James West - Crown of the Setting Sun

After a time, his heartbeat slowed, and he relaxed. He told himself that an already forgotten nightmare must have brought him awake. With what had happened at the mines, he must expect bad dreams.

He licked his lips, but his tongue was too dry to offer relief. Now more than ever, his body cried out for water. Stiff and achy as he was, and desperate for a few more hours of sleep, Leitos decided it was past time to set out again. He had not yet shifted his position when the sound of feet crunching over desert gravel froze him.

The walker came nearer, a stealthy advance. Despite the gloom, Leitos easily made out a pair of huge sandaled feet come to a halt in the sand piled at the mouth of his burrow. Fearing the seeker would question the suspicious mound of loose soil and the subtle tracks covering it, Leitos’s heart lurched into a frantic rhythm. Starlight glinted dully off the rivets of the Alon’mahk’lar’s sandals. He imagined the creature looking about, its broad, flat nose raised to the breeze.

When the head of an iron-banded cudgel thumped down next to those feet, it was all Leitos could do not to bolt from his makeshift cave. His only hope rested in knowing that Alon’mahk’lar saw poorly in the dark, and could catch a scent no better than a man. If he remained still, his pursuer might move on, allowing him to flee under the cover of night.

But why should I hide from them anymore? a small, compelling voice wondered. With but one word, he could give away his position and accept the enslavement he deserved. He would be chained on the morrow but, too, he would be fed, watered, and sheltered. And he might even find Adham still alive, waiting for his safe return in their cell. Giving up was the right course, that voice assured him.

Leitos did not understand why he resisted surrendering, until the night’s gentle breath filled his nostrils with a scent as familiar to him as that of his own sweat. The smell of blood wafted from the dark smears glazing the cudgel’s head, and beneath this lurked the bestial reek of the Alon’mahk’lar . While the mingling of odors was recognizable, Leitos had never consciously noticed them because of their close and constant proximity, the whole of his life. If oppression, sorrow, and death had a scent, this was it; a stench that embodied all that Adham had stood against.

I never noticed, Leitos thought in dismay, taken aback by his lack of discernment, horribly ashamed that he had so recently condemned his grandfather’s actions. Over long moments, understanding began to fall upon him and, like a pick striking unyielding stone, all that he had been forced to believe by the slavemasters began to crack and fall asunder.

Leitos shrank away from the Alon’mahk’lar , both physically and within his mind. Once backed as deep into his burrow as he could go, he found himself shivering and struggling not to vomit. His distress had nothing to do with any odor or fear, but rather the realization that he had nearly given himself over not to a benign master, but rather to a lifelong oppressor, a creature that cared no more for him than it cared for stomping a beetle underfoot. In surrendering, he would defile his grandfather’s sacrifice, the deaths of all the other slaves, and his own life.

In the darkness, Leitos cursed that quailing voice within himself. He had known only suffering at the hands of the slavemasters. There would be neither food, nor shelter, nor forgiveness. Nor would he find Adham waiting. Slaves that resisted, few though they were, died staked under the sun for all to see, their skin cut off in strips, their screams choked with handfuls of sand. Such despicable cruelty was a warning to the chained. Moreover, that action was a testament to the black whims of the Alon’mahk’lar and the one they served.

“I am sorry,” Leitos murmured under his breath, tears beginning to flow as he saw in his mind’s eye a smiling Adham, his protector, his kindred. Adham had cast aside his own life to ensure Leitos’s escape. Of course there was a price for such freedom, and for whatever reason Adham had believed Leitos could meet it. Grow strong and cruel, and avenge the blood of our forefathers .

A wave of shame fell over Leitos for ever thinking along the same lines as Altha. Are we all so weak? Leitos thought, recalling how few slaves had stood with Adham, how most, including himself, had looked at the man as if he were insane for standing against the slavemasters. “I am sorry,” he murmured again.

Leitos did not notice that the Alon’mahk’lar had moved away, until it called out to its brethren in its natural tongue, a deep and garbled muttering. Upon hearing that demonic voice, dismay came alive in Leitos, stealing his breath. Slaves rarely heard that language, and it induced a nearly incapacitating fear. Oily sweat popped out on his brow. He forced his shuddering limbs to remain still. The effort left him weak, but also gave him a sense of victory.

By the time he was in control of himself, the Alon’mahk’lar had moved out of earshot. With the utmost caution, he peeked from his shelter and sought his enemy. Off to the south, moving with slow deliberation, the group of hunting Alon’mahk’lar were but shadows within shadows drifting over a low dune of pale sand. Even with the distance, their eyes winked and glimmered like dull silver coins.

He could not understand how they had missed him … until he remembered the jackal struggling to claim a meal from the vultures. Though he had been half-asleep, he recalled the jackal darting in, over and over, to snatch the snakeskin, only to have the squawking carrion birds flap and hop forward, driving their adversary back. Their battle must have obscured his tracks. Never in his life had he given thanks to animals that feasted upon death, but he did so now.

Leitos crept out of the burrow and raised up into a crouch, keeping a wary eye on the slavemasters. They continued to move away, unaware of how close they had come to capturing him. Not only were they moving away, they did so at a hard angle from the direction he intended to travel. Relief washed over him, but he quickly tamped it down. He could ill-afford to grow confident that he was safe. Not yet, maybe never. Adham’s demand that he avenge their forefathers meant that he might never know peace or safety.

How can I do your will, grandfather? he thought, setting out. All too well Leitos recognized that he was but a half-starved youth, alone in a perilous land about which he knew nothing. In truth, he was only vaguely aware of his location in a world larger than he could imagine. Geldain , he thought in answer to the unspoken question, recalling the name Adham had mentioned when pointing to the crude map he had sketched in the dust on the floor of their cell. Somewhere far south of a land once known as Tureece . Based on that, Leitos supposed he was half a world or more away from the place he had been born. Just the thought that so much land and water existed made him nervous, as it always had when Adham spoke of such things.

As he crept from bush to boulder, eyes darting from one shadow to another, he sifted through old conversations until recalling Adham’s story of a voyage across the Sea of Drakarra, a journey during which he and the other slaves had, by turns, been either chained to the decks of a great ship, or lashed to one of a hundred oars. Leitos had been but a babe then, Adham told him, newly weaned and tossed with other infants into a large basket. Alon’mahk’lar feared deep water, Adham had said, which meant the shipmasters were treacherous humans. That self-serving men would betray their own always troubled his grandfather, perhaps more so than the presence of the Faceless One and the Alon’mahk’lar . After landing on the shores of Geldain, the slaves had been given over to new masters, chained together, and marched into the heart of a nameless desert. Most slaves perished long before reaching the first of many mines, but the Alon’mahk’lar always brought more.