The Parched sea

'That's all?' The widow pulled the hide off the rabbit and threw it to a saluki lurking on the edge of their camp.

'They can be eaten, too,' he said. 'My father and I used to eat mutton-sheep-every year when we went to Archendale.'

'Archendale? Tell me about that,' the widow demanded.

'It's a beautiful place,' Lander said, closing his eyes. 'The River Arkhen flows through a rocky gorge. The whole valley is filled with lilies and moss.'

'It sounds wonderful.'

Ruha's eyes were fixed on the Harper's face, and he could tell from their dreamy expression that she was trying to imagine the paradise he described.

'Archendale is a wonderful place,' Lander confirmed.

'But it was almost destroyed. The Zhentarim tried to take it over, too.'

'How did you stop them?' Ruha asked.

'It wasn't me. My father did it,' Lander replied, growing melancholy at this turn of the conversation.

'Was he a Harper, too?'

Lander shook his head. 'No, he was a merchant, but he was a good man.'

Ruha's eyes remained fixed on Lander's face, and he realized she expected him to continue the story.

'Archendale's farms were the best within riding distance of Sembia,' Lander began. 'Every summer, my father and I would go there together to buy produce. One year, my mother wanted to come along.'

'Why should that bother you?' Ruha asked, studying him carefully.

Lander looked away, uneasy that the widow had read his feelings so easily. 'My father married a beautiful, charming woman,' the Harper said. 'What he didn't know was that my mother was also a deceitful Cyric-worshiper. She had intentionally married a wealthy merchant in order to gather commercial information for the Zhentarim- information they used to fill their own pockets with gold at the expense of honest men like my father.'

Lander paused, a lump of anger growing in his breast as he recalled how his mother had used him to dupe his father. When he turned ten, she had started taking him to the house of a famous mercenary three times a week, presumably for lessons in swordsmanship. What neither the Harper nor his father had realized, however, was that while Lander was learning to fight, his mother was meeting with her Zhentarim masters in the back of the house.

'Go on,' Ruha urged.

'The time came when the Zhentarim decided to take over the rich farms and orchards of Archendale. They assigned my mother the task of gathering the names of all the farmers and landholders in the valley. That was when she insisted upon joining my father and me on our annual trip,' Lander continued. 'Fortunately, my father was an observant man, and my mother, as usual, underestimated his intelligence. When she insisted upon meeting all of his business contacts and asked about men he did not even deal with, he decided to find out what she was doing.

'When we returned to Archenbridge, my father hired someone to follow my mother while he was out of town. The man was able to stalk her to a secret meeting of Cyric's evil sect and to see her meeting with a known Zhentarim agent.'

'What a shock for your father,' Ruha said, absent-mindedly holding her bloody jambiya in her hand. 'What did he do? Kill her?'

Lander grimaced. 'In Sembia, men don't do that sort of thing to their wives,' he said. 'My father set out for Archendale to warn the farmers about the Zhentarim plot. He sent me to another city with a message for a trusted friend.

'My mother saw me leaving town and came after me with two men. When she caught me, she tried to convince me to join the Zhentarim, but I couldn't help remembering all the wonderful times my father and I had shared in Archendale. I told her to let me go and, when her guards tried to take me prisoner, I killed them.'

'And your mother?'

Lander shook his head. 'I made the worst mistake of my life,' he said. 'I let her go.'

Ruha gave him a exonerating nod. 'A man shouldn't-'

'My mother went straight to her Zhentarim masters,' the Harper interrupted, an intentionally sharp tone in his voice. 'They sent their agents into Archendale.'

'What happened?' the widow asked, her concerned eyes showing that she had already guessed the answer.

'I don't really know,' Lander replied, looking at the ground. 'I passed my father's message to his friend, then waited for him as he had made me promise. I didn't hear anything until nearly a fortnight later, when a Harper came and told me that both my parents had died in Archendale.'

Ruha's voice dropped to a shocked whisper. 'How did it happen?'

Lander shook his head. 'A Zhentarim assassin caught my father shortly after he entered the valley. The Harper wouldn't tell me how my mother died.'

They sat in uneasy silence, both of them staring at the pebbled ground. After a time, Ruha cleaned her jambiya on a piece of cloth and sheathed it. She took some dried camel dung out of a kuerabiche, then reached into her aba and withdrew a flint and steel. She handed the dried dung and the flint and steel to Lander. 'Will you please light a fire?'

Without speaking, the Harper pulled some shreds off the hem of his tattered aba to use for tinder.

Ruha withdrew a pot from another kuerabiche and half-filled it with water. 'I see mirages from the future,' she said, avoiding the Harper's eyes. 'When I was a little girl, I was not wise enough to hide this.'

Lander piled the tinder on a dung-patty. 'So? Seeing the future is a gift.'

'Not among the Bedine,' Ruha replied. 'I was shunned.'

'As a child?' Lander exclaimed.

The widow nodded. 'It was my father's decision, but he had no choice, of course. The elders demanded it.'

'The elders were fools!'

When Ruha did not meet his gaze, Lander leaned over the dung patties and began striking sparks. The third one caught, and he gently blew on it until it produced a small flame in the tinder.

'Who are fools?' asked a youth's familiar voice.

Lander looked up and saw that Kadumi had returned from his duty as a scout. The boy was standing at the edge of their campsite, his bow and quiver in one hand and the reins of his camel in the other.

'Er-nobody,' Lander said.

The color rose to the visible part of Ruha's cheeks, and Lander looked uncomfortably back to the flame.

Kadumi scowled, then turned to unsaddle his camel. After a moment of tense silence, he asked again, 'Who are fools?'

'Nobody,' Lander replied, looking up from his fire. 'Ruha and I were just talking about the differences in our cultures.'

Though he wasn't sure why he should be embarrassed, Lander could sense from the attitudes of both Kadumi and Ruha that he and the young widow had violated an unspoken rule.

The Harper's explanation did not satisfy the youth. Tossing his bow and quiver aside, Kadumi advanced angrily. 'Ruha is my brother's wife,' he said. 'You may not have secrets with her!'

Lander stood. 'We don't have any secrets-'

Kadumi reached for his jambiya.

'Kadumi, no!' Ruha cried.

The Harper was so shocked by the action that the boy actually had the blade halfway out of the scabbard before Lander caught his arm. Grasping Kadumi's wrist tightly, he helped him pull the dagger the rest of the way out of the sheath, then quickly used his free hand to press inward against the joint. Kadumi cried out in pain and dropped the dagger.

'Don't draw a weapon on a man you can't kill,' Lander said. His heart was pounding hard, but he kept his voice even.