Sands (Sharani Series Book 1) (12 page)

Makin Qay’s voice silenced the quiet hum that hung over the assembled throng. “My people. We bring dark tidings today. The Heltorin and Londik clans no longer exist.”

Lhaurel brought a hand to her mouth. She winced in sudden pain and realized she’d bitten her lip so hard it bled. Her eyes fell upon Kaiden as she cursed. He was silent as well, head down and staring at his arms. In her mind, purple blood dripped into the sand.

“We all know that something woke them early this Migration. But now something else has happened. Something has turned the sailfin packs toward the Oasis.”

“What is doing this?” someone from the crowd shouted.

“The wall will stop them!”

“Yes, the wall. They can’t get past the wall.”

Makin Qays held up his hands for silence. The shouts slowly died down, but the whispers remained. Husbands spoke to wives and clutched the hands of their children. Smaller children who didn’t understand what was going on yawned and stretched out in the sand or else made faces at their elders. And the mothers hushed them all, turning their attentions back to the Warlord.

“Earlier today I met with the council, and we decided on a course of action. We cannot be sure the Oasis walls will hold off the genesauri this time. Things are changing, and we don’t know why. We can’t trust past experience to hold true. We don’t know what’s causing all this, but we intend to find out.”

“So what do we do?” The voice was Kaiden’s this time. Lhaurel felt a flush of irritation, even though she had the same question.

“We will send out half casts to harry the sailfin packs and try to track them back to their origin. Maybe we can find out what started all this and put a stop to it. Then we can simply ride out the rest of the Migration in relative peace. I will lead the first patrol. Gheinghal and Sarial will lead another group out as well. Those in favor?”

Most of the people raised their hands.

Lhaurel was stunned. The Warlord was letting the
clan
decide? She raised her hand as well, gritting her teeth against the pain of her bleeding lip.

“So be it, then. The casts will leave in the morning.”

*              *              *

Lhaurel awoke adrift in a sea of blackness, awash with images that flickered and then faded, leaving her both relieved and saddened. Then she blinked, and the blackness faded. She became aware of the spring gurgling in one far corner of the room, felt it bubbling up from the depths below. Sensations of movement and people passed through her, as elusive as smoke.

Khari sat at the edge of her bed, a short, curved sword belted at her waist. Lhaurel sensed nothing from her. Nothing at all.

“Get up,” the woman said, hand on her sword. “Grab your sword and come with me.”

Lhaurel blinked and chewed on her bottom lip, hesitating. She’d gone to bed late after the Gathering, mind awash with questions and sensations brought about by strange powers and thoughts.

Khari arched an eyebrow. “Don’t make me repeat myself, girl,” she said.

So it’s back to being mean again, is it?

Lhaurel finally shrugged and got to her feet, fishing around by the side of her bed until she located her sword. She was too tired to find the belt Beryl had given her, so she simply held it close to the hilt, wooden scabbard slick in her palms.

Khari didn’t wait for her to change or even tie her hair back. Still holding her sword, Lhaurel hurried to follow as the woman left the room with a purposeful stride, leading her upward. The angle of the stone wasn’t so steep that she would have noticed normally. In fact, thinking back, she’d had absolutely no sense of direction when walking through the caverns within the Roterralar Warren. Back in the Sidena, only long years of constant traipsing through the endless red sandstone passages had given her any sense of north, south, east, or west. Now she somehow knew that there were dozens of side passages and smaller rooms that branched off the main tunnel they were in, some with people or livestock in them and others without. Last night she’d been too confused with it all to put a name to the sensations, but this morning it was all much clearer. Sharper.

She shuddered and tried to shut it out. She failed.

Lhaurel hurried to keep up with Khari’s fast pace. The woman didn’t pause at any of the side passages but strode forward with dogged determination in each step, as if she regretted every one of them.

Several people worked in the passages they traversed, both men and women, some of whom she recognized from last night’s Gathering. Drifts and piles of sand clung to the sandstone walls and clogged the walkways. It was a silent testament to the sandstorm that had passed. A memory of pain and fear. The image of a man crept into her mind. A man holding up a shield against the wind. A man protecting her. Overlaid with that image came one of a man calmly killing a rashelta. A man who had left her to die. She chewed on her bottom lip and pushed the thoughts away.

At some point, Lhaurel realized they were headed toward the greatroom. That was where she had first seen Khari in the dueling ring. There were people in the greatroom up ahead, five of them. Lhaurel sensed two working on the ground level and three others in various rooms on the other tiers. Lhaurel shook her head, trying to ignore it, but couldn’t and ran headlong into a wall.

“If you can’t even watch where you’re going,” Khari said without turning, “why am I wasting my time teaching you how to use a sword? You’ll probably end up cutting off your own leg.”

Lhaurel pushed herself off the wall with the hand that held her sword, the other nursing her bruised and damaged face. Blood dripped from a few small scrapes. The pain and embarrassment forced its way out of her mouth in the form of a barbed comment.

“You know, this bullying-the-new-girl routine is starting to get old. If you try smiling a little more it may work better for you.”

Khari only chuckled.

In the greatroom, Lhaurel was unsurprised to see the same two women spinning yarn at a wheel along one side of the room. The fire ring had been removed and new sand tossed down where it had been stained black by the flames. One of the people in the rooms above had since left, leaving only the two still behind in their quarters. Khari walked to the far end of the room and drew her sword, turning and waiting for Lhaurel to catch up. A large circle had been drawn in the sand, within which rested two smaller concentric circles. Lhaurel approached, unsure whether she was supposed to draw her sword as well. As she got closer, she realized that the circles were actually made of stone, carved into the ground and then filled in with sand. She stopped at the edge of the larger circle.

Khari gestured for Lhaurel to remain where she was and then shirked her outer robes, which left her only in tight leggings and a thin vest. Lhaurel would have found it scandalous if she hadn’t worn similar garb while practicing her sword work.

Khari dropped into a middle guard, muscles snapping into position with incredible speed and precision. She moved from the middle guard to a hanging guard while stepping backward. Almost immediately, she pivoted and spun back to the middle guard followed by a horizontal guard with such fluidity that it seemed but one long motion. She flowed through the forms, her feet tracing the circles of stone. At times she faced Lhaurel. Other times she faced away from her, sword flashing in dizzying arcs and spinning patterns that left blurs of silver-grey hanging in the air.

Lhaurel watched in awe as Khari moved through all of the basic forms and then transitioned into forms that Lhaurel had never seen before. The sword moved like a living thing, an extension of Khari’s will rather than an inanimate weapon. It spun up over her head and then down at a stunning angle to flip into a reverse grip and complicated pattern of footwork that Lhaurel wasn’t able to follow. It was more than sword work. It was artistry.

Suddenly it was done. Khari lowered her sword and turned to face Lhaurel, face glistening with sweat. Lhaurel felt a pang of loss as the moment, the majesty, faded.

“If you wish to enter this circle,” Khari said, her voice barely above a whisper, “you must leave behind who you once were. That part of your life is over. If you enter this circle, you will be forevermore a Roterralar and no more of the seven clans. You must be committed, heart and soul, to a cause. Strategy before tactics. Movement before battle. Purpose.”

Caught up in the moment, Lhaurel eagerly stepped into the circle.

An hour later Lhaurel had not once removed her sword from its sheath. It lay in the sand outside the outer circle. Lhaurel stood just inside the outer stone ring, feet spread to shoulder width and knees slightly bent. Khari stood just behind her, correcting her form with a few slaps of a thin rod.

“Knees bent,” Khari snapped. “Bent, I said. Your balance is off—I could knock you over with one hand.”

To demonstrate, she did so. Lhaurel got to her feet again, blowing hair out of her face and brushing it back behind her ears. The scarlet locks dripped with sweat. She reset her stance and bent her knees as instructed.

Khari nodded appreciatively. “Good, now it’s just doing that a few hundred more times before you have it ingrained into your muscle memory.”

Lhaurel bit back a groan. Her legs ached, she smelled horrible, and the lesson had not gone anything like she had expected. After seeing Khari’s stunning display, Lhaurel had expected to launch into forms, but the woman had instead set her back to basics. Stance and feet placement. Movement before battle, she said.

Lhaurel sighed.

“Oh, stop whining,” Khari said with a sniff. “You’ll live.”

Lhaurel stifled another groan but couldn’t resist rolling her eyes at Khari’s back. The short woman was surly and blunt but effective. There was an economy and litheness to both her movements and her words that spoke of a sophistication hidden beneath the gruff exterior, something Lhaurel had noticed the first day she’d seen the woman, back when Kaiden had first delivered her here. Beauty hidden beneath layers of dirt and grime.

One of the women who had been spinning yarn brought Khari a waterskin. Lhaurel felt the water sloshing around inside the skin, felt each wavelike motion. She also sensed the woman walking away to rejoin her companion at the spinning wheel, even though she had turned so that her back was toward them. She shuddered.

Instinctively she turned to accept the skin from Khari. She sensed the water, not the woman, which Lhaurel found odd even though she couldn’t explain why. The water was warm and brackish, tasting of leather and sweat, but it passed through her system like a small fire, spreading warmth throughout her limbs. Aching muscles eased and tension faded.

“Well, off with you then,” Khari said, taking the skin from her and stoppering it without looking. “To the eyrie with you.”

“The eyrie?”

A booted foot shot out and kicked her lightly on the rump, propelling Lhaurel forward. She squawked indignantly, but Khari’s gruff voice drowned off her protests.

“What did I tell you about repeating myself? Off with you!”

Lhaurel would have argued, but it was pointless with Khari. Instead, Lhaurel picked up her sword and adjusted her clothes before breaking into a slow jog. The drink of water had given her a burst of restless energy that surged within her, granting her speed and strength. Though she had never traversed the paths to the eyrie from here, she could sense where the eyrie was located, could feel the aevians’ presence within it, and somehow knew the way to get there. The pathways were clear, already devoid of sand.

She passed a few people in the halls, people garbed in the typical robes of the desert peoples, some with swords and some without. She couldn’t remember seeing any of them before, but they didn’t even pause to give her a second glance, not even the men. Some of the people wearing swords, some of the warriors, were women. More evidence that things well may be as different here as Khari, Makin Qays, and Kaiden claimed.

She couldn’t decide if everything was what it seemed to be. There was too much fear for faith. She didn’t even know if Kaiden was there to protect her or try to kill her. And behind all that was the threat of the genesauri. Something had caused them to change after centuries of constancy. No one knew what it meant.

The eyrie arose in front of her, majestic and vast. The aevians flew around the room, filling it with a cacophony of chirps, caws, flapping wings, and the sound of talons scraping against rock. A few women worked over sailfin carcasses near the door, carving up the meat for the aevians to eat. Several smaller aevians hopped in the sand near the pile of cut steaks, hungrily eying the bloody meat. One of the bolder ones darted forward, skittering on the sand. He seized one of the steaks in his pointed beak and leapt into the air, his wings throwing up dust as he flapped to a nearby ledge and began tearing bloody chunks free with a sickening, wet ripping noise. The others, emboldened by his actions, leapt forward and stole their own pieces.

The women kept on working.

“Lhaurel!” a well-known voice called. Tieran strode toward her, aevians scattering as his long strides ate away at the distance between them.

Lhaurel smiled and brushed a loose lock of auburn hair back behind her ears.

“Well, apparently you survived Khari,” he said with a wide smile. “That takes a strange combination of stubbornness and a resistance to surly facial expression, but once you get used to that, she’s alright. My wife likes her, so that’s a point in her favor.” He winked at her.