Paul Thompson: Destiny

Still Kerian could not rid herself of the nagging fear that a powerful sorcerer such as Faeterus would find some way back from death. Wise Sa’ida and well-read Favaronas had been unable to assure her that her suspicions were groundless, so she would make absolutely certain Faeterus could never again darken the world.

The joints had fallen apart, and the bones were scattered. She cut away greenery and raked through the dirt with her fingers, seeking even the tiniest bones. As she found each one, she laid it atop the sorcerer’s rotted robe. When she was satisfied she’d left none behind, she soaked the pile and the dirty fabric with lamp oil and set it alight.

The pyre blazed up, sending a stream of dirty yellow smoke skyward. She fed the fire with vine cuttings and windfall limbs, turning it into a genuine bonfire.

The morning passed. Kerian sat on the edge of the Stair and ate wild blueberries. The view was spectacular, and she allowed herself to be captured by it. Fluffy clouds floated high over Inath-Wakenti, dappling mighty trees and lush foliage with patterns of light and shade. Flocks of starlings wheeled overhead. Nearby, squirrels leaped from treetop to treetop, and birds trilled and sang.

She kept the bonfire hot, adding kindling and splashes of oil. Only when the sun hovered above the western peaks did she allow the flames to die out. Raking through the ashes with a tree branch, she crushed any remaining bits of bone to dust. The hot ashes and bone dust went into a clay pot that she carried back to Eagle Eye.

The last scraps of the creature that called itself Faeterus would not remain in Inath-Wakenti. Kerian and Eagle Eye winged down the valley toward the pass. They flew far out into the desert before the Lioness upended the clay pot. The cloud of ashes was taken by the wind and scattered across many miles of Khurish sand.

A line of nomads riding on the shady side of a dune spied a very odd thing: a lone figure walking toward them. No one but foolish laddad went about in the desert on foot. The nomads—they were Weya-Lu, as it happened-halted their horses and watched in cautious curiosity hands resting on sword hilts. The stranger wore only a ragged breechcloth. His skin was burned by the sun to the color of cinnabar. He was either mad, possessed by a desert spirit, or a monster in disguise. He hailed them.

“Stand where you are!” the eldest nomad commanded. He drew his sword and pointed its curved blade at the sun-baked apparition. “Name yourself!”

“I am Shobbat, son of Sahim, Khan of All the Khurs!”

That decided the issue. He was a madman.

Advancing slowly, hands held high, he cried, “Look upon me and know the truth!”

“What truth?”

“I have come from the land of the dead-from the Valley of the Blue Sands. I, who was cursed and given the form of a beast by a vile foreign sorcerer, have been cured by the gods! Now I return to cleanse the land of Khur!”

His words fell upon fertile ground. The Weya-Lu, still grieving the loss of so many of their kin as well as their Weyadan, listened. They let the stranger come into their midst. Under the deep-desert burn, the features of the khan’s eldest son were apparent. Still, their allegiance was not so easily won.

“How long have you been in the desert?” one man asked.

Shobbat shrugged. “I don’t know. I awoke in the valley, naked as the day I was born. I set out each morning with the rising sun on my right shoulder, three mornings so far.”

The Weya-Lu exclaimed. He carried nothing with him; had he once had provisions? None at all, he said. Immediately, they pressed a waterskin on him. He drank, not with the desperate thirst that should have afflicted him, but slowly, his actions those of a true child of the desert, who is always careful not to waste a drop of precious water. The nomads were awed. Surely Those on High were watching over the prince. How else to explain his not simply surviving in the desert for three days, but being in such good health?

“May we escort you back to Khuri-Khan, Highness?” asked the eldest.

“In time.” Shobbat took another drink. “When I return to the city of the khan, I will wipe clean the stain of corruption there. My father treats with all manner of foreigners. He takes their coin, fawns over them, and protects them, all the while oppressing the righteous believers of his own nation, those who follow the Condor.”

The nomads nodded their approval of the epithet. Not even Torghan’s own children used his true name lightly.

Shobbat added, “I will not allow this to continue. Those on High have spared me to lead the righteous against a corrupt and unworthy ruler!”

The fire of righteousness blazed from Shobbat’s eyes. Each man felt it, breath-stealing as a dash of icy water in the face. One by one, swords were drawn and lifted high. The nomads likewise lifted their voices, shouting, “Hail the Desert-Blessed Prince! Hail the Son of the Avenger!”

The shouts continued for a longtime. Shobbat stood in the center of the ring of men, soaking up the acclaim as a tree soaks up spring water. These dozen Weya-Lu were his first converts. More would follow, many more, and the walls of Khuri-Khan would tremble.

Emissaries arrived before summer ended. They came from Solamnia and Ergoth, Sanction and Schallsea, and numerous other cities across the land. The soldiers among the delegations noted with practiced eyes the great wall being erected across the mouth of the valley. The design was typically elven: elegant and clean with soaring buttresses and high towers whose slender shapes belied their great underlying strength. Behind the outer wall, a second had been started, and beyond it lay the foundations of a third. The mountains ringing Inath-Wakenti were rich in granite. No effort was being spared to make the walls high and thick. It would be some time before the defenses were complete, but when they were, no army could hope to force the passage.

The visitors were conducted along a road of finely crushed blue granite to the budding city in the center of the valley. There they were received by the Speaker of the Sun and Stars in a palace complex being built atop the largest single slab of stone any of the visitors had ever seen. None knew the significance of the Tympanum, but all wondered at the broad crack bisecting it.

Before winter claimed the outer world, a special emissary arrived from Khuri-Khan. General Hakkam led a party of forty high lords from the court of Sahim-Khan. All were attired in the panoply of Khur, a splendid display, if barbarous to elf eyes. Clan totems were rendered in gold atop broad-brimmed helmets. Every shoulder, every elbow bristled with a shining steel spike, and each man’s hooded sun mantle was spotlessly white—the color of wealth in dusty Khur.

Although city-dwellers rather than superstitious nomads, the Khurish delegation still preferred not to enter the Valley of the Blue Sands. As a conciliatory gesture to his reluctant ally, Gilthas broke protocol by meeting them just inside the uncompleted valley wall. He arrived on foot, shaded from the late-autumn sun by a long canopy of flowers supported by a dozen young elves. Although large, the canopy weighed very little and rippled in the slight breeze. The canny Speaker also wore white. Even his aurochs-leather sandals were pale as mountain snow. The only touches of color were the square-cut amethysts decorating the ends of the cord tied around the waist of his robe.

Hamaramis, Taranath, and a retinue of warriors followed their sovereign. They, too, were clad in white and bedecked with flowers. The display had been carefully orchestrated, and it had just the impact Gilthas intended. As desert-dwellers, the Khurs regarded flowers and green plants with deep reverence. Presenting his people awash in blossoms—so near winter, no less-proclaimed Gilthas’s power far better than gilded raiment would have. The elves presented a pageant of wealth and success, the kind that fills bellies and swells coffers with income from trade.