Sanctuary

clawed at the stone, they stabbed furiously at the softer skin under its legs. Some swords snapped, but enough penetrated to make blood flow. Stirred by an agony it had never known, the sand beast arched its back with a mighty effort, shifting pillar and elves, and freeing itself. Crushed hindquarters dragging, it fled, mighty foreclaws propelling it several yards at a time. The lust to kill elves was subsumed beneath a more primal need-to live.

Her warriors found the Lioness, groggy but uninjured. Atop her sprawled Favaronas; the archivist was senseless.

“We beat it, General! It’s running away!” they shouted, moving Favaronas aside and pulling her to her feet.

The words penetrated the fog in her battered brain. “What? Go after it! Don’t let it escape!”

Mounted elves spurred away. Kerian called for a new horse. While one was being brought, she knelt by Favaronas. Blood trickled from his nose, but his eyes had opened. With her help, he sat up, holding his head in both hands.

“We aren’t dead?” he muttered.

She grinned. “Didn’t I tell you I’d protect you? I even let you land on me!”

The sour look froze on his face as his gaze went beyond her. “Look there!”

Issuing from the deep hole left by the uprooted monolith was a swarm of tiny lights. They drifted and darted in the night air: blue, white, red, and a smoky orange. The blue lights rose more quickly than the rest, and winked out one by one. White and red lights drifted to the ground and died like embers falling on wet grass. Only the orange wisps remained, circling and rising.

The Lioness had taken a few steps toward the lights, but Favaronas warned, “Stay back! Don’t touch them!”

“What are they?”

“I don’t know, but they were imprisoned by the standing pillar. They weren’t meant to roam free!”

A horse arrived for Kerian. Wincing from her accumulated hurts, she swung onto its back, telling Favaronas, “Watch those things. Tell me what happens.” She spurted hard after the sand beast.

The orbiting orange lights peeled off in groups of two and three, and followed her. Favaronas and the foot- bound warriors shouted warnings, but she was already too far away to hear.

Fiery pain kept the sand beast to a speed little better than a horse’s best gallop. The bones broken in its left hip grated against each other. Sword cuts in the tender junction of its left hind leg burned.

Great as its agony was, even stronger was the fury blazing in its breast. The need for vengeance pushed it onward. It would visit this pain a hundredfold on the one who had sent it here. If necessary, it would cross the entire world to slay the one responsible for this agony.

Something snagged its right rear foot. Brought up short, the monster toppled forward, burying its chin in the turf. Before it could get up, more ropes whistled in, snagging its horned head and front limbs. Each loop drew tight, the one encircling its neck cinching so hard it couldn’t draw breath. Then the creature found itself pulled in four directions at once.

Kerian galloped into the fantastic scene. The sand beast was down, thrashing against its bonds. Wounded and confused, it couldn’t break the ropes holding it before more arrived. Its gyrations tore up clods of blue-green soil and widened its wounds. Blood flowed freely. Additional loops cinched its neck. Its eyes bulged as the pressure on its throat grew and grew.

As her horse skidded to a halt, she was amazed to see the orange lights sweep past her. They never paused, but flowed toward the tormented beast. They held off a few feet, sparkling like quartz in firelight, until all their number was gathered, then in unison they dropped. When they touched the sand beast’s hard flesh the area was bathed in a silent flash of white light. A gust of cold wind stole Kerian’s breath. The ropes abruptly went slack, causing the straining horses to surge forward and nearly unseating their riders.

To the amazement of all, the sand beast was gone.

* * * * *

Wapah halted at the flap of Adala’s tent. “Weyadan, I have food for you.”

“Enter, cousin.”

He ducked under the ridge pole and knelt in front of her, taking care not to spill the contents of the tin plate he carried. Only ripe olives, bread, and rice, all cold, but she made no comment on the poor fare.

Two days had passed since the laddad had escaped into the Valley of the Blue Sands. Adala had pitched her tent where she stood, and the rest of the nomad warriors camped around her, tending their wounded and burying their dead. Here they would remain until the elves returned.

Trouble was, they were not equipped for a long stay. They had only the food and water they happened to be carrying at the time of the battle, and nothing more. It was their tradition to fight light and unencumbered; siege warfare was not their style. The bulk of their supplies had been lost when the family camp was attacked.

Shortages appeared immediately. Inmost Khurish camps, each tent had its own fire, but the nomads had so little fuel, campfires were rationed to one per five tents. Traditionally, they burned cow or goat droppings, but they were far from their herds. Water was precious, and food scarce.

Adala went without a fire, though any warrior in her host gladly would have given up his fuel to her. She sat in her tent and sewed on a project of her own, her only illumination the starshine she collected in a concave silver mirror set in the open door.

“There’s no sign of the enemy,” Wapah reported. She nodded, but didn’t look up. Her fingertips were pricked and red with irritation, the inevitable consequence of sewing so long in such poor light.

He waited for her to stop sewing and eat. When several long minutes passed with no sign of this happening, he decided to go ahead and ask the question weighing on his mind. She would eat when she would eat.

“Maita, how long will we stay here?”

Lately, the tribesmen had added this to her titles. No longer speaking of “Adala’s maita,” they named her Fate itself.

“We will stay here until the laddad come out.” She turned the heavy rectangle of cloth over and started stitching on the other side. “Or until we are told to go.”

“Told by whom?”

“Those on High. I am but Their instrument.”

Frowning, Wapah departed. It was a dark and somber camp he traversed back to the tent of Bindas, newly sworn war chief of the Weya-Lu. The tribe’s warmasters had taken to congregating there, not least of all because Bindas’s late uncle, Gwarali, never traveled anywhere without a generous supply of wheat beer. The leaders sat together in the hot darkness, sipping beer from tiny brass cups and speaking in low tones about their situation. Already there was talk of leaving the valley mouth. They didn’t need to hover here, the dissidents said. All they need do was guard to route back to Khuri-Khan, and they would surely catch the laddad as they tried to return to their people. Food, water, medicine, and other supplies could be had by trading if only they left this place and kept on the move. That was their way. Sitting here in the shadow of the Pillars of Heaven was foreign, and dangerous.

“The Weyadan knows what she is doing,” Wapah insisted. “Those on High have chosen her to cleanse our land. Do you doubt her?”

None would say so, but the beginning of that sentiment was plain in the black tent, as plain as the aroma of Gwarali’s brew.

Talk turned to strategy. What was the best way to catch and defeat the elusive elves? Their long-legged horses were strong and fast, if not as hardy as desert ponies. Laddad armor resisted the nomads’ favorite weapon, the bow. Even their swords had longer blades than the tribesmen’s.

“In Estwilde, the Nerakans rode with lances,” said Bindas. He’d served as a mercenary in the Knights’ army during the recent great war. “They pierced any metal plate they rode at.”

“You need hardwood to make lances,” another mercenary veteran pointed out.

“We can trade for it.”

“Before the laddad come out?”

And so it went. Voices rose and tempers flared as more beer was consumed and frustrations were voiced. A few of the warmasters who’d been to the world outside Khur offered to lead troops into the valley to find the