Sands (Sharani Series Book 1) (21 page)

The tent flap rustled as Taren stepped inside, his cold eyes taking in the small dark room and alighting on Marvi’s still form along one side of the room. She watched as his silhouette drew near and reached out a hand to wake her.

“I am awake, Taren,” she said.

He grunted, unsurprised at having found her awake.

She half sat up, curiosity overcoming her tiredness. Since becoming Warlord, Taren had not spent much time within the camp. As was customary, he’d spent a large amount of his time with the other Warlords, boasting of past conquests and forming new alliances or renewing old rivalries. In Marvi’s opinion, it was inevitable that men would take any excuse they could find to swill down some wine and brag about highly embellished deeds of yesteryear. But she had expected other things from Taren. Especially after all she had done to aide him in his quest. She had, after all, killed her husband for the man. And helped him bypass her own sons for leadership of the clan.

“Get up, woman. The clans are all gathering at the well.” His voice was gruff, and Marvi detected more than a trace of irritation. Or arrogance. It was hard for her to tell with Taren sometimes.

“What’s going on?” she asked as she rose and pulled on clothes that lay near the bed.

Taren ignored her and pushed out the door into the night outside.

She had heard movement outside her tent earlier but had simply written it off as one of the patrols sweeping through camp a bit too vigilantly for their own good. She had meant to have words with Taren about that later but never got the opportunity. Now, as she pulled the tent flap door out of the way and stepped out into the cool night air, she realized that the sound had been the noise of the camp emptying. She joined the throng of people hurrying from their tents, all headed in the same direction. Warriors were scattered amongst the throng, carrying swords or spears, but they were sparse. More common were women wearing the yellow
shufari
or mothers with children clutching sleepily at their mother’s skirts. She nearly knocked Saralhn over as she hurried to catch up to Taren.

“What’s going on?” Marvi asked, grabbing Taren on the shoulder.

He spun around and backhanded her across the face, knocking her to the ground.

She fell hard, clutching at her bruised face, eyes wide with shock more than fear or pain. No one even stopped to see if she was alright or to help her to her feet.

Taren stood over her, one hand resting on the hilt of his sword and the other pointing down at her. “Never touch me again, woman,” he said, voice soft. “You are no longer the Warlord’s wife. You do not wear the blue.”

Cold anger flashed through her, but she quelled the bitter retort on her lips.

She no longer wore the blue
shufari
, it was true. Instead she now wore the white of a widow, the same as so many others. But Jenthro had not defined her before. Authority was earned. She had put Taren in the position he was in now. She could just as easily take it back away from him or allow it to be taken from him. Her expression hardened, and in her mind, she began planning her first moves.

“As you wish, Warlord,” she said, her eyes hard as ice. Whatever passion she had felt before was gone.

Taren grinned wickedly and turned back around, disappearing into the crowd.

Marvi made to get to her feet and felt a pair of hands grab her right arm from behind to help hoist her up. Marvi looked over her shoulder. Saralhn stood there, supporting her weight. In the light of a passing torch, Marvi could make out a large purple bruise on the young woman’s cheek.

She pulled her arm free and dusted off her clothes. “Go,” Marvi said curtly.

Saralhn nodded, melding with the passing throng.

Taren stood atop the speaking stone at the exact center of the Oasis. He looked out at the assembled masses that were huddled together in familial and clan groups. Marvi noted that the Frierd were short on numbers, but the Sidena were fewer still. The journey to the Oasis had cost them dearly.

What was Taren doing leading the meeting?

He reared himself up and began to speak. “Brethren.” His voice boomed out through the darkness. “I have called this gathering to share with you glad tidings before fell news. There is hope once more for our people.”

Somewhere in the crowd, someone yawned loudly, and another voice called out, “If it’s not about special fruit that can make you fly, it’s not good enough to get us out of bed.”

Taren’s face remained outwardly calm, but Marvi, who was studying him closely, saw the tightening of his jaw, the set of his shoulder.

He grinned through tight lips and continued onward. “This is the defining moment of our civilization.”

His soft voice quieted the crowd as easily as if it had been a thunderclap.

“And with as much magic in it as your special fruit.” Taren drew a small knife and began to idly trim his nails while he talked, not looking down at his hands while he worked. “I ask you, brethren, how is it that we take down a sailfin? How do we defend ourselves against genesauri when we are not walking the stoneways or here within the Oasis? I answer for you. We band together. Two or three warriors pool their talents and skill to fell the foul beasts, each one defending and protecting the other. The strong survive and the weak are left to die.”

There was a murmuring note of agreement from the crowd. Many of the warriors were nodding. The women mostly had their heads down, tending to tired children, though even those that had no children seemed intent on the intricacies of the sand at their feet.

Marvi, for her part, pressed careful attention to every word. What was Taren about? He was getting powerful if no one had stopped him yet. Too powerful, maybe, for her to take down.

“Unity,” Taren continued. “It is a lifeline against futility and loneliness. It is a flame of hope against the darkest night. I will never be able to describe the joy of being faced by death and having one of your brethren spit in the devil’s eye and bring you back to life again. We are brothers-in-arms against danger. Protectors of each other.”

The yawner from earlier repeated his prior show of boredom. It was a large man with a thick black beard and long hair tied back behind his ears. He was muscular and tall, if a little on the uglier side. The moonlight highlighted the silver scars that scoured a line down the middle of his nose, giving him an ethereal cast.

Taren pointed at him with the dagger he’d been using to trim his nails. The people around the man shied away as Taren spoke.

“You there, warrior, speak your mind.”

The man grunted and shrugged, shifting his weight from one foot to another. It was obvious that he didn’t like the attention he was getting, nor did he want to speak, but pride forced him to respond.

“What do you want, man?” he asked, his voice a deep rich drawl. “I know yeh don’t want nothing to do with unity. Yer just making a show of all this since yer a new Warlord. Cut out the crap and get to the point.”

Marvi let out a small silent whistle of grudging admiration and incredulity. The man had no small amount of courage. Maybe he wasn’t half bad to look at. The scars gave him character.

Some of the women who had had their heads down glanced up for a moment, looking to see who had spoken.

Atop the speaking stone, Taren regarded the man coolly and then turned slowly where he stood, raising his hands high, one hand still clutching his dagger. “What do we do when there is a sandtiger amongst the flocks?” He fell silent, waiting for the crowd to respond.

“Chase it away,” several voices shouted.

Taren smiled and shook his head with a small chuckle. “A temporary solution at best. What do you do?”

“Move the sheep away,” one of the women called.

Again Taren shook his head and smiled. The hand holding the dagger flourished slightly so that the weapon flipped over and left him holding the blade by the point.

“Worse answer yet. You band together, and you eliminate the threat. If you do not, the sandtiger gets it in its head that this is an easy source of food.

“This is a simple way to survive. You subjugate yourself to it since it will keep coming back until the problem is gone. Not only that, you track it back to its nest and eliminate its mate, its cubs, all of them. You wipe out the threat once and for all.”

He was facing away from the man who had spoken, but Marvi saw Taren’s body tense a moment before he spun at the torso and his arm pumped, letting the dagger fly. It was a masterful throw, one only a handful of warriors within the Oasis could make, but the dagger spun through the air end over end, glittering in the torch gleam and moonlight, before finding its mark in the man’s eye.

He slumped to the ground with a silent, futile groan.

The assembled clans immediately cried out in anger, shock, and surprise. Marvi tensed and clutched at her throat. What had Taren just done? The water oaths that governed the actions of all the clans within the Oasis forbade the shedding of another’s blood. They protected the clans from each other and from themselves. For three months each year, there was peace within the Oasis. Not in living memory had that been violated. It was one of the things that actually kept the clans together. Violations of the water oaths were punished by the clans as a whole, not by any one Warlord, but by all of them together. She expected one of the other Warlords to shout out in protest, but none of them spoke up. In fact, she didn’t see any of the other Warlords in the crowd. Other voices cried out in the din, asking the same questions.

“The water oaths!”

“Murderer!”

“What have you done?!”

Saralhn pushed through the crowd, going to the man’s side and rolling him over. She checked his pulse as shouts assailed Taren. After a moment, she moved her hand away from his throat, dripping with blood, and shook her head.

Taren raised his hands for silence, and the shouting slowly died away. He radiated a sense of confidence that Marvi found disconcerting. He didn’t seem even remotely concerned that he had violated every oath that the desert people held sacred. In fact, he seemed coldly delighted.

Marvi felt a strange itch creep down her arms, and she hugged them to her chest.

“The genesauri are coming,” he said. “All of them. They are coming here. If we do not stand united, we will be destroyed. We will be their easy source of food. Just like the sandtigers, we have to hunt them down and destroy them.”

“Are you mad?” Someone shouted, bravely voicing what everyone else was thinking.

Taren arched an eyebrow, his wrinkled face growing even more wrinkled at the gesture.

“This man was an enemy of the unity. I am upholding the water oaths. I am preventing the shedding of innocent blood. Those who do not stand with me only further their own destruction. The genesauri are coming, and we will destroy them. And I will lead you in that great battle.”

Silence reigned. But it was more than simple silence. Among the women, the silence was the silence of despair and resignation. The silence that fills a room after the death of a loved one. The loss of hope and peace in the face of devastating truth. Among many of the warriors and men that made up the lesser half of the group, the silence was of disbelief and anger, the silence of a man who simply did not know what to say or how to say it. Yet among the children the loudest silence lived. Among them was the silence of fear. Fear because they simply did not understand but felt the emotions radiate from their parents and those around them.