City Under the Sand
Jeff Mariotte
To Maryelizabeth, with love.
Great appreciation is due many people for their support, friendship, and assistance during this project. Some of those people—but by no means all—are Fleetwood, Howard and Katie, friends in the gaming community including Matt, Jess, Amy & Boyan, Weston Ochse, Dianne Larson, and the terrific crew at WotC.
I
Emergence
“Silt storm!”
At Avra’s bellow, chaos ceased. For a long moment, the clatter and clack of weapons halted, as did the grunts and cries of the combatants, and even the rasp of sandaled feet scrabbling in sand.
All turned toward the southeast, toward the northern end of the Sea of Silt, which reached far into this almost forgotten country. The Road of Kings skirted the sea’s shores as it wound toward Raam and Draj, south of their present location, but a running battle with raiders had driven the merchant party off course, well north of the road.
On a day like this, with a fierce wind raging out of the south, the lightweight silt could be carried for great distances. The two forts between here and the sea had no doubt been blasted, their inhabitants still picking it from teeth and eyes, dusting it off everything they possessed.
Avra realized the storm was worse than he had first thought. The massive cloud barreling toward them was a mixture of gray and yellow. Silt and sand together. Silt was lighter, a nuisance, but the sand would sting and scour more. The cloud towered high above the plain; behind it the burning sun of Athas was a flat, distant pink disc hovering just above the horizon. It looked almost harmless.
Even as the realization of the cloud’s potential pierced Avra’s brain, the sounds of battle resumed as combatants tried to take advantage of the momentary distraction. Paid mercenaries fought side by side with House Faylon’s slaves to defend the House’s caravan against marauding raiders: a mixed group of humans, elves, half-elves, goliaths and others. Should the raiders prevail, every member of the caravan would be slain. If the guards won, the caravan would return to the main trading route and continue on to Draj, to sell goods mainly from hard, durable agafari wood and to buy grains and hemp for sale back in Nibenay.
Avra had spotted the storm behind his foe, a raider with the lean, hardened look of a former Raamite soldier. The man had risked a quick glance over his own shoulder, but, curiosity satisfied, stabbed at Avra with a dragon paw. Avra brought his agafari-wood sword up in time to block the thrust, sending the bone blade jabbing harmlessly past his right leg, but the raider spun the dragon paw around and came at him with the blade at the short staff’s other end. Yet another blade thrust out from a guard protecting the Raamite’s hand at the shaft’s midpoint; Avra had already suffered a cut from that one.
Before the Raamite could bring his weapon into position, Avra kicked the dragon paw’s shaft with his right foot, knocking the blade wide. As Avra dropped his foot, his balance shifting forward, he thrust his sword into the other man’s exposed midsection. The Raamite wore a chitin breastplate, but it only came to mid-abdomen. Avra’s blade nicked it but stabbed deep. The Raamite let out a gasp, his dragon paw dropping to the sand. Blood bubbled from the raider’s mouth and gushed from the wound as Avra withdrew his blade, and then the man pitched forward.
Avra dodged the falling body, shook droplets of blood from his sword, and scanned for his next opponent. Two raiders teamed up against his friend Curran, a dozen long paces away. Avra ran toward them.
And the cloud hit.
In an instant, Avra was blind and deaf.
The world vanished, obscured by the impenetrable, choking haze of sand and silt. It burned, tearing at his exposed flesh like flames intent on peeling the skin from his bones. He closed his eyes and mouth, but the wind pulled his lips apart enough to let the mixture coat his teeth. His eyes were rimed with the stuff, and he stumbled forward, not daring to open them lest he be permanently blinded. Even before his ears filled, he could hear nothing but the howl of the wind, the flutter and flap of his loose desert garb, and the grainy stammer of particles striking him.
Surrounded by enemies, he dared not relax his guard. But if he couldn’t fight, neither could they. Or so he hoped.
In a smaller sandstorm or dust storm he might simply have crouched down, covered up, and waited it out. But this one showed no sign of ending soon, and he didn’t dare crouch because such a tempest could shift an entire dune, or form a new one, in no time, and of the things Avra feared most in life, confinement was near the top of the list.
So he flailed with his wooden sword and stumbled on, desperate to remain upright in the punishing wind and biting sand.
And the storm raged on.
Avra only knew when night fell because of the cold, although the heavy coating of sand around him offered shelter. Finally, the following day, it ended. A last gust of wind, a final pelting of sand—redundant, at this point, he was so coated in it he might have been a sculpture from a Nibenese building, come to life—and then all was still. At once, Avra felt the full heat of the sun beat down upon him. Should have enjoyed the shade while I could, he thought with a bitter, sand-filled grin. In the Athasian deserts, only water was scarcer.
He dusted his fingertips against each other and wiped grit from his eyes, using his thumbs to get into the corners. He spat and spat even as it pained him to lose water so senselessly. He rubbed his teeth, dug specks from the insides of his cheeks, and spat some more. He turned his head perpendicular to the ground and smacked the other side, trying to dislodge sand from his ears. His scalp might never be free of it.
Only then did he think of the raiders, and the caravan he had been hired to protect. He blinked, shielded his eyes with one gritty palm, and turned in a slow circle.
He didn’t know where he was. Or where anyone else was, for that matter. Caravan and raiders alike had vanished. More likely, he had—bumbling blindly through the storm for an afternoon and a night and much of the next day, in a desert where a person could lose his bearings ten minutes from camp.
He wasn’t even sure which way he had traveled. He might be back to the Road of Kings, or beyond it, or farther north than he had ever been in his life. Before him were dunes, a few scrubby plants, and the baking Athasian sun.
At least I’m not buried alive, he thought. He laughed out loud at the very idea, so concrete a few minutes ago, but seemingly absurd in the present stillness.
Or was it? What if he had gone nowhere, but his comrades and enemies were even now buried underneath new layers of sand and silt? The idea raised hackles at the back of his neck, and a line of sweat trickled down between his shoulder blades. “Hello!” Avra called, then again, louder and more anxiously, “Hello, anyone!”
No answer came back to him, not even an echo. It was as if the desert sand sucked his voice from the air before it traveled ten paces. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted once more.
This time, he heard an answering cry.
“I’m here!” a familiar voice shouted. “Avra, is that you?”
“Hagkun?” Avra called. Hagkun was a mul, the offspring of a dwarf mother and human father, he knew from Nibenay’s gladiatorial pit. They had both hired on as mercenaries at the same time, after House Faylon had lost a good number of their combat-trained slaves in a previous raid. In Nibenay, freemen could compete in the pits, and Avra had never been good for much besides fighting, so he carved himself a fair career as a gladiator until this opportunity presented itself.