Sands (Sharani Series Book 1) (9 page)

“Very. They could prepare. Some of them were already running when the sailfins hit. And this was a small pack, maybe only a hundred of them.” Kaiden’s voice was cold, detached, and factual. It made Lhaurel shudder.

“How many died?” Lhaurel asked.

“Sailfins? You can count the skeletons yourself.”

“How many Sidena died?” she repeated.

Kaiden shook his head. “I don’t know. A lot. Some of the others held off another pack while you ran and escaped afterward, if you recall. They said there were only a few hundred running toward the Oasis.”

“A few hundred?” Lhaurel brought her other hand up to her mouth, though it wasn’t for the smell.

Then Kaiden’s words clicked in Lhaurel’s mind. “Wait, the Roterralar
were
there. Why didn’t you stop this? You could have protected them, couldn’t you? They didn’t have to die.”

Kaiden sighed, and his expression darkened. “You’ll have to speak with Makin Qays about that. The short answer is no, we couldn’t have stopped it.”

Lhaurel felt cold tears run down her cheeks. This was death on a level she’d never imagined. There was nothing that could stop this level of destruction.

Booted feet crunched on sand, and Lhaurel turned to see Tieran approaching. Kaiden turned toward him as well.

“There’s nothing here worth saving,” Kaiden said. “You find anything down there?”

“Just lots of blood,” Tieran replied, “and this.”

He reached into a pocket and pulled out a thin, white object. A wide-toothed comb made of bone. The comb Saralhn had given her, forgotten at the springs. Lhaurel reached for it, and Tieran handed it to her. She held it carefully, though with white-knuckled strength.

“Saralhn,” she whispered, and she pulled the comb to her chest, rocking back and forth as she wept.

*              *              *

The door swung open. The scent of sweat and spice wafted in with the light.

Kaiden and Tieran had left her waiting in the small room when they’d gotten back from the Sidena Warren. Saralhn’s comb rested in her waistband. She’d waited here, quiet and subdued, for what had seemed like an eternity. And—simultaneously—only an instant.

Lhaurel got to her feet, though the man who had opened the door remained standing on the eaves, framed by light and a strange red penumbra. She squinted against the sudden brightness.

The man’s clothes were of a simple cut, practical rather than ornamental. His long grey-brown hair was held back from his face by an intricate silver chain and a long genesauri bone. A medium length beard adorned his chin. His skin was deeply tanned, browned by long years of toil in the blistering desert sun. He must have been in his fifth or sixth decade, which was extremely old by Sidena standards, almost as old as Old Cobb.

Lhaurel felt as if she were being weighed on invisible scales, though she did not know the bargain being struck or the measure of the counterweight.

“Are you coming in or going out?” she asked wearily. “It’s hard to tell since, you see, you’re currently halfway from doing either.”

“Actually,” the man said without taking his eyes from her face, “I am doing both. I am entering this room and leaving the passage behind. It is the nature of entering a place that you must, of necessity, leave the place you’re already in.”

Lhaurel gave him a wan smile.

“I believe that it is wise to start off a conversation with both parties being able to call each other by name,” the man began. “I am called Makin Qays. You are called Lhaurel.” He paused for a moment as if he expected her to say something but then continued on after only a heartbeat’s passing. “I am the Warlord of the Roterralar—”

“How come I’ve never heard of the Roterralar clan before now? We all just think of you as the crazy people who wander into warrens from time to time.” The question escaped her lips before she’d consciously decided on which of her hundred questions to ask.

“A worthy question. One I would have answered had you allowed me to continue with what I was saying. Please do not interrupt me again.”

Lhaurel nodded.

He continued calmly, “I lead these people. What they do, they do by my command and with me at their head. Even the mystics follow me. We protect the clans from the genesauri. And sometimes even from each other.”

Lhaurel sat up straight. “Protect us? How in the seven hells do you protect us from the genesauri? Where were you when the sailfin packs attacked my clan?”

Makin Qays put his arms on the table, interlocking his fingers. The short sleeves of his warrior’s coat pulled back, exposing muscular forearms covered in an array of colorful banded tattoos. She counted seven different colors.

He leaned forward and placed his chin on top of his fingers. “We, the Roterralar, swear to protect and defend the Rahuli people. Defense, in part and in whole, from all enemies, from the enemy, and from all that threatens their existence. To this end, should our lives be required in this defense, then they are lain down. Hope is a solitary flame standing alone against a gale. What is the test of honor? To uphold the flame, or to snuff it out? This is our oath. We are always there, but never where you can see us.”

Lhaurel frowned.
What?

“Stop and think for a moment, Lhaurel. What would the clans do if they realized there were people who would be there to protect them? What would they demand of us then?”

“They’d demand that you do your jobs,” she responded instantly. “Protect them.”

“All of them? Every time?” The look he gave her was sharp, penetrating.

“Yes! Every single one of them, every single time.” Even as she said it, though, her thoughts returned to the memories of the Sidena Warren, broken and destroyed. How could anything stand against that? And that had been a small sailfin pack, according to Kaiden.

“Is that all they’d do? Demand that we protect them?”

Lhaurel paused, pushing aside her frustration, emotion, and memories to consider the question. No, they wouldn’t just do that. “They’d probably fight you. They might even band together to take this place from you, or at least the aevians.”

Makin inclined his head toward Lhaurel in acknowledgement. “The genesauri often attack in many places at once and in massive numbers. You’ve never seen a true sailfin pack. What makes it to the warrens is what remains after we get done with them. But we are not infallible. We barely have enough warriors to face one pack, let alone many. You saw what a small pack did to your warren. Imagine what a larger one is capable of. Imagine what
all
of them can do. And that’s just the sailfins. The marsaisi are worse, the karundin hell incarnate.”

“Why don’t you get more warriors? There are over a hundred aevians. I’ve only ever seen a handful go out at one time.”

Makin Qays smiled ruefully, shaking his head. The wrinkles on his face deepened, making him appear even older.

“It is not so simple as that. There are other factors involved. We have neither the resources nor the capacity to support more than the few hundred we have here. Less than a quarter are warriors, though they have all upheld the flame. Suffice it to say that we must remain hidden because we do not have the numbers to protect everyone, everywhere—including ourselves—from the rest of the Rahuli. We do what we can so that the race can survive. We get new warriors, but only a few at time by means where they will not be missed. Finding you was enough work on its own, an endeavor that took several years.”

Lhaurel swallowed hard and clenched her fists to keep them from shaking. “You are all cowards,” she whispered. She didn’t really mean it, but it slipped out before she could stop herself.

Makin Qays rose to his feet slowly, keeping his gaze locked onto hers. His face didn’t change expression, but his eyes smoldered with a deep blue flame. He raised one of his arms, brandishing the tattooed bands. There were over thirty banded rings on that arm alone.

“These rings represent each time someone dies because we couldn’t protect them. We find each body we can and give them the honors that they deserve, no matter how grisly the remains. When you understand what it’s like to have to choose which clan to protect and which to let flounder on its own, when you feel the guilt of each death as it is inked into your flesh as a reminder, when you kneel in the sand clutching a little girl’s hand as her guts leak out of her stomach and her eyes slowly fade and there’s nothing you can do but hold her, when you know what that’s like, then you can call us cowards. Then you can presume to understand why it is that the clans do not know us.”

He dropped his arm and turned around, pivoting on the heel of his boot. Without looking back he pulled open the door, exited, and shut the door behind him.

Lhaurel remained where she was. Slowly, her hand dropped onto the comb in her waistband for a long, lingering moment. Then her head fell into her waiting hands, and she cried. The tears were cold.

We lost half the clans today in our struggle with the enemy. Briane cried over the loss of an uncle. What would it be like, I wonder, to have a family who cares about you? I didn’t know how to comfort her, but she didn’t seem to need much comfort after her tears were done. The cause, she said, was worthy of the sacrifice.

-From the Journals of Elyana

The first thing she noticed when she entered the room was harnesses. They hung from pegs on the walls, each line or lead neatly attached to separate pegs or hooks hammered into the rock so that none of the varying pieces of leather would get tangled. There were hundreds of them, stretching down both side walls, up and over the door, and even hanging from the ceiling. She was so enthralled by the sheer number of them that she barely noticed the man who had softly closed the door behind her. He stepped back into the shadows and watched her as she studied the room.

Lhaurel took a step forward into the long, narrow room to better view the furnace and metalwork that rested in the center, nearly dominating the middle section. A metal flume carried the smoke of the massive ceramic furnace up and out through the ceiling, the metal darkened with years of soot. The smell of leather and ash and the odd odor of heated oil hung heavy in the air.

The man cleared his throat behind her. She jumped.

The man was short, smaller than Lhaurel, with plain features and a wide nose. But what he lacked in height he made up for in sheer brawn. His arms alone were bigger around than both Lhaurel’s legs together. A leather vest strained against a chest large enough to seem nearly grotesque. Corded muscles on his shoulders and arms showed through the skin like bands of iron. And his skin. It was flecked with small specks of a dull greyish cast, like freckles, but that glittered in the lamplight. It was almost as if long years working at the forge had infused flakes of metal to his skin.

“Welcome, Lhaurel,” the man said, his voice raspy.

“Thank you . . . sir,” she said.

He flourished one hand, gesturing for her to move back toward the center of the room, where the forge rested.

She obliged.

He shuffled along behind her, his step a rasping sound against the sand. The man walked with one leg trailing behind the other, almost dragging it along. It pulled against the loose sand, making the grating noise. He noticed her watching him and growled deep in his throat. She turned away hastily.

She stopped in the middle of the room but heard the man shuffle along behind and pass around her. Heat radiated from the open forge where coals glowed a deep, dark red around a layer of white.

Tieran had come to get her after Makin Qays had left. Khari had wanted him to bring her to see a man named Beryl. Despite herself, Lhaurel found herself liking the jovial Tieran more and more as they’d walked through the warren before he had deposited her here.

The man limped into her periphery, headed toward one of the various bins secreted beneath the long tables nestled against the wall. His limp gave him a decidedly hunched look, and Lhaurel almost took a small step back. “Why am I here?” she asked.

Beryl didn’t respond. Instead, he righted and tossed something from inside the bin at her. A practice sword—straight blade, almost no guard. She caught it deftly as it twirled toward her. Lhaurel looked up at him quizzically, only to find him swinging a sword of his own down toward her head in a powerful overhead chop. She brought her blade up in a mad scramble to block. Wood cracked against wood. Pain shot up her arms from the force of the blow.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

His answer came in a sudden flurry of blows. His eyes were hard, focused, as he spun his practice sword in a dizzying pattern of blows. The wooden sword seemed almost alive in his hands, spinning in and hitting her once, twice, three times in rapid succession before she could get her feet under her and slip into a middle guard position. With each blow that connected, her arms ached. The strength in his arms was incredible! She marveled that someone so crippled could move with such grace.

Suddenly, his onslaught slowed. He broke into a more measured, steady rhythm, spinning the sword in a sequence of moves that she recognized. She had memorized all the practice sequences that the Sidena warriors trained with and so slipped into the form designed to counter the smith’s movements. Still, she was wary. Why was he attacking her?

The man shifted into a second sequence, and she responded in kind, slipping into its counter sequence and matching him blow for blow. The blood pounded in her ears, pushing adrenaline throughout her body, and her muscles loosened with the warmth of motion. The blacksmith was good, incredibly so, yet she almost smiled as she slipped into the forms. He shifted to a third sequence, and again she responded with the appropriate counter.

Their speed picked up, practice swords coming together with more force behind each blow. Lhaurel had never drilled so long before. Her muscles ached, her arm felt leaden with fatigue. But she felt a thrill of happiness running through her.

With a muffled grunt, the blacksmith executed a sudden twist on his blade, and Lhaurel’s practice sword was ripped from her weakened grip and dropped to the sand.

Sweat dripped down Lhaurel’s face. She breathed heavily, almost panting. The blacksmith didn’t even look winded.

“What . . .” she gasped, “what was the point of coming at me like that?”

“Would you have fought an old cripple if he’d just asked you?”

She pondered the question for only a few moments before answering, “No.”

“First thing you need to learn is to never trust what you see,” the smith said, bending down with a groan and picking up Lhaurel’s discarded sword. “Trust is more precious than water. You can’t trust anyone, not even your own eyes. Trust only your weapons.”

Lhaurel nodded, unable to articulate her words as she gulped down air.

“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked. He shuffled over to one of the bins and dropped the wooden practice swords inside.

“Kaiden brought me.”

“No, girl, I’m not talking about here with the Roterralar. I’m asking if you know why you’re here with me right now?”

She shook her head. Hadn’t she just asked
him
why she was here?

“Khari wants me to make you a sword,” he said, voice becoming quiet and raspy again. “The fool woman thinks you’ve got enough promise to be one of the warriors. Well, maybe she’s right. Rare to find a woman fresh from the clans that knows the basic forms. Knows them badly, but knows them.”

“Badly?”

He ignored her. “Do you know what it takes to make a sword? Heat and pounding. Blood, sweat, and tears. Metal has to be thrown into the fire until it gets so hot that it can’t bear another moment in the coals. And then it gets beaten down. Shaped. Harder metals take more beating and more heat. They get abused more, but they make by far the finer blades. And the proper fuel creates the proper heat. Everything has a cost, has a price to be paid. That is the second thing you should remember.” He peered at her, eyes sharp and penetrating.

Lhaurel stared back at him blankly.
He’s insane.

The man rolled his eyes and shuffled around the furnace to the small opening that led deeper into the chamber. He muttered something under his breath, running one hand through his tufty, grey hair. His bad leg, the left one, dragged along in the sand, leaving a furrow in the ground.

“You coming, girl?” he asked.

She hesitated for a moment but then ran after him.

The heat intensified the closer that she got to the furnace, rising almost to an unbearable level when she tried to hurry through the narrow opening between it and a row of counters upon which various tools or unfinished works of metal or leather lay. She was already covered in sweat, but it poured anew from the intense heat. Lhaurel cursed softly as she hurried past the forge and into the room behind it.

Despite the heat blazing against her back, the contents of the space halted her in her tracks in stunned amazement. Long spears by the hundreds leaned against the sandstone walls. Racks upon racks of swords were neatly arranged in long rows, the weapons glistening and polished as if new. Dozens of bins rested against one of the walls, but even with the bins and racks, the room was arranged so that the center was completely bare of furnishing, leaving a large swath of clean, reddish sand. The back wall was also bare, devoid of any weaponry or ornamentation of any kind.

Lhaurel chewed on her bottom lip. It was incongruous to have one wall completely clear when every other available space was covered. Her eyes studied the reddish sandstone surface, trying to identify anything out of the ordinary. There, along the seam where the walls met each other and along the ceiling. There was a faint line that shone red like the eyelids did when gazing at the sun with closed eyes. A quick scan revealed cleverly hidden stone hinges along the left side. The whole wall was a door, one that opened out into the sands beyond.

The smith waited for her near one of the racks, his expression one of knowing humor. He leaned against his right side, easing the pressure on his bad leg, though it had not hampered him in the slightest when they had sparred. Lhaurel still felt a little winded from the encounter. It was either that or the sight of the weaponry making her hyperventilate.

She wanted to laugh. What the Sidena warriors would have given to be in this place now? The Warlord would be stunned. Taren—well, Taren would have taken everything he could get. Maybe to kill off another one of his wives. She smirked. Neither of them was here now. She was. She took a moment to bask in the irony and triumph of it.

She turned to the smith, her voice holding a touch of wonder. “Who are you?” she asked.

“They call me Beryl,” he said with a little mock bow. “And you are Lhaurel.” His tone warped the humor into sarcasm. “Now, do you want to come over here and pick a sword or do you want me to simply pick one for you?”

Lhaurel started, absently brushing wet hair back over her ears. “Didn’t you just say that Khari wanted you to make me one?”

Beryl shook his head and snorted, throwing up his hands. “All you new recruits are the same,” he said. “You think that making a sword is a simple matter, something that only takes a few hours. Well, you’re wrong. I just told you all about it. It is an art, a craft that must be studied and practiced again and again until it becomes a part of you. The work becomes an outward expression of someone’s heart and soul. That doesn’t happen overnight. That doesn’t happen in a fortnight. So again, do you want to come over here and pick a sword, or should I?”

Lhaurel hesitated, unsure of how to respond after his long-winded tirade. He hadn’t answered the question that she’d asked. Or rather, Lhaurel was sure that he thought that he had, but not in a way that made any sense to her.

Beryl grimaced and threw his hands up in the air with a muttered, “Fine, then. I’ll do it.” He continued to mutter under his breath as he limped down the rows of sword racks.

Lhaurel chewed on her bottom lip and cocked her head to the side. She wasn’t sure what she’d done to indicate that she didn’t want to choose her own sword. She had merely been trying to figure out the man’s answer.

“Here you are, then.”

The blacksmith’s voice right beside her ear sounded like the blast of a hunting horn. A hand flew to her chest as she turned, her heartbeat racing. Beryl held out a sheathed sword, hilt facing her. She reached out a hand that was shaking—either from the adrenaline that still raced through her blood or anticipation—wrapped it around the hilt, and pulled the sword free.

Straight and only sharp along one edge, the blade shone with a luster that defied the dull grey  metal from which it was made. It came to a wicked point, and the hilt was wrapped in a thin wire to aid the grip. The cross guard was a single round piece of metal, unadorned and simple. It was beautiful.

“Take it and get out of here,” Beryl said, proffering the sheath and a belt that had been worked in silver to appear like a
shufari
.

Lhaurel took the belt, trying hard to focus on the questions that she knew she should be asking. “Why are you giving this to me? I’m new here, and you can’t trust me. I might as soon kill you as anything else.”

Beryl gaped at her, the first real look of genuine emotion that Lhaurel had seen on his face. “Haven’t you been paying attention? I’m making you a sword. Takes a long time, making a sword. Use this one until then. What did you think you were going to do when chosen to come here? Eat fruit and sip wine all day? And you’re nowhere near good enough for anyone here to worry about.”

“How in the seven hells am I supposed to know?”

“Not my problem,” Beryl said, making a dismissive gesture with his hands. “Now take the sword and get out. I’m sure someone will find you and know what to do with you. Well, maybe not.” He paused, his brow furrowing above his bushy eyebrows. “They’ve cracked your shell, girl, but you’re not broken just yet, are you?”

“Broken?”

Beryl straightened suddenly, seeming to tower over her even though he was far shorter than she. He made dismissive gesture with one hand. “Leave me in peace.”

Lhaurel opened her mouth to ask another question, but Beryl’s expression tightened and he raised a massive hand, index finger extended to point toward the exit.