4. After that night, the settlements were rarer. There were only a few small ones – too small to be actually called villages, they were more an assortment of clay huts gathered together around drying patches of grass. The caravan stopped in such places too. Tributes had to be collected from everyone. Kassir noticed these people did not greet the caravan with the same friendliness as in Red-stones and other, more affluent villages. True, they gave the tributes readily enough – though Rhea often declared they were not good and demanded more. There was wariness in their gestures, though, as if they thought those from the caravan might do more than simply collect the yearly tribute.
Soon after, even those small, pathetic settlements were gone. Ahead of them loomed the hardest part of their journey. The desert stretched before them, miles upon miles of burning sand. They still had a month to go before they reached the Temple of the Sun Gods.
“Don’t think a month makes it an easy journey,” Tar told Kassir. “It doesn’t. A lot can happen in a month. I’ve made this journey there and back twelve times before. I know no one who’s done it more than me. And all those times I’ve lost men. The heat took most. But there were other things too – desert storms. Fevers. Once there was a manticore.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Kassir asked. “Anything to help? I’m a Light-tender, after all. Surely I can give some advance warning. Maybe I cannot do much about the heat. But if there are wild beasts about, or if there’s a storm coming – I might find out before you and we might have time to do something about it.”
Tar fixed Kassir with his measuring gaze. The boy could tell that the caravan master doubted him.
“Lad,” Tar said in the end. “It is our job to see you safely to the Temple of the Sun Gods and not the other way round.”
Kassir bowed his head.
“I know. And you have been doing a splendid job so far. You should be rewarded. I want to reward you in the only way that I can. I want to use my skills to help.”
Tar snorted. He thought the Light-tender was much too arrogant for his own good.
“All right, lad. You help. Mind you, if things get hot, and we tell you to stay out of the way, you do that. No heroics.”
Kassir nodded readily enough. In truth, he did not think he would be capable of too many heroics. His only brave deed had been to go against the shadow bear and even that he had not done of his own free will. At the time, he had thought his battle with the shadow bear a daring feat. Now enough time had passed for him to realise it had mostly been luck. It was unlikely luck would get him through a second encounter. He thought he was too young to sacrifice himself for others.
During the following week, though, there seemed to be no need to sacrifice anything. The road was hard but not impossible – certainly nothing that a caravan master with twelve years of experience could not handle. The desert stretched all around them, now a monotonous sea of hot sand. The camels trudged wearily through it. To make things easier for the beasts, Tar had all of them dismount when the sun was at its hottest. He also had the goods unloaded and given to fresh camels. Rhea grumbled a little at this frequent handling of gifts meant for the Gods, but even she could see Tar had a point. The only way the tributes would reach the Temple of the Sun Gods was if they all followed his instructions.
Days came and went and the land was much the same – sand dunes, crags and the dried trunk of a long dead tree, a remnant from when the land must have been greener and kinder. Kassir was getting tired of the sand. He wondered who had made the desert and why. His folk said it was a gift from the Gods to their chosen people. But now that he could see it in all its horror, he thought it was more a punishment than a reward.
They did not meet other travellers on the road. There could not have been anyone else. Westward, where the Temple of the Rain Goddesses stood in its oasis, there was more traffic. Beyond the Temple of the Sun Gods, there were several other settlements and they had their own tribute caravans. Little was known of those places, though, and even less of the land beyond them. It was not considered part of the World Without, but was something much more mysterious and terrifying. Some said a dreadful tyrant had once emerged from that land to swallow the whole world.
There were not many animals, either. Just a few small foxes, as sandy as the desert itself. They scuttled quickly at the approach of the caravan. There were some lizards also. One of the caravan members, a hunter, snared a few. Kassir did not think much of lizard meat, but had to admit it was good when anything else was lacking. One day, they even caught a glimpse of a desert mole. But that was all. There were no jackals or shadow bears, or manticores, or any of the other monsters said to roam the desert.
The weather held, as much as it could in already harsh conditions. The sun was scorching and it burned them mercilessly, making their skin red and hot and their heads ache. At night, they huddled around the fire, shivering on the cooling ground. But they were all people of the desert, used to such hardships since before they could walk. Bad weather alone had little chances of bringing them down.
Despite luck having held with them so far, Kassir began to feel more and more ill at ease. He could not put his thoughts into words, but he was sure a struggle of some kind was approaching. Perhaps it was the distant, half-formed notion that no one could reach the Temple of the Sun Gods unless they proved themselves worthy or maybe it was a sixth sense that only Light-tenders possessed, some murmur heard on the wind, a glimpse of something in the distance that should not have been there. Whatever it was, it grew more and more pronounced as days passed, until he could not ignore it any longer and felt about to jump out of his skin at the smallest sound that might have been even a little out of place. The others noticed his uneasiness and doubled their vigilance. If a Light-tender was on edge, you paid attention. Like this, they were not completely unaware when the Dark Thing came.
5.There were many legends that frightened the people of the desert. The vast emptiness under the sun was a breeding ground for creatures of darkness. Some were less than fear made them, and some were only the fevered dreams of those who spent too much time in the sun. But many of them were quite real. There were shadow-bears, red-eyed and hungry, trying to get to places where they could find more food. There were lions and manticores, lying in wait for the unwary traveller. There were giant bat-like creatures swooping at night from the dark skies. And there was the worst of all, an evil no one had ever escaped unscathed, a creature so terrifying, folk did not dare mention it.
It had many names, and all were spoken in whispers as terrified travellers exchanged news of its movements. Some called it simply the Bane or the Dark Thing, without wanting to say more. Many called it the desert siren, or sand-siren. Others referred to it as the changeling due to its uncanny ability to shapeshift.
It appeared under many guises. More often than not, it took the form of a beautiful maiden, a weeping child, or a wounded beast. When it attacked, it looked like a snarling bird of prey or a giant spider. But none knew its true form. It was said that the only time a sand-siren showed what it really looked like was when it died.
As far as people knew, no one had managed to kill a sand-siren. Slayers of shadow-bears and manticores and many such things were plenty – even though not all were telling the truth. But not of sand-sirens. No one had survived an encounter with it unscathed, let alone been able to kill it. People did not even know if there was only one such creature in the desert or if it was a species. If it was only one, then it was long-lived and hard to kill.
It was the middle of the second week of the tribute caravan’s journey through the desert. They had two more weeks until they reached the temple if everything went according to plan. The day dawned as the previous ones, hot and dry. There was no cloud in the sky and no breeze in the air. It was the second day when they were unable to discover an underground spring, and it was unlikely they would find another soon. Their remaining water supplies were tightly rationed. It was the same with their food. They had managed to catch a few lizards the previous evening, but they were lean things without much meat on them.
The mood of the caravan was, unsurprisingly, low. Even the camels were wild and uncooperative. And it was not only the heat and the hunger that made them so. It was something else, a tension that threatened to break out at the smallest slights. Fights started regularly amid the caravan guards. Rhea snapped at anyone who even looked at her wrong, calling them heretics and unworthy of carrying tributes to the Sun Gods. In turn, the others openly criticised Rhea’s self-righteousness, hurling insults at her, ranging from stuck-up servant of the Sun Priests to she-demon. Run was mocked as a dreamer, who would have been better off as a merchant than a caravan guard. Kassir they called a wet-behind-the-ears lad, who used his status as future Light-tender to hide his own inexperience.
Fortunately, no one had gone against Tar and Batar yet. It would have been bad indeed, if they started disobeying the caravan master and the leader of the guards. A caravan under revolt had little chances of reaching its destination. Oddly enough, both Tar and Batar were quite indulgent of such behaviour.
“It’s from spending time with each other for so long,” Batar explained. “On top of everything else. It gets lonely when it feels as if we thirteen are the only people left in the world.”
Whenever one of them got too mouthy, Batar would send them ahead as a scout for the rest of the day. When they returned, they usually were calmer.
It was Kassir’s turn to scout ahead. He was the least likely to lose his temper, mostly because he had endured worse taunts in the village than the ones the caravan folk threw at him. But lately, his restlessness was becoming unbearable, and he felt that something would snap soon – whether in himself, or in the world, he did not know.
“If you notice anything amiss, come straight back and tell us,” Tar advised him.
Kassir nodded tightly. He did not bother to say that, at that moment, everything felt amiss to him. Kassir walked for a while, climbing a steep sand hill. He found himself shivering despite the heat. Something was watching him, and the sensation was stifling, as if he was in a room where the walls crowded in on him and not in the vast emptiness of the desert.
“It must be from too much sun,” he thought, shaking his head to dispel the sensation.
He reached the hilltop tired and sweaty, with an anxiety that had no apparent cause. The world felt wrong, and he did not know why. Then, he had an idea. He turned to look back and caught sight of the caravan, small dark spots trudging towards the foot of the hill. He knew they would hardly be able to see him. He let his eyes turn to the vast emptiness they still had to cross. The desert looked the same as ever. Only Kassir had the distinct impression the sand was moving in strange, rhythmic patterns. It could have been the wind – but the day was windless.
He closed his eyes and strained his hearing instead. It was a trick he had learned during his last year in the village. He had discovered that if he ignored one of his two heightened senses, he would raise the other one to a new level. If he closed his eyes, his hearing would seem even sharper. And that was what he wanted right now. A hearing that would help him pick up anything out of place, anything to explain the uneasiness plaguing him for days.
At first, there was nothing. There was the sound of his own strained breathing, the call of an eagle, the cry of some animal in the distance. But these were not the sounds he wanted to focus on. He shut his eyes tighter, hardly daring to breathe. He focused on his uneasiness, trying to bring it out and find its source. He blocked everything else, in search of that one sound that might not belong. Finally, he found it – faint, on the edge of hearing, but now he was aware of it there was no mistaking it. It was a soft sigh, like a distant wind, but much more melodious and infinitely sad. It was the beginning of a song, and now that he could hear it, he thought it was meant only for him, beckoning him over the long miles to where he could meet the singer.
Kassir opened his eyes, blinking into the glare of the afternoon sun. He looked at the place where he thought he had seen the sand moving. He stood there gazing at that spot intently. He could still see the strange dance, but now he was sure the grains of sand moved to form an image – a beautiful image of a tall and slender girl with golden tresses. And the longer he looked, the more certain he was that she was beckoning to him, raising her arms enticingly. For one wild moment, he nearly obeyed the summons. He was ready to run down the hill, straight into the arms of the beautiful singer. Something made him stop, though.
Later, he would not be able to tell what it was that had saved his life that day. It could have been that his keen senses picked up something wrong, a false note in the song, a distortion in the lovely face, so that it no longer seemed so beautiful. Perhaps a Light-tender could not be easily ensnared by spells, even by one so obviously powerful. Whatever it was reminded Kassir of where he stood and what the stories of his people told about apparitions found in such places. He knew then what he was dealing with.
Kassir wasted no time but turned swiftly around and made a mad dash down the hill, back to his companions. He was waving his arms frantically as he ran, hoping to stop their climb. He did not dare to shout, afraid their enemy might know he was aware of it.
As soon as they spotted Kassir running towards them, the caravan halted. The guards were quickly arranged so that they could attack and at the same time protect Rhea and the tributes. Batar regretted that Kassir was not there too. He and his father exchanged a worried look. If something happened to him, they would be the ones held responsible.
Fortunately, Kassir reached them safely. He stopped a few paces ahead of Tar, panting and trying to get enough breath back to speak.
“What is it, boy?” Tar asked impatiently, shaking him slightly. “What made you bolt like that?”
Kassir gulped the air greedily.
“Sand-siren,” he gasped. “I think... a sand-siren... beyond the hill.”
Tar said nothing, but urgently pushed Kassir to join Rhea where she stood, flanked by the caravan guards.
“A sand-siren!” Run exclaimed and there was panic in his voice. “How do we avoid it? Can we go round somehow?”
“We can’t,” Tar said sharply, rolling his eyes at the comments of the inexperienced. “You don’t avoid a sand-siren once it knows you’re there, and this one surely knows we’re here, otherwise not even Kassir would have been able to see it. And we can’t go round, either. It would take too much time. We’re low on supplies, and we have to reach the temple on a certain day. Need I remind you we’re the tribute caravan, not some merchant’s expedition?”
“We’ll go straight on,” Batar informed. “We’ll try to avoid the sand-siren’s snares.”
“But, if we go straight on, that thing will try to kill us,” a young man protested.
Like Run, this was his first desert crossing.
“Oh, no doubt it will, and no doubt it will succeed with some of us,” Tar said bluntly. “We just have to make sure we do not lose anyone or anything not expendable.”
Tar glanced meaningfully at Kassir, Rhea and the tributes. Rhea remained stone-faced. Kassir was trying not to look back at Tar at all. He wanted to tell these people that they should not sacrifice themselves for him. But that was not his choice to make. That choice had already been made by the Gods.
Now in attack formation, the caravan got ready to move again. It climbed the hill slowly and cautiously. But not even Kassir could spot something wrong now. It was too much to hope that the sand-siren was not on their trail. More likely, she had realised she was discovered and was trying to devise a different way to ensnare the travellers. They reached the hill undisturbed. They did not stop as they usually did after a hard climb but plodded on.
“Down there in the valley,” Kassir said hoarsely. “That is where I saw the sand-siren.”
He spoke quietly and only Rhea was able to hear him.
“How did you know it was a sand-siren?” she asked. “Usually, when it appears, it does so in a form that tricks travellers. But you were not tricked.”
Kassir shrugged. He still did not know how he had seen through the disguise. He remembered the apparition, tall and golden-haired and slender, and realised with a jolt that it looked like Ruana. And maybe that was what had told him something was wrong.
“She was beautiful,” he confided in Rhea. “She even reminded me of someone I knew. Of someone I thought I was fond of, once.”
He paused and looked uneasily at Rhea, wondering what she had to say about the chosen of the Gods wasting his affections elsewhere. She merely nodded thoughtfully and urged him to go on.
“I can see how someone who wanted to draw me into their net would see that image in my head and think it was suitable bait,” Kassir said. “But it was not the right one. There was someone else, and she was not nearly that enticing, but she was the one I would have taken as wife, had I not been bound to the service of the Gods. And I did not see her. I saw the prettiest girl I knew. It made me suspicious.”
The caravan was now descending the steep hill. So far, nothing had gone wrong. Tar was on edge. He had no reason to doubt Kassir. He wondered why the sand-siren was not showing its face already. Why wasn’t it making its move?
They were now in the valley. Run, who was walking close to Kassir, suddenly perked up.
“Water!” he exclaimed. “I think I hear water.”
Indeed, now that they thought better of it, they could all hear the unmistakable trickle of water nearby – water flowing above ground, not from a subterranean spring. The news almost drove from their minds the fear of the lurking predator. Batar looked at his father questioningly.
“Should I send some of the lads to look for the spring? Or do you think it would be too dangerous?”
Tar hesitated. The trickle of water was as enticing to him as it was to the others – he was just as parched. But he had not forgotten where he was.
“It would be foolish to separate or to stray from the path,” he said.
“We need water, though,” Batar argued.
“I daresay. But we won’t get any from here. I know this route like the back of my hand – there are no over-ground springs.”
“But we can hear water,” someone protested. “Are you saying that’s not what we’re hearing? What else could it be?”
“What else indeed? Have you forgotten the sand-siren? Do you think it would be beneath it to trick us with water when it’s quite clear that’s what we’d crave for most right now?”
The crew said nothing. They stared darkly in the direction of the innocent trickle and pressed on, determined to ignore anything else. There was no doubt now that this valley was sand-siren territory. A sand-siren had spotted the travellers and was using all its cunning tricks to ensnare them. But they were not going to allow themselves to be taken in. They were under the command of Tar, oldest and most experienced caravan master. Tar had faced the sand-siren three times already, and although he had endured heavy losses, he had also escaped. He was determined to escape now as well and save as many of his men as he could.
But the creature hunting them was cunning and resourceful. It was also desperate. It preferred to ensnare its prey, true, to have it willing and ignorant of what was going to happen. If it could not do that, though, it was not above trying a different approach. A sand-siren did not usually attack outright, but if it had no other choice, it would try that, too.
The caravan was now in the middle of the valley. Nothing had bothered them since they had heard the trickle of water. They were beginning to hope they would be the ones to manage it, the ones escaping a sand-siren’s clutches with their party intact. A sound shattered the usual silence of the desert. It wasn’t the gentle trickle of water, this time, or the faint echoes of a song. It was a brutal clash, like thunder rending the sky in two or like the emerging of some archaic beast from beneath the earth. The company halted, their camels unwilling to move forward after such horrifying noise.
“Keep going,” Tar instructed his people. “And have your weapons at the ready.”
The guards carried long swords and were armed with bows and arrows. Tar himself had a sword and a dagger. Rhea was armed with an old scimitar. Kassir was the least armed of them – he had only a dagger that Rashed had given him as a parting gift. He clutched it and hoped he would at least annoy the beast before it took him down.
The crew had some trouble convincing their camels to move forward, but they managed in the end. Kassir kept a reassuring hand on his own camel’s back, to keep her going. He had discovered quickly that his camel – whom he had named Windrush – was far more obedient than the others. At first, he thought Tar had chosen him a quieter beast. But when he mentioned it to Rhea, she told him that it was something to do with him being a Light-tender. There was an unexplainable bond between animals and Light-tenders. If Kassir concentrated hard enough, he could almost feel that bond – it was something more instinctive than anything. And, at times, he could even control it. He tried to do so now, urging Windrush forward, urging her not to be afraid. It took some effort, but Windrush was stumbling less than the other camels.
After that first terrible sound, nothing much happened for a few minutes. Then the ground cracked opened and out leapt a spider – bigger than any spider should be. Before their horrified eyes, it split into two creatures, then three. Moving as one, they surrounded the caravan and attacked at once. The guards formed a wall around Rhea and Kassir. Their swords flashed, gleaming in the yellow sun. The creatures backed off for an instant at the sight. They had not expected their prey to fight back. Then, they attacked.
There followed a chaotic swirl of movement. The creatures were everywhere at once, driving into the caravan without mercy. The caravan gave as good as it got. Swords clanged and arrows swirled. One beast fell, and this discouraged the two others, if only briefly. But just as they thought they might win this, the two remaining spiders merged into one, then turned into a giant bat, swooping over the travellers. Batar ordered his guards to shoot at it. They did so, but the arrows flew past it harmlessly, as if deterred by some spell. And the bat swooped closer.
A cry rang out and Kassir watched in horror as Run was lifted from his mount and carried high in the air. A stray arrow caused the beast to drop him, and he lay unmoving a few paces away from the caravan. The bat attacked again.
Kassir edged forward, trying to get past the protection ring made by the guards. He ignored Rhea’s warning.
“What in all hells are you doing here?” Tar cried when he saw him.
“Give me your bow and arrows,” Kassir said. “And let me draw it to me.”
“Do you know the trouble we’ll be in if we lose you?” Batar protested. “The priests will do to us much worse than this beast ever could.”
But Kassir did not care. He did not care that he was the chosen of the Gods and was the one supposed to survive. It could not be like that – not at all costs. He did not think his fellow travellers had less right to live than him.
“Give me your bow and arrows,” he insisted. “I see better than any of you. I can aim better. I can end this once and for all.”
“For the Gods!” Tar exclaimed, realising what Kassir wanted to do. “He wants to kill the thing!”
In the meantime, the beast was circling them ominously as if searching for another point of attack. It had taken down one of the men. It would take down the others too, one by one, if it had to.
Kassir looked at Tar, urging the caravan master to understand. The laws might have stated Kassir was the one who had to reach the Temple of the Sun Gods alive, but Tar, as caravan master, was bound by higher laws and by many desert crossings to keep all of them safe. At least, he should not allow them to be sacrificed for the safety of one person. Not while there was another way.
Tar eventually saw the young Light-tender was right. He knew things would go ill with him if something happened to Kassir - and with Rhea as a witness, the priests would find out exactly who made the decision. But things were going quite badly already. And Kassir had a solution. He handed the boy his bow and arrows.
“Good luck.”
Kassir took the weapons and moved away from the group. He looked up at the sand-siren, concentrating on his Light-tender ability, that unexplainable awareness of another creature that, if he tried hard enough, he could turn into control. He had to make a considerable effort this time, but he managed to capture the sand-siren’s attention eventually. The creature stopped in mid-air when it became aware of Kassir’s call. Quite likely no one had tried that on it before. Eager to investigate and eliminate this new occurrence, it flew away from the group and bore down on Kassir. He stood his ground, not raising his bow. He could hear the others shouting at him, urging him to do something or get out of the way. Kassir ignored them. He knew what he had to do.
The beast was now almost upon him. Only then did he take aim. The sand-siren looked straight at him, and Kassir glimpsed a moment of understanding, like with the shadow-bear a year before. He almost hesitated. Then he remembered Run – and fired.
The arrow sped from the bow, searing the air. It hit the sand-siren square in the chest. Later, Kassir would think that the only reason he managed to do so was because the creature had been taken by surprise, puzzled by the pull he tried to exert on it. The monster gave a pain-filled cry. It was the lament of fury and disbelief from something that thought itself invincible. It beat the air with its wings helplessly. Then, it suddenly fell, stirring a dust cloud at Kassir’s feet.
When the dust settled, and Kassir could once more see properly, he looked down at his fallen enemy. To his horror, he found that it was shrinking before his terrified eyes, becoming a small, withered creature with shrivelled limbs. No one knew what a sand-siren’s true form was – until it died. Looking down at it and remembering the sight he had seen from the top of the hill, the golden hair and the fair voice, Kassir shivered in disgust.
He raised his eyes to find the rest of the caravan staring at him. There was wonder and surprise on their faces. He knew what they were thinking – that he had managed to do the impossible. No one, it was thought, had slain a sand-siren before. Kassir did not think much of his feat. He should have volunteered to do it earlier, before Run had to sacrifice himself. The thought brought a bitter taste in his mouth.
“I told you I could draw it to me,” he said hoarsely.
Copyright Simina Lungu 2022
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