“We did not fear when the Vanishing came,” the nomad declared. “Our gods were not points of light in the sky, but beings immortal and unchanging. They never left us. They guard us still.”
Blown sand stung the exposed flesh of Shobbat’s cheeks like a thousand shards of glass. He turned his face away. “Was everyone else in the world wrong when they thought the gods departed?” he asked testily.
Wapah shrugged one shoulder. “Who knows what godless barbarians think?”
On they rode, the nomad talking, the prince of Khur riding in uncomfortable silence. In spite of Wapah’s talk of the desert’s hard edges, the land had begun to look molten and soft to Shobbat. The terrific heat smelted the air itself, causing everything to shimmer and blur. Both horses grunted deep in their chests, resenting the task they were obliged to perform. Every two hundred steps, the duo paused for water. Two swallows for each beast and one for each man, as Wapah prescribed.
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.
Wapah asked his intentions. When Shobbat said he planned to enter the formation, the nomad put heels to his horse’s flanks and moved quickly to the crouching prince.
“Nothing was said of entering!” he said. “You must not! Do not disturb the spirits of this place!”
“I didn’t come here just to view the sights. What I seek is within.”
A cascade of sparks fell from his flint, and Shobbat concentrated on coaxing the flame to life. As he adjusted the wick, he heard a scrape of metal. Wapah had drawn his weapon, a narrow sword bare of crossguard, the style preferred by most nomads.
“You dare draw on me? I am your prince!”
Wapah was a motionless silhouette. The feeble lamplight did not reach his face, and his expression was hidden by the night. “If I rode away, what would you do? you’d never make it back to your city,” he murmured.
For the first time, Shobbat felt a flicker of uncertainty. He quickly quashed it, falling back on all the arrogance and assurance of his privileged upbringing.
“My whereabouts are known, fool,” he snapped. “If I do not return, for whatever reason, your entire clan will be hunted down and destroyed!”
This was a lie. No one in Khuri-Khan knew where Shobbat was. The prince didn’t trust anyone enough for that.
For a long moment they gazed at each other, the pampered prince and the talkative nomad. Then Wapah sheathed his sword and bowed his head. “Let Those on High judge you. I shall not.”
Shobbat picked up his lamp, his brief fear forgotten. Sentimentalists, that’s what these nomads were. They’d ride to their deaths shouting for joy, but threaten their families and they crumbled. Exploiting that weakness allowed Shobbat’s father to rule them. Sahim-Khan was the least sentimental man in the world.
The prince labored through the deep sand to the base of the formation. The central column seemed enormously high, rising tower-like against the starry sky. Around its base lay shards of black granite, shivered off the surrounding spires. Shobbat was grateful for the firmer footing they provided. The flickering light of his lamp showed no inscriptions, carvings, or any indication of intelligent handiwork, only rough, wind-worn granite.