In between tiny, nibbling bites of the offered barley and dates, my strange companion provided something of an explanation for the circumstances in which we found ourselves. Her name was Fenin, and she was a maiden selected from birth with the dubious honor of being offered up as a meal to the great worm of the desert. To that end, she had been taken from her home and placed here, loosely tied to this rock, just that morning. For the preceding seventeen years of her life, she had been kept apart from others in a small house in the center of town, permitted to leave only with three escorts. “Svilsara is the greatest city upon the earth,” she insisted, though from her description, it only took an hour to complete her daily, supervised circuit of its inner wall. In that small house, she was provided with everything she could want: the finest of clothes and delicacies, a room full of books, and next year’s sacrifice as a companion. Why she looked as though she had been starved for a year and was dressed only in a threadbare, dust-stained robe, without even straw sandals to protect her feet from the sunburnt rock, she did not say.
Night drew around us like a smothering cloak, and Fenin’s eyes came to focus, though she kept her eyes fixed on the stretch of stone between herself and the fire. “This is your fault,” she told me again. “Everything was in place until you came along.” It had not been the ritual drugs that had persuaded her, as I had suspected. I had been a champion in Phyreios, and my presence had done nothing to dissuade the worm beneath the mountain from emerging. Here, I was as nameless as a grain of sand. “I’m sure it will come along in its own time,” I said, and I hoped that I would not be proven correct.
Fenin scowled, stretching paper-thin skin over the delicate bones of her face. Her garment barely concealed a belly huge and distended from malnourishment. It was fortunate that she seemed content to pick at the food; she might have made herself very ill if she were to consume it too quickly.
“You should rest,” I offered. “I can keep watch for the serpent.”
She shook her head. “It is my responsibility to greet him when he arrives. If he arrives,” she added, and for an instant she sounded exactly the petulant child she was, despite her aged appearance.
“I’m sure he’s on his way,” I said.
Her swift, sharp glance told me she did not believe me.
“My name is Eske,” I continued. “I come from far to the north. I have visited the great city of Phyreios, the temple of the dragon in the eastern mountains, and the isles of the southern sea. I’m heading west now, seeking a sorcerer who might aid me on my quest.”
Fenin’s attention wandered, and her eyes scanned the black expanse that would, come morning, turn back into the sea of dust. For now, the impenetrable darkness was quiet and still. I placed a hand flat on the rock, feeling for any tremors that might indicate the approach of a great serpent, but felt nothing. I allowed myself the faint flicker of hope that the serpent was just a myth, and not a particularly well-told one—I had not been warned of it, after all, and no one at the last oasis had ever mentioned such a place as Svilsara.
“So, this city of yours,” I said, drawing Fenin’s attention back from the empty desert. “What do people do there? Is there a well? A mine? Good land for grazing?”
Her huge, sunken eyes blinked twice as she gave me a blank stare. “The serpent provides all we need,” she said at last.
A worm like the one that crushed Phyreios, or like the one that I had hunted among the spires of floating ice, so long ago, was not known to provide anything for anyone, besides food for itself. These great beasts were not gods, who would grant gifts in exchange for faithfulness; nor were they dragons, with the wisdom of ages and the capacity to bargain with mortal men. Their base, animal will was also far too powerful for a magic-worker to harness—the Seven Ascended, with all their power, perished under the rubble just as their worshippers did; just as I almost had, and just as Khalim—
“So you must have some learned men there,” I said, cutting off my own thought before it could take root, “and women as well, with all your books.”
I would not hand the wicked book, still at the bottom of my pack, to Fenin—not yet. She looked as though she might not be strong enough to lift it, and the fear that she might expire if I took my eyes off her for an instant kept me rooted to my spot by the fire. And I could not trust her strange convictions, and the way her appearance belied them all. For now, I would keep the book where it was, but perhaps my search for a learned sorcerer was closer to complete than I had thought.
“The elders of Svilsara are the wisest in the world,” Fenin told me. “No others could have made contact with the great serpent and gained his blessings.”
“Do you think so?” I asked.
She must have heard the doubt in my tone, because she gave me a sharp, momentary glare before returning her eyes to the benighted desert, from which no serpent emerged.
“They must be wise,” I said, trying a different tact, “and crafty, to entice a world-serpent with only one sacrifice per year.”
“You know nothing, unbeliever,” Fenin spat. She was missing several teeth, and her gums were the deep purple of a sailor long lost at sea. It was no wonder she was picking at the food, despite her visible hunger.
I began to suspect that the serpent was nothing more than a tale, and her sacrifice was to be merely the conclusion of many years of deprivation. She would pass away quietly, here upon an island of rock in the vast desert, and the other citizens of Svilsara would be none the wiser. The wind would eat away her meager flesh and etch her bones to dust, and no traveler would find any evidence that she had ever lived. As Svilsara was remote enough that I had not been told of its location, this evil practice might have continued for generations before her and generations after, thousands of youths and maidens consumed by the desert to satisfy the ambitions of the elders.
But there were questions I could not answer. Why was Fenin half-dead to start with, when the sun would quickly slay any unprepared traveler or deprived captive anyway? And why did she believe, against the evidence of her eyes and the obvious pain in her mouth, that she had been treated like a great khan’s pampered bride for her entire life?
The desert night was cold as winter. I finished my mending and drew my robe around me, and I added more fuel to the fire. Fenin seemed unaware of the chill, and moved no closer despite her thin clothing. My fuel was precious, as I was unlikely to find more in this barren land, but she would accept no shelter and would certainly die if I let the fire burn out.
The only thing left to do was to wait until morning. Then, perhaps, I could take Fenin back to Svilsara, wherever it might lie, and demand an explanation from her elders.
It would take time. I was already taking the long way around, adding gods knew how many days to my journey and burning through my supplies. Another detour would only strain my limited provisions.
I could have left Fenin where she was and moved on. She might have preferred that I do so, and any evidence that she or I had ever been upon this rock would be gone within a day or two. The thought was tempting.
But Khalim would never leave a starving girl to the elements, and how could I show my face to him one day with the knowledge that I had done so?
I remained on the rock, watching the fire, and waited.
Gently, like the rocking of a ship in shallow water, the earth beneath me began to shake.
I thought it an illusion at first, the trembling of my own overtired mind, but Fenin pulled herself to her knees and began once more to sing. Her keening cry called out to the devourer, begging him to come near.
The shaking grew stronger. I banked the fire and smothered it with sand, afraid a spark would fly out and catch my tent. Bran awoke and nosed at my clothing, and I held his bridle, weighing the choice of remaining here with Fenin or seeking higher ground, and whether she would join us if I insisted.
It wasn’t until much later that I realized that Bran had not adopted the wide-legged stance and bent posture that he took up when the ground was unstable. He was nervous, his ears flicking and his eyes wide in what remained of the light, and his hooves scraped an anxious rhythm on the rock, but if he felt the same tremors in the earth that I did, he did not show it.
Fenin continued to sing, and as long as she did, I knew she was alive. The last embers of my fire went out. The black desert night fell over us like a shroud.
If the worm eats me, I thought, how long will it be before I notice?
The quake slowed, thrumming away into the earth beyond the reach of my senses, and stopped. Fenin fell quiet, and I could just make out the irregular shape of her clothing if I stared at the place I had last seen her. My ears strained in the silence.
A dark shape moved in front of her, darting in from the unseen expanse of dust. The smell of burning sand, absent since sunset, followed behind it.
I reached for my harpoon. Thin tongues of lightning licked at my fingers, casting an eerie, pale light upon the scene. I saw Fenin, kneeling upon the rock, her bony hands raised in supplication. A shadow, tall as a man and standing on two long legs, loomed over her.
“Who goes there?” I shouted into the darkness. “Step back from her and show yourself. I have a weapon.”
The figure straightened, turned, and took one step in my direction. I held Bran at arm’s length and brought the harpoon to my shoulder. In its faint, crackling light, I could see the curve of a sharp smile and two reflected points floating in liquid, black eyes. My hand tightened around the harpoon as the figure bent over the remains of my fire and reached out a shadowy hand.
Blazing yellow burned my eyes and turned the world, for an instant, to brightest day. I turned my head away, lowering my weapon to shield my face. Bran whinnied and stamped his feet. I held him fast. If he ran off, I might have never found him.
Slowly, the spots faded from my vision, and my eyes adjusted to the light enough that I could see. My fire had been relit, and it flickered and sputtered under the layer of sand I had kicked over it, staining the dusty stone a dull orange. Fenin, her eyes wide and glassy, still knelt on the other side.
Standing beside her was a sharp-featured young man, dressed in a robe as black as the night. He grasped both Fenin’s bony wrists in one hand, and in his other, he held a curved knife that caught the firelight and reflected back a blood-red gleam.
He turned to me and smiled, stretching his lips a little too widely over teeth that shone white as the distant sickle moon and sharp as his knife.
“How fortunate I am this evening,” he said in a voice like the wind hissing over the dunes, “to meet not one, but two illustrious citizens of Svilsara!”
Back to Chapter XXX: The Sea of Dust
Forward to Interlude Four: The Land of Ghosts
Thanks for reading! Next, we’ll check in with Khalim, and then find out what is going on with the strange characters Eske has encountered.
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