Exile (16 page)

Chapter Sixteen

SANDSTORM

AURELIA SAW THE SHADOW ON ROBERT’S FACE AS soon as he entered the cabin.
He is afraid.
She did not have to ask why. He told her the truth—about the assassins. As Robert spoke, she could picture the fall of his thoughts, from fear to guilt to self-recrimination, but she had no time to head off the slide. Because first came the departure, from the most wondrous week she had ever known and the two people who had made that week possible. But this—she knew—was not about her. She forced herself to heed her much-disdained royal training and to make her own farewells with limited fanfare. Then she climbed onto Falcon’s back. To watch.

It was hard. To see the long, long handshake between Robert and his father, in which neither seemed able to let go. And the tears of Mary Vantauge spilling over in her last embrace with her son.

Aurelia had no right to those tears. Though she found herself trying to imprint every detail of Robert’s parents into her memory. The stiffness in his father’s stance, which she now saw as a method of defense. As well as his constant advice. And Mary Vantauge: her blond braids unraveling from the rush, her hands passing the basket of parting foodstuffs from palm to palm, her blue eyes peering into the distance. Not south toward the danger, but north, where her son would be. To his future.

The entire leave-taking felt so ...

Final.
Because everything is final when you’re being hunted.

At last Robert, now in his saddle, accepted the basket from his mother, giving her one more kiss. Then he whirled Horizon, and the stallion took off at a fast canter. Falcon kicked her heels at being left behind.

Aurelia lifted her hand in a wave, calling out her gratitude, then let the filly go.

The horses crested the slope, severing the chance of another glimpse at the Vantauge homestead, and instead of pulling up, Robert bent low. The stallion launched into a gallop, and Falcon accepted the challenge, racing amidst the wild grasses just as she had upon Aurelia’s arrival.

This was about flight, not practical but emotional. Aurelia knew Robert was living and breathing and fleeing the danger behind them. And she knew what it meant. No stops. No idle conversations. And no more kisses. But for the glory of this one amazing week, she had known there would be a price to pay.

They fled north. Fast. For four weeks. And somehow avoided death. Robert had no choice but to maintain their earlier bearing. To the south lay danger. To the east the desert lands were restricted by treaty. And to the west lay only frontier, terrain sure to be known by their hunters.

Robert and Aurelia rose early and camped late, detouring around any settlement that broke their path and around the handful of travelers crossing the same route. He knew the solitude was the antithesis of the expedition but had promised her it was temporary, that once they reached the desert sands there would be no means for anyone to track them. He could only hope someone from the tribes would cross their path. For there were no towns.

Or maps. This he learned at the small trading post on the northern boundary of the frontier, from a woman behind a bartering counter. “Are ya hopin’ ta be cheated?” she asked, then, taking pity on him, offered directions to the nearest oasis. “Though there’s no tellin’ if it’ll be there on the morrow,” she said. “The desert has currents. Ya never know when they might change.”

For three days he and Aurelia traveled through a wasteland, neither frontier nor desert. No trees or canyons, fields or buildings, but one slope after another of sandy ground invaded by scrub grass.

And then, at the crest of a hill slightly higher than the others, the grass gave up. He heard Aurelia gasp at his side. A crimson sea of burnt red sand flared before them. No calm, flat, endless stretch, but a roiling of sculpted arcs. The dunes rose, then dropped in sharp fierce lines, their climax in a long dynamic ridge of defiant waves.

Something in his chest clenched. He had pictured the Geordian like an expanse of golden threshed grain, not this fierce lethal red before him. Scrambling, he reached for his pack. The compass was not at the top. He rummaged deeper.

“Robert?” Aurelia sounded annoyed. She must have said something to him that he had not heard.

But he continued the search. They could not go on until he found the compass.

She yanked the pack from his hands and glared. “Would you just stop?!” He could not have responded if he wanted to. “You’ve been dour for weeks!” she railed. “And I’ve put up with it because I know you’re worried, and I know the danger is real, and we had to hurry. But Robert, it’s the Geordian!” She flung her hand at the sculpted ridge. “Just look!” Her voice broke.

“That could be gone by morning,” he said, trying to explain why he had been searching for the compass. “It’s not a landmark. It’s just sand, Aurelia. It moves.”

She hurled the pack at the ground. “Admit it’s spectacular!”

He blinked. Of course it was. “It’s a challenge.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Is that what draws you to it?”

“No.” It was the story of his horse that had pulled him toward the Geordian. The possibility that Horizon’s sire had come from the legendary herds of the desert tribes. “But that’s what draws
you.”

“Admit it’s beautiful!”

She was so adamant. Determined. He could not resist testing her patience a bit further. “It’s dangerous.”

She stuck her tongue out at him.

“Oh, I see we’ve matured a lot on this trip,” he said.

“Admit you can’t wait to set foot in it.”

True.
There was something about that unmarred surface, daring him to step where no one had before. People had been living in the Geordian for thousands of years, but never
here.
Never quite in this exact place, due to the sand’s shifting nature.

In answer to her statement, he dismounted, ignoring the fallen pack at his feet, and set one careful step into the crimson sea.

She swung off Falcon’s back, landing beside him, then ran out ahead, spinning. Her brown hair flew, her face glowed, her arms rose to her surroundings. Embracing a dream. The ultimate goal, the edge of her kingdom, a place most people had only heard about in legend and myth.

He ran out after her, then raced ahead, skidded on the sand, and fell. She laughed, dodging his reach, and passed him. He pulled himself up, raced after her again, and within moments had her in his grasp, dragging her down.

“Admit it’s beautiful,” she demanded.

His nose was in her hair. His arms around her waist.

A thousand voices scolded him. His mother’s. Drew’s. And Robert’s own. He tried to remember the reasons he had used to convince himself not to pursue her earlier. But the old arguments no longer held up. He was not supposed to love her because it would place her in danger. But she
was
in danger. Nothing could save her from that. He couldn’t love her because she was a princess. Well, maybe he could not marry her. Or plan on the rest of his life at her side. But he was with her now. The only one. The only person in her life to share this moment, her achievement of this dream.

His breath came ragged and his arms ached. “Beautiful.”

And then, to his horror, she pulled away, running back to the filly.

You see
, his conscience taunted.
It’s better to keep your emotional distance
.

What emotional distance? Exactly what about the last five months had been emotionally distant? When he had held Aurelia in his arms the night she yelled at him for not kissing her? When she had yelled at him for thinking of leaving her? Or when Robert
had
kissed her? That one long reciprocated kiss that had not died until his father’s footsteps had returned to the barn.

Ruefully, Robert sat up, shaking the sand from his hair and eyeing the blasting red desert. Even that crimson view could not be more hazardous than love.

It took him another three days to learn he was wrong.

The sand had begun to blow. And to bite Aurelia’s skin. She tightened the kerchief around her face. The dim red cloud had been stalking them for the entire afternoon, but Robert had insisted they continue. The oasis was near, offering the hope of real shelter. Though the closer they drew, the fiercer the wind and the more limited the hope.

No beckoning emerald paradise awaited, only a small stand of rocky ground with crippled, tightly bunched juniper. But even that meant water. And something solid enough that it would not rise to attack like the stinging grains that had swarmed above the filly’s legs and begun to file away at Aurelia’s arms. With a
hiss
like grating sandpaper.

If she and Robert did not reach cover soon, the sand would scrape the skin from their bodies.

Finally the horses reached the trees. She swung off and had barely touched the ground before Robert, his own mouth covered in a handkerchief, thrust the canteens into her hands. She accepted the task, knowing she needed to get the water now, as there was no telling whether it would be there later.

Wrapping the canteen cords over her neck, she scrambled into the inner trees, her vision impaired by the grains of sand that hurtled through the thin foliage and crooked limbs. There! A liquid pool beneath the shifting blur of red.

She closed her eyes and dropped down to her knees, completing the task by feel. Plunging each canteen beneath the wet surface and twisting on the lids. Then she stood up and hurried to help Robert.

The tent had decided to resist. No doubt a reaction to the fact that she had shunned it, rejecting its off-white walls for their similarity to the other tent burning in her nightmares. But she and Robert needed this one now. He had strung the rope from one juniper to the next and draped the canvas over it, but the stakes refused to sink into the ground. Or rather the sand spit them back out. The intensity of the wind had grown brutal, and the debris began to block out the light. Panic started to well up within her.

But Robert pocketed the stakes and hefted a rock, dropping it on the inner edge of the canvas. The material stayed down.

Of course!

Aurelia hefted two more weights and hurried to the other end of the fabric. Soon the worst of the wind was blocked, the sand pelting upon the canvas wall, and she and Robert tackled the opposite side, pulling the walls together as narrowly as possible, then curving the edges and lashing them together with leather rawhide ties, leaving only a low opening for an entrance.

At last the tent stood secure. As secure as it could in this barrage.

Robert gestured for her to enter, while he headed toward the horses. But she went after him. The supplies would be retrieved faster if she helped.

He didn’t argue. He had no means. Even if he had spoken through the handkerchief, she would never have heard him over the howling wind and pelting sand. They removed the packs and the bedding, then tugged the horses as close to the leeward wall of canvas as possible.

Aurelia gave Falcon one last desperate hug, then hefted her supplies and hurried into the tent. But Robert did not follow. Binding her courage to fury, she plunged once again into the storm.

He was still with the horses.

She understood. She did. And had no desire to be responsible for Falcon’s death. But if the horses could not survive outside without him, they would not survive. Aurelia moved up behind him, closed her grip around his arms, and pressed her fingers into the muscle. She would draw blood if she had to.

He detached her hold as though it were nothing, then locked his arms around her chest and pulled her into the tent, where she wanted to go; but then he tried to leave. She flung herself upon him, wrapping her arms around his neck and yelling, though she knew he could not hear amidst the growing roar outside. And then what was left of light went out.

Finally Robert gave way, dropping his attempt to leave and sinking to the ground instead, taking her with him. She relinquished her death grip around his neck, but he gathered her close.

Together they waited. For what, she was not sure, except for life. Death hammered on all sides, and she did not want it—could not accept it without a fight. But there was no way to fight the wind. Any more than there had been a means to fight the jagged cliffs of the Gate. And if she died, there would be no way to fight anything else. Not her sister. Or the hunters. Or corruption.

So Aurelia waited. She would never know how long. It was impossible to tell without light.

But at last the roar eased to its former sandpaper hiss.

And Robert withdrew. Into the night. A genuine dark.

She followed, though she did not want to, her left hand on his back, the fingers of her right tracing the leeward side of the tent. She remembered all too well Bianca’s corpse and had no desire to find another. The sand still blew, but Aurelia could not feel its bite because she was numb with fear.

Then Robert pulled away. And her feet hit solidity. She bent, her hands trembling as they touched the gritty surface of a long, broad, sand-caked back. Horizon. She waited for a moan or a cry from Robert, but instead felt a harsh, uneasy cough. From beneath her. The horse was alive.