Accepting Ruha's plan with a respectful nod, Kadumi cast a wary eye toward the southern sky. "Let us hope the strangers leave soon," he said. "If that storm catches us in its path, we will have to wait it out."
Three
From beneath a fallen tent, Lander heard his guides approaching. Pitched on the southern end of the oasis pond, about a hundred feet from the camp, this tent was the first in which he had found no bodies. It was also a stark contrast to the clutter of the other tents, for there was nothing inside except a ground-loom, three cooking pots, a dozen shoulder bags of woven camel hair, and a few other household items. Apparently the inhabitants of this household had escaped the massacre. Lander wondered how.
"Lord, there are camels out in the sands!" called Bhadla, the elder of his two guides.
"I'm not a lord," Lander responded wearily, correcting the solicitous servant for the thousandth time. He found a twelve-inch tube made of a dried lizard skin and sniffed the greasy substance inside. It was foul-smelling butter.
"Whatever it is you wish to be called," Bhadla said, "I hope you have finished whatever you are doing with those dead people. We must go."
"Go?" Lander asked, crawling toward the voice. "What for?"
Like his guides, he had heard the camels roaring outside the oasis, but he had no intention of leaving. He had come to this wretched desert to find the Bedine, not flee from them.
Lander reached the edge of the tent and pushed his head and shoulders out from beneath it. The blazing sunlight reflected off the golden sands and stabbed painfully at his one good eye. "What's this about going?"
"Someone is coming," the short guide repeated. "We shouldn't be here when they arrive."
"They'll think we did this," offered Musalim, Bhadla's scrawny assistant.
Like all D'tarig, Bhadla and Musalim stood barely four feet tall. Each kept himself swaddled in a white burnoose and turban from head to foot. Lander wondered what they looked like beneath their cloaks and masks, but knew he would probably never find out. He had met dozens of the diminutive humanoids over the last few months, and he had yet to glimpse anything more than a leathery brow set over a pair of dark eyes and a black, puggish nose.
"I doubt anyone will think the three of us murdered an entire tribe," Lander said.
"The Bedine might," Bhadla said. He brushed the back of his fingers against his forehead in a disparaging gesture Lander did not understand. "They have very bad tempers."
"When I hired you, you assured me you were very popular with the people of the desert," Lander said, crawling the rest of the way from beneath the tent.
As he stood, he noticed that a gray haze was spreading northward from the southern horizon. In Sembia, his home, such a cloud signaled the approach of a storm. He hoped it meant the same thing in the desert, for a little rain might break the oppressive heat.
Turning his attention back to his guide, he said, "Are you telling me you lied, Bhadla?"
Bhadla shrugged and looked away. "No one can say what the Bedine will do."
"I can," Lander countered.
Musalim scoffed. "How could you? Bhadla cannot even tell which tribe this-"
Bhadla cuffed his assistant for this indiscrete admission. In the language of his people, the D'tarig said, "Watch your tongue, fool!"
Though he wore a magical amulet that allowed him to comprehend and speak D'tarig, Lander feigned ignorance. Since both of his guides spoke Common, the universal trade language of Toril, he had seen no reason to let them know he could understand their private conversations.
"I do not need to know the name of this tribe to know they will kill those who loot their dead," Lander said, looking pointedly from one D'tarig to the other.
The hands of both guides unconsciously brushed the pockets hidden deep within their burnooses. "What do you mean, Lord?" Musalim asked suspiciously.
Lander smiled grimly. "Nothing, of course," he replied. "But if I had taken anything off the bodies of the dead- rings off their fingers or jewels from their scabbards, for example-I would also be anxious to leave."
Musalim furrowed his barely visible brow, but Bhadla seemed unimpressed. "Bah!" the older D'tarig said. "The survivors will think the raiders took these things."
Lander looked toward the sand dunes. "I don't think so," he said. The figure that had been watching them all morning was gone-but not far, he suspected. "They've seen with their own eyes who looted the dead."
Musalim's eyes opened wide. "No, Lord!"
"I'm no lord," Lander snapped. "Don't address me as if I were."
Bhadla's eyes narrowed. "You're lying."
"Not at all," Lander replied. "My father was a wealthy but untitled merchant of Archenbridge, and my mother was… well, there's no need to discuss her. Let's just say I'm no lord."
Bhadla shook his turbaned head angrily. "I don't care if your mother was a goat who gave milk of silver and urine of gold!" he yelled. "Were the Bedine watching or not?"
Lander flashed a conciliatory smile. "I never lie."
The D'tarig uttered a curse in his own throaty language, then began pulling jewels and rings out of his pockets. Laying the booty on the camel-wool tent at Lander's side, he hissed, "You should have told us!"
"You shouldn't have taken it," Lander replied.
"It's not our fault," Musalim complained, also emptying his pockets. "Those who attack should take the plunder, not leave it to tempt us. Who razes an entire camp and steals nothing but camels?"
Studying the devastated oasis with a grim expression, Lander answered, "The Zhentarim."
"Black Robes?" Bhadla echoed. "They couldn't have done this. They're just traders."
Lander could understand Bhadla's misconception. The D'tarig lived on the fringes of Anauroch. They survived by goat herding, but the most adventurous and greedy ventured into the Great Desert. These "desert walkers" collected resin from cassia, myrrh, and frankincense trees, then sold it to merchants sponsored by Zhentil Keep. The Zhentarim resold it to temples all over the realms for use as incense. As far as the D'tarig knew, the Black Robes were nothing more than good merchants.
"The Zhentarim are much more than traders," Lander explained, turning to face Bhadla. "They're an evil network of thieves, slave-takers, and murderers motivated by power, lust, and greed. They rule hundreds of towns and villages, control the governments of a dozen cities, and have placed spies in the elite circle of practically every nation in Faerun."
Musalim shrugged. "So?"
"The Zhentarim want to monopolize trade and control politics over all of Faerun," Lander said. "They want to make slaves of an entire continent."
Dumping his last ring onto the collapsed tent, Bhadla said doubtfully, "I don't believe that. Wealth is one thing, but who would want the trouble of so many slaves?"
The Sembian shook his head. "I don't know why the Zhentarim want what they want, Bhadla," he said. "Maybe they're working on Cyric's behalf."
"What is this Cyric?" interrupted Musalim, still searching the hidden pockets of his robe.
"He was once a man, but now he's a god-the god of death, murder, and tyranny," Lander answered.
"In the desert, he is called N'asr," Bhadla explained.