'You're dead.'
'Help me! Find my bones, Shai. Release me from this torment. Bring me home. I can't rest.'
He staggered along the ridge of rock, having to use it for support because of the battering wind. He could barely see an arm's length in front of his face. Wind pummeled him as he stumbled after it. 'Hari! Wait!'
Out of the storm, a solid figure emerged, and grabbed him. 'Shai!'
He'd not realized the wind screamed so loud that another's voice, even shouting, might sound like a whisper. This was no ghost, whose voices need not compete against earthly noise, but rather Captain Anji, materialized like a spirit out of the howling storm
'Back to camp! If you wander out here, you'll die.'
'But I heard Hari-I've got to go-'
'Demons ride this wind. They're the ones tempting you. Come back!'
Shai was not weak. He had found solace in carpentry since he was a child whittling scraps into fantastic animals, and he fought now, breaking free of that grasp.
A white-skinned figure walked out there, moving into the black storm, unbowed by the terrible wind. The wind pressed her clothing hard against her front, revealing a woman's form. Her pale-gold, shining hair streamed like a banner, unbound, and it seemed that she had wings with the silver gossamer fineness of a moth's, dazzling as they rippled. Nay, those were not wings. That was cloth, a vast cloak driven by the wind, enveloping the pale figure, swallowing her, before he could see her face. He stepped toward her, drawn by a malevolent yearning.
'Wait!' he cried. 'Who are you?'
'Shai!' A hand caught his belt and tugged him backward. He strained for an instant against that grip, but Anji's will subdued him, as did the abrupt realization that he was half choking on all the sand filtered through the folds of cloth wound around his head. He stumbled in Anji's wake. The vision was lost. Demons walked abroad, beautiful and deadly. His heart was hollow, sucked dry.
Anji shoved him into the shelter of the wagons and crawled in after him. Within, the air was stifling, thick with dust but breathable. Men coughed. One lit a lamp.
'Ah, there you are, Captain,' shouted Chief Tuvi, who was holding the tiny lamp cupped in one palm. The light shrouded the cramped cavern made from carts and cloth. Wind thrummed in the canvas, rumbling like thunder.
Mai reached out, eyes wide. 'Shai. Anji! '
Anji crawled over to her. Before he could quite arrange himself cross-legged beside her, she threw her arms around him and buried her face in his chest, shaken but not weeping. Priya sat quietly, head bowed, lips moving in her singsong prayers, but if she was singing out loud the wind's howl drowned melody and words. Anji encircled Mai with one arm, leaving the other free near his knife. He shut his eyes, seeming content to endure the storm and even death in this pleasing manner.
Tuvi blew out the light.
The wind increased in pitch until the sound of it hurt. The spray of sand and dust and rocks was louder than a driving rain, obliterating everything until they huddled in a netherworld in which all substance was caught betwixt and between, neither air nor earth, neither day nor night, neither living nor dead. Shai couldn't even hear the ghosts, or perhaps the storm had scattered them.
The demons screamed, but silk was proof against their kind.
It was too hot and frightening to sleep although now and again he dozed off, only to jolt awake as whispers throttled him.
'Beware the third blow… I betrayed her, but only after she betrayed the others. She betrayed all of us. And I aided her, out of fear. I cannot bear my shame any longer. Let the wind take me. Let this burden pass on to another… '
Yet it was only the heat and sand stifling him, after all, and the close-packed bodies, and his parched throat.
In time the wind lessened and, at last, hours or days later, ceased.
When they dug themselves out and Chief Tuvi called roll, they had lost not one man or horse, although a few were having trouble breathing, and it was clear they would need more water and that soon.
'Not so bad,' said Chief Tuvi. 'The heart of the storm didn't pass over us. It stayed to the south.'
But Cornflower was gone, vanished entirely. Mountain had thought she had taken refuge with Priya and Mai; Priya had thought she was with Mountain and the nine bearers. Shai hadn't thought of her at all.
Captain Anji shaded his eyes to examine the red haze that blanketed the southwest. The sun was setting, although it couldn't be seen through the retreating storm. 'The demons took her,' he said.
Shai hid his tears.
13
All that next morning as they pushed eastward across the dusty flats, Mai thought obsessively of the feel of Anji's arm around her as the storm had raged. She had turned to him without thinking. He had the experience and foresight to shelter all of his people, and somehow that made their intimacy more precious by contrast. Her heart outraced her head. He was so strong. He was clever and imperturbable. He wasn't like anyone in the Mei clan, not at all. He had chosen her, out of all people.
Surely the heroine in the old songs had thought as many ridiculous things about the bandit prince she fell in love with!
She laughed and he, hearing her, turned with eyebrows raised as their horses plodded along. She blushed. How much more intense this feeling was even than the sun's punishing light! The old songs were silly and sentimental, but that didn't mean there wasn't a grain of diamond truth hidden in the sand.
By midday it was too hot to ride. Ahead of them the way was cut by rugged ground, and Chief Tuvi led them into a ravine formed by a dry riverbed. There was no surface water but there was shade to be had right up against the cliff face. The slaves set to work digging, but by the time they had got down a man's height, two of the slaves had fainted and there was still no water and not even muddy sludge. A third slave lay in the shade, clutching his stomach and moaning.
'May I go see what I can do, Mistress?' Priya asked. 'They will leave them behind if they're too weak to talk. It would be a terrible way to die. At least in a storm you die quickly.'
'Do you think so?' asked Mai. 'Do you think Cornflower is dead?'
'I hope so.'
Mai shuddered. Swallowed by sand, flesh scoured from bone by the screaming wind. Yet how much more terrible to be snatched and tormented by demons. 'She was so unhappy. Do you think she wanted to die?'
Priya's mouth twitched. Compassion, perhaps, might cause the lips to form that particular angle. 'You are the only one of your family who would ask that question, Mistress.'
The words made her uncomfortable; she was no champion of Cornflower. She'd turned her gaze away, just as the rest had. 'Go help those men.' The words came out more sharply than she'd intended, but Priya bowed and hurried away to the sick man.
Mai sat on a pillow in the shade of the cliff, sweating and tired but not exhausted. She hadn't had to walk, or dig. Down the ravine, soldiers offered their mounts water from cupped palms. Nearby, Anji and Tuvi consulted a pair of scouts.
'How bad is the road?' Anji was asking. 'Can we negotiate it in darkness?'
'We'll have a bit of moonlight. There's hills and dunes for the next two days or so before we get back to flatter country near to Mariha. That's if we don't lose the trail, and if that storm didn't wipe away the caravan markers.'
'How much of a risk?'
'Better to ride it during the day. But if we delay too long here and can't get more water, we'll lose horses first and then men.'
'Let me think on it.'
Anji walked over to stand beside her in the shade. For a while he thought, and she waited. In the marketplace, one learned patience. She felt comfortable with him and, indeed, relieved to be alive. The storm had
