But Loor had no intention of surrendering. She had been sent on a special mission by the crown prince himself. The only thing that would redeem her failure would be to die a good death.
“Give me the ax,” she said again to the boy.
The boy pulled the ax from a fold beneath his robe. Loor felt a tug of excitement at the sight of it. The ancient wooden handle was intricately carved, displaying an artistic skill that she knew had been lost by her people long ago. The ax head itself was pure gold. Unlike the highly decorated handle, the ax head was simple—a battered wedge of metal, unmarked by anything other than the many blows it had struck over the years during the Festival of Azhra.
The boy threw it negligently on the ground.
As he did, a man detached himself from the group of archers and walked haughtily toward her. “You think we care about such things?” he said.
“That ax is of great value,” Loor said.
“It is dull and useless. A toy. If I wanted such a thing, it would be made of steel.”
“Then I will take it,” Loor said. “Just give me some water and I’ll be on my—”
Before her hand could reach the ax, an arrow zinged through the air, hitting the ground only inches from the blade.
“If you want the ax,” the man said, “you must take it from us.”
With that, Loor sprang into action. She grabbed the ax and hurled it at the man who had been speaking. The man ducked fluidly, and the ax thudded into the head of one of the men behind him.
The man who had been talking slid the hood of his robe back smoothly. He was fair skinned—though not as fair as a Rokador—and dark haired. A thick scar split his face from one side to the other, and his left eye was just a puckered socket surrounded by scar tissue.
Loor charged him.
She expected a volley of arrows to follow. But instead the tribesmen simply followed her with their bows.
Before she could reach him, the one-eyed man had drawn a long, thin stick from beneath his robe. It was made from some kind of wood that she didn’t recognize—gleaming, dense, and black. By the time she got to him, he was in a ready stance.
She didn’t give him a chance to compose himself though. She simply attacked. The man’s stick was much thinner than her own staff, so it moved more quickly. Loor had practiced stick fighting since she was old enough to hold a staff, but the man’s techniques were unexpected. She was stronger and faster…but he seemed to have an answer for every attack she made.
“Son!” he called out to the boy on the ground. “What is our first rule of combat?”
“Never make the first move,” the boy called back.
Loor tried to use the man’s conversation to find an opening. But instead the man parried and hit her on her biceps. It wasn’t enough to break her arm. But for a moment her limb went numb, and she thought she might lose the stick.
“You charged into this canyon without adequately studying it,” the man said.
Loor felt sure that under normal circumstances she could have beaten the man fairly quickly. But she was feeling light-headed from exhaustion, heat, and dehydration. Each time she saw an opening in the man’s guard, her limbs were too slow to exploit it.
Again the man hit her. His thin stick didn’t seem to be intended to break bones, but only to cause pain. This made Loor mad. It wasn’t even a real weapon. One blow from her stick could have ended the fight. But she just couldn’t seem to land it!
Still, she relentlessly attacked, driving the man from one side of the canyon to the other. And still the arrows of the tribesmen followed her. Finally she saw another opening. Without breaking the rhythm of her attack, she dove forward.
Just at the moment she believed her stick would impact with the man’s head, though, he slipped to the side. His thin black stick whistled through the air, snaking between her legs. Using her own momentum against her, the man deftly levered her right leg out from under her and she crashed to the ground. She felt the skin tear on her knees.
But the pain was nothing. She had long ago ceased to think about pain.
“Never make the first move,” the man said again, a broad smile briefly crossing his face.
Insults, on the other hand, still had the power to hurt her. She had been the finest stick fighter in Xhaxhu, her face put on posters, her skills talked about after every game. But this man was making a mockery of her.
With a scream she exploded to her feet. I will not lose! she thought. And this time, as she powered forward, the man fell back before her onslaught. With a surge of joy, she realized that she had started to understand his game. All his little feints and weight shifts and sly little darting movements wouldn’t save him now. She understood him.
The man dodged and parried her hail of blows. From somewhere deep inside she summoned up the strength to make one last attack. But, she decided, it wasn’t enough simply to win. She had to humiliate him.
Feigning just slightly more fatigue than she actually felt, she dropped her stick a few inches. It was a subtle thing…but it gave the man an opening. He took it, darting forward and attempting to slam her in the face with his stick. Using exactly the same move he had used against her, she slipped to the side, thrust her stick between his knees, and levered his legs out from under him.
The man fell hard, his face twisting in a grimace of pain as he thudded to the ground. His stick flew from his hand.
Loor leaped onto him, standing on his right arm, her staff poised for a final strike. “Fall back!” she shouted. “Fall back—or he dies!”
But the men didn’t move.
Loor glanced back down at the man on the ground. She expected to see his face full of fear and pain. But instead he was smiling. “Perfect!” he said.
Then two fingers on his right hand rose and fell. There was something practiced about it, as though it were a signal.
With that, every one of the tribesmen released their arrows. The air around her literally whistled as the shafts came at her from all sides.
I have failed, she thought. But at least I have died honorably.
And then the arrows hit.
THREE
Loor expected pain.
But instead she felt only an odd sensation of constriction. And then she realized what had happened. The arrows they had fired had missed. All of them.
But it didn’t matter. In a flash she knew the men hadn’t meant to hit her in the first place. Every arrow they fired trailed a fine piece of rope. She was now surrounded by a web of rope. Around her the men were grabbing at the string and running in circles. She tried to struggle.
But by the time she had figured out what was going on, it was too late. Half the men ran in one direction, half in the other, their arms weaving rapidly as they passed one another. It was clear from the smoothness and coordination of their attack that this was a tactic they had practiced thousands of times before.
Within seconds she was completely enmeshed, circled from head to toe. The one-eyed man leaped deftly to his feet. Unable to move, she couldn’t even resist as he pushed her to the ground and slid his long stick underneath the encircling mesh that bound her.
He studied her face. “Perfect,” he said again. “Look at her. Even after three days in the desert, without enough water, she would have killed me.” He smiled at his men. “You have done well, my men! King Allon will reward you greatly!” He snapped his fingers at two of the hooded men. “Take her.”
The two men jumped forward and lifted the ends of the stick, hoisting Loor up onto their shoulders so that her head dangled above ground. With a feeling of horror Loor realized what must be happening. There were stories about the tribesmen. Stories of human sacrifice. Stories of cannibalism.
The only consolation she could find was that no one would ever know. Imagine the shame her mother would feel if she knew that Loor had been eaten by cannibals. A thing like that would stain the honor of a family for generations! She felt nauseated. Even the thought of her own death didn’t sicken her
as much as that.
“Before you have a chance to eat me,” she said, “I’ll starve myself. I’ll make myself sick. I’ll be foul tasting and diseased.”
The one-eyed man laughed loudly. “Eat you!” he said. “You Batu are such idiots. I cannot believe you still tell those ridiculous stories. Our people have not eaten Batu in centuries.”
“Then what do you want?” she said.
The man made a signal to his follows, a big circle in the air. Then he pointed to the entrance to the canyon. The men began walking single file. They carried her in front, like a trophy. Behind her she saw that the tribesmen had simply left the ax, the centuries-old treasure of her people, lying on the ground like discarded trash.
“The ax!” she said.
“It is of no consequence,” the one-eyed man said. “It is just a useless bauble. In the desert everything must have a use. The desert is too unforgiving to allow for such frivolity.”
Loor watched the ax disappear as the men slowly filed out of the canyon. Loor had always thought of herself as coming from the least frivolous people in the world. But she had to admit she could see the man’s point. Out here, if you couldn’t drink it or eat it or use it to keep the heat and cold from killing you, a thing was only going to drag you down.
“Where are we going?” she said.
“This is a great honor, you know,” the man said.
Loor spit on the ground. Honor? This was the most demeaning thing that had ever happened to her in her life.
“We are a small, isolated people,” the man said. “We need fresh blood to keep our people strong.”
Loor blinked. What was he talking about?
“We knew that if we stole the ax, your king would send someone to recover it. A female warrior. Your men are strong, but Batu women can go farther and longer in the desert. So we knew that eventually a woman of unusual courage and fortitude would come to us.” He smiled. “And here you are. Not only vital and strong…but young and beautiful.”
“And you sent a ten-year-old boy to do this? Your own son? What if we had captured him? What if we had killed him? What if he had died in the desert?”
“Surely you understand the concept of honor,” the man said, clapping his son gently on the shoulder. “And he is eleven.”
The boy looked so proud that he was about to burst.
Loor had to admire these people. They were not quite what she expected.
The one-eyed man smiled fondly at his son. “What a story he will have to tell his grandchildren! ‘At the age of eleven, I broke into the great city of Xhaxhu and stole their greatest treasure.’ A price cannot be put on a thing like that.”
“You still have not answered my question,” Loor said. “What precisely do you want from me?”
“King Allon,” he said, “has reached a certain point in his life. The time has come to have an heir to the throne.”
“What are you talking about?” she demanded.
The line of men finished filing out of the rocks and started up the face of the first dune. They were heading back into the desert. In the distance she could see that the sun had slipped behind the horizon. The sky was a wash of brilliant pink. Already the air had begun to cool. Soon, she knew from experience, it would be quite cold.
“Quiet,” he said softly. “We do not speak in the desert. Every time you open your mouth to speak, your breath exhales moisture. To speak in this place is to squander precious water on the lifeless sand.”
“I will stop talking when you answer my question!” Loor howled. “What are you doing with me?”
The one-eyed man studied her as though considering whether he should waste any of his body’s precious water on her.
“Congratulations,” he said finally. “In three days you will marry the king of the Zafir.”
Then the one-eyed man put up his hood, and his face disappeared into the darkness.
FOUR
For the next day and a half not a single man spoke. They walked slowly through the sand, not wasting a single step or a single motion.
Around midday the next day, they left the shifting sands again and began winding through a series of barren foothills in the shadow of the Elzehe’er range, slowly climbing higher and higher. The air began to cool somewhat, but the land was still parched and arid.
Late in the day they crested a small rocky outcrop. And suddenly, spread out in a small valley below them was an astonishing sight.
Water.
Not just a little water, but a vast lake of it. Surrounding the lake was a green valley. Flocks of sheep gamboled across the grass. And in the distance, perhaps a mile away on the shore of the lake, lay a broad colorful maze of tents. There were red tents, yellow tents, white tents, orange tents, tents made from several colors, tents painted with designs. It was a riot of color.
As they crested the hill and spotted the tent city below them, the men all dropped their hoods and cheered. Then they placed Loor on the ground and cut her free from the web that secured her to the stick.
Loor’s first instinct was to try to escape. But after being tied to a pole and fed almost nothing for a solid day, she could barely stand. Her feet were asleep, her muscles felt rubbery, and she felt dizzy and slow witted.
The men sat in a circle around her and laid out a meal. Loor hated to admit it, but it smelled better than any food she’d ever experienced. There were smoked meats and fish, dried fruits, spiced pickles.
Loor considered not eating for a moment, just to spite them. But then she realized that if she was going to escape, she needed to get her strength back. She ate slowly, resisting the impulse to shove all the food into her mouth.
When they were done, the one-eyed man put his hand over his heart—the standard greeting of the desert people—and said, “I am Heshar. I am proud to know you.”
Loor glared at him. “Loor,” she said, patting her own chest. “I will be proud to kill you one day.”
Heshar smiled as though she had just given him a high compliment. “Come,” he said. “Let us take you to the king.”
As she stood, a shadow slid across the grass in front of her. She looked up. High above her the hindor circled slowly on the breeze.
She was amazed that it had followed her this far.
Good luck is still with me, she thought. Perhaps I can still complete my mission.
In Xhaxhu important people lived in large stone buildings that oozed a sense of power and authority. But the king of the Zafir lived little differently from his people. His tent was a bit larger and had a brilliant red pennant hanging from its high center pole. But otherwise it was distinguishable from the living quarters of others only by the hard-faced guards who stood outside the entry flap, eyes restlessly scanning the horizon.
As they approached, the guards put their hands over their hearts and greeted Heshar solemnly. He seemed to be a respected man here.
“Is this her?” a white-haired man with a large mustache asked.
Heshar nodded. The guards studied her with undisguised interest. All the women in the camp were clothed from head to toe in robes. By comparison Loor seemed nearly naked. But Loor felt that she was being studied more the way one would study a livestock specimen than a woman.
The white-haired man nodded. “You have done well, Heshar.”
Then he snapped his fingers at one of the guards. The guard disappeared into the tent. Finally he returned with a carefully folded robe of fine silk. Loor could smell the perfume wafting off of it.
“Cover yourself,” the white-haired man said.
Loor threw the beautiful robe on the ground. “I am Batu,” she said. “Robes slow you down, weaken your ability to fight.”
The white-haired man eyed her silently for a while. “As you wish,” he said. Then he pulled back the flap of the tent and motioned her to enter.
Loor was a little shocked. She was still wearing her dagger on her hip. No Batu guard would ever have allowed an armed stranger to approach a Batu leader.
; She walked inside, followed by Heshar.
The tent was large and brightly lit, the sunlight entering through a series of cleverly designed vents in the roof. Three musicians sat near the door, playing quietly on stringed instruments. A light haze of smoke filled the room.
At the far end of the tent sat a man in a perfectly white robe. Flanking him were ten men, short spears cradled in their laps.
“Please,” the man said. “Sit.”
She walked up until she was about ten feet from the man. Was this the king? She wasn’t sure. He was slim, with a handsome face, and bright black eyes. Loor estimated that he was maybe five years older than she was—perhaps twenty. He wore no signs of rank—no crown, no jewelry, no fancy sword, no ornaments at all.
“I will not sit,” she said.
The man shrugged. “What is your name?”
“Loor.”
“I am Allon. It is my privilege to rule the Zafir.”
Loor crossed her arms over her chest and didn’t speak.
“Have you been mistreated?” King Allon said.
“If you mean have I been taken and dragged here against my will, yes. I was not beaten.”
The king laughed. “Oh, Heshar, Heshar,” he said to the one-eyed man. “I am well pleased with your work.” He turned to the men flanking him. “Look at her! Is she not magnificent? Such spirit! Such inner strength!”
The men nodded soberly. Everyone seemed relaxed and complacent.
Loor chose that moment to grab her dagger and hurl herself at the king. Before she could reach him, however, his men had grabbed their spears and leaped to their feet. They were blindingly fast.
One of the men grabbed her by the waist and wrestled her to the floor. He made a move as if to punch her in the face. But the king said, “No, no.” His voice was gentle. But there was authority beneath the soft tone. Loor had to admit she was impressed.
The man who’d tackled her raised his hands and stepped off her.
“I presume,” King Allon said, “that my friend Heshar has told you why you were brought here.”