an instant.”

Jame stirred. Had she thought before of That-Which-Destroys as a positive force? Well, yes, in her more defiant moments. “That which can be destroyed by the truth should be,” Kirien had once said. Always? Sometimes Jame wondered.

The old woman went on to describe River, Oasis, and their child, the Pathless Tracker, who spoke to Stone and knew the rites to propitiate Sandstorm.

“When we die,” she added, “he leads us across the Desert and through the Sea into the Story of Things That Were. You would not have gotten this far if your guides were not his initiates. You Kennies don’t have to believe in Tracker, but you show him good manners if you know what’s best for you.”

“And who are you?” Jame asked.

“Me?” The old woman laughed and showed her few remaining teeth. The lower half of her face seemed to have become more skeletal as the night progressed, giving her a skull’s lopsided, bony grin. “I am Storyteller, Granny Sit-by-the-Fire. Every hearth and every campfire is my shrine. I tell truth you’ll remember, even if I have to lie to do it. Without me to tell you what you are, you would just be clever animals, no better than that overgrown wombat lying there farting by the sledge.”

Her listeners laughed, but laughter died suddenly. Something dark stumbled toward them out of the night, whimpering. In a moment, they had scattered, and the old woman withdrew into shadows, leaving the memory of bones.

Jame thought at first that the advancing figure was a wounded animal, but then she recognized one of the drivers who had whistled at Mint. The man dragged a leg and cried as he lurched forward. Damson walked behind him, cold-eyed.

“I was on guard duty,” she told Jame. “He said his friends might like a pretty face, but he preferred ’em plump and wanted to be friends. Then he grabbed me.”

“You have the training to deal with him without this.”

“Oh, I did that first. He’s got a broken leg, when he has time to notice.”

“Damson, let him go.”

The cadet grimaced and did. The man collapsed.

By now people were gathering, including Jame’s ten-command.

“You should have broken his neck,” said Dar, furious. He and Damson might play tricks on each other all day long, but they were teammates and this was an outsider.

A wagon master approached, throwing on his clothes. “What’s all this?”

“She led me on!” cried the man, groveling away from Damson. “She’s a witch!”

He collapsed again and writhed at the girl’s feet, frothing at the mouth.

“Stop that!” Jame grabbed Damson to shake her . . .

. . . and found herself abruptly in the soulscape, grappling with something dark and dire. Ivory armor slid over her limbs, shielding her. She lashed out.

. . . and Damson sprawled at her feet in the sand with a split lip.

“I said if you ever struck me, I would strike you back,” Jame said, shaken. “I couldn’t help it.”

Damson spat blood. “Neither could I.”

“They’re both witches!” cried the driver, beginning to wax hysterical.

“Now what?” demanded the wagon master, distracted, as another man ran up to clutch his arm.

“It’s Nevin,” the newcomer panted. “Seized from his tent . . . through the floor . . .”

The master turned pale. “Gods help us. We’ve landed in a nest of snatchers. Everybody, get up! We have to move camp. Now.”

“A nest of what?” said Dar blankly. “Oh . . .”

Something green and scaly had emerged from the sand. It fumbled at his boot, gripped it with ten-inch claws, and pulled. Dar sank in up to his thigh.

“Help!”

Some of his friends grabbed him while others dug frantically. Finding his foot and the thing clutching it was no problem, but the sinewy arm, or neck, or whatever it was seemed to go down forever. Mint hacked through it. Dark blood spurted out of the hole, drenching Dar.

“Argh!” he said, trying to wipe the sticky goop off his face. “It burns!”

“Strike the tents!” the wagon master was shouting. “Move, move, move!”

One of the moas gave a squawk suddenly cut off, leaving only a puff of feathers afloat and the half-seen afterimage of a claw as broad across the palm as a man’s torso.

Everywhere tents were falling and people scrambling to load their wagons. The wind was stronger now and the visibility diminished except where lit with cracks of lightning. Blue light ran hissing over the wagon frames and up the oxen’s horns, crowning them like violet candle flames.

“’Ware the return stroke!” someone shouted.

As if his voice had called it forth, lightning seared down, striking dead the unfortunate oxen where they stood.

Jame was helping bundle Ean’s rolled tent into his sledge when they heard a child scream. Where was Byrne? She and Ean scrambled up the nearest dune. From its crest they saw an enormous, scaly claw on a neck or arm shimmering with blue-violet fire, thrust up through the sand. The boy dangled from its fingertips, curled up like a kitten in its mother’s jaws. Beneath, in a depression, smaller claws groped up like nestlings about to be fed by their parent.

A stocky figure stood at the base of the soaring arm and chopped at it with a sword as if with an axe.

The thing convulsed and dropped its captive. Jame took a running leap, caught the boy just above the groping claws, and rolled with him to safety.

Lightning clove the air, followed by a thunderous clap like the end of the world. The snatcher’s stump of an arm (or neck) flailed, fountaining black blood in a stench of burnt flesh, then whipped back into the sand, followed by its offspring.

“Whee!” said Byrne, somewhat breathlessly as his father snatched him up.

Jame confronted the swordsman. “Gorbel, what are you doing here?”

“What?”

They were both shouting, still partially deafened by the blast.

“I said . . .”

“I heard you.”

The Caineron Lordan leaned on his reeking blade, his face scrunched up against the sweat running down it. “Had to come, didn’t I?” he said, raising his voice to a near bellow against the ringing in his ears and the howl of the wind. “Father insisted that I discover the mystery of the Wastes, so I bribed a trader to take me along incognito. The idiot insisted on a team of hyenas, which promptly ate him. So here I am, in the desert, on foot.”

“You’re more than welcome to ride on my sledge,” said Ean, hugging his son.

“Appreciate that,” said Gorbel, gruffly. “Assuming that this lady doesn’t denounce me. Krothen’s wagon masters have no fondness for the Caineron.”

“I’m not sure I do either,” said Jame, “but you’re you. What quarrel do we have?”

“None that I know of, unless you count the last time at Tentir when I tried to kill you.”

“Oh, we’ve already gotten past that.”

“Then, sir, I accept your offer. Now let’s get out of this demon-infested wilderness.”

The caravan hastily trekked several more miles as the storm grew. The wind, whipping over dunes, covered and uncovered the bones of ancient, scattered dwellings so that sometimes they seemed to walk down dimly seen streets of the dead and sometimes through fields of petrified grain that snapped off under the lambas’ feet. There were sand-clogged wells and things that bent over them until the sand came again to cover all. Sometimes vast shapes wheeled overhead only to disintegrate in the lightning strokes.

At last the wagon masters declared the ground safe. Once again all pitched camp, this time on the hard desert floor between dunes, and collapsed exhausted in their hastily erected tents.

Meanwhile, the storm built.

“And you didn’t denounce him?” demanded Timmon.

It was the next morning, and the sandstorm roared over them, blotting out the sun, turning everything a lurid yellow. No one would travel today.

“At least Ean has a fighter on his team now. You should have seen Gorbel handle that sand monster.”

“Oh, he’s good at killing things, no question about that. Some day, though, you’ll have to face the fact that he’s blood-kin to your brother’s worst enemy.”

“And you aren’t?”

“Of course not. When has Grandfather Adric ever said ‘no’ to Torisen?”

“Repeatedly, starting when he didn’t let Tori attend the randon college. Your grandfather wanted a puppet for Highlord. He’s still coping with the fact that Torisen Black Lord doesn’t dance to anyone’s tune.”

Timmon opened his mouth, then closed it. They were perilously close to bringing up his father Pereden, who had definitely been Torisen’s enemy, and had made the entire Southern Host suffer for that enmity. Jame respected Timmon for coming to accept that, but she didn’t care to rub his nose in it.

“I thought you liked Gorbel,” she said.

Timmon ruffled his golden hair, perplexed. “I suppose I do, despite his rotten house. There’s something dependable about him. Decent, even, to the extent that his father leaves him alone, and even then . . .”

Quill stuck his head into the tent. “You have company, Ten.”

He opened the flap and bowed in a woman closely muffled in a cloak off of which sand cascaded. Jame and Timmon both rose.

“I bring an invitation from the seekers’ tent,” said the visitor with a marked accent which Jame had last heard from the lips of a dying girl. “If the Knorth Lordan would deign to join my mistresses for a dish of tea . . .”

Jame inclined her head. “I would be honored.”

In Kens she added to Timmon, “Stay if you like, or go. I don’t know how long this will take, nor what it’s about.”

The cloaked woman led her though the camp, both of them leaning sideways into the wind. Jame had donned a cape of her own, but sand as fine as flour still found its way into her clothes, eyes, and mouth where it ground unpleasantly between her teeth. Jorin trotted at her side. He at least could keep his eyes closed. The seekers’ tent was four times the size of her own with internal compartments that baffled most of the wind, but still bulged and swayed at its onslaught. The blond, portly woman and her thin, elderly companion waited for her in the innermost chamber, sitting on rich carpets, steaming dishes set out before them. “Tea” was clearly a flexible term.

Jame bowed to her hostesses and, at their invitation, sat cross-legged opposite them. Jorin curled up beside her. His nose twitched at the smell of food.

“I am Kalan,” said the younger. “This is Laurintine. Our kinswoman, whom you tried to save, was Laurintine’s great-granddaughter, Lanielle.”

“I’m sorry that my rescue failed. She tried to send you a message, but died first. My condolences.”

Age and weight notwithstanding, Jame thought, these two ladies bore a striking resemblance to each other and to the young seeker who had so unnervingly crumbled to dust in her arms. They might almost have been the same woman at different ages.

They offered sweetened tea and small honey cakes. Everything was gritty with dust. The canvas walls flexed as the wind buffeted them and the flame in a hanging brazier danced wildly. Jame sipped, wondering what else this was all about.

The two seekers exchanged glances.

“Tell her,” said the older one in a hoarse voice, as if the desert had her by the throat. “We agreed.”

Kalan sighed. “Very well. You may have heard that this is a special caravan, perhaps the last of its kind. That may be. If so, someone in the Kencyr camp should know why in case anything goes wrong. King Krothen may demand secrecy, but your people have always been kind to us. For that and for Lanielle, we chose you.” She sighed again. “Where to begin.”

“Long, long ago . . .” croaked Laurintine.

“. . . there was a southern city named Langadine, on the edge of a great inland sea, surrounded by ancient civilizations. Of them all, though, it was the richest and the most dazzling, home to merchants, nobles, and gods. But no place is paradise to all. One day a girl fled from that fabulous city and tried to drown herself in the sea. She was with child, you see, and unwed. That was a great shame then . . .”

“As it is . . . to this day.”

“Well, yes, but the water would not receive her. As she floundered in it, it turned to the salt of her tears. In the morning after a tempestuous night, she found herself lying on a dry salt plain with nothing but the bones of her city behind her.

“Wanderers found her and took her to Kothifir. There she bore her child, a girl, and there she lived for many years. Eventually, however, she grew homesick and longed to return to Langadine. The king had heard her story. Intrigued by the idea of a great city in the Wastes, where he only knew of ruins, he mounted an expedition to take her and her daughter home. Thus she became the first seeker of the Langadine line.”

“Did they find the city?” asked Jame.

“They did. The northerners were amazed at its wealth, especially at a certain sheer fabric which they had never seen before.”

“Silk.”

“Yes. They took a bolt of it back to Kothifir led by the daughter who thus, because she had been born in Kothifir, became the first Kothifiran seeker. She had, by now, had a daughter of her own, who accompanied her. The travelers were welcome, but not by the king who had sent them. What for them had been only a few weeks’ journey for Kothifir had taken years.”

“So they had traveled in time as well as in space.”

“Again, yes. The king sent a trade mission, but they only found ruins in the desert. Langadine was not rediscovered until one of its two daughters, the maiden, agreed to lead an expedition. And so it has gone ever since. We seekers are always female members of the same lineage, able to find the city of our birth. There are usually three of us bound to each city: the maiden, her mother, and her grandmother, sometimes with a skip in generations, but there are fewer and fewer of us. I can lead this expedition back to Kothifir, having left a recently dead husband and a baby daughter behind me in that city, but my mother is also dead and Laurintine is the last Langadine seeker now that her great-granddaughter Lanielle is also gone.”

There was silence for a moment. Kalan clenched a plump fist and beat it against her thigh. Her hazel eyes were bright with unshed tears. “Ah, I should not have left my child and would not if she had not been ill. Will she live until I return? This is a hard life, always traveling to satisfy the greed of others. The lords of both cities ask too much of us. I only want a home and family of my own, before it is too late.”

“As it is . . . for me?”

“Laurintine, I am sorry. Service to the caravans has worn you to a bone, and all your children are dead.”

The wind soughed, the canvas boomed. All without was desolation. Here within, life was the fragrant if gritty cup of tea which the older woman poured and offered to the younger.

Jame watched them share the moment, the misery. Her own hand instinctively sought Jorin’s rich coat for comfort and he nuzzled her fingers. Could she have left a child behind, a sick baby? The very thought of children was alien to her, but she was young. Perhaps someday she would fully understand Kalan’s distress. She already knew what it felt like to long for a home.

“What about the time distortion?” she asked.

Kalan pulled herself together. “That,” she said, “is the other great worry. It varies from trip to trip. At first time passed faster in the north than the south, the present faster than the past, but that stabilized and then reversed. Now only two things are sure. For one, seekers cannot revisit their own pasts. Our lives lead forward, at whatever pace our surroundings decree. Whatever is done to us, we cannot undo.”

“And the second thing?”

“Langadine is catching up with Kothifir, or rather I should say with the Kothifir of three thousand years ago. Around that period, the southern city suddenly collapsed in some final, fatal cataclysm. We don’t know what happened, except that beforehand the sea turned to salt water and began to dry up. The process had already begun the last time I was there. What has taken them centuries is only years to us.”

Jame sat back on her heels, considering. “We could slip through one last time,” she said, “or we could get caught on the cusp of disaster. Here and now, though, I don’t know what we can do about it.”

“Turn back,” said Kalan.

Laurintine gripped the other’s knee with a bony claw. “I want,” she rasped, “to die . . . at home.”

“And the wagon masters aren’t likely to listen to me,” Jame added. “Would they to you?”

The two seekers looked chagrined.

“I thought not.”

An idea struck her. “The spoils of the Wastes can only survive in the present if King Krothen touches them. Lanielle hadn’t met him yet. Is that why she died after she was injured?”

Kalan inclined her head without speaking.

Leaving their tent, Jame paused on its threshold to consider the situation. If she understood her people’s role, they wouldn’t be permitted beyond the boundary between past and present. That should put them out of the path of disaster unless, as Kalan said, something went wrong.

And it always does.

G’ah, she hated being out of control, but this situation loomed like the mountain ranges to the east and west, not to be changed by any puny effort on her part. At least the wind seemed to be abating. In another day or two, they should reach the edge of the Great Salt Sea.