The Blue Eye

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She kept moving, hearing sounds of discovery break out in the camp behind them.

Not enough moon to trace their footprints in the sand, but all it would require to track them was a torch. The army of the Nineteen had men enough to spare to follow several different trails at once. Or they could save themselves the bother and ride the Companions to ground. A simpler method still: they could loose their hunting falcons on the night. It was what she would have done in their place.

All these thoughts raced through her mind as the wind whipped her hair against her face. She was the slowest of their party, Khashayar moving with deadly grace and Sinnia as though born to these sands.

Arian made her way across the depression, picking her steps with care over the swaying grass. She couldn’t see the depot ahead and was trusting to Khashayar’s instincts. She’d had a moment when she wanted to tell him to cut his losses and run—to return to Ashfall, to lend his strength to his Khan. But she needed him. She wouldn’t be able to cross the desert without him.

He cut south across the sand, Wafa clinging to his back. As the ridge dipped southward, the roof of stars cast a sharp orange flare against the sand. Her heart in her mouth, Arian feared they had fallen on a desert-dweller’s campfire. But the light dimmed with the curve of sand, and she realized what she’d seen was a field of orange poppies.

Her relief was short-lived. Angry voices carried across the sand, followed by the thunder of hooves. Desert horses trained for speed and agility. And guided, as Arian had feared, by the telltale cry of a hawk.

The Nineteen had found their trail.

His voice gravel-edged and deep, Khashayar urged them to hurry. “We have to reach the supply depot before the guards hear the alarm.”

They sank into another valley, but Arian knew it for a losing battle. They couldn’t outrun the Nineteen’s horses. And the pursuit was too close to give her time to conjure a mirage. Wind snapped her hair against her face again, and she caught the glimmer of an answer.

“Go,” she said to the others. “I’ll meet you at the depot.”

“No, sahabiya. My orders are to stay at your side.” Khashayar grabbed hold of her arm.

Arian shook herself free. “I’m not helpless, Khashayar. Trust to my use of the Claim.”

He didn’t argue further, her self-assurance persuasive.

When Sinnia hesitated, Arian urged her on. “Khashayar will need your help. If I need you, I’ll call you back.” She pressed her circlets; Sinnia did the same.

They split up without further discussion, though Arian heard Wafa’s broken cry of protest.

She moved through a maze of gullies, seeking the valley of sand’s center. A band of caracals followed her high along one ridge, their golden eyes aglow in the dark. She used them to pinpoint her progress, the sound of hooves at her back. A red fox froze as she crossed his path, its black eyes sharp and curious. It darted away again at the earsplitting cry of a hawk.

She was almost at the center of the valley, bringing the riders with her, leaving Khashayar’s way clear ahead.

She moved along curled eddies of grass deep into the valley of sand. The riders approached, a party of six astride the mares that were bred in the heart of the desert, their arrow-straight manes tossing in the wind, their heads thrown up high and proud.

Five commanders of the Nineteen hooted at her in triumph. One man remained silent, dried blood at the edges of his lips, the glaive in his hand starkly poised. Their eyes met, and she knew his strike would be fatal. But the thrill of fear she felt wasn’t because of the glaive. It was at the realization that she’d failed to kill him with the Claim, as she’d thought she’d done in the tent of the Al Marra. She must have faltered in her resolution or in the way she’d shaped the verse—but how could that be when she had seen the breath whisper from his body?

Or had she?

How had Najran been able to resist the verse she had used to strike at him? What powers did he possess?

Then she noticed something else. His hips were girded with his belt of jeweled daggers, the tip of his glaive spiked with blood.

“You killed the child?” she cried in protest.

His eyes hooded, he answered her, “I put a traitor to death.”

His voice was the scrape of a blade, metal crunched against bone.

The group of riders circled her, drawing closer, the hooves of their horses stirring up clouds of sand. The caracals crept closer on the ridge, predators who now assumed a hunting crouch. She met the eyes of one and motioned it away with a wave. The black tufts of hair at the tips of its ears quivered before it bounded down the far side of the ridge, its packmates following behind.

Arian kept moving, one slow step at a time, her eyes on the man with the glaive. His eyes struck sapphire sparks as the riders tightened their circle.

“Fall back,” she warned them, the promise of the Claim beneath her words.

Najran raised his glaive, his head cocked to one side, listening.

Her tone gentle, Arian called up the Claim. “Would any of you wish to have a garden with date palms and vines, rivers flowing underneath, and all kinds of fruits?”

A soothing whisper chased at the edges of the dunes. The riders nodded to one another in answer, loosening the reins of their mares.

Arian motioned at them, just as she had motioned at the caracal. The horses drew away, giving her space to maneuver.

And still Najran watched her with those sapphire-studded eyes, his fingers loose and relaxed around the glaive.

The whisper in the valley rose into the air, gathering traces of sand, the silver pathways of the stars dimming above their heads.

“But you would be stricken with age, your children too weak to tend it, your garden struck by a whirlwind, lashed with fire until burnt.”

Najran raised the glaive high above his head.

But it was too late now for him to undo the power of Arian’s spell. The crests of the dunes that surrounded them exploded in a tornado. The distance between Arian and the riders increased as the vortex rose around them, pierced by ribbons of flame. Hot winds from the north mixed with cold winds from the south: the aesar of the desert put to the test of the Claim.

They were smothered by sand, while fire roared in their ears until it had swallowed their cries, burning the riders to ash, their horses scattered to the winds.

In the eye of the storm, Arian waited until the whirling sand subsided, a shimmering waterfall of fire that circled her until it ebbed into a single line—a wall between the encampment she had escaped from and the uncharted distance ahead.

Flames spun orange-gold patterns on the sand—it was over; it was done.

But when she looked up, one man remained on his horse, his weapon poised in his hand as he watched her across the veil of fire. He lowered the glaive, his gleaming eyes fixed on hers.

She finished what she’d come to say.

“So does the One offer clear signs so that you may reflect.”

The sapphire glint in his eyes dimmed to amber, as he acknowledged the words. He wheeled his horse around, searching for a way through the whirlwind her voice had summoned from the sands. When he realized there was no path that would allow him to cross, he spit out a lengthy curse. Then he bowed at her in respect.

“Until we meet again, First Oralist.”

She nodded and left him on the sands.

9 (#ulink_4b2b8067-0306-5d6a-a104-05eefffb9df3)

ARIAN FOUND THE OTHERS ON A RIDGE ABOVE THE SUPPLY DEPOT, where most of the camp was asleep. A handful of guards were near a small armory, another one asleep at the foot of a trio of camels. The Nineteen had grown confident to leave so few here, but it was more likely that they had dozens of similar depots dotted about the desert.

“Wait here,” Khashayar told them. He disappeared down the ridge.

“How did you know to call the aesar?” Sinnia asked.

She hugged Sinnia close to her, the warmth of the contact easing the chill of her encounter with Najran. “From those stories you told me of your childhood. Those tales of warriors who crossed the Sea of Reeds to summon up the firewinds.”

“Those were fables,” Sinnia muttered, aghast. “That was quite a risk.”

“Surprising, I know,” Arian teased. “Given our adherence to only proofs we can see.”

A pause. Then Sinnia’s bold grin. She squeezed Arian harder.

“Wretch.”

Arian smiled too. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist.”

She noticed Wafa staring at the pair of them, mildly indignant that the Companions had found anything to laugh at in their near escape.

She stroked a hand through his curls, kissing the top of his head.

“Don’t be frightened,” she reassured him. “Have faith in Khashayar.”

Wafa snorted in disgust, which she apprehended as his general disgust at men of every stripe, save for the Silver Mage. At the thought of Daniyar, her spark of amusement subsided. The depth of her longing for him remained acutely painful.

She took a sip of water from her waterskin, then offered it to Wafa, meeting Sinnia’s eyes. Using the language of the Citadel, she told Sinnia what had happened in the valley.

“Twice now, I’ve been unable to kill Najran.”

Sinnia’s eyes swept the supply camp for signs of renewed activity. There was no sign of Khashayar, a black blade against the night.

“Najran is the Shaykh’s sayyid. He wouldn’t have risen as high as he has if he wasn’t uniquely gifted.”

Arian’s exhalation was a sigh. “Perhaps. But I failed to kill him with the Claim. I split the Registan with my voice and killed dozens of Ahdath at the Clay Minar. And together, we held off the One-Eyed Preacher. How could Najran have resisted the compulsion of the Claim?”

“There is no compulsion in faith,” Sinnia reminded her.

Sinnia was right, but it was beside the point. The real question was whether Arian had now encountered someone more powerful than the One-Eyed Preacher. Like the Nizam of Ashfall, Najran was a whisperer who had the ear of power. How far did that power extend? Could there be something to the Nineteen’s numerology—a hidden message contained within the arithmetic of the Claim? If there was, why had Najran then denied the power of the Nineteenth revelation? Why had he dismissed the story of the Adhraa as a story of the Esayin?

She had a more practical concern, as well. How long would the veil of fire hold before Najran tracked them again?

“Let’s go.” Khashayar’s gravel-edged voice. He’d crept up to them without a trace of noise.

Sinnia hissed in surprise. “You’ll be the death of me, Khorasan. Next time give us a warning.”

A corner of his mouth jerked up. “That warning would come with blood that I’d prefer not to spill.”

The words might have softened his image as a member of the Zhayedan, but when Sinnia scanned the supply camp again, she saw that the guards lay dead upon the ground.

“What of the others in the tent?”

“Don’t ask.” He pulled both of the Companions to their feet, easier now with physical contact. A camaraderie was building between them; neither woman rebuked him. Keeping his voice low, he added, “I’ve damaged their armory and spoiled their food supplies, though I set some aside for our journey. The camels are ready. I can add your packs to their load.”

Arian and Sinnia helped him load their supplies, careful to divide their waterskins evenly between their three mounts. Unlike Sinnia, Arian hadn’t ridden a camel before. Their strong smell and snorting breath came as a surprise, as did their long, thick lashes. Camel spiders scurried around their hooves. Arian suppressed a shudder. Wafa shrank back from their dun-colored mounts, his expression frightened and forlorn.

“Do you want to ride with me, boy?” Khashayar offered. Wafa shook his head with a scowl that bordered on rudeness. He clung to Sinnia’s hand, making his preference clear.

“So this is your thanks for the way I carried you across the desert. Ruffian.”

Khashayar’s grin flashed against the darkness. He boosted Arian up onto her camel, swinging into his seat with easy masculine strength. Arian kept pace with him, Sinnia and Wafa at his other side. It took them some time to adjust to the swinging gait of their mounts, but Khashayar rode without difficulty.

“You’ve done this before,” Arian observed.

“Training,” he answered briefly. He wouldn’t tell her more. The Zhayedan protected the secrets of their army.

“We should make for the Gulf of Khorasan. If we cut through the gulf, we’ll be at the court of the Negus much sooner than we planned.”

A sharp shake of his head. “I overheard the guards.” Faint contempt in the words. The Zhayedan wouldn’t be so careless discussing their plan of battle. “The Nineteen hold the Gulf. They’ve set the ports ablaze, which means there’s no safe place for us to cross. We’ll cut southeast, travel overland, skirt the far edge of the Rub Al Khali. Then we can cross the Sea of Reeds. If we journey south on the water, we’ll be able to make up some time.”

Arian considered his plan, conscious of what he’d chosen not to say.

“If we take the longer road, by the time we reach Timeback, Ashfall may have fallen.”

A grim twist of Khashayar’s lips. “Not as long as there are Zhayedan left to fight. I have my orders from the Khan. I won’t allow myself to fail them.”

Too tired to argue with his Zhayedan stubbornness, Arian subsided in her seat.

He glanced over at her, his gaze skirting the shadows under her eyes, dropping lower to the pale curves of her mouth.

“You should rest, First Oralist. I can lead the camels while you sleep. We’ll be easier to spot come daylight.” He reached for Sinnia’s lead too. “You as well, Companion. Neither of you have rested since your arrival at Ashfall. Nor long before, I suspect.”

Sinnia snatched back her lead with a sinuous twist of her shoulders. “I can manage.”