The Parched sea

'Hold these. I'll go to the back of the line and see if I can coax them down backward.'

As she worked her way past the apprehensive camels, the bleating of the goats and the knelling of their bells faded.

'Wait!' Lander called. 'They're gone!'

Ruha turned around and saw that he was correct. The goats had disappeared, as had her wind wall. In their place stood the white, translucent figure of an unveiled woman. Her face was young and strong-featured, though there was a certain weariness to her countenance that gave her a lonely and heartbroken appearance. She was studying Ruha with an expression of sisterly sorrow.

'Kadumi! Come back! They're gone,' called Lander. Without waiting to see if the youth heard him, the berrani turned and started back up the mountain. 'We'd better get off this narrow ridge before something else happens.'

'Wait,' Ruha said, still looking past him to the translucent form of the goddess. 'How do you know Rahalat has given us her permission?'

Lander looked directly at the place where the form of the goddess was standing. 'There's nothing there,' he said. 'Just a moonlit rock.'

Rahalat gave Ruha a sly smile, then suddenly looked in the direction of the Bitter Well. She scowled in displeasure, and then the goddess was gone.

Ruha led her camels across the rest of the spine, puzzling over the appearance of the goddess and the meaning of her final frown. From Lander's reaction, it was apparent that Rahalat had permitted only the widow to see her, and from that Ruha deduced that she was being shown some sort of special favor. She could not decide, however, whether the glance in the Bitter Well's direction had been a warning of some sort or whether the goddess had merely seen something in that direction that she did not like.

When Ruha reached Lander's side, he asked, 'You didn't make that wall of force that saved us?'

'What's a wall of force?' Ruha asked, turning to look down the mountain. 'Is Kadumi coming?'

The question was unnecessary, for the youth was already crossing the rock spine. He paused in the center long enough to cast a regretful glance down at his dead gelding. Then, a sheepish expression on his face, he rejoined them without saying anything.

Lander resumed his climb, finally calling a halt atop a section of steep crags and two-thousand foot cliffs that overlooked the oasis spring. Ruha could see the embers of the Mtairi campfires spread out in a semi-circle against the base of the mountain. In the darkness, she could not see individual silhouettes moving about the camp, but there was no sign of torches, so she assumed the trio's escape remained unnoticed.

Beyond the camp, the alabaster crests of the whaleback dunes and ebony ribbons of their dark troughs created an eerie sea of black and white that stretched clear to the eastern horizon. Somewhere to the northeast, Ruha knew, was the Bitter Well and the Zhentarim army.

'I thought we had walked farther,' Kadumi commented.

'We did,' Lander answered. 'The only way to get here is around the back of the mountain. If anyone comes after us, we'll see them leave camp long before they reach us.'

'Still,' Ruha said, 'it would be best not to let them see our silhouettes on this ridge.'

The berrani nodded, then led the way a few paces down the other side of the shoulder. As Lander and Kadumi tethered the camels, Ruha heard the faint tones of an amarat horn. Her first thought was that their absence had been discovered, and she quickly scrambled back up the shoulder.

A moment later, Ruha knew she was wrong. She crested the ridge in time to see a bolt of light flash in the dunes outside the oasis, then a muffled peal of thunder rumbled up the mountainside. More amarat horns sounded.

'Zhentarim!' she gasped.

By the time Kadumi and Lander joined her, flickering pinpoints of torchlight were dancing between the khreimas. A solid line of the torches was forming at the edge of the camp.

'It appears Al'Aif got his wish after all,' Lander commented. 'The Zhentarim must know that Zarud was killed.'

'How could they know so soon?' Kadumi asked. 'That was only a few hours ago.'

'Magic or spies,' Ruha suggested. 'Do they always attack so quickly after an insult?'

'The Zhentarim are careful planners,' Lander said, his eyes fixed on the scene below. 'As soon as Zarud presented their treaty, they probably started moving their army forward-just in case the sheikh did not accept their terms.'

A familiar knot of cold dread formed in Ruha's stomach. 'The Mtair will be slaughtered, just like the Qahtan.'

Neither of her companions contradicted her.

Seven

'Where are the dead?'

The question was Kadumi's, but it troubled Lander and Ruha as well. The trio was perched on Rahalat's shoulder, at the top of a steep face of barren rock that dropped over two thousand feet to the campsite at the base of the mountain. The sun was just rising, and they were getting their first view of the devastated khowwan of the Mtair Dhafir.

From such a distance, the three survivors could make out only a few details of the scene below. Every khreima in the camp had been knocked down. The Zhentarim had tethered the Mtair's camels in a tight circle and were looting the possessions of the Mtair Dhafir. Hundreds of columns of gray smoke rose from campfires spread around the base of the mountain, and the camel drivers were taking their beasts to drink from the spring in small groups.

Missing from the scene were what Lander had most expected to see: the bodies of the Mtair Dhafir. At such a distance, it was impossible to tell a tribesman from an invader, for men looked like dark specks crawling across the pale sands. What troubled Lander and his companions was that all the dark specks were moving. If the Bedine were lying at the base of the mountain, at least two hundred of the dark specks would have been quite still.

'Perhaps the Mtair escaped,' Kadumi whispered. 'It was dark, and we could not see what was truly happening.'

The trio had spent the night watching the battle, but they had not seen much. After the amarats had sounded a second time, the torches on the battleline went out, presumably extinguished by the warriors themselves in order to keep from drawing attention to their positions. A few minutes had passed, then muted cries had begun to drift up the mountainside.

In camp, the women, marked by the flickering lights of their torches, had scurried about, collecting children and supplies with renewed frenzy. As the Mtairi battle cries grew more desperate, the women had assembled on the far side of the camp, then fled the battlefield.

Before the line of yellow flames had traveled fifty yards, a muffled chorus of surprised screams had heralded an invader ambush. The refugees had scattered, but their torches had started to wink out immediately.

Recalling the agonized shriek that had accompanied each dying light, Lander knew that even if some of the women had escaped, there were many more who had not. The sand should have been carpeted with their bodies and with the bodies of the warriors who had died at the battleline.

Lander shook his head. 'Everybody couldn't have escaped, Kadumi.' The Sembian did not bother to speak in a hushed voice. With the Zhentarim nearly a half-mile away, there was no chance of being overheard. 'There should be dozens of corpses at the very least. Do you see any?'

'No corpses,' Ruha answered. She pointed at a knot of dark specks gathered at the tent in which the trio had been held last night. 'But I don't like what is happening there.'

As she spoke, the gathering began to break into groups of ten or twelve. As each group left, it moved in a different direction.

'Search parties!' Lander said.