Chapter 12: 12

Atop the escarpment, Barrin turned in a slow circle, observing the surrounding area. To the South, he could see, at the very edge of his sight, the point where the sands of the desert gave way to a more rocky, canyon pocked landscape. Beyond that horizon, far, far to the South, lay his home. A place he had not returned to in many long seasons and had no intention of ever seeing again. The world had too much to offer to return. Too many chances to fight and fulfil his hunger for battle.

In the other directions, he could see little but the rolling, ever-changing dunes that stretched out as far as the eye could see. No signs of civilisation. No pricks of light to indicate anything of substantial interest. No other oasis. The waters of the pool below trailed away via two streams. One heading south-east, the other to the south-west, as though it sent out fingers to survey the surroundings it could never escape.

Where the water originally came from, Barrin could not imagine. They emerged from the cliff face, around half-way down, fresh and clear. The waterfall pounded into the surface of the pool, feeding the surrounding vegetation with precious, life-giving water, but only in the immediate surrounds. Only a few hundred yards out, the desert reared up once again. North. They could only go North and hope for the best, though Barrin doubted the single waterskin would last them longer than a day, perhaps two, which meant finding shelter during daylight hours and travelling in the chill of night to conserve their sweat.

They had eaten heartily, the night before, feasting upon fish and berries, drinking their fill and cleaning themselves in the waters as they tumbled out of the oasis, into the streams that seemed in such a hurry to leave this blighted place. Sleep had come easy. Days of little rest crashing back upon them both but, even then, Barrin’s eyes flashed open several times during the night.

“We cannot stay here forever.” He returned to their makeshift camp, dipping to gather a handful of berries from the pile in the wide leaf, tossing several into his mouth. “Or, rather, I cannot. If you stay, I shall send aid as soon as I can.”

“If you go, I will follow, Barrin Black-Scythe.” She had stopped calling him ‘White-Hair’, but her new name for him was not an improvement. “Destiny swirls around you, I can feel it, and I intend to witness the effect you press upon the world.”

Destiny again. Destiny or fate. Maeal did so like her superstitions. Barrin ignored that as he watched her crush some kind of vegetation on a rock, mixing it with the charcoal left over from the night’s fire. She added water and continued to rub stone against bowled-stone until the concoction became a thick, black paste.

Taking a small branch she had whittled and feathered, she added the paste to it and began to paint around her eyes. Her hands moved with long practice, sweeping the makeshift brush, circling both eyes until they had wide, black lines around them. Then she placed three fingers into the paste, blackening them to the knuckles, and painted three lines from her mouth to underneath her chin. The marks of a priestess of Aa.

The rags her clothing had become were now tied and twisted into a wrapping for her chest, a loincloth and sash falling in front of her nethers. Other than taking the filthy, infested clothing from the dead creatures back in the ruin of the ancient city, she had little other option than to make the best of what she had. It covered enough, but left much open to the ravages of the unforgiving Sun. Her short, black hair, washed now, remained tousled and ragged, only passing fingers through the strands.

Barrin, for his part, still wore the breeches taken from the guard, and his boots, though all of them had suffered greater wear-and-tear in the few hours he had worn them than they had since tailor and cobbler had created them. Strips from the cuffs of the legs now tied back Barrin’s long, flowing white hair. She was right about that, at least. Few people had hair like his, though he had never celebrated the fact.

Hair like that brought too much attention at times when Barrin would prefer solace. Many a time he had found enemies, in battle, singling him out. A rallying point for them and their comrades to fall upon. Barrin had never turned away from that, revelling in the challenge, but his own allies did not appreciate the attention, grumbling if ever placed beside him in the lines of battle. Though, truth told, his great size and muscles could point him out among a crowd as easy.

“You could survive here, assuming those things remain in their hole.” He had seen no sign that the stunted humans ever breached the surface of the world, but he could not say that would always remain so. “Out there, with little food and water between us, I cannot guarantee the same. You should stay.”

“If you do not trust in your own god, then trust in Aa. Aa will provide.” With her make-up reapplied, those large eyes looked ever-more fervent ... and foolish. “Destiny will not allow one such as you to fall so easy, nor the one destined to witness it.”

She pressed a modest hand to her chest, dipping her head in a mock bow. He could not force her to stay, and cared little if she followed. If he thought her becoming a greater burden than necessary, she would soon learn that destiny could become a harsh mistress. He would abandon her without thought. Kill her, even, if he felt need to. The only thing that mattered, more than her, more than even his own life, lay in finding Kahri. Find him or avenge him.

“If your god will provide for us, then how is that destiny? How is that fate?” He had grown tired with her proselytising. He had no need for his own god, let alone hers or any other. “Is not destiny and fate threads already woven, awaiting our actions to fulfil them? If your god interferes and aids us, then he spits in the face of destiny. Shtuur would not aid us and would sneer at us even needing aid.”

“A cynical god for a cynical man.” Maeal shook her head as though admonishing a child. “Aa is as much a part of your destiny as I, as you are. Destiny weaves around you. I see it and so will you.”

“If destiny were here before me, in human form, I would kill them as easy as I would kill any that thought they could force me to do something I did not wish to do.” Barrin hated these conversations. He preferred action to talk. “If anything, anyone, or any god, stands in my way of finding Kahri, they will suffer. That is all I know and all I care to think about.”

He turned away, staring into the crystal clear waters of the oasis. Never had he had to speak so often and to think as much with it, not even with Kahri. His love knew well when to talk and when to hold his tongue, as Barrin knew for those few times Kahri felt in much that same mood. One of the many reasons Barrin loved the man. He never had any need to tell Kahri he had had enough of talking. Kahri knew. This woman would talk until she found herself clutching at her bowels, trying to return them to her belly, Barrin having heard enough. Even then she would still talk.

“Do you believe what he said? The guard?” She could not stop! Barrin stifled an irritated growl. “That Shumma-Vohk engineered your capture? And mine, I suppose.”

“I ... I don’t know.” His hands fell to his hips and he allowed his irritation to fall away. “I am not certain Shumma-Vohk even exists. No-one has even seen a shadow of the man for, what, eighty years?”

A war had erupted, long before Barrin had emerged, bloody and screaming from between the legs of his mother, but, had he lived in that time, he would have jumped at the chance to fight. Encompassing almost the entire run of nations around the Pahash Sea, the war had raged for almost ten years. Shumma-Vohk, if history spoke true, led an army enhanced by sorcery and had almost succeeded in taking the entire known world. Few records remained from those days, leading to people eventually saying Shumma-Vohk did not exist, that the war was nothing more than a conflict over territory.

Barrin knew the tales as well as any, better, thanks to Father’s insistence upon Barrin engorging himself in all aspects of war, even rumours and innuendo and flights of fancy. Even in lies, knowledge can come and victories won. Telling the difference between the truth of it, the lies and the stories proved difficult in the case of Shumma-Vohk. At once a great ruler and a terrible despot. A powerful sorcerer and a guileful charlatan. Barrin had no reason to believe any of it, but he had witnessed the use of sorcery, himself. He could not dismiss the possibility, no matter how laughable.

“If it is him, and I am as uneasy about the possibility as you, why would he take some and send others, like you and me, away? If he needs slaves, I can see none more powerful than you. Even though I am not attractive to you, I know my worth. Many would pay to lay with a priestess.” Her voice dwindled as she considered what she had said, voicing out loud what she had probably feared all along. “And ... and if he bore half as much power as they say he did, the world could fall into a darkness it may never emerge from.”

Power. Barrin cared only for the power of his own body, honed over many years and many battles. He could not imagine the power that Maeal intimated. He had seen the effects, of course, but the actual power itself eluded imagination. To make a deal with demons and devils to have the power to remake reality, to make the impossible possible. And what did the demons gain from such deals, other than the satisfaction that they had brought chaos to the world?

“Gaharri. He is the only one that concerns me now. Gaharri in Tesh. Tesh is North of here, though bearing East or West I cannot know for certain until I find somewhere familiar.” He did not know why, but he drew the crescent-moon sword, the ‘Black-Scythe’ Maeal had renamed him after. He ran a finger over the needle-sharp edge. “That is my task. I find him, force him to talk and then on to the next task. That is all I can do.”

“Because if you think too much about it, too far ahead, you may start to think that you may be too late.” She rose from the sand, black-fingered hand falling upon his arm. “He lives. He lives! Say it. He lives and you will find him, and if Shumma-Vohk, or anyone, gets in your way, you will deal with them. I see it all before us. I see it all!”

The woman was mad. She saw nothing. If she could see anything, she could tell him where to find Kahri. She would know if Shumma-Vohk had returned, if he ever existed. She would know everything she needed to know. Barrin could not see a gift operating in such haphazard fashion. Either she was a seer, or she was not and all things pointed to her having nothing more than delusions. Still, it didn’t hurt to flatter her pretensions. It may silence her, for a little while, or not.

“He lives.” He smiled, though he did not wish to. “He lives and I will find him.”

But first, he had to find Gaharri. She could rely on her superstition, but he would rely on more mortal efforts. He, they, would set off at nightfall, heading North. They would walk until they found something he recognised and then he would turn toward Tesh, and woe betide any in that town that tried to stop him from finding the answers he sought.

Woe betide man, destiny, god or sorcerer. Barrin would have his lover back, or he would have bloody revenge, or he would die in the attempt. There were no other options. No other ways that this would end, could possibly end. Love, or blood.