When less than an hour of light remained in the day, Sa’ar called a halt to the caravan. Immediately the women began to unpack supplies and arrange them on the flat, rocky ground in tentless semblances of their normal camp.
Lander attempted to help Ruha unpack the supplies for herself, him, and Kadumi, but she curtly instructed him to go and sit with the sheikh. More confused than ever, the Harper went over to the area of ground that Sa’ar’s first wife had staked out as his tent, then sat on a kuerabiche and sipped the cold tea that a servant provided. Fortunately, the sheikh was occupied with the details of posting sentries and arranging the camp, so Lander felt no obligation to make small talk.
When Ruha had laid out the camp, he returned to the area that would serve as the trio’s khreima. Someone had provided her with a hare for the cooking pot. As she skinned the hare, the widow did not acknowledge Lander’s presence. That only made him want to talk with her that much more.
If he was going to succeed, Lander knew he would have to say something to overshadow the warning that had passed between Ruha and the sheikh. Remembering her inquiry about Sembia, the Harper decided to lure her into a discussion about his home.
“In Sembia, the rabbits are as juicy as sheep,” he began, eyeing the stringy hare she was skinning.
His tactic worked immediately. “What are sheep?” Ruha asked, nervously glancing in the direction of the sheikh’s family.
The question caught him by surprise, for he had never before had to describe one of the beasts. He held his hand two and a half feet off the ground. “They’re about this tall, they come in herds, and they’re covered with wool—”
“Like tiny camels?”
Lander shook his head. “Not even close. Their fleece is soft and white.”
“How much milk do they give?”
“They don’t give milk,” Lander corrected. “At least not that Sembians drink.”
“Then what good are these sheep?” Ruha demanded.
Lander laughed at her desert pragmatism. “They give wool. We make clothes from it.”
“That’s all?” The widow pulled the hide off the rabbit and threw it to a saluki lurking on the edge of their camp.
“They can be eaten, too,” he said. “My father and I used to eat mutton—sheep—every year when we went to Archendale.”
“Archendale? Tell me about that,” the widow demanded.
“It’s a beautiful place,” Lander said, closing his eyes. “The River Arkhen flows through a rocky gorge. The whole valley is filled with lilies and moss.”
“It sounds wonderful.”
Ruha’s eyes were fixed on the Harper’s face, and he could tell from their dreamy expression that she was trying to imagine the paradise he described.
“Archendale is a wonderful place,” Lander confirmed. “But it was almost destroyed. The Zhentarim tried to take it over, too.”
“How did you stop them?” Ruha asked.
“It wasn’t me. My father did it,” Lander replied, growing melancholy at this turn of the conversation.
“Was he a Harper, too?”
Lander shook his head. “No, he was a merchant, but he was a good man.”
Ruha’s eyes remained fixed on Lander’s face, and he realized she expected him to continue the story.
“Archendale’s farms were the best within riding distance of Sembia,” Lander began. “Every summer, my father and I would go there together to buy produce. One year, my mother wanted to come along.”
“Why should that bother you?” Ruha asked, studying him carefully.
Lander looked away, uneasy that the widow had read his feelings so easily. “My father married a beautiful, charming woman,” the Harper said. “What he didn’t know was that my mother was also a deceitful Cyric-worshiper. She had intentionally married a wealthy merchant in order to gather commercial information for the Zhentarim—information they used to fill their own pockets with gold at the expense of honest men like my father.”
Lander paused, a lump of anger growing in his breast as he recalled how his mother had used him to dupe his father. When he turned ten, she had started taking him to the house of a famous mercenary three times a week, presumably for lessons in swordsmanship. What neither the Harper nor his father had realized, however, was that while Lander was learning to fight, his mother was meeting with her Zhentarim masters in the back of the house.
“Go on,” Ruha urged.
“The time came when the Zhentarim decided to take over the rich farms and orchards of Archendale. They assigned my mother the task of gathering the names of all the farmers and landholders in the valley. That was when she insisted upon joining my father and me on our annual trip,” Lander continued. “Fortunately, my father was an observant man, and my mother, as usual, underestimated his intelligence. When she insisted upon meeting all of his business contacts and asked about men he did not even deal with, he decided to find out what she was doing.
“When we returned to Archenbridge, my father hired someone to follow my mother while he was out of town. The man was able to stalk her to a secret meeting of Cyric’s evil sect and to see her meeting with a known Zhentarim agent.”
“What a shock for your father,” Ruha said, absentmindedly holding her bloody jambiya in her hand. “What did he do? Kill her?”
Lander grimaced. “In Sembia, men don’t do that sort of thing to their wives,” he said. “My father set out for Archendale to warn the farmers about the Zhentarim plot. He sent me to another city with a message for a trusted friend.
“My mother saw me leaving town and came after me with two men. When she caught me, she tried to convince me to join the Zhentarim, but I couldn’t help remembering all the wonderful times my father and I had shared in Archendale. I told her to let me go and, when her guards tried to take me prisoner, I killed them.”
“And your mother?”
Lander shook his head. “I made the worst mistake of my life,” he said. “I let her go.”
Ruha gave him a exonerating nod. “A man shouldn’t—”
“My mother went straight to her Zhentarim masters,” the Harper interrupted, an intentionally sharp tone in his voice. “They sent their agents into Archendale.”
“What happened?” the widow asked, her concerned eyes showing that she had already guessed the answer.
“I don’t really know,” Lander replied, looking at the ground. “I passed my father’s message to his friend, then waited for him as he had made me promise. I didn’t hear anything until nearly a fortnight later, when a Harper came and told me that both my parents had died in Archendale.”
Ruha’s voice dropped to a shocked whisper. “How did it happen?”
Lander shook his head. “A Zhentarim assassin caught my father shortly after he entered the valley. The Harper wouldn’t tell me how my mother died.”
They sat in uneasy silence, both of them staring at the pebbled ground. After a time, Ruha cleaned her jambiya on a piece of cloth and sheathed it. She took some dried camel dung out of a kuerabiche, then reached into her aba and withdrew a flint and steel. She handed the dried dung and the flint and steel to Lander. “Will you please light a fire?”
Without speaking, the Harper pulled some shreds off the hem of his tattered aba to use for tinder.
Ruha withdrew a pot from another kuerabiche and half-filled it with water. “I see mirages from the future,” she said, avoiding the Harper’s eyes. “When I was a little girl, I was not wise enough to hide this.”
Lander piled the tinder on a dung-patty. “So? Seeing the future is a gift.”
“Not among the Bedine,” Ruha replied. “I was shunned.”