Probing ahead with her long wooden handle, the daughter of pirates sloshed through ankle-deep water, following the curving sandbar to the shore. Reiver skimmed along quietly as a fish, but Hakiim hurried, tripped, and splashed down like a harpooned whale. Once ashore, the three wedged the anchor between two boulders and jammed a big rock on top to hold it fast.
Amber dried her feet and donned her sandals, ready to go, and barefoot Reiver was already waiting. Hakiim was busy arranging an old rucksack made of carpet scraps on his back, lashing a jacket and blanket atop it, hanging a haversack of food and a canteen on his shoulder, and slinging a jingling scabbard for his curved scimitar through his belt. When all of that was finished, he was stuck holding his round shield in his left hand.
'What do I do with this?' he asked.
'Skim it across the river,' advised Reiver.
'I can't throw it away. I only know how to fight with shield and scimitar combined.'
'If we need to fight,' Amber teased, 'just spin around and charge the enemy with that backpack. It's thicker than any armor I've ever heard of. Oh, here, hold still.'
With nimble fingers, she tied his leather-bound shield atop his rucksack. Hakiim waggled his pack and bonked his head on the shield's rim.
'I'll fall over backward.'
'After a mile you'll know what to throw away,' Reiver assured him. The thief showed only pouches at his belt and a thin canvas bundle over one shoulder, though his patched and saggy clothes could have concealed more.
Reiver scaled the ridge like a squirrel to scout the country beyond, and Amber joined him. Hakiim plodded up the slope, already puffing, and peered into the nearly total darkness.
'Hey,' he said, 'where are we going?'
Amber squinted. Far off, faint against the night sky, jutted a tiny, upright finger of shadow against the deep indigo of the night sky.
'There,' Amber said.
'Not much to see,' groused Hakiim.
'This is ancient history,' Amber protested, 'and it's fascinating.'
'It's boring.'
'Oh, come now,' Amber coaxed, 'aren't you curious about who built this tower? Don't you wonder what it overlooked, or guarded, and who's stood here before us?'
'No,' said both young men.
'You should have stayed home, you grumps.'
'We grumps are going down,' announced Reiver. Careful of handholds and footing, he and Hakiim began to spiral down the narrow stairs.
'Go, I don't care.'
Alone, Amber circled the tower's top, window by window, squinting as afternoon sun glinted on the brassy desert. North lay the crumbling ridge that lined the river. Patches of sand were still dimpled by their footprints. Eastward peeked a brown smear, the foothills of the Marching Mountains. To the west lay only more wastes, which dropped away at the south. The desert was mostly sand, shelves of shale, and jumbled rocks. Tufts of coarse yellow grass cropped up here and there, as did patches of low thorn bushes. Scattered about were Calim cactuses, tough and flat and half-buried in sand. Amber had already dug out one cactus spine that had pierced her camel hide sandal. After that, she walked more warily.
In a long morning's walk they hadn't seen a soul, yet Amber knew people had once regularly crossed these wastelands. From her high perch in the tower, she could clearly see blocks of black basalt and carefully fit flagstones forming a roadbed. The road had been grand in its day, wide enough for six horses abreast, she reckoned, but now it was obscured by sand.
Was this a spur of the ancient Trade Way that crossed the desert from north to south or a different road altogether? The Trade Way had always been lined with paired minarets, while this tower stood alone. Perhaps the other tower had fallen and been buried, or maybe uncaring men had looted the stones to build huts for goats.
Amber looked east and west and wondered where the road had run. Was it from the mountains to the sea? Had it connected forgotten cities or markets? Holding her breath, Amber imagined this tower when it was brand new, perhaps washed with lime and hung with a brilliant flag. Tall guards in painted armor might have waved as chariots with red wheels and spirited horses dashed by or stood grimly facing east toward barbarian empires, determined to repel a brutish horde of hobgoblins or drow shrieking hideous battle cries. Had there been battles here, and brave deeds with the flagstones drenched in blood? Had princesses and commoners met here for illicit love under the moon? Had kings and spies met secretly in this very room? Was this a guard tower at all, built for war and defense, or a minaret for calling the religious to prayer, or a temple to an unknown god, or a wizard's retreat? Or something else?
Whatever its use, few clues were left in the tower. The high ceiling, corbelled into pointed arches, may have been gilded once, shining in the sun, but it was bare slate now. The only furniture was a stubby column with twisted brass brackets; whatever they'd held had been stolen long ago. No paintings or inscriptions or maps adorned the walls, nor even graffiti, bat droppings, or birds' nests.
'You're not boring at all,' she said to the tower.
Only a sandy-colored lizard heard her, watching from a windowsill with beady eyes and a lipping tongue. Amber's sandals squeaked as she descended the stone stairs. It was a lonely sound.
Outside a breeze sighed, for Calim's Breath always haunted the desert, but the mournful tones sounded tired. Amber sniffed. The air smelled of salt and dust, but nothing living. The fellows lounged against the tower's eastern side in the shade. Reiver ate, as usual, while Hakiim dozed. After sailing most of the night, they'd walked seven or eight miles inland to reach Amber's goal. The minaret had proven farther away than it looked, for distances were deceptive in the desert with nothing to compare against. At noon the men had wanted to turn back, but Amber had trudged on, so they followed. The sun hung over their shoulders every step of the way, a cruel tyrant who dominated desert and sky. Even now, as day waned, the sun inflated while dropping toward the horizon.
'Scoot over.' Amber plunked in the shade and sipped from her water bottle, refilled from a brackish well dug into the tower's ground floor. She slipped off her sandals, scrubbed sand from between her toes, and checked the cactus thorn's red jot.
'I've got blisters,' Hakiim said, examining his own feet. 'When do we head back to the boat?'
'Why not sleep on the top floor of the tower?' asked Amber as she peered about at the landscape. 'Is that safe?'
'No place is safe,' Reiver said, 'but the desert's probably safer than sleeping in the boat. Animals come down to the river to drink at night, and predators wait in ambush. The shore is a battle zone after dark.'
'I always heard the safest lands are near the rivers, where the jackal cannot reach,' Hakiim offered. 'What kind of predators?'
'Lions, red wyrms, killer warthogs, man-eating bears, dragon-kin…'
'Stop baiting him, Reiver, and stop fretting, Hak.' Amber scratched ankles red from sand flea bites and said, 'Nothing!! get you. It's called a desert because it's deserted.'
'Mostly deserted,' Reiver said, then flipped over a flat stone and exposed a red-backed scorpion. It danced a defiant circle, tail crooked to sting.
'Eyes of Nar'ysr!' Hakiim scrambled backward so fast he thumped over.
Reiver drew a dagger from inside his shirt, caught the scorpion under the belly, and flicked it away. 'You have to beware,' he said, 'but we're probably safer here than on the streets. In Memnon you can bump into villains with knives and no scruples, or burn up from bottlemist plague. The desert's more dead than alive, and spirits can't harm you-much.'
'That's true,' mused Amber. 'The greatest genies of all time move at every hand. Memnonnar's bound into this sand and rock we sit upon, and Calim mingles with the air we breathe.'
'They watch always and still possess powerful spells,' hedged Hakiim. 'Only a fool would offend a genie.'
'True.' Amber proclaimed loudly, 'May the names of Great Calim and Mighty Memnonnar be ever a thousand times blessed!'
Reiver peered at the sky and said, 'Both are trapped tight and doomed to stare at each other forever. That's
