The Desert Spear

The dama’ting laughed, the first time he had ever heard her do such. It was a beautiful, tinkling sound. “Do you not?” she asked, slipping off her veil and headwrap. His eyes widened, but it was not at the youth and beauty he saw.

He did indeed know her.

“Inevera,” he breathed, remembering the nie’dama’ting who had spoken to him in the pavilion so many years ago.

She nodded, smiling at him, more beautiful than he had ever dared to dream.

“The night we met,” Inevera said, “I finished carving my first alagai hora. It was fate; Everam’s will, like my name. The demon bones are carved in utter darkness, by feel alone. It can take weeks to carve a single die; years to complete a set. And only then, when the set is complete, can they be tested. If they fail, they are exposed to light, and the carving must begin anew. If they succeed, then nie’dama’ting becomes dama’ting, and we don our veil.

“On that night, I finished my set and needed a question to ask. A test to see if the dice held the power of fate. But what question? Then I remembered the boy I had met that day, with the bold eyes and brash manner, and as I shook the demon dice, I asked, ‘Will I ever see Ahmann Jardir again?’

“And from that night on,” she said, “I knew I would find you in the Maze after your first alagai’sharak, and more, that I would marry you and bear you many children.”

With that, she shrugged her shoulders, and her white robes fell away. Jardir had feared this moment, but as the flickering light caught her naked form, his body began to respond, and he knew that he would pass this last test of manhood as he had all the others before it.

“Jardir, you will take your men to the tenth layer,” the Sharum Ka said.

It was a fool’s decision. Three years after he had donned the white veil, every kai’Sharum assembled knew that Jardir’s unit was the fiercest and best trained in all of Krasia. Jardir pressed his men hard, but the dal’Sharum gloried in it, their kill counts exceeding any three other units combined. They were wasted in the tenth layer. It was unheard of for the alagai to penetrate the Maze so deeply.

The Sharum Ka sneered at Jardir, daring dissent, but Jardir embraced the dishonor and let it pass through him. “As the Sharum Ka commands,” he said, bowing low from his pillow to touch his forehead to the thick carpet of the First Warrior’s audience room. As he sat back up, his face was serene despite his disgust at the man before him. The Sharum Ka was supposed to be the strongest warrior in the city. This man was anything but. His hair was streaked with gray, his face deeply wrinkled like a Damaji’s. It had been long years since he had stood in the Maze, and it showed in a belly gone to fat. The First Warrior was supposed to lead the charge in alagai’sharak and inspire the men to glory, not conduct the war from behind his palace walls.

But for all that, so long as he wore the white turban, his will in the night was inviolate.

Dama Ashan, his unit’s cleric, and his lieutenants, Hasik and Shanjat, were waiting outside the Sharum Ka’s palace to escort Jardir back to the Kaji pavilion. He was only a kai’Sharum, but there had already been attempts on his life from jealous rivals, even within his own tribe. The Sharum Ka would not live forever, and with the Andrah having come from the Kaji tribe, it was all but certain one of the Kaji kai’Sharum would be appointed to take his place. Jardir stood in the way of many older kai’Sharum’s hopes of ascension.

The three men were never far from his side ever since Inevera had arranged marriages between them and Jardir’s sisters. Imisandre, Hoshvah, and Hanya had been in rags when Jardir left Sharik Hora three years ago, but now they were Jiwah Ka to his most trusted lieutenants, and had borne nephews and nieces to strengthen those loyalties.

“Our orders?” Shanjat asked.

“Tenth layer,” Jardir said.

Hasik spat in the dust. “The Sharum Ka insults you!”

“Calm yourself, Hasik,” Jardir said softly, and the big warrior immediately quieted. “Embrace the insult and it will pass through you, allowing you to see Everam’s path.”

Hasik nodded, falling in behind Jardir as he strode away from the palace. Hasik had returned from the dama’ting pavilion a changed man three years ago. He was still one of the Kaji’s fiercest warriors, but like a wolf brought to heel, he had given his loyalty fully to Jardir—the only way to preserve his honor after the humiliating defeat.

“The Sharum Ka fears you,” Ashan advised. “As he should. If you continue to gather all the glory, the Andrah may tire of having a weak old man commanding his forces and allow you to challenge him to single combat.”

“And seconds after he shouts ‘begin,’ we will have a new First Warrior,” Shanjat said.

“That isn’t going to happen,” Jardir said. “The Andrah and Sharum Ka are friends from of old. The Andrah will not betray his loyal servant even if the Damaji themselves demand it.”

“So what do we do?” Hasik asked.

“You go home to my sister and thank her for the meal she has no doubt prepared you,” Jardir said. “And when night falls, we go to the tenth layer and pray that Everam sends us alagai to show the sun.”

As always, Inevera was waiting for him when he reached his quarters in the Kaji palace. Her robe was lowered to uncover the breast where his daughter Anjha suckled. Jardir’s sons, Jayan and Asome, clung to her robes, young and strong.

Jardir knelt and spread his arms, and the boys fell into them, laughing as he lifted them high. He set them back down, and they ran back to their mother. The sight of his sons pricked at his serenity for a moment before he could embrace the feeling. It wasn’t just his reputation the Sharum Ka sullied. It was theirs, as well.

“Something troubles you, my husband?” Inevera asked.

“It is nothing,” Jardir said, but Inevera clicked her tongue at him.

“I am your Jiwah Ka,” she said. “You need not embrace your feelings with me.”

Jardir looked at her and let the tight lashes of his control ease.

“The Sharum Ka sends me to the tenth layer tonight,” he spat. “How many warriors will he lose while his best unit guards an empty layer?”

“It is a good sign, husband,” Inevera said. “It means the Sharum Ka fears you and your ambitions.”

“What good is that,” Jardir said, “if he robs me of every future glory?”

“He cannot be allowed to do that,” Inevera agreed. “You must find glory in the Maze now more than ever. The bones tell me the First Warrior is not long for this world. Your glory must outshine all others when he goes to Everam, if you are to take his place.”

“How am I to do that waving my spear at empty air?” Jardir growled.

Inevera shrugged. “Sharak is yours. You must find a way.”

Jardir grunted, nodding. She was right, of course. There were some things even a dama’ting could not advise upon.

“The sun will not set for hours,” Inevera advised. “A bout of lovemaking and a short sleep will clear your head.”

Jardir smiled and went to her. “I will call my mother to take the children.”

But Inevera shook her head, stepping away from his reaching arms. “Not me. The bones say Everalia is ripe. If you take her from behind with great force, she will bear you a strong son.”

Jardir scowled. Everalia was his third wife. Inevera hadn’t even bothered to show her to him before they were betrothed, saying the Jiwah Sen was selected for her breeder’s hips and the fortune the alagai hora cast, not her beauty.

“Always the bones!” Jardir snapped. “For once I would bed the wife I choose!”

Inevera shrugged. “Take Thalaja if you prefer,” she said, referring to his more beautiful second wife. “She is ripe as well. I simply thought you would prefer a son to another daughter.”

Jardir gritted his teeth. She was the one he wanted, but as Khevat had warned, wife or no, Inevera was dama’ting, and he could not simply take her the way he would another woman. He opened his mouth, and then closed it again.

Did she really cast the bones for everything? Sometimes it seemed Inevera just used claims of their foretellings to get him to act as she wished, but she had not been wrong yet, and it was true he needed more sons if he was to restore the line of Jardir to its former glory. Did it really matter which wife he took? Everalia was comely enough from behind.

He headed for the bedchamber, pulling off his robes.

They waited.

As cries of battle rang through the outer layers, and wind demons shrieked in the sky, they waited.

As other men went to Everam in glory, they waited.

“No alagai sighted,” Shanjat relayed, signaling back to the nie’Sharum on the wall.