Sanctuary

Seated back to back, their bed so narrow they were nearly touching, husband and wife stared in opposite directions. They might as well have been miles apart. The Lioness was flushed with fury, her hands clenched into fists; Gilthas’s face, blurred by tiredness, was pale, his jaw stiff with tension.

He finally said, “No, lady, elven honor is not dead, merely stored, like the great archive of Qualinost, against the day when we can afford to display it again.”

Both of them lay down. After a moment, Gilthas reached a hand out, but she edged away, curling up on the side of the bed, as far away as possible.

That was how they fell asleep-Kerian curled in on herself, facing away from her husband, and Gilthas, face up, one hand outstretched toward her stiff back.

Chapter 2

Hard edges, that’s where things is clearest. Where land and sky come together cleanly, with nothing in between. A man can see what’s what, and who’s who. Good and evil are obvious. They say the sea is like that. The desert is, too.”

The guide, the very opposite of the usual taciturn nomad, folded his hands across his horse’s neck and continued to expound his philosophy. His audience of one, riding a few steps behind, made no reply. Prince Shobbat of Khur was only half listening. Sunrise was an hour past and already the heat was intense. Shobbat adjusted the brim of his broad felt hat and told himself, for the hundredth time, that his goal was worth this suffering.

As far as Shobbat could see in all directions was sand, broken rock, and scattered boulders bleached to a uniform shade of tan by the unflinching sun. No color at all relieved the trail northwest from Khuri-Khan into the trackless wastes that made up most of the realm of Khur. No shade either. Only hard light by day and perfect, starry blackness at night.

Surveying the desolation around him, Shobbat wondered if there wasn’t something to the windbag nomad’s notions after all. Devoid of trees and buildings, the vista certainly was pristine.

“In green lands, there’s trees, grass, and the like, sprouting out of the dirt to tie air and land together,” his guide was saying. “Clouds in the sky are the breath of growing things, fogging the air. Underfoot there’s nothing but corruption, worms, beetles, and rot, spreading over the land like a mantle of decay.”

Shobbat grunted, eyes squinted nearly closed against the glare. “You’re a poet.”

“No, my lord. A nomad. I’ve known the hard edges all my life.”

The guide’s name was Wapah. So dry and leather-like was his face that he might have been any age from thirty to sixty His beard was long, and the same flat brown color as the sand. Plaited into the hair on his head were thin reed staves that supported the light, cloth shade protecting his head and neck. Spiders were embroidered around the hem of the dirty linen cloth. The black-and-orange leaping sand spider was the symbol of Wapah’s clan. A single bite from the creature could kill a man in minutes, or rot the leg off a healthy horse in a day.

Under brows so thick they were plaited into tiny braids, Wapah’s eyes were pale gray. This was an unusual hue among Khurs, but not unknown in Wapah’s clan. Gray-eyed nomads did not wear the perpetual squint of other desert-dwellers. Wide-eyed in a land of killing glare, the people of the Leaping Spider Clan seemed more intensely aware of their surroundings. Many were seers and given to visions, and for this reason nomads like Wapah were called “mirror-eyed.”

Prince Shobbat, eldest son of Sahim, Khan of Khur, was not nearly so prepossessing. Past thirty, he was (as a court wit once said) “bearded and bland.” He wore a loose linen tunic tucked into riding trousers of the same material, and tall, dark leather boots. The yellow and red sash at his middle did not, as he intended, hide his princely paunch but merely accentuated it. In the same vein, the beginnings of jowls were poorly concealed by his short black beard. When his father was Shobbat’s age, he’d already been khan for ten years. All the prince had accomplished thus far was to eat a great deal, drink a great deal, and pursue a great many comely women. This journey represented his first significant foray beyond the walls of Khuri-Khan. It had been prompted by a broken wall and a cryptic stone tablet.

After the Vanishing of the Moons, the dragon Malystryx claimed and occupied Khur. Repeated attacks by the Red Overlord had left the Khuri yl Nor heavily damaged. After Malys was overthrown, Sahim-Khan gave his eldest son the task of overseeing repairs on the palace. It was a dull, thankless job until, one day, the laborers demolishing a cracked wall in the south wing had come upon a stone tablet hidden in a niche inside the blocks.