Authors: Jean Johnson
“With great care on my father’s part. He didn’t always have time for us, but he made sure my sister and I visited with our mother’s kin, who were given instructions to treat us as just another pair of kids. No spoiling, no laxing of discipline, and no holding back of love. And he made sure that we knew he loved us, just for being ourselves. Our tutors were also instructed to teach us how to see through flattery and obsequious fawning, and to know when someone was being honest and trustworthy…though I’ll admit that Truth Stones make a nice shortcut.” She smiled at him to show she was teasing.
“It’s good to know I’ll always have employment,” he dared to joke back. Her earlier words finished sinking in, making him flush despite the heat of midafternoon. “So…you want to know if I’m interested in you?”
“Yes, if you don’t mind speaking plainly about it,” Arasa said. She reminded herself silently that holding her breath was undignified. “And provided my little revelation hasn’t tipped the balance either way, in your original intent.”
Elrik could understand that. Freeing one hand from the reins, he dug into the satchel slung at his side, and pulled out the Truth Stone. “I may be a little intimidated—all right, a
lot
intimidated by your station—but I’m still interested in you. Arasa-the-woman. Very interested. More than I probably should be, given your station.”
The stone was unblemished when he unfurled his fingers. Arasa blushed. “Well. Now it remains to be seen if you can handle being in the midst of the madness that surrounds my ‘station.’ At least the bed will be big and soft.”
“Assuming your father doesn’t have me thrown out, or worse,” he muttered. At her sharp look, he gestured at his freckled face. “For being a foreign commoner, and daring to want to touch his child.”
“Considering he arranged for my sister and me to have formal instruction in the erotic arts as soon as we reached adult status, plus the necessary contraceptive amulets, and gave us a message to ‘play responsibly,’ I don’t think it’s as big a concern as you’re fearing,” Arasa revealed dryly. “Kalasa certainly took advantage of his tacit permission for such things, but then I’ve always been more bookish than her. You don’t run across that many males who are both interested and young enough in the Royal Archives. They’re more apt to be found hanging around the Imperial Salle, which was where she spent most of her own time. She’s cultivated a certain…oh, I don’t know, an allure, I guess, a confidence and charm that makes it difficult for some men to resist her.”
From the way she didn’t look his way, Elrik guessed she had seen some men who had been interested in her turning to her twin instead, in the past. “Kalasa, that’s your sister’s name, right?” Elrik asked. She nodded, checking her Wall-Finder again. “Kalasa means ‘sunlight’ in the Imperial tongue…and Arasa means ‘moonlight.’” He smiled, looking at the slowly approaching canyons in the distance. “I’ve always been more partial to moonlight, myself.”
Glancing at him, Arasa caught sight of that smirk, and felt warmed by it. “Given how pale your skin is, it’s probably a good thing. Time to stop and rest the horses, I think.”
Complying, he dismounted with her. While she tended to her Imperial Mares, stripping the saddle off the one she was riding, he removed the saddle from his own petite steed, allowing both of them to air-dry. When he set out the drinking pan for Juniper, filling it with water from one of the skins strapped to the saddle, his horse guzzled it eagerly, all but inhaling the liquid. A brief grooming with her curry brush was all she needed to smooth down the hairs of her brown hide, and when the water was gone, he added a double handful of grain and dried fruit to the shallow wooden bowl, allowing her to lip up the grains.
Elrik moved to help Arasa water and feed her own horses, as he had during the length of their journey. Imperial Mares were known for their ability to fight as fiercely as any Flame Sea warrior, with an almost doglike loyalty to their riders. Yet after he was introduced to each of them by her guiding his hand to their nostrils for a whiff of his scent, they had seemed as tame as plow-horses.
Given their normally fierce reputation, he thought it was little wonder he hadn’t made the connection. And it was true that they had stomped on the occasional snake or sand-demon, crushing them flat, but even a normal horse would do that. Even after he knew what they were, he couldn’t see a reason to be afraid of them.
It did make him wonder how the courtiers of the Empire would view his presence, and
that
made him nervous. Firming his courage, he asked, “Are you
sure
you want to take me to your chambers, once we get to Ijesh? I don’t want to cause trouble with your father’s Court. The other Am’n might look down on you.”
Arasa quirked one of her blond brows as she stroked her own currying brush down Lake’s golden limbs. “Elrik, you’re a
mage.
That automatically gives you a high status in the Empire. You don’t need to be born to a Noble Family to command a certain respect—if anyone gives you any trouble, just threaten to turn their nose into a sausage, or something.”
The absurdity of the suggestion made him chuckle ruefully. “In the southern lands, the suggestion would be to ‘turn you into a toad,’” he mock-cackled, curling his fingers and wrinkling his nose. Relaxing, he shook his head. “But I wouldn’t turn anyone into a toad in the desert. That’s just too cruel.”
“Then you’re a kindhearted man,” she observed, glancing at him. “How do you survive on such a volatile border?”
“Oh, make no mistake,” Elrik corrected her, pausing in the middle of brushing Thunder’s hindquarters. Unclipping the metal-wrapped staff slung at his side like a sword, he watched an approaching lump wriggling its way toward them, forming a rill of disturbed sand in its wake. “I can and will defend myself. I
have
defended myself, in the past. I just prefer to be politely civilized rather than barbarically belligerent.”
A stab of his arm and a jab of his thumb thrust the spring-loaded spike into the middle of the squirming bump. Something squealed, the sand shivered and twitched, and he planted his boot on the mound, extracting the spike without revealing the beige-scaled beast. He’d seen them before; there was no need to see them again. A couple jabs of the silvered spike in the sand helped scrape off the bluish-white ichor; a tap against his boot-heel shook the grit free, allowing him to retract the tip. It would need cleaning later, when they had the water to spare, but then it had needed cleaning after their last pause for rest. Thankfully, once they reached the hardpan desert, where the soil was too solid to burrow through, the sand-demons would be left behind.
The oversized palomino twisted her head around, snorted softly, and flicked him in the small of his back with her tail, telling him silently but eloquently to get back to scratching all her travel-borne itches with that lovely currying brush still in his other hand. No fool—especially now that he knew what the mare was, and what the rumors said she was capable of doing—Elrik clipped the staff back onto his belt and complied. Glancing at Arasa, he smiled wryly. “As you’ve seen, I can take care of myself, and those around me.”
“Sand-demons can be dangerous, but some men can be even more so,” Arasa reminded him. “Swatting at mountain-flies for a week as we left Kumré, and then stabbing at sand-demons for two more weeks of crossing the Inner Desert, isn’t the same as one moment of heart-stopping battle.”
“Sometimes sand-demons swim under the surface with six legs, and sometimes they stride across the land on two. The wise traveler is always prepared against either kind—let us concede each other’s point,” Elrik added, heading off further argument. “And focus on more important matters. Such as the danger I will be in from Thunder, here, if I do not finish currying her.”
* * *
Ijesh
was a strange but wondrous place. Legend said the place had been inhabited ever since the most primitive of times…but legend also said that water had not flowed reliably through these canyons until the First Emperor had come to this place. Now, however, there was an abundance of water, though at first one didn’t see signs of it.
The first impression was of sloping, rough rock walls gradually growing taller as a traveler descended deeper into the canyon, then of caravans coming and going, some in the main ravine, others in side-gullies angling off to either side. Gradually, one noticed the holes cut in the faces of the cliffs. The first ones were raw-edged, just holes that had been rough-hewn. A few had troughs cut and filled with dirt and plants, though not many. Then the road turned to the left, rounding the edge of a window-riddled cliff; as the valley floor widened into a stall-lined market, the view broadened into great carved entryways, balconies, columns, and statues.
Almost all of the buildings were cut from the hard white-and-gold granite that formed the stone of the valley walls. Curtains hung in windows; banners fluttered from balustrades and jutting posts. A few structures stood on their own, mortared in blocks of stone; the remainder were temporary shelters of wooden posts and canvas awnings, lending brightly dyed colors to the views. And everywhere, water trickled in aqueducts that followed the rugged curves of the canyon walls, splashing down carved channels in gurgling rills that allowed greenery to grow in vast, stone-rimmed beds.
For all that the wind was quieter down here in the twists and turns of the hidden valleys, the air at least was cooler, moister. Easier to breathe, if perfumed with a hundred or more scents: dromids and horses, goats and chickens, spices resting in market bins, flowers growing on the terraces overhead. It didn’t
seem
like a large city, since there was never much of it in view at any one time, but it went on and on, from the market sector, where travelers could find a room at a wall-cut inn, to residential areas, where the bleating of market animals herded to the butchering pens gave way to the chattering of young children chasing each other through the streets. And there were side-canyons that they didn’t explore, passing alleys carved by both natural and artificial means.
Elrik would have been lost within minutes, had he not been following Arasa. He certainly would have been separated from her in the crush, if the sight of her three Imperial Mares, two of them on lead-ropes trailing after the one in the lead, hadn’t cleared a path ahead of them. It was almost eerie, the way the crowd’s awareness of the overgrown horses spread, turning heads and quieting conversations as the inhabitants and visitors shifted out of their way. It made him feel something of a tag-along, an afterthought, riding as he was on mere Juniper, the short, brown, stocky half-pony.
They reached a broad stone barricade, stretching from wall to wall on one side of their winding path and patrolled across its arched top by guards with halberds. Here, Arasa turned her current steed, Lake, toward the broad, wrought-iron gates flanking the archway. Guards appeared, spoke quiet words with the princess through the grille, then swung the gates wide enough for horses and humans to enter. Within short order, Elrik found himself urged to dismount as stable-hands came forward to take Juniper’s reins.
Fingers slipped around his, startling him. He had only a moment to glance at their taupe-eyed owner before she was tugging him away from the servants handling their steeds. Arasa pulled him deeper into what he realized was one of the most ornately carved canyons seen so far.
Bas-relief panels depicted the history of the Empire, while carved pillars represented the Gods of the Empire. Fountains splashed water, cooling the air even further and moistening both his skin and his lungs. Tugged into the cliff-carved palace, he found himself mounting intricately carved stairs flanked on one side by a gurgling cascade that poured down its own set of channel-carved steps. Vaulted ceilings boasted painted surfaces between their ornately pointed ribs. Decades must have been spent shaping the stone around them, but his hostess barely gave him time to see any of it. Before he could absorb more than a quarter of his surroundings, she pulled him through a pierced stone—
stone
—door into a room three times the size of the tavern where they had first met.
The columns in here were more fluid and the frescoes on the ceiling more abstract, but the walls had been polished to a glossy shine rather than carved with depictions of ancient history. The furnishings were crafted from inlaid wood, bleached leather, and pastel cushions. Gossamer curtains hung across what appeared to be a balcony off to the left, fluttering softly in the slight breeze that stirred the warm air; flanking them were heavier curtains that he realized could be pulled across the opening to protect against the chill of the desert night. Greenery bloomed in planters on the terrace, while more grew in pots on some of the tables, and cut flowers spilled out of ornately glazed vases.
Overall, the sitting room gave the impression of comfortable wealth; not pretentious, but comfortable with itself. Much like Arasa herself, Elrik decided. He turned to her, but found the questions forming in his mind derailed by movement off to the right.
Two women in identical blue outfits moved into the room from an archway opposite the balcony; they stopped and bowed at a respectful distance. Servants. Arasa glanced back at Elrik, smiled at him in reassurance, and addressed them. “This is Mage Elrik, my guest. He and I will be taking a bath as soon as the pools can be filled. Please find something for him to wear while our garments are being washed, and set out fresh clothes for myself as well.”
“As you wish, Taje-tan Arasa,” one of the ladies agreed, addressing her by the Flame Sea equivalent for “princess,” though the title actually only meant “noble heir.” The maidservant offered, “Taje-tan Kalasa left just this morning; the bathing chamber has not yet drained itself from her visit, if you wish to soak immediately.”