Sanctuary

Once the sun climbed to its zenith, even the nomad fell silent. The air was too dry for speech. Shobbat’s narrow, dark lips, so like his mother’s, cracked. Smears of blood stained the gauze scarf covering his nose and mouth.

Just after midday they reached the first landmark on Wapah’s itinerary, a shelf of stone rising out of the sand to a height greater than the mounted men. Pointed at one end and rounded at the other, the prominence was known as the Tear of Elir-Sana, named for the divine healer.

Unlike the monotonous sand or the unvarying hues of other rocks, the Tear of Elir-Sana presented a bold, colorful sight. It was composed of multicolored layers of rock; some were as orange as a sunset, others ash gray, blue-black, or creamy yellow. The eastern face was deeply grooved by generations of wind-borne sand. From tip to rounded end, the perfect teardrop was thirty feet in length. A spring bubbled from a cleft on the west side of the Tear. According to legend, the spring had been born from the tears of the goddess Elir-Sana, when she had collapsed here, half-dead from exhaustion.

Wapah announced they would refill their waterskins here. The water was said to have healing powers. Although it certainly slaked Shobbat’s thirst, he found the taste nothing out of the ordinary.

After filling his two empty skins, the prince struggled back to his horse through the fine, drifted sand. His booted toe caught on something hidden just beneath the surface, and he fell forward. The full skins slung around his neck dragged him down. Cursing, he sat up and glared at the object that had tripped him. It was a skull. Clean, dry, and yellowed, it was not human.

“What unholy thing is this?”

Wapah leaned down from his saddle and peered at the find. “Dragon-man.”

A draconian skull? Shobbat’s annoyance vanished as he studied it more closely. The cranium was wide and triangular.

Fangs as long as Shobbat’s thumb sprouted from the upper jaw, and there was a horny beak like that of a monstrous bird. The skull was half again as big as a human head, and on its rear were several parallel gouges-cuts from a blade, most likely.

“A warrior,” the prince said, standing and dusting sand from his long coat.

“A scout in search of water. He found it, but never left. The desert takes no prisoners.” Shobbat did not point out this draconian appeared to have died by the sword, not from exposure.

Mounted once more, Shobbat spotted something imbedded in a stratum of the Tear. He drew the dagger from his sash and jabbed at the rock. Fragments cascaded around his horse’s hooves.

Wapah frowned at this wanton destruction but kept silent.

The prince had uncovered a yellow stone protruding from a layer of similarly colored sandstone. “Is this a shell?” he exclaimed. The object looked very like the top half of a clam.

Wapah shook his head. “Only a stone, shaped by chance. A jest of the gods.”

The prince disagreed. He speculated the sea might once have covered this part of Khur. Wapah immediately dismissed this notion.

“It is told in the Song: the land of Khur is the oldest of the world, the first solid ground created by the gods,” the nomad said flatly. “It has never been under water.”

The Song was sacred to the nomads. A collection of legends from the distant past, it contained thousands of verses, too many for anyone to memorize entirely, so it was divided into eight cantos, each named for one of the great gods of the nomads: Kargath the Warrior, Rakaris the Hunter, Torghan the Avenger, Elir-Sana the Healer, Anthor the Hermit, Hab’rar the Messenger, Soro the Firemaker, and Ayyan the Deceiver. Wapah was a singer of the Anthor Canto.

The two men rode on. Progress became more difficult, as the horses had to plow through belly-deep sand. Wapah’s short-legged gray animal, more accustomed to such terrain, kept a steady pace. Shobbat’s elegant chestnut, its long legs meant for speed, floundered. As a result, sundown had come and gone by the time they reached their destination.

Like the Tear of Elir-Sana, Shobbat’s goal was an island of stone in an ocean of moving sand. Rather than a single formation, it comprised a thick column of gray stone forty feet in height, ringed close around by four black granite towers only half as tall. The four angled inward, their tops touching the central column. Pale starlight gave the formation an eerie feel, like an ancient and forgotten temple.

The tablet found in the ruins of the Khuri yl Nor had spoken of this strange formation as an ancient oracle. It was said there were passages and a cave in the central spire. The cave was the prince’s destination.

The wind died with the sunset. The air quickly lost the heat of day and grew cold, but warmth still radiated from the broiled sand. Shobbat dismounted and rummaged through his saddlebags. Knowing there would be no wood for torches, he’d brought a small brass lamp. He knelt and placed the lamp on the sand, then struck flint on steel to light the wick.