Lander regarded the boy with an even, honest expression. “I don’t know yet.”
Kadumi shrugged. “Well, they are our enemies also. We may as well ride together—for a time, at least.”
The youth began to untether the camels. Lander joined him, leaving Ruha to wonder what the stranger really wanted from the Bedine.
Once they had checked the saddles and strung the baggage camels into a caravan line, Lander led the trio up the wadi. When the dry ravine ended, they dismounted and ascended onto the breezy shoulder of Rahalat.
Ruha envied the grace with which the berrani led the way over the broken ground, for she found the going hard on the steep terrain—especially since, as a woman, it was her duty to lead the baggage string. Several times she almost turned an ankle, and once she lost her balance as they topped a twenty-foot cliff.
As she crossed a rocky spine running between a pair of thirty-foot precipices, Ruha decided that it might be best for Kadumi to lead the baggage camels. Before she could speak, the hollow knell of a goat bell sounded behind her. Her first thought was that the animal making the sound belonged to the Zhentarim, for the Mtair Dhafir kept no goats. Bringing the incantation for a wind wall to mind, she spun around ready to cast the spell and push her enemies off the mountain.
There was no one behind her. Without turning around, she asked, “Lander, Kadumi, did you hear anything?”
“Yes, down there,” Lander replied.
“No, over here,” Kadumi countered.
Ruha turned and saw Lander peering off of one side of the spine and Kadumi off of the other. The bell sounded again, and this time she realized it came from inside her head.
The widow’s companions realized the same thing. Kadumi blanched and covered his ears with his hands, while Lander simply shook his head, vainly trying to clear it.
“Rahalat!” Kadumi gasped.
The youth began tugging on his camel reins, trying to turn his gelding around and start down. When the confused beast looked over the precipices to either side of it, it would not move. Lander grasped the boy’s shoulder. “What’s Rahalat?”
“The mountain spirit,” Ruha explained.
“She does not want us here,” Kadumi added, still trying to turn his camels around.
“A ghost?” inquired Lander.
Ruha shook her head. “A goddess.”
“Rahalat was a shunned woman,” Kadumi explained. “Her khowwan abandoned her here, and she claimed the oasis as her home. She was very bitter and used her magic to prevent any tribe from grazing here.”
The bells sounded again, but this time they seemed to come from all sides. Kadumi dropped the camel reins and started down the mountain, abandoning the confused beasts.
“During a drought, the Dakawa murdered her,” Ruha continued, not attempting to stop her brother-in-law. “According to legend, the spring turned to blood. For the next ten years, anything that drank from it perished. Now, every tribe that camps at Rahalat must sacrifice a camel to the mountain goddess or the water goes bad.”
Looking after Kadumi, Lander said, “We can’t go back. When the sheikh hears we’re missing, he’ll search everywhere for us.”
A terrible clatter sounded from above, and the air filled with the bleating of goats. A moment later, a herd of several dozen of the beasts materialized from the boulders on the slope above the rocky spine, then started moving down the mountain. The camels began backing away nervously, their footing coming precariously close to the cliffs to either side.
Kadumi called, “Come with me, you fools, or you will be driven off the cliffs with my camels!”
“We can’t abandon the camels,” Lander said to Ruha. “Without them, we’re dead.”
“And if we stay, we are also dead,” Ruha answered, watching Kadumi descend the mountain. The widow did not blame him for leaving.
Lander was not intimidated, though. He started toward the goats, waving his arms and crying, “Go back to where you came from! Get out of here!”
Kadumi’s brown gelding tried to turn and flee, then slipped and lost its footing. With a terrified bellow, it plunged off the cliff on the backside of the mountain, its body bouncing off the rocks with a series of muffled thuds.
Ruha realized that, whether or not he was a fool to challenge Rahalat, Lander was right about one thing: they could not afford to lose their camels. She waved her hand at the top of the rocky spine, at the same time whispering the incantation she had brought to mind earlier.
The breeze shifted, then whistled as it wove itself into an impenetrable wall in the spot she had chosen. The goats stumbled into the invisible barrier, then began to batter it with their horns or try to climb over.
Lander turned and stared at Ruha with an astonished expression. “Did you do that?”
“No,” she said, speaking the lie automatically. It did not even cross her mind that Lander might not be offended by her use of magic. Ruha handed the reins to the baggage camel to the confused berrani. “Hold these. I’ll go to the back of the line and see if I can coax them down backward.”
As she worked her way past the apprehensive camels, the bleating of the goats and the knelling of their bells faded.
“Wait!” Lander called. “They’re gone!”
Ruha turned around and saw that he was correct. The goats had disappeared, as had her wind wall. In their place stood the white, translucent figure of an unveiled woman. Her face was young and strong-featured, though there was a certain weariness to her countenance that gave her a lonely and heartbroken appearance. She was studying Ruha with an expression of sisterly sorrow.
“Kadumi! Come back! They’re gone,” called Lander. Without waiting to see if the youth heard him, the berrani turned and started back up the mountain. “We’d better get off this narrow ridge before something else happens.”
“Wait,” Ruha said, still looking past him to the translucent form of the goddess. “How do you know Rahalat has given us her permission?”
Lander looked directly at the place where the form of the goddess was standing. “There’s nothing there,” he said. “Just a moonlit rock.”
Rahalat gave Ruha a sly smile, then suddenly looked in the direction of the Bitter Well. She scowled in displeasure, and then the goddess was gone.
Ruha led her camels across the rest of the spine, puzzling over the appearance of the goddess and the meaning of her final frown. From Lander’s reaction, it was apparent that Rahalat had permitted only the widow to see her, and from that Ruha deduced that she was being shown some sort of special favor. She could not decide, however, whether the glance in the Bitter Well’s direction had been a warning of some sort or whether the goddess had merely seen something in that direction that she did not like.
When Ruha reached Lander’s side, he asked, “You didn’t make that wall of force that saved us?”
“What’s a wall of force?” Ruha asked, turning to look down the mountain. “Is Kadumi coming?”
The question was unnecessary, for the youth was already crossing the rock spine. He paused in the center long enough to cast a regretful glance down at his dead gelding. Then, a sheepish expression on his face, he rejoined them without saying anything.
Lander resumed his climb, finally calling a halt atop a section of steep crags and two-thousand foot cliffs that overlooked the oasis spring. Ruha could see the embers of the Mtairi campfires spread out in a semi-circle against the base of the mountain. In the darkness, she could not see individual silhouettes moving about the camp, but there was no sign of torches, so she assumed the trio’s escape remained unnoticed.
Beyond the camp, the alabaster crests of the whaleback dunes and ebony ribbons of their dark troughs created an eerie sea of black and white that stretched clear to the eastern horizon. Somewhere to the northeast, Ruha knew, was the Bitter Well and the Zhentarim army.