What had been their motives? Why did they betray the caravan?
The answer remained unclear until I had examined most of the tent and noticed the rummaged contents of two small chests and the emptied jewelbox that belonged to Egiras. They had taken whatever had been left of the Princess’s fortune, several large ruby and opal stones and ropes of pearl and precious metals. It is possible they had been disappointed and expected far more, for Egiras was thought to carry secret riches with her. But then Egiras always had that air of superiority, an illusion of the highest extreme nobility
—even when she was reduced to nothing more than a quiet madwoman.
And the reason she herself had escaped with her life, I realized, was that they had planned to take her with them, possibly for royal ransom, not knowing that Egiras had no kin and there was no one who would care to pay for her release. Luckily I had interrupted their kidnapping. As I continued moving through the camp, gathering the remaining things that might be of use to us—while my thoughts searched madly for a solution, for a shred of hope—Yaro woke and joined me.
“Tell me what I must do to help you, my Lord Nadir.”
I looked into her earnest eyes and for a moment found a jolt of living energy there, that very hope I had lost.
“Go and gather cotton and rope and wood sticks,” I said, keeping my expression blank, “and anything else you think may help from the wagons, in order to make a sling. We need something to carry your mother as we walk through the desert.”
* * *
They had taken all they could carry, and bound things in bags to be slung over their shoulders. Since there was a greater stretch of desert behind them than before them, according to the days the caravan had traveled, Nadir had made the decision that they will continue onward toward the East.
Eventually the desert would end in plains, with possible sources of water, and then in the distance there would be mountains. Beyond those lay fertile land, and the trip from that point on would be survivable.
In secret, Yaro had looked into Nadir's eyes, however, and she knew that he did not believe they would come out of the desert.
The Princess Egiras was mostly silent, and she did not protest when given a small bag to carry. While the others got ready, she stood looking toward the East, her narrow eyes unblinking, hypnotized by the horizon. Her midnight black hair was tangled, moving in the warm gusts of wind, and her head was uncovered from the sun. She had to be told like a child to put her veils on and to shield herself from the incandescent sunfire.
“Leave me behind . . . please . . .” whispered Yaro’s old mother as she was made to lie on a small cotton sling.
“Be quiet, stupid woman, or I will beat you!” snarled Yaro. A considerable sack of their food and belongings was attached to Yaro’s thin back, and she fiercely picked up one end of the sling while Nadir took the other.
Nadir himself was loaded up like a pack-beast, and in addition he carried their precious jar of water.
“We go now. Come, my Princess Egiras!” said Nadir loudly, and Egiras obeyed his voice like a trained creature.
They started to walk, taking slow steps so as not to flounder in the thick sands. Around them, the wind of the desert howled in laughter.
Their allotment of water was three sips for each of the four of them, twice a day. Nadir knew this was an unrealistic measure, and that they would not last long under these circumstances, no more than a couple of days. But the jar of water was all they had. And there was at least another week of travel left to them, if not more—now that they were on foot. The first day passed in a white daze. They took frequent stops, and Nadir watched Yaro carefully, for she was not just overloaded but also carried the other end of the bed-sling. However, she seemed indomitable, her skinny figure filled with implausible strength. It was Egiras who stumbled most often as they walked through the burning sands.
“My shoes are torn . . .” said Egiras after their third stop. She was pale and serene. When they examined her feet, Nadir saw that indeed her expensive silk slippers had ripped apart, and the delicate soles of her feet had been scorched to bloody blisters by the heat of the sand.
“Let me bind your feet with salve and cotton, my Lady,” said Yaro. Egiras stared at her blankly, then nodded. Yaro rummaged in her bag, and came up with some cheap oil unguent, which she applied to the feet of the Princess, and plain rags which she used to create the simple wrap footgear of a pauper.
The rest of the day Egiras did not complain, and they walked onward, breathing hard, in silence.
Night was a blessed relief. After a quick meal of hard old cheese and flatbread, and their precious sips of water, they fell into delirious parched slumber.
A blink of an eye, and it was morning.
Yaro fed her mother and gave her water to drink, and herself took only two sips of water for every three that the others had. They took turns answering the call of nature, got their bags loaded, and were on their way.
The second day was more difficult. All pretense of hardiness was dropped, and everyone moved with a desperate stumbling gait as their feet sank in the crumbling sterile white powder. Breathing laboriously, they took each step with a group rhythm that had come about unconsciously.
Nadir walked with grim detachment, often throwing glances behind him at Yaro, seeing her breathe in shuddering gasps, her eyes averted, maybe in pride.
At around noon, Yaro stumbled and dropped her end of the sling. Her mother came down roughly and Nadir stopped and lowered his own end gently.
“Yaro,” he said, watching her lie in the sand. “We will take a break now.”
“No,” she panted. “We go on, mustn’t waste time. Let me catch my breath for a moment, my Lord. . . . Just one moment.”
“Enough. I will carry the sling,” said Egiras. The wind howled. They stared at her for a moment in incomprehension.
“Oh, no, my Princess,” said Yaro, gasping and struggling to rise. “How can you do that? It is not right for you to carry the burdens. . . .”
“It is not right for me to perish in this desert,” replied Egiras with a glimmer of her former sarcasm. “Therefore be silent, woman, and walk the best you can.”
“My Princess—” began Nadir. But then, seeing her determination, he too grew silent, and nodded.
He picked up his end of the sling-bed, while Egiras took the other end in her slender pampered hands, with their delicate tiny fingers.
They resumed walking through the wind-blown sands.
The third dawn was parched agony.
Blinking, Yaro opened her eyes into searing pain, her eyelids red and sore from the endless dust that had collected on her face and had not been washed off for days. Her throat was dry and scraped, and her innards hurt with desiccated constriction. She could feel her kidneys shriveling up and turning into stones within her. All movement was languid agony, and headache-induced dizziness came in waves as she tried to rise and felt herself immediately floating and detached from her body.
Early dawn, and the desert stood like an ocean of smooth dunes in bluish haze around her, while she could barely see the sleeping shapes of the others.
A thought came to her, Today is the last day of my life.
The wind swept her, and for a moment Yaro thought she flew.
She simply stood there, feeling herself soar, for long illusory minutes. Eventually the others came awake, and then came the most important ritual: taking the three sips of water each to fortify themselves for the day’s journey ahead. They had stopped eating the day before. It was impossible to chew and swallow bread and cheese without water to wash it down. Indeed, hunger had become deadened and secondary to the ache of emptiness that was dehydration.
When her turn came, Nadir stood before Yaro, holding up the clay jar while she took one tentative sip of water, feeling it slip within her like a glorious miracle of the gods. And then she took another sip.
“Go on,” Nadir said, watching her intently. “One more.”
“No . . .” Yaro said. “You take it, my Lord. Drink it for me, for you are larger, and you require more than me. Besides, I don’t think I thirst all that much today. It must be a cooling of the wind. . . .”
But then came the voice of Egiras.
“I command you to drink. Else we go nowhere.”
And Yaro had no choice but to obey.
They stopped at noon. The young women had been taking turns carrying the old woman in the sling, but it had become obvious she was dying, and so they paused, setting down their burden. Yaro put her nearsighted face close to her mother’s sunken chest and listened for her breath, lighter than a moth’s flutter and coming in sporadic labored bursts. Yaro’s expression contorted then, and she hid her face in the poor ragged cotton of the old woman’s robe. Nadir took out the clay jar and uncapped it. “Let the old one have the rest of my water for today . . .” he said softly, his own voice rasping and low.
Gently moving Yaro away, he tilted the jar and brought it to the old woman’s black lips. The old one opened her eyes and stared back at him with quiet wisdom—nothing but eyes in a dry skull covered with shrunken ebony turtle skin.
She barely moved her head from side to side to indicate that she did not want the water. But Nadir continued nevertheless, and he managed to wet her lips with a couple of drops. And then it came, the end of things. For as he tilted the jar vertically nothing more came forth from it. It was now empty except for a muddy thick residue of wet clay and moistened sand.
Indeed, as the dregs of sand poured forth, it was drying before their very eyes as the wind took away all that was not dust. . . .
They had run out of water, so much sooner than they had expected, and they had not even noticed.
But maybe not quite.
“Let me, my Lord . . .” Yaro whispered. “I have a small flask which I’ve carried on me in secret for all these days in reserve for such a moment, a moment of our end, and it is no longer any use to conceal it. Let me first give her a couple of drops from the flask, and the rest you can have, to share with my Lady Egiras.”
As they watched, Yaro took out the hidden flask and reached into her pack for her old wooden bowl. She uncorked the flask and poured the small handful of liquid that it contained into the old worn bowl of polished faded wood. She took the bowl gently, with a timelessness of ritual, and brought it to her mother’s lips.
The old woman sipped once, then closed her eyes.
Overhead, the sun burned at the zenith.
And Yaro, looking directly into the sun-blinded eyes of Nadir, offered him the bowl of water.
Nadir stared, then took the bowl from her and put his lips to it. It was the same bowl in which she had served him before at their nightly camp rests when the caravan had still been alive. He had held it, drunk from it, yet had not recognized it then. But now it was high noon. And the sun glittered with sudden bright golden and persimmon fire upon the shallow surface of the water. . . .
Familiar fire.
Nadir felt the reflection of orange pierce him, strike his eyes with a sudden sharp memory of childhood.
He stared at the cup of water in his hands, and he knew it. This cup was his, had always been his.
It was the cup of Ris, the same one that he had lost and had given to Egiras and lost again. . . .
More than twenty years ago.
“Where did you get this cup?” he whispered, looking at Yaro with an intensity that she did not understand.
“My Lord?” she replied. “It is my mother’s old soup bowl. What do you mean? She’s had it always.”
“No!” exclaimed Nadir. “Where did she get this cup?”
And then the old woman parted her lips, barely croaking. “This is an old cup. I—picked it up many years ago, from the floor where it had been dropped and forgotten. I served the Princess Egiras long before my daughter Yaro served her. I served the father of Princess Egiras also, the late Lord Urar-Tuan. . . . It was in his tent I found it, on the day he died. In his tent, many years ago.”
“Then this is my cup! The same one that my Grandmother Ris gave me, the one that used to hold boundless water, until—”
“Until I took it away from you,” said Egiras. “I was a spoiled child and my dark will was to have the magical trinket. Except that, as soon as I had the cup to myself after my father had tricked you, poor little angry boy Nadir—as soon as it was mine, the miraculous water ceased. The cup became dry and useless.”
Nadir stared into the mirror-bright water in the bowl, seeing in it the sun’s double.
“Ris had taken away the wonder of it . . .” he muttered. “And yet here it is, after all the years—an impossible coincidence. Maybe if we pray to Ris she will show her mercy once again.”
“I do not pray,” said Egiras suddenly, rising behind him, a dark silhouette in the sun, coughing and speaking with peculiar energy. “And this is not a coincidence, simply the manner in which things came to pass. I remember the day of my father’s death, and then later how you swore faithfulness to me, little brave Nadir. All that time I had tortured you so, and yet after all that, you still resigned yourself to my will. And in that one moment you truly gave me your prize possession, this thing of wood. I knew it was the very soul of you, and that’s why I hated it and threw it from me. Because I hated you. Hated you because you served me so well. . . .”
But Nadir did not seem to hear her maddened speech. Closing his eyes tight, leaning his head forward, he mouthed silent words, his lips and breath against the wooden bowl’s rim. And then he kissed it with reverence and took several swallows.
“You drink, my Princess,” he said. “And then all the rest of you. Ris willing, there will now be water enough for all.”
“Didn’t you hear me?” she said.
But Nadir’s face was transfigured. “Drink . . .” he said simply, and then smiled. And thus she received the bowl from him and took two careful sips, then handed the rest to Yaro.
Yaro began to protest once again, but Egiras looked at her like a serpent. And Nadir stared with equal intensity, but one of a different nature—as if a sun were hidden within him. Even Yaro’s fading mother croaked something to the extent of insisting she drink. And so Yaro drank.
She took one swallow, and then another, and then . . .
The wooden cup was empty.
The last drop had touched Yaro’s lips, and already the desert wind was quenching itself on the surface of the bare wood, taking in the last remnants of liquid discoloration until the cup was pale and bone-dry once again like the well worn old utensil that it was. It was then that Egiras began to laugh.
She laughed hoarsely, her voice scraped raw and wheezing, while the rest remained in silence, except for the hum of the wind.
In silence they remained, for there was no miracle of Ris to save them this time. And silence was the only thing left to those who respected the gods.
Meanwhile, the blasphemer among them, the woman whose nature had been bound from birth to the Lord of Illusion—who is also the Lord of Doubt—made noise and banished the quietude with her hysterical sound of despair.
“What did you think would happen, my poor Nadir?” she finally managed to croak after her outburst had settled down. “Did you think the cup would now replenish itself after you’ve muttered over it? Did you honestly think that you could call forth the gods themselves with your priestly lips? That Ris would deliver you, deliver all of us, for the second time?
“Truly, now that I think back, I hardly remember if it wasn’t all a dream in the first place, if it ever existed—that original miraculous cup. When I was a little horrible girl and I played with the cup, just after taking it away from you, I don’t remember if it was an illusion of water in it or if it was one of my sorcerous father’s tricks.
“There was a god present, if I recall, a bound god whom my father was tormenting—indeed, my father had taught me well—tormenting the one called Tazzia, in the shape of a mortal horse.
“It was that marvelous
horse that lured you to us, Nadir, was it not? Surely it was not our humanity. For you had newly come forth out of the desert, halfway a god yourself, and you were quietly insolent and angry and filled with dark energy that needed a release somehow. . . .”
As Egiras continued speaking, almost babbling, Yaro remained frozen in horror, holding the empty dry cup. Nadir meanwhile stood up and turned his back to them all. The desert wind moved his pale cotton robes about him, and he stood dark against the light of the slate-white sky. His was a tall warrior shape, and yet the shadow he cast upon the sand was short and squat, for the sun had barely began to move from the zenith toward the West. Looking at that crisply delienated dwarf shadow, Yaro thought she saw a flicker of something vaguely familiar.
And then she was sure. . . .
“My Lord Nadir!” she said faintly. “Do not move! Oh, stand still, my Lord, stand perfectly still. . . .”
And, while Nadir froze with his back to her in confusion, Yaro came up behind him, holding the empty wooden cup. She crouched behind him, and with one sudden movement dipped the cup into the darker shadowed area of the sand, just at his feet. Then she arose, holding in her hands the cup, now filled with sand, and speaking like a madwoman. “I can see you! Oh, I know you, and I can see you, Illusion!”
To the others Yaro added, “This cup holds no sand, but true water. You can turn around, my Lord, but be careful not to step into your own shadow, for it is a small spring, and all around us is not dry sand but an oasis.”
Nadir slowly turned around and looked directly at her. His expression was sorrowful, filled with kind pity.
“What do you say, Yaro, my poor one?” he said very softly. “Come, sit down, for we will not go any farther and it is easier that we die thus, as fast as possible, instead of lingering—”
“No!” exclaimed the skinny serving woman. “You don’t understand, because you cannot see! And it is all because of her! ” And Yaro pointed in the direction of Egiras.
“It is she!” continued Yaro. “She is a fount of Illusion, permeated by it. And all those around her also grow not to see, the longer they are with her, the closer they are.”