Sands (Sharani Series Book 1) (5 page)

She looked down again, taking in the dunes, the violent struggle of life and death going on beneath her, the dizzying height. Over a hundred spans in the air, her only support was the man to whom she clung and Skree-lar’s broad back. It was a moment of fearful wonder that she couldn’t fully fathom. Her grip tightened even further around the man’s waist.

They climbed high into the air, wheeling to the northeast and keeping the sun to their right. The sight and sounds of battle passed from her view. The man guided the bird with a few tugs on the harness and the occasional odd pattern of whistles.

Lhaurel was fascinated by the ride, though it was far from comfortable. The stiff wing beats brushed up against her already sun-baked thighs, and her skin was being torn at by the rushing wind and sand. Yet all discomfort vanished each time that she glanced down toward the ground. Sand stretched as far as the eye could see, rolling and cresting in endless waves. Even during the periods of safety when the genesauri hibernated beneath the sand, the desert was a constantly changing labyrinth of dunes, sand, and death for several thousand spans around the Oasis. Some of the dune fields moved over fifty spans in the course of the months that the genesauri slept, making them impossible to map.

The ground was firmer, less sandy, from the cave-filled plateaus the Rahuli people called warrens outward to the Forbiddence, the massive, grey-brown stone mountains that rose as sheer cliffs in a perfect circle around the Sharani desert. Full of scraggy bushes and hard, cracked earth baked hard over eons of constant heat, the plains there were generally safe from the genesauri, but there was little food to be found. And absolutely no water.

It was an intimidating yet awe-inspiring sight. She glanced southward, back toward the shallow cliffs where her clan held refuge during the Dormancy. She wondered again if Saralhn had made it to the stoneways safely. Skree-lar banked to the left, compensating for a sudden gust of wind that took him off course.

The thrill that ran through her had nothing to do with fear.
This
was freedom. To pass through the skies, move through the limitless currents of space—it defied reason and time. It was exhilarating. Pure, unadulterated joy.

The man let out a series of whistles and clicks, and Skree-lar banked to the left even more. Far on the horizon, massive cliffs reared up against the sky. Lhaurel peered toward them, ignoring the searing sun on her flesh and the fine grit of sand that cut into it and irritated her many cuts and bruises. The cliffs seemed to pierce the sky, thrusting upwards, striving to meet the clouds, almost as tall as the Forbiddence. The sides of the cliff were straight. Sheer. Impenetrable.

Within moments, they were circling the massive plateau, dropping incrementally closer and closer toward the top of the stone.

“Brace yourself,” the man shouted against the wind.

Lhaurel laughed in exhilaration, her overwhelming emotions lending a note of hysteria to her actions.

Skree-lar screamed a note of answering joy as it flared its wings a few spans from the stony surface, pinion feathers bending backward with each stroke of its wings, tail curling inward, slowing it further. Talons stretched outward, grasped onto stone. They slammed forward with the force of the landing.

Unprepared, Lhaurel almost knocked the red-robed man from Skree-lar’s back, but the man had braced himself as he had admonished her to do. Instead of knocking him free, her grip around him suddenly loosed, and she tumbled free of the bird’s broad back, rolling down one wing and sprawling in the rock, afire with pain. She picked herself back up again with a curse, checking the new cuts and bruises that now graced her sun-scorched flesh and crisscrossed other, less recent injuries. The euphoria of flight faded in a wave of dull, aching pain. The cut on her left wrist dripped a steady stream of blood onto the deep, red rock. It mingled with the dust there, making a slurry of reddish paste.

The man looked down at her for a moment, an odd expression on his face, and then his mouth split into a grin, and he started laughing. It was a deep, throaty laugh, full of mirth, though dusted with something aloof and condescending, simultaneously different and similar to his earlier wheeze.

“What are you laughing at?” she demanded, her annoyance burning away the pain and soreness that had been threatening to take her to her knees up until that moment.

She had definitely passed her breaking point, being so confrontational. Cruel experience had taught her to hide her emotions as best she could. An emotional explosion like this back with the Sidena would have earned her a whipping. She was loath to live through one of those again.

The man stopped laughing but grinned at her, hopping down from Skree-lar’s back.

The bird screeched and shambled off across the stone a short distance. It was far less graceful on the ground than it was in the air.

The Roterralar walked up to her, stopping only a few feet away. He was barely as tall as she, but his suddenly iron visage made him seem all the more imposing. “I am the man who saved you. I have every right to laugh when I please. There is so little humor left in our world, Lhaurel, that I take the opportunity when I can.”

Lhaurel took a half step back from the intensity of his words and the sudden light that flashed in his grey eyes.

He matched her step, keeping his gaze locked onto hers. “You didn’t have to catch the sword. I could have saved the girl on my own, but you had to go and take the sword yourself. Ask yourself why. A decision like that doesn’t just happen. You
already
chafed at their rules and traditions. You have to live with the results of you own actions.”

Her temper flared at being called a fool. If he could have done it on his own, then why had he offered her the sword? Why hadn’t he simply done what he, as a man, was supposed to do and protect the women and children of the clan? It was obvious. He’d done it to see what she would do. It angered her even more knowing that he was right. She felt, ironically enough, as foolish as a Roterralar suffering from the sun fevers. She’d
wanted
to fit in, but the things she wanted—desires originally inspired by the outcasts, of all people—were incompatible with the lives the Sidena lived. And as much as she wanted to be a part of something, to not feel alone anymore, she didn’t want to be a part of that.

“Did she live, at least?” Lhaurel asked. She knew she’d already asked the Roterralar, but she had to know.

The man shrugged. “I saw her get out of the warren, but I didn’t follow them to the Oasis. I had other things to attend to.” Lhaurel felt a moment of pride and satisfaction rush through her. At least her actions had meant
something
.

“What is your name, anyway?” she asked, only then realizing she didn’t know it. She simply thought of him as “the man,” or “the Roterralar,” as she’d always called the red-robed fanatics that wandered into the warrens.

The man smiled again, spreading his hands wide.

“I am of the sands and stones. I am he of the aevians, a warrior of the sands and metal that make up our world, a man of the Rahuli people.”

Lhaurel glared at him. Pain damped what little patience she had left.

His smile widened. “They call me Kaiden. And I am sorry for this.”

He nodded, and before Lhaurel could move, rough hands grabbed her from behind. Something was placed over her mouth and nose, a cloth of some sort that smelled of the small purple flowers that grew in the Oasis. She struggled, but the grip around her shoulders and neck was simply too strong. Her muscles grew weak, and her eyelids grew heavy. She blinked rapidly and tried to scream, but all that came out was a ragged moan.

Behind Kaiden, Skree-lar clicked his beak and made a soft chirping noise. For some reason, that made her want to smile.

*              *              *

For a moment, Khari ConDeleza, Matron of the Roterralar, felt a flash of annoyance and disappointment as the girl slipped slowly toward unconsciousness. Despite the girl’s wounds and obvious weakness, Khari had hoped to see at least a little vigor from the girl. She’d given the men careful instructions so that the girl would have ample opportunity to fight back and resist. But—

The girl suddenly dropped, pulling the sword from Rhellion’s belt as she fell.

That’s the spirit.

The girl was slow to react, slow to move, and a normal enemy would never have been able to take Rhellion’s sword from him, but Khari had instructed him to let it happen beforehand. That was, if the girl had enough gumption to actually try something.

“Stay back,” the girl said, eyes darting to the three men who had drawn swords and advanced on her.

Kaiden stood back to one side as he’d been instructed to do.

The girl took a step back, legs shaking visibly, though the sword point didn’t waiver.

Khari watched from one side, curious to see what the girl would do. There was no way off the top of the plateau except for on the back of an aevian.

As instructed, Rhellion moved forward, a sword given him by one of the other men held low. “Calm yourself, girl,” he said. “There’s no need to fight.”

The girl stepped back again.

Rhellion’s face hardened, and he raised his sword. “Put that down, girl. You wouldn’t want to hurt yourself.”

Rhellion thrust, and the girl batted it aside.

Khari raised an eyebrow. The girl knew the basic sword forms. Rhellion swung back, and the girl batted it aside again, twisting the blade so the blow was deflected and allowing the girl a chance to reset. True, it was slow, but the move was executed perfectly. Khari stood upright and drew her own sword, striding forward.

“Your form is sloppy,” Khari said curtly.

Rhellion backed away and allowed Khari to stand facing the girl. For a moment, the sword dropped, and the girl’s face scrunched in confusion. Then Khari raised her sword and pointed it at the girl.

The girl raised her own blade.

Khari, obligingly, went on the attack, though slowly and deliberately. The girl responded with perfect form, her face intent with concentration and a little fear, though her movements were stiff. She really
did
know the basic forms. How had she managed that? Khari pushed her harder and the girl’s defenses broke, unable to match Khari’s speed. Khari batted the girl’s sword aside and dropped her own sword onto the girl’s shoulder, the razor-sharp edge against her neck. The girl’s eyes showed white with fear and confusion. Khari felt a twinge of regret at what she was going to have to do next, though it would be for the girl’s own good. She hated having to break the new recruits. There were few of them, only three in the last decade, so she was not in very good practice, and a breaking was an extremely discriminating process.

“You will learn that nothing is the same here as it was in your little clan,” Khari said in a flat voice made all the more powerful for its lack of emotion. “Forget everything you have ever learned, and you might survive life here. Forget your pride. Forget that you can even think for yourself. Your life begins and ends at my whim now.”

The girl gulped, trembling either from fear or the effect of adrenaline wearing away.

The true enemy of any ideal is a lack of persistence. And persistence is the true ideal of a fearsome enemy. The creatures are hardy, if not yet salvation. Change is the autumn leaf on its journey to the ground. It is not the first leaf that heralds autumn’s hold, but the last, and all the ground is brown, and red, and gold.

-From the Journals of Elyana

Makin Qays, Warlord of the Roterralar, eighth clan of the Sharani, stepped back from the hidden opening high above the eyrie floor. Wrinkles born of the weight of leadership furrowed his brow. Age belied his once fine stature and slowed his step at times, but he still held himself with a proud and noble bearing. He had led the Roterralar against the genesauri for three generations now, over forty years. And during all forty years the genesauri pattern had never changed. Until now.

Though the sailfins were the smallest of the three genesauri, their vast numbers made them as deadly as the larger two. Thankfully, there were generally several fortnights between when the sailfin packs showed up and when the larger genesauri, the marsaisi and karundin, awoke from their hibernation.

Wind made the thin cloth that hid the opening flutter and shift slightly, but Makin Qays took no notice. The covering lay in a shadowed corner of the eyrie, high along wall. Even knowing it was there, he often had difficulty finding it from the eyrie floor. He sighed, pulling himself from his troubled thoughts, and walked back to the edge.

The woman that Kaiden had brought to the warren was still standing by the doorway, her gaze moving from one side of the eyrie to another in an aimless pattern. Confusion was a common sentiment among those they welcomed. This one was taking it better than most, he noted with interest. Perhaps she might even be ready to fight in this Migration. Sands knows they needed her.

Khari, his wife and the matron of the eyrie, entered the room and joined the table of silent observers. She must have had to jog the whole way to make it up here this quickly, but that was her way. Silently, he applauded her performance with the woman below. She hated having to break the young men and women down, tearing them apart one piece at a time. But it was requisite that something be broken before it could be fixed.

Breaking was a delicate process. It wasn’t simply a question of taking a hammer to a crockery pot and bludgeoning it until all that was left was a few tiny pieces and a smattering of dust. No, with people, the breaking had to take place in a way where the pieces could be put back together. Trauma wasn’t necessarily the best course. Each person was different.

“So,” Makin Qays said, turning to the table of silent observers. “What news?”

Tieran, one of the cast leaders, grinned. “The new girl is a pretty one. It’ll do my old bones some good to have her around.”

Khari shot him a flat look.

Tieran’s twin, a woman named Sarial who was nothing at all like her brother, snorted. “You’re not old, and you say that about every woman,” she said.

“Well, it’s true each time.”

Makin Qays silenced them with a word. “Any
relevant
news.”

“She’s got a stubborn streak in her about a dozen spans wide,” Khari said, “but she is decent with a blade. I just have to break her first.”

“I have a feeling we’ll need her before this Migration is through,” Makin Qays said thoughtfully.

“I’ll do what I can,” Khari said.

“She won’t break.” Kaiden’s voice was strangely resolute.

Khari blew out a long breath. “Let’s hope you’re wrong, Kaiden. For all our sakes. We’ll give her a couple of days, and then I think we’ll let her know that her friend didn’t survive.”

*              *              *

A single long cut along the sailfin’s belly, then peel back the skin. It came off the flesh easily, only needing a few easy slices to loosen it from the muscle and sinew beneath. Once the skin was peeled all the way up to where the large dorsal began, Lhaurel had to roll the creature over and skin the other side. Long cuts sliced both the skin and the dorsal free, though she was careful not to let the tips of the dorsal spines pierce her flesh.

Now the real work began. Milky white cords of sinew and gummy flesh coiled around the long, tubular body, which had to come free. The coils were tough and hard to cut, but she persisted, even with just a single knife whose blade was shorter than the length of her hand. Her first sailfin had taken her nearly half a day to skin and slice up into chunks for the aevians to eat. Part of it had stemmed from the fear that coursed through her at the sight of the creature despite knowing it was dead. Now, two weeks later, she could get through four or five sailfin corpses in that same time. And she was no longer afraid. Fear faded in the face of familiarity.

What she hadn’t gotten used to was the smell.

A foul odor came from the fat and the membranous white strands that she had to peel away layer by layer. The skeleton was also unique in that it was a mottled mixture of white bone and a dark grey, metal-like substance. It smelled of rust and age mingled with rotted meat.

She cut out a thick steak and set it aside, lost in her work and her own thoughts. The past two weeks had been both the most exhilarating and the most frustrating of her life. Being with the aevians all day long, every day, seeing to their needs and even sleeping curled up in the sands near them—that was wonderful. She loved the majestic birds, their nobility and playfulness. She felt a special attachment to and a love for them that she had never before experienced.

And she couldn’t leave. There was no feasible escape. Even if she did manage to climb down the thousand spans to the desert sands below, she had no idea where to go, nor any reasonable hope of surviving the journey. The sailfins, though smallest of the genesauri monsters, were the most numerous. Their packs ravaged the desert and destroyed anything living upon the sands. And the bigger ones—Lhaurel shuddered at the thought.

Taking a deep breath, Lhaurel got to her feet and let out a shrill, piercing whistle, a skill that she had only recently mastered. Immediately, the aevians descended. Several skittered toward her low along the ground, rust-colored wings flapping and black eyes fixed on the meat she had prepared. Others dove from their places high along the cliff walls, sickle-shaped wings folding inward as they cut through the air, racing each other like children at play.

The sight of the approaching flock would have terrified most people, but it made Lhaurel smile. She closed her eyes and listened to the beat of wings, the cries of pleasure, and the shrieks of friendly competition. The sounds were the sounds of friends and companions—the sounds of the one thing she trusted in this place. They bore down on her, talons extended, hooked beaks clicking in hungered anticipation.

A thrill ran through her.

The aevians parted around her, diving for the butchered meat and avoiding her as if she were an immovable pillar in their way and not a mere woman half the size of the smallest aevian.

She breathed in and then let it out slowly, her frustration and anger burned away in the rush of adrenaline.

“I already knew you were stupid,” a cold voice said, raised slightly to compensate for the noise thrown up by the feasting birds. “But
that
was sheer idiocy.”

Lhaurel opened her eyes to find Kaiden before her.

His flinty eyes penetrated her. She refused to blush and then grew angry as she felt heat blossom on her cheeks.
Foolish woman,
she snapped at herself,
don’t let him see that he’s getting to you. Didn’t all those years with Marvi and Jenthro teach you anything at all?

“And I just realized the extent of your arrogance,” she retorted. “Well, it’s either that or you have a strange understanding of the meaning of an apology. Would
you
think someone was truly sorry if they
left you a prisoner in strangers’ hands?”

He shrugged, an expression heightened by his bare shoulders, exposed beneath his thin leather vest. An array of colorful bracelets adorned his arms above each wrist in differing patterns. Upon closer scrutiny, Lhaurel realized that they weren’t bracelets at all but tattoos. Bands of color wrapped up his forearms, ending just short of his elbows. Most of them were a deep, dark brown that stood out from his lightly tanned skin and the other bands of color around them.

“You can think what you wish,” he said. “My apology was sincere and so has merit. It is not my fault if it falls on deaf ears.”

“Arrogance it is, then.”

He shrugged again and stepped around a group of aevians fighting over a particularly juicy chunk of sailfin. “From what I’ve seen, you seem to like it here. Well, the aevians at least.”

They’d been watching her? Worse,
Kaiden
had been watching her. She felt more exposed than when he’d seen her in her smallclothes. He’d watched her work, watched her toil, and sweat, and rant, and pee. How many more of them had watched her?

“Lhaurel,” Kaiden said, then hesitated.

Lhaurel looked over at him, chewing on her bottom lip to keep herself from saying anything else rash.

Kaiden’s expression firmed. “The girl, Saralhn—she didn’t make it to the Oasis.”

Lhaurel felt as if she’d had a bucket of freezing water poured down her back. Her vision swam. Dread spread through her, clutched at her heart. Her lungs seized up, and she gasped for breath, afraid and angry at the same time. She felt suddenly dizzy.

Kaiden swore as she fell to her knees.

Immediately she could breathe again. The feeling of icy dread washed out of her, bursting free like water held back by a dam in the Oasis.

Kaiden knelt down beside her, resting an arm on her shoulder. “Are you ok?” His voice seemed both annoyed and concerned, an odd combination.

She started to get to her feet, placing a hand on Kaiden’s knee to give her support, but her hand touched a patch of wetness. Jerking her hand back, she felt bile rise up in her throat, and she almost heaved.

“It’s not what you think,” Kaiden said, his voice suddenly cold again. “My water pouch burst. Hence the cursing.” As if to prove it, he reached into the pocket of his leggings and removed a deflated waterskin, a large hole in one end. He tossed it aside, making several aevians hiss and skitter out of the way. He held out his hand.

Lhaurel ignored it and got to her feet, pushing herself up with hands on her own knees. “Are you sure she didn’t make it?”

Kaiden hesitated, then nodded.

Anger, pain, and despair welled up within Lhaurel. Saralhn had been the only true friend she’d ever had. It wasn’t enough that she’d been forced to endure the strange ways the Roterralar had been treating her. What she’d gone through with the Sidena wasn’t enough. Now Saralhn was dead.

Frustration, anger, and pain pushed past the inhibitions with which she had been indoctrinated. “You had no right to watch me without my knowledge, Kaiden,” she said vehemently. “No right at all.”

Kaiden’s eyes steeled, becoming hard pools of grey reflectivity. “You don’t even understand what you’re talking about.” He jabbed an accusing finger at her. “We have every right to protect ourselves. You have no attachments to life, no understanding of what it means to be part of a clan or even of a family. It is you who have no rights here. No right to claim understanding. No right to even demand answers to your questions. I saved your life from the genesauri. I could just as easily return it to them.”

Lhaurel’s shiver didn’t come from the threat. Rather, it was the monotone way in which he said it. No anger or fear colored the words. It was a simple statement. Fact. It quenched the anger and the frustration, leaving behind only the pain.

“I didn’t choose my life,” she said, looking down. “I never had a family to be a part of. I don’t even know who my parents were. Not really. I didn’t choose this.”

“You chose to take that sword. You chose to train.”

She raised her chin, pride firming her resolve, but Kaiden’s expression stopped her. He wasn’t even looking at her, the arrogant little—Kaiden nodded at something over Lhaurel’s shoulder, his face angled high along the wall.

Then he noticed her. “What?”

“What were you just looking at?”

Kaiden arched an eyebrow at her. “I wasn’t looking at anything.”

Lhaurel gave him a look that clearly told him she didn’t believe a word. She’d already exploded once. One more outburst, albeit smaller than the last, wasn’t going to make any real difference.

“Suit yourself,” he said. “I really must be going now. Enjoy your solitude.”

Lhaurel glared daggers into his back as he left, though once the door closed, she turned and glanced in the direction Kaiden had been looking. The corner of her lip tugged into a half smirk. He’d finally slipped.

*              *              *

A few hours later, after coming to terms with Saralhn’s death as best she could, Lhaurel stood in the same spot where Kaiden had been standing when she had caught him peering up at the wall with far too much attention. She scanned the sandstone walls, studying the area for anything that would appear like an opening or place where one could perform observations. She must have stood for a good ten minutes, studying the stone.