Horses weren't the only thing the kid could handle.
Nayyib brought the stud up to me. 'I would recommend we go on,' he said. 'The cut hasn't interfered with his muscles, so he can be ridden. But if we stay the night here, or even if we go back to the oasis, which isn't that far, he'll stiffen. Best to keep him moving.'
Del glanced at me warily. 'To Julah?'
I shrugged, taking the stud's reins. 'Let's see what happens when I'm in the saddle again.'
As Nayyib packed away his supplies again, I set about readying the stud. He was unusually subdued, as if he'd spent all of his temper and strength. Once he was saddled and loaded, I filled a canvas bucket with water from a bota and let him drink. He sucked it up greedily, lifted his dripping muzzle out of the bucket, then shoved it against my chest as if asking me to commiserate.
I smiled, scratching his jaw. 'I'm sorry, old son. You didn't deserve that. It's me they want to kill, not you.'
I packed away the bucket, turned to mount him, and discovered how much a half-crushed leg doesn't like being asked to bear all my weight. Swearing, I managed to make it up into the saddle, left knee throbbing. So much for the healing I'd encountered at Meteiera. I'd been told any new injuries would be mine to keep; seems like I was repeating old habits.
I turned the stud. 'This way. To Julah, right?'
In concert, Del and Nayyib shook their heads.
'East?' I asked reluctantly.
'East,' Del confirmed.
'What's east?' asked Nayyib.
I ran a hand over my face, trying to rein in anger and frustration. 'Who in hoolies knows? Something that seems to think I need to be there.' A dead woman who spoke to me in dreams. 'Look, it doesn't feel far, whatever it is. If you two want to go on to Julah, go ahead. Maybe I'm supposed to do this alone anyway.
Del shook her head. 'If you go east, I go east.'
I looked at Nayyib.
He hitched one shoulder in a dismissive half-shrug. 'You said I could ride with you to Julah. We're not there yet.'
I sighed deeply. 'Fine. Let's go east, shall we?'
East. Toward the sunrise—and whatever else might be lurking out there.
I became dimly aware of voices. Del and Nayyib were talking quietly, as if I weren't present. I felt rather as if I were waking up from a dream, except I hadn't been sleeping. I was working like a human lodestone, following the compulsion that pulled me east. For the moment that compulsion had slackened, and I glanced up at the sun. By its position, I knew we'd been riding about two hours.
Then I became aware of the surroundings. A vast ocean of cream-pale sand, sparkling with crystals afire from the sun. The Punja, the deadliest of the South's deserts.
I pulled up, stopping the stud. Del and Nayyib, reining in also, were staring at me warily. I frowned, scratched idly at facial scars, then reached to pull up a bota hanging from the saddle and slake increasing thirst.
'We need to water the horses,' Del said.
I nodded as I unstoppered the bota. 'Apparently I'm being allowed time to do just that. Or else whatever it is insisting I come has decided we're far enough.' I knew how it sounded, but it was the only way I could think to describe it. I sucked down water, climbed down out of the saddle, easing onto my left leg, and unhooked another bota. This I emptied into the canvas bucket and let the stud drink.
'You said it wasn't far,' Del remarked.
'I said it felt like it wasn't far. I can't say for sure.' I shook my head, grimacing. 'I sound sandsick. Hoolies, maybe I am.'
'No.' Del's voice was quiet. 'You have instincts I have always trusted—and now more than instincts.'
Ah yes, more. Magic. Magery. I'd used a little on Umir's book, spelling the lock, and then shied away from the idea like a spooked horse.
As the stud drank, I squinted across the expanse of sand, sheil-ding my eyes with the flat of one hand. The Punja had killed more people than would ever be counted, sucking the life from their bodies, scouring flesh from their bones. Whole villages had been swallowed by sand carried miles in dangerous simooms, burying all signs of life. Caravans, crossing from oasis to oasis, paying huge amounts of money to guides who knew the Punja, often disappeared despite their best efforts to anticipate the dangers. Sometimes you just can't anticipate everything.
I certainly hadn't, when Del had hired me to guide her across the Punja. I'd have never guessed a few years later we'd still be together as sword-mates, bed-mates, life-mates.
I smiled, recalling those first days. The ice-maiden from the North, summoning frigid, killing banshee storms with her magical sword. Boreal was long dead, broken and buried in the chimney formation in the mountains by Julah. Beit al'Shahar. My Nortern jivatma, Samiel, was there as well, whole and unblemished, left behind as the chimney collapsed.
'Find me,' the woman had said, 'and take up the sword.'
If the sword she meant was Samiel, why were we out here in the Punja, at least two day's ride from Beit al'Shahar? I had inti-tally wanted to go get the jivatma, if possible; it was why we'd headed for the mountains in the first place, once out of Haziz. It hadn't felt like a compulsion then, merely a plan. Something I wanted to do.
Now, here, I needed to do it. Yet there was no jivatma anywhere nearby. That I knew. So maybe I was meant to find another sword, a different sword.
Unless only the woman was here for me to find. Or what was left of her.
Shaking my head, I packed the squashable bucket away, hung empty botas back on my saddle, made to remount. Then stopped. Stood there, clinging to the stud.
'What?' Del asked.
I flung up a hand, stopping her from saying more.
Silence, save for the familiar sounds of horses. They shifted position, pawed at sand, shook manes, rattled bit shanks, snorted, chewed at the metal in their mouths. I heard nothing else.
But I felt it.
Abruptly I stuck my foot in the stirrup and swung aboard, ignoring the complaints of my leg. 'Turn back,' I said urgently. 'Simoom!'
I reined the stud around. Del and Nayyib mounted quickly and turned as well.
But that was where the storm came from. Behind us before; now ahead. The first faint haze was visible along the horizon, like a wisp of ruffled silk.
'The other way!' I shouted, sinking heels into the stud. Maybe my sense of direction was forever skewed, thanks to– whatever.
We ran, but the wind and sand ran faster. The storm spilled across the land like a vast, rolling wave, filling the sky from horizon to sun. The day grew dark.
'There's no shelter!' Nayyib's voice, pitched to cut through the first whining of the wind.
No. None. In such circumstances the best bet was to put the horses down and use them as shelter. I suspected Nayyib's horse was trained for it, if the kid had grown up on a horse farm in the South; but then Iskandar was up near the border, more soil than sand, and he might not know much about simooms. He probably knew even less about the Punja, though he had made it to Haziz. Probably paid a guide.
No guide could help us now. The leading edge of the storm was very close, collecting gouts of sand as it howled across the land. Del's gelding probably wasn't trained to lie down—I couldn't see anyone taking a blue-eyed white horse into the Punja—and the stud, after his experience earlier in the day, would likely refuse all inducements. We didn't have time to try Nayyib's trick of cross-tying and hobbling legs.
Knowledge flickered deep in my mind. Fear followed swiftly, churning in my belly.
Not me, I said. Don't expect me to do this.
But of course something did. Something inside. Something that had been teased back into awareness with the writings in Umir's book, full of spells, incantations, conjurations. Despite what I'd said, I hadn't quite read it all, but enough. More than enough.
