Alliances

“The laddad must be freed to continue on their way!” the voice boomed. “The balance of the world depends on it!”

“Vengeance is balance!” she retorted, as angry as she was astonished. “Keep your world! I know only the sands of Khur, and here, the laddad are a curse and will be dealt with!”

Leaders of the tribes had come seeking Adala’s counsel regarding the strange frigid wind. A few arrived in time to hear the voice’s last pronouncement. All saw Adala rise to her feet and shout at her cousin. Wapah’s talkativeness annoyed them all, but no one had ever seen Adala lose her temper with him.

“I will see the laddad out of Khur one way or another!” she raged at her cousin. “This is my maita! Those on High have shown it to me! Do you dare stand against Them, ancient seer?”

Thunder crashed. There were no thunderheads in sight, just high streamers of white cloud. As one, the nomad chiefs threw themselves to the sand. Those who had not witnessed it for themselves had heard how Adala’s maita brought down lightning from a clear sky and obliterated a Mikku warmaster who dared oppose her.

Adala raised her hands to the sky. “Do you hear that, false oracle? Your lies have aroused my maita! Begone before Those on High blast you down!”

“It is you who are in danger, woman. You have my warning,” hissed the strange voice. Wapah’s right arm lifted, fingers pointing limply toward the deep desert south of the camp. “Give up your aggression now, or you will find a maita you do not want: the fate that awaits all who hate.”

Suddenly Wapah collapsed in a heap. Thunder pealed once more, and the icy wind ceased. Slowly the chiefs and warmasters got to their feet. Wapah seemed none the worse for his possession. In fact, he was sleeping soundly until two men shook him awake.

“Eh?” he said blearily. “I dreamt a storm was coming—”

He was interrupted by the cry from the nomad camp. Adala’s tent was pitched on the east side of a low dune, sited to catch the first rays of the sun. She hurried over the rise, with her chiefs and Wapah trailing behind.

In camp, men and women stood outside their tents, staring southwest at a point where the sharp line between pale sand and blue sky was blurred. The hazy spot grew rapidly in size until all could see the tall column of dust that was rising above it, like a dagger pointing from sky to ground.

“Whirlwind!”

Dozens of voices screamed the dreaded word, and the warriors around Adala took up the cry. Those in camp dashed for their tents. The warriors with Adala vaulted onto their horses and rode hard for their threatened families. Only Adala did not panic. She stood calmly, alone until Wapah joined her.

“What a vivid dream I had!” he said, scrubbing his eyes with both hands. When he took his hands away, he saw the danger bearing down on them, and his mouth dropped open. “Maita, we must flee!” he cried.

Every nomad feared whirlwinds. They weren’t frequent, but their terrible power was the stuff of campfire legend. The greatest hero of the desert tribes, the war chief Hadar, was said to have been carried off by a monster whirlwind, which flung him to the Dark Moon. Hadar battled the god of the dark moon for centuries. When Hadar finally defeated him, the god fled, convincing his brother on the White Moon and their sister on the Red to go as well, lest the stalwart war chief attack them too. That was when the sky had changed and the moons vanished, what foreigners called the Second Cataclysm.

Adala had Wapah’s wrist in an iron grip. He strained against it, pleading with her to get to safety. She would not be moved.

“My maita will not allow this!” she said, eyes squinted against the rising sand. “My maita is stronger than any false oracle!”

And so she stood, one hand clamped on Wapah’s wrist, the other drawing the scarf over her nose and mouth. Around her, men and women fled or dug holes in the lee of the dune, seeking cover from the killer windstorm. Adala closed her eyes. Terrified, Wapah did likewise.

The wind roared like the howls of ten thousand wolves. The sand beneath their feet was sucked away, and Wapah went down on his knees. Adala sank up to her ankles but remained proudly upright. She was shouting into the teeth of the storm. Wapah couldn’t hear her words. He bent so his face touched his thighs. The wind pushed him backward slowly, until his arm, still held by Adala, was stretched in front of him.

He looked up. The column of wind writhed like a living thing, shredding tents and flinging their contents in all directions. A bronze pan, used to cook a family’s communal meal, spun through the air and landed next to Wapah. The flat, three-foot span of metal buried a third of its width into the sand. Had it struck him, he would’ve been sliced in half.