Sands (Sharani Series Book 1) (3 page)

Lhaurel tried to catch a glimpse of the hidden man, but the warriors around him stood too close together for her to make out anything but the standard brown of cloth and leather. A hard look from the Warlord, who had noticed her rebellious act, dropped her back on her heels. But she refused to lower her gaze.

The Warlord cut an imposing figure, full of hard lines and with a face as impassive as stone. His graying hair was pulled back into a topknot by a simple cord adorned with a metal pin shaped like a sword. He walked with the grace of a warrior but the poise and air of one who had lived with authority as a mantle since youth.

Growing up, Lhaurel had often thought the man arrogant. Looking at him now, she revised her earlier opinion. It wasn’t arrogance. It was condescension. She almost took a small step backward as his gaze fell upon her once again. She realized that she was chewing on her bottom lip and stopped herself.

The crowd around them watched the ceremony impassively as the procession passed through a hallway of crossed swords and then parted, revealing the warrior hidden at their center.

Lhaurel couldn’t push back the rush of despair that washed over her. It was Taren.

He smiled at her with a crooked grin, though there was no levity or humor in the look. His perfect brown robes and thick leather groom’s vest were at odds with his bald pate and scarred hands. A long leather cord trailed down from his right hand. The sealing dagger hung at his waist.

  Lhaurel’s breath caught in her throat, and she fought a wave of panic. Her eyes sought out Saralhn, who gave her a small nod of encouragement. She could do this.

With a start, Lhaurel realized that the Warlord had come to face her and that the procession had arrayed itself around her, forming a half circle. The warriors’ faces reflected a range of emotions, from pride to solemnity. Lhaurel’s pulse quickened, and color burned on her cheeks. She felt hot and cold at the same time. The cloying smell of sweat and drink hung heavy on the air. Lhaurel clutched at her dress with both hands to keep them from shaking.

The Warlord began to speak. “Two hearts, two hands, two lives entwined.” He grabbed Lhaurel’s left arm and held it up alongside Taren’s right. The leather thongs hung in the air between them, rocking back and forth like pendulums. “Two becomes one through the bonds of time. Two to become one, flesh of their flesh, heart of their hearts, blood of their blood.” The Warlord pulled the sealing dagger from Taren’s waist and slashed it across her left wrist in one swift stroke.

Lhaurel gasped. The pain was hot, incredibly hot, though the wound was shallow. Deep red blood poured from the wound, ran down her arm, and dripped from her elbow onto the sand. She almost expected it to hiss and steam. Instead it pooled and formed a dirty puddle.

The Warlord grabbed Taren’s right arm and flipped it forward so the palm faced him. Four distinct scars stretched across his wrist, the one closest to his palm faded with age. Four scars meant four wives that had gone to the grave performing their greatest duty, bringing more sons into the world that could protect the warren from the genesauri and the other clans. At that moment, Lhaurel saw the scars as tributes to four women only remembered through the number of their sons still living.

Among the warriors, the scars were worn as badges of honor. Lifeblood pumped through the wrists. A cut too deep could lead to the loss of a hand or even their lives. Jenthro had years of practice, and no one, man or woman, had died from the sealing cuts for years.

Helplessness spiced with fear sank into the pit of Lhaurel’s stomach. Blood pumped from her wrist and dripped into the sand. The last four women married to this man had died.

“His blood in her veins,” The Warlord continued, slashing Taren across the wrist beneath the fourth scar, “pumping to her heart. Her blood in his, sealing the union. Flesh to flesh, heart to heart, blood to blood.” He pulled Lhaurel’s wrist up and pressed her cut against Taren’s, wrapping the leather thongs around them both. She felt the older man’s blood mingle with hers, hot and sticky, pumping through the slit in her wrist and down into her arm. She could smell the salty tang of it in the air. Less blood came from his cut than hers.

“And thus are they sealed.”

It was done. The music ended.

A murmur arose from the surrounding watchers. Hands were raised into the sky, palms forward, exposing scars of varying degrees of freshness in a token salute. Tradition named it a gesture of honor and respect.

Lhaurel bit her bottom lip against the pain as Taren raised their bound hands high, nearly pulling Lhaurel from her feet. Even with her abnormal height, he towered over her.

“Hail the union!” Taren shouted into the chamber. His voice echoed and reverberated over and over until it was joined by other warriors’ voices, shouting exultation to the heavens.

Lhaurel looked down toward the ground and swallowed hard against the bile welling at the back of her throat. Blood dripped over taut leather.

The echoes rose to a frenzied, cacophonous pitch. Then the sounds fell away, dying in a ragged succession that left the last note a broken, hollow thing. Lhaurel looked up and blinked, noticing that the assembled watchers had turned from her and Taren and were looking toward the northern side of the room. She turned in the direction they were looking.

A red-robed figure walked forward with the gait of a much older man, as if his presence there weren’t unusual at all. He was one of a group of strange men who wandered the sands without a home and called themselves Roterralar, or wanderers. They weren’t outcasts but something far more odd, always garbed in red robes and steeped in rumor and suspicion. The crowd parted with tones of fear and amazement, affording Lhaurel a complete view.

The Roterralar walked forward with a determined expression, his eyes hard, though there was a smile on his lips. He seemed to be favoring his right side slightly, taking a dragging limp forward with that leg while walking normally with the left. And behind him he dragged the body of a sailfin.

The eight-foot-long behemoth was clearly dead, but even still, Lhaurel struggled to hold back a gasp of fear. It came out as a mixed gasp of fear and amazement, echoed throughout the room by a half-hundred throats. Even though the sailfins were the smallest and most plentiful of the genesauri monsters, few there had seen one up so close. Fewer still could look at this one without a wave of fear and confusion.

Jerria’s face hardened, and one of her smaller children started to cry. The woman had lost her first husband to a sailfin pack during the previous Migration.

Lhaurel fought back her own wave of pain and memories, though her thoughts had grown clouded with the blood loss and pain.

“What are you about, man?” Jenthro shouted, cutting over the small hum of amazement that had overcome the onlookers.

The man took another few shuffle-steps forward, dragging the corpse behind him, careful to avoid the poisonous purple spines of the sail on its back.

“Well, aren’t we all excited on this happy day?” the Roterralar said, meeting Lhaurel’s eye and inclining his head slightly.

Lhaurel looked away, hoping that no one had noticed her breech of protocol.

Jenthro gestured and a number of warriors surrounded the man. They were careful to avoid the sailfin corpse. Even dead, the small genesauri was not something anyone wanted to be close to.

“What are you about?” Jenthro repeated, his tone hard.

“Well, I thought you should know the Migration has started.”

He said it so unconcernedly. Lhaurel blinked, looking for humor in his expression. Who would joke about something like that?

“The Migration is over a fortnight away,” Taren spat. “Everyone knows that.”

“But where’d the sailfin come from, then?” Lhaurel said quietly.

Taren yanked on their bound arms to silence her, nearly knocking her from her feet.

Lhaurel stumbled but caught herself as Marvi voiced the concern Lhaurel had already expressed. No one stopped her. She was the Matron and above all but the Warlord. Lhaurel swallowed her anger, fighting the onset of a strange dizziness.

“I killed it, obviously. Where else do you get a sailfin corpse? It’s not as if I could trade for one down in the Oasis, could I?” The man’s tone made more than one of the assembled warriors finger their swords.

Taren snorted. “You expect us to believe that pile of goat leavings? Few can boast of killing a genesauri.”

The red-robed man smiled, an expression that didn’t come close to reaching his eyes, and stood resolute, so different from the impression he had given during his entrance. His young face was plain, his hair the standard shade of brown, but his calm while being completely surrounded and heavily outnumbered belied his youth. Lhaurel doubted he was much older than her own seventeen years, but he acted as if he were the most senior warrior present.

“We can argue about that until we all turn back to sand and dust, but it doesn’t really change anything. Open your ears. Can’t you hear them coming? The faster ones will be here in just a few minutes.”

Silence killed the soft hum of voices with the effectiveness of a plague. Even the smallest child in the group lay still, listening for the terrifying keening of the wind passing along a sailfin’s spine. Lhaurel glanced at the people around her, seeing the same fear in their expressions that she felt within herself. Saralhn, standing by her husband, was as pale as bleached bones.

“I don’t hear anything!” Taren snapped after a moment. Lhaurel tried to ignore the irritated tugs on her wrist as Taren gestured for the warriors to grab the Roterralar man.

“I hear it!” Someone in the crowd shouted.

“Me too!”

Other shouts joined in, but Marvi hushed them with a forceful command. The warriors who had been stepping forward to grab the man hesitated, listening again.

Lhaurel heard it then, a soft sound carried on the back of the winds outside the warren. The keening notes of a sailfin pack. Terror washed over her.

“Everyone to their tasks!” Marvi shouted, her thunderous voice echoing throughout the chamber and making everyone jump. “Cobb, take three warriors and secure the water urns.”

Everyone hesitated, frozen in the moment of fearful, stunned recognition. Lhaurel blinked, her mind refusing to comprehend what was going on. Her world had come crashing to an end wrapped in blood and leather, and now the genesauri were coming? Sands take her, the
genesauri
were coming.

“Move!” Taren yelled, pulling Lhaurel forward by the tethers on their wrists.

The crowds burst into motion, scurrying into the warren like ants into their hole. Lhaurel watched in detached amazement as mothers grabbed their children, herding them toward rooms to gather their possessions while their husbands assembled with the other warriors. She noticed Saralhn turn to leave only to be yanked back by her husband, who shouted something unintelligible at her before shoving her back toward one of the cavern exits.

Lhaurel watched it all with strange curiosity while being pulled along by her left wrist. She wondered if loss of blood was affecting her thinking.

“Get me out of this thing,” Taren demanded, dragging Lhaurel over to Jenthro. He reached for the sealing dagger in Jenthro’s hand, still wet with blood.

Jenthro backed away, holding the dagger out of Taren’s reach. Lhaurel stumbled forward, righting herself with difficulty as Taren tried to snatch the dagger anyway.

“Tradition dictates an entire night need pass to seal the bond,” Jenthro said with a grin that bore no humor. “Figure it out yourself.”

Lhaurel blinked. Was the Warlord seriously suggesting they run all the way to the Oasis bound like this?

“Please,” Lhaurel stammered, part of her terror cutting through the mental slowness caused by loss of blood. “Please, take it off.”

“Oh, enough!” Marvi snapped, walking forward with a drawn dagger. “We need him.”

Without turning to face her, Jenthro backhanded her across the face. Taren growled in frustration but stopped reaching for the dagger. Marvi spat blood into the sand.

Lhaurel felt a fleeting moment of pity for the woman. Marvi outranked everyone there and could even speak for the Tribe in meetings in the Oasis, but not even she could hold a weapon. Lhaurel wondered what they’d do to her if they ever found out she practiced the sword forms in secret on her own. Still, she was grateful Marvi’s actions had overshadowed her own pleas, but both were unimportant with the genesauri coming.

The Roterralar watched them from next to the sailfin corpse, running a stone over the edge of his blade. The steady rasp was an eerie accompaniment to the swelling screams of the approaching sailfin pack.

Lhaurel struggled to focus, shoving aside the growing dizziness and mental slowness just as warriors began to return to the greatroom.

Old Cobb limped forward, leading a small group of warriors who bore the water urns affixed to wooden poles between them. Women returned with their children, bearing heavy packs of all their possessions. Even the smallest child carried something, be it a favored toy or a sack of meal. Lhaurel caught a glimpse of Saralhn at the back of the group, carrying a pack that was far too large for her small frame.

Taren tugged at their bound wrists with a frustrated growl. Red blood dripped into the sand.