Kadumi joined them, still leading the camels. Instead of thanking Lander for saving his life, as the Harper had expected, the youth studiously avoided meeting the older man’s gaze. Instead, he turned to Ruha and spat at her feet.
“Witch!”
Eight
Ruha’s mount suddenly slowed its jolting pace, jarring the widow out of the lethargic daze into which she had fallen. For the last five days, the three companions had been riding hard, hoping to overtake the Zhentarim. The effort had exhausted Ruha and, despite her best efforts to stay alert, she often felt as if her mind had left her body to fend for itself.
When Ruha looked up to see why her camel had halted, she saw Lander stopped twenty feet ahead. He was staring at the horizon, where a broad, black line of apparent nothingness separated the dun-colored ground from the cerulean sky. Ruha squinted at the dark line. When it did not disappear or become more distinct, she dismissed it as one of the desert’s thousand and one visual illusions.
“What’s he doing?” Lander demanded, pointing at a black fleck on horizon, where the blue sky met the black strip of illusion.
The speck was Kadumi. At his own insistence, the boy was riding ahead to scout. Since learning that his sister-in-law was a sorceress, the boy had said no more than a dozen words to her, and all of them had been disparaging. Ruha was not surprised by his reaction, for she suspected that he blamed her magic for the bad fortune that had brought the Zhentarim down upon his tribe. Most Bedine would have done the same.
Whatever the cause for Kadumi’s detachment, it set Lander’s nerves on edge. The Harper preferred to do his own scouting and did not like trusting his safety to someone else.
“Why’s he dismounting?” Lander demanded.
Ruha squinted at the distant figure. “You can see that?”
“Of course,” he responded gruffly. “You don’t think I’d let him out of my sight!”
“But that far—and with only one eye?” Ruha immediately regretted her question, fearing that she would touch a sore nerve. “Please forgive me. I didn’t mean—”
The Harper chuckled and raised a hand. “No offense taken,” he said. “It’s a badge of my own damn stupidity.”
“How so?” Ruha asked, anxious to appease the curiosity she had felt ever since meeting the stranger.
“When I was a boy, my mother gave me a pet hawk that didn’t want to be a pet. I had to keep it on a tether.” He paused, unconsciously rubbing a finger along the edge of his patch.
“And?” Ruha prompted.
“One day it made its feelings known.”
Ruha grimaced, imagining the raptor tearing at Lander’s boyish face. “What did your father do?”
Lander smiled. “Let it go, of course.”
“A Bedine would have killed it,” Ruha said. “I think I would have, too.”
“Why?” Lander asked, meeting her gaze with his one good eye. “You can’t blame an animal for wanting to be free. Your people should realize that more than anybody.”
“The Bedine would have been more concerned with vengeance than with what is right.”
Instead of commenting on Ruha’s reply, the Harper turned his attention back to Kadumi’s distant form. “Why is he stopped? Is it the Zhentarim?”
The faint whistle of a high-pitched amarat horn wafted across the barrens. “I don’t think it’s the invaders. Kadumi’s signaling us to come.”
Urging his camel forward, Lander asked, “Why?”
“We’re there,” Ruha replied. “He dismounted to meet a sentry.”
The Harper scanned the horizon with a scowl. “That’s unfortunate.”
“Why?”
“I’d rather Kadumi didn’t meet this new tribe without us being there,” Lander replied. “I don’t trust him to keep your secret, and there’s too much at stake here to let superstition get in the way.”
Ruha glanced back to make sure everything was in order with the string of Kadumi’s camels she was leading. “We can only hope that he remembers his duty to protect his brother’s wife.”
“Will he?”
Ruha shrugged. “I think so. He’s seemed very bitter since the fight, but that’s only natural, considering what he’s been through in the past weeks. The blood runs hot in boys that age, and any Bedine would be upset to discover that his brother had married a witch. Still, I don’t think he will let his emotions overcome his honor. He impresses me as a boy who listened closely to his father and knows what is expected of a man.”
“And what happens if you’re wrong?”
“I don’t think the sheikh will kill me,” she said, avoiding the Harper’s gaze. “But he won’t listen to you, either. You and I will have to leave.”
Lander frowned. “The Zhentarim—”
Ruha lifted her hand to quiet his objection. “If it comes to that, nothing you say will change the sheikh’s mind. In that case, I’ll help you find another tribe. You can repay the favor by letting me ride with you to your land.”
The Harper raised an eyebrow and looked her over from head to toe. “I don’t think you’d like Sembia,” he said. “Still, if you really want to go, I’ll take you there.”
“Sembia,” Ruha said, smiling to herself. “That is a nice name for home.” Aside from its name, she knew only one thing about Lander’s home, but it was the only thing she needed to know. In Sembia, at least if the Harper was any example, no one would care that she was a sorceress.
After a moment of silence, Lander scanned the horizon with a furrowed brow. “If we’re getting close to Colored Waters,” he asked, “why do I see no sign of an oasis?”
“You will,” Ruha replied. Though she had never been to Colored Waters, she had heard descriptions of it. The black strip on the horizon was no illusion. It was the great basin where the oasis sat.
As they rode, the sable strip took on the distinct appearance of the abyss marking the site of the final battle before the Scattering. The Bedine believed this was where, centuries before, the gods had destroyed the denizens from the Camp of the Dead. When Ruha was close enough to see the far edge, the hollow assumed the shape of a great, ebony bowl. It was ten miles long, eight miles wide, and over a thousand feet deep.
Except for a few star-shaped dunes of golden silt, its steep walls were covered entirely with a fine, sable-colored soot. In the center of the basin floor, an amber cone, said to be made from the ashes of the denizens, rose nearly as high as the lips of the great bowl.
Five lakes, each the crescent shape of a scimitar’s blade, ringed the base of the cinder cone. Each lake was a different color: emerald-green, turquoise, silver as the hilt of a jambiya, sapphire blue, and red as a ruby. According to legend, the different colors resulted when the dried blood of the immortals was washed or blown into the water and dissolved.
Around each lake were clumped wild fig trees, tall golden grasses, and leafy green bushes. Over the entire floor of the basin, salt-brush and hardy lime-green qassis plants poked through the ebony ash, and the grayish yellow camel herds grazed in every part of the black bowl. The huge valley was as close to paradise as any place Ruha had ever seen.
“In the name of Mielikki,” Lander gasped. “What hell has that boy led us to?”
Ruha ignored the Harper’s question to ask one of her own. “Who is Mielikki?”
“You wouldn’t worship her here,” Lander answered, unable to rip his gaze away from the ancient caldera before him. “Mielikki is the goddess of the forest. She’s my patron and protector, at least until I go down there. What is it?”
Amused by Lander’s reaction, Ruha smiled. “Colored Waters, of course.”
A few minutes later, they reached the edge of the basin. Ruha could feel heat rising in swells, and the air shimmered in liquid waves that made every distant line a serpent. Noting the caldera’s shape and dark color, she could only guess that it acted like a giant funnel for collecting At’ar’s radiance. It was a good thing there was plenty of water at the bottom, for any living being staying down there for even a few minutes would grow very thirsty.