The Parched Sea

Five

Ruha spent the next two hours describing to her father what had happened to the Qahtan. Listening with growing concern, the old sheikh repeatedly interrupted her with questions, especially when she described the white bolt that had killed Ajaman and the lizardlike humanoids that had led the attack. When the widow at last finished the story, her father made her repeat the entire thing to be sure she hadn’t missed anything.

Finally he shook his weary head. “The strangers speak with the honeyed tongues of bees, but it seems their bite carries the venom of a scorpion. I doubt we can trust them to keep their treaty, but I fear what they will do if we do not agree to it. This will be a difficult decision.”

With that, he sent a messenger to summon the elders to council, then instructed his servant to take Ruha to her khreima. The boy led her to a small tent that had been erected a hundred yards outside the camp circle. Had she been a normal guest, one of her father’s wives would have invited the young widow to stay in her tent. Instead, Ruha knew, this khreima had been erected especially for her.

The tent was large enough to hold ten or twelve people. It had been stocked with several carpets, a kuerabiche to use as a pillow, and an empty waterskin. Though exhausted from last night’s long ride and the interrogation her father had given her, Ruha took the waterskin and went toward the spring. If she did not fill it before she went to sleep, she would have nothing to drink when she woke, hot and thirsty, in the afternoon heat.

As the widow approached the gully, she realized that something was wrong. Instead of the lyrical babble of the spring, she heard the raucous cries of alarmed birds. Ruha’s first thought was that the Zhentarim were coming to attack, but she quickly realized that was impossible. She had heard no warning amarat horns, and it was inconceivable that an entire army had sneaked past the Mtair sentries in broad daylight.

Ruha crept along the edge of the ravine toward the alarmed birds. She moved slowly and cautiously, for she had long ago learned the value of prudence in the desert. It took fifteen minutes of crawling on hands and knees, carefully staying hidden behind the thin cover of qassis bushes, to reach the disturbance.

When she finally peered over the edge of the gulch, the widow gasped at what she saw lying ten yards below, in the bottom of the ravine. A dozen larks were perched in the twigs of the ghaf trees lining the small stream, screeching madly at a figure lying face-down in the stream. He wore a sand-colored aba and his keffiyeh was nowhere to be seen. Ruha immediately realized that he was no Bedine, for his head was topped by long golden hair.

The widow watched the motionless man for a moment, wondering how he had managed to sneak past her father’s sentries. Ruha concluded that he must have come during the night. She started to back away, intending to summon her father’s warriors.

The man lifted his head, cocking it as if to listen. It was then that Ruha realized she had seen him before. A black patch covered his left eye, and the pale skin of his face was red and blistered with sunburn. He was the man she had seen in her vision, who had appeared on the wake of the Zhentarim army.

A short, featherless arrow protruded from his right breast, and there was a dark stain below the wound. Ruha recognized the short shaft as being similar to the ones that had been used to slaughter the Qahtan. It appeared that the one-eyed berrani was no friend of the Zhentarim. That made the man her ally, for, as Al’Aif had whispered to her earlier that day, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

As Ruha contemplated what to do next, the stranger astonished her by looking in her direction. Ruha had not made the slightest sound while watching the man, and felt confident that she was well-concealed behind the lip of the gulch and the qassis bush. Yet the wounded man clearly knew she was there. Automatically she lifted a hand to make sure her veil was in place.

The berrani called to her. “Bedine, I have come to warn your people—the Zhentarim are coming.”

Though his words were strained and weak, he spoke in unaccented Bedine. Ruha wondered whether he knew the same magic that Zarud and his purple-robed companion had been using to communicate, or if he had learned the language from some other tribe.

Without replying to the stranger, Ruha went down the slope, then rolled him onto his back. He had cracked, bleeding lips and a face haggard with the effects of dehydration. The wound was more serious than it had appeared from atop the ravine, for the berrani had torn both his aba and his flesh trying to pull the barbed shaft from his shoulder.

“Who are you?” she asked at last, filling her hands with water from the tiny stream.

The wounded man allowed her to pour the water into his mouth, then said, “I’m called Lander.” The effort of talking drained his strength, but he continued to speak. “I’ve come to warn your tribe—”

“The Zhentarim are here. There is no need to warn us.”

Looking alarmed, Lander summoned his strength and gasped, “They have already wiped out one tribe!”

“Save your strength,” the widow said, holding her fingers over the stranger’s mouth. “We know.”

“But you don’t—”

Ruha used her fingers to close his eyes. “I said to save your strength.” With her free hand, she took a pinch of fine sand and sprinkled it over the man’s face. “Sleep,” she whispered, following her order with a spell that guaranteed he would obey.

After filling her waterskin, Ruha rolled Lander onto his side and whispered an incantation. The man’s robe flapped as the breeze grew stronger and slipped beneath his body. Soon he hovered a foot off the ground, his weight buoyed by the wind beneath his back. The widow took the stranger’s arm, then pulled him up the gulch in the general direction of camp. When she judged they were roughly even with her khreima, she left him floating in the bottom of the gulch and climbed to its edge to peer at the camp, a hundred and fifty yards away.

From what she could see, the women were busy with their weaving and the children were either with the camel herds or playing inside the main circle of tents. Neither Zarud nor any of the men were anywhere in sight, and everyone else was studiously ignoring her tent.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Ruha went back to Lander and towed him out of the gulch. The last thing she wanted was to get caught using her magic, and she suspected it would also be better if Zarud remained ignorant of Lander’s presence. Keeping a wary eye cast in the direction of camp, she pulled him to the back side of her tent, raised the camel-hair wall, and pushed him inside. Only then did she cancel the spell and let him drop to the ground.

Ruha entered the tent from the front, then dragged the stranger farther into the tent, where she could attend to his wound. Even in his magically induced sleep, Lander’s face was drawn and contorted with pain. Ruha had the urge to look beneath his eye-patch, but resisted the temptation. If she were the one lying unconscious and wounded, she would not want him to lift her veil, so it only seemed fair to respect his privacy. Instead, she pulled the berrani’s dagger from its sheath. Unlike her own jambiya, it had a straight blade that would be more useful for the tasks at hand.

Ruha cut the dirty robes away from the wound and removed a diamond-shaped amulet of gold from around his neck so she could inspect the wound. The featherless arrow had entered just below the collarbone. The flesh surrounding the black shaft was puffy and red. Lander had tried to work the arrow out by himself, and the edges of the wound were torn and raw. He had enlarged the puncture enough so that Ruha could almost see the head, buried deep within the sinews that held his shoulder and collarbone together. The flesh surrounding the head oozed pus and deep red blood.

The widow tugged gently on the shaft and saw why the berrani had not been able to extract it. The end of a barb poked its sharp tip through a muscle. Lander did not stir at all, and the young widow was glad his stupor would spare him the pain that would accompany what she had to do next.

Ruha had never before extracted an arrow from a man’s flesh, but she did not feel queasy or hesitant. Like all Bedine, she had learned to clean game and butcher meat at a young age, and human flesh was not so different from that of a hare or a camel. Moreover, during her years with Qoha’dar, she and the old woman had had no one but each other to rely upon in the event of trouble. More than once, Ruha had set a bone or sewn up a gash for her mentor.

Grasping the shaft with her left hand, she used the other to tug gently at the arrow. When the barb appeared beneath a large sinew, she gently pushed the arrow back into the flesh and turned it a few degrees, then pulled up again. This time the tip showed through a mass of mangled red flesh. She guided the tip of the dagger down the arrow shaft until it reached the barb. With a quick flick, she severed the strands of meat holding the arrow in Lander’s shoulder.

Ruha pulled the shaft free, and the berrani gasped in his sleep. She tossed the grisly arrow aside and pressed her palm against Lander’s lips. He immediately returned to his stuporous sleep, and the young widow ripped a piece of cloth off the hem of his aba. She soaked it with water from the skin she had filled at the spring, then wiped the blood and grime out of the wound. The flesh she had cut to extract the dagger was still oozing blood, so she rolled the cloth into a small ball and pressed it into the puncture.

The widow ripped another piece of cloth from Lander’s robe, soaked it, and cleaned the flesh surrounding the wound. Where it was not inflamed and red from the trauma of the injury, the berrani’s skin was as pale and milky as the moon. Had anyone told Ruha that a man could be so white, she would have imagined a grotesque, inhuman disfigurement. On Lander, however, the color seemed a creamy complement to his blue eye and golden hair. The young widow had to restrain herself from laying a hand on his chest to see if his skin felt as soft as it looked.

Disconcerted by her unexpected surge of curiosity, Ruha dressed the wound with the cloth she had used to clean it. When she removed Lander’s cloth belt to use as a bandage, she heard something jingle in the pocket of his robe. She reached inside and found six glass vials. Five contained a thick golden liquid, but the sixth was empty. The widow had no idea what the fluid was, but she feared the unconscious man would roll over and shatter the containers, so she laid the vials aside.

After Ruha finished bandaging the dressing into place, she laid down in a corner, pulled a sleeping carpet over herself, and closed her eyes with her veil still covering her face. Later, when her father was not surrounded by the gossiping elders on the council, she would go to him and tell him of the berrani.

At dusk Ruha awoke. For a few minutes, she laid beneath her carpet, listening to the doves coo and the quail chatter as they watered in the gulch. From the camp came the roars of thirsty camels and the shrill voices of tired mothers ordering neglectful children to fetch the evening’s water.

Lander lay just as the widow had left him, on his back, with his belt holding his blood spotted bandage in place. He remained so motionless that Ruha began to worry her surgery had killed him. Finally he drew a great deep breath, and Ruha knew that he was alive.

The widow rose and rubbed the sleep from her eyes, then took a long drink from the waterskin. When she finished, she placed it next to her patient in case he woke, straightened her aba, and left the tent.

Ruha went straight to her father’s tent. As she passed through the camp, she could see that it was an unusual evening. The camel herds were tethered close to the tents, as if they were going to be loaded at any moment. The women were not quite packing, but they were arranging their possessions in neat bundles, as if they expected the order to leave at any moment. The eldest sons were sharpening their father’s scimitars and testing bowstrings, casting anxious glances in the direction of the sheikh’s khreima.

When she reached her father’s tent, Ruha stopped outside the entrance. The elders were inside with the sheikh, as were several of the tribe’s best warriors. All were arguing loudly. Loudest among the voices was Al’Aif’s.

“The invaders will make drudges of our camels and slaves of our warriors,” he declared. “I would rather die with my enemy’s blood on my blade.”

“And would you also leave your wife and daughters to the Zhentarim and their beasts?” countered an elder’s shrill voice. “If we refuse the treaty, we perish like the Qahtan.”

“But neither can we ignore our pact with the Qahtan. We swore that their enemies were ours,” cried a sonorous voice that could only belong to the tribe’s strongest man, Nata. “So let us scatter the women and children in the desert. With so many men and beasts, the invaders need a lot of water. We’ll poison the wells within a hundred miles. The invaders will die within a week.”

“What will we drink?” queried an elder. “And what will the other tribes think of us? Surely they will all swear a blood feud against us for such a sacrilege.”

“The witch has brought this upon us,” said a warrior. “Just as she brought it upon the Qahtan.”

“Fool, do you think the Zhentarim will disappear when she leaves us?” demanded Al’Aif. “We must be concerned with the invaders, not her.”

Ruha listened to the argument for several minutes and realized that it had long ago degenerated into angry shouting and the stubborn reiteration of contradictory positions. She was just about to turn and leave when she heard her father’s weary voice rise above the rest. “Here is what we will tell the Zhentarim!”

The tent quieted immediately.

“You have argued for a full day without coming to any understanding,” he said. “Therefore, it is my duty as sheikh to decide for us all.”

Muffled murmurs of weary agreement came from inside the tent, and then Ruha’s father continued. “Let any warrior who will not do as I ask leave the khowwan and call his family by some other name than that of the Mtair Dhafir.”

A surprised mumble rustled from inside the tent, for Ruha’s father was invoking the sheikh’s ultimate threat to secure obedience to his will: that of banishment. It was a risky thing to do. If too many families took him at his word, the tribe would dissolve.

Whatever her father had decided, Ruha realized, he was determined that his decision would be the tribe’s.

“We cannot fight the Zhentarim,” the sheikh began. “They are too many and we are too few.”

The tent rumbled with disgruntled murmuring.

“Neither can we become their slaves, for the children of the lion were born to roam free.”

Again, discontent resounded throughout the tent.

The sheikh continued steadily. “Here is what we must do. We will agree to serve the Zhentarim as guides, biding our time and always keeping our camels ready for a long journey. Sooner or later, Kozah will send another storm, or the Zhentarim will grow unwatchful, or their army will dwindle as At’ar takes her due. When that happens, we will take our camels and disappear into the desert, leaving the Zhentarim and our troubles far behind.”

A murmur of reluctant consensus whispered from the tent, but no one protested too loudly or threatened to force the sheikh to make good on his threat. Ruha realized that her father had developed the only compromise that would hold the tribe together.

Al’Aif was the only warrior to question the sheikh’s plan. “Of course, I will do as you say, Sheikh,” he said slowly. “But I do not like this plan. What if Kozah does not send another storm? What if the Zhentarim do not grow lax?”

Several warriors added their voices to Al’Aif’s question, but the sheikh was ready with an answer. “If we cannot escape within six months, my friends, I promise that we will slit the throats of more invaders in one night than we could hope to kill by fighting now.”

Save for Al’Aif, both the warriors and the elders greeted the sheikh’s contingency plan with hearty approval, but Ruha could not help feeling they were fooling themselves. Remembering the shrewd, appraising eyes of the pale man that had accompanied Zarud, she suspected that the Zhentarim had already thought of this plan and developed a method to counter it.

“Now fetch Zarud, boy,” the sheikh said. “The sooner we tell him what we have decided, the sooner we will be free again.”

A moment later, the servant left the khreima and started for the far side of camp. Hoping to tell her father about Lander before the boy returned with the Zhentarim, Ruha entered the tent.

In the dim light cast by the flickering butter lamps, she saw that her father sat in his usual place at the head of the tent. To his left sat the five elders of the tribe, and across from them were seated Al’Aif, Nata, and four more warriors. As Ruha approached her father, they all turned toward her with disapproving frowns. In the Mtair Dhafir, decision-making was men’s business and women were not welcome at the councils.

Ruha ignored their stern gazes and looked directly to her father. “I have heard your decision. Before—”

“Our decision does not concern you, witch,” interrupted Nata.

Ruha turned her stare on the burly warrior. Speaking in a calm, even voice, she said, “That is just as well, Nata. I would rather live a shunned life than share slave bonds with you.”

The warrior’s face darkened with anger, and he tried to stammer a reply, but Ruha turned back to her father before he could spout any words.

“Father, before you commit your tribe to this course of action, there is something I would like to show you.”

The old man furrowed his brow. “Then show me quickly.”

Ruha glanced at the curious eyes to either side of her. She still felt that revealing Lander’s presence in front of all these men would be the same as telling Zarud herself. “It is for your eyes alone.”

Angry mutters and grunts rustled throughout the tent. Her father looked from the warriors to the elders, then said, “Did you not tell me everything you knew earlier today?”

Ruha nodded. “There is something else.”

“If it is important, then you can tell me here,” the sheikh said. “Otherwise, it will have to wait.”

“Then it will wait,” Ruha sighed.

As she turned to depart, the servant boy returned with Zarud, Kadumi following on their heels.

“If it pleases you, Sheikh, I would like to hear what you have decided,” Kadumi announced, pausing at the tent entrance.

Sighing, the sheikh waved the boy into the tent. “You deserve to know.”

Glancing grimly at her brother-in-law, Ruha started to step past him and Zarud. As she passed, the Zhentarim caught her by the arm and shook his head, then said something in a language she did not understand and motioned for her to stay.

Ruha looked to her father, and he nodded.

Zarud took the widow’s sleeve, then gently tugged her along as he stepped into the center of the semi-circle of the sheikh’s council. When he stopped, both the warriors and elders frowned at his presumption in touching a Bedine woman. Ruha pulled free of his grasp.

Paying no attention to either the widow or the advisors, the Zhentarim asked a question. No one spoke his language, but there was no need to understand his words to know he requested the Mtair Dhafir’s decision about the treaty. In the eyes of every Bedine present, however, there was an unspoken question: why had he wanted a woman, especially Ruha, to stay?

The sheikh glanced at his daughter, then looked back to Zarud, carefully masking whatever curiosity he felt behind a blank face. “The Mtair Dhafir accept your treaty,” he said, nodding his head.

Wry grins crossed the lips of several elders and warriors. The sheikh had sworn no loyalty and pledged no friendship. In Bedine terms, at least, Sabkhat had not bound them to any alliance.

Smiling, Zarud inclined his head to the sheikh, then to the elders and the warriors. He spoke some more words that no one understood. The men of the Mtair looked from one to another with querying eyebrows and blank eyes.

Zarud spoke again, this time grasping Ruha’s wrist and pointing toward the Bitter Well, where the Zhentarim were camped. He put his hand in front of his mouth and made speaking motions, then did the same for the widow.

“He wants to take her to teach them our language,” concluded an elder.

Ruha jerked her wrist free. “Never!”

The Zhentarim grabbed her arm again, nodding and speaking sharply. He pointed to two elders, then to Al’Aif and Nata, and then toward the Bitter Well again.

“Why does he need with so many teachers?” demanded Nata. “This isn’t right!”

Kadumi stepped toward Zarud, his hand drifting toward the hilt of his jambiya. He stopped when Al’Aif rose and motioned for him to stop. The scarred Mtair turned toward Ruha’s father. “Already the Zhentarim tighten their reins, Sheikh. Is it still your wish to placate them?”

The sheikh locked gazes with Zarud, giving no sign that he had heard Al’Aif’s question. Finally, without looking away from the Zhentarim, he said, “It is the only way, Al’Aif. You will all be ready to leave at dawn.”

Kadumi stepped forward again. “No,” he yelled. “Ruha is the wife of my brother. I cannot allow this!”

Al’Aif intercepted the young warrior. “The sheikh has decided, Kadumi,” he said, pushing the boy toward the exit. “Don’t worry about Ruha. I’ll protect her.”

After Al’Aif and the boy had gone, the sheikh looked at Nata and the two elders Zarud had selected, then rested his gaze on his daughter. “I’m sorry that it has to be this way,” he said. “We must think of the welfare of the whole khowwan.”

“You must think of the tribe,” Ruha retorted, turning to leave the tent. “I have not been bound to do so since I was five summers old, when you banished me from the Mtair Dhafir.”