The Outworlder (3 page)

“Don’t worry about that,” he told her. “These
rugs are woven to keep out sand and odor. It is a great art that
the women of our land have developed over hundreds of years. You
won’t ruin them.”

“I didn’t know you’d heard me,” she murmured
as she crawled fully onto the rug and pulled a cushion under her
head. “How about these? Can I use these?”

“Of course,
xenali
.”

“Why do you keep calling me that?”

Jared took off his jacket and tossed across
one of the chests in the back of the cave. The short sleeves of his
black undershirt revealed corded arms and a small, strange tattoo
on his right bicep. He crossed to one of the stone jars, removed
its lid, and dipped out a cupful of clear water.

“Why do I call you what?
Xenali?
”

He brought her the cup and held it out to
her. She took it eagerly, gulping the liquid down her parched
throat.

“
Xenali
is our word for stranger,” he
explained. “You didn’t give me your name, so I have nothing else to
call you.”

Sahara tipped the cup to get the last drop of
water and then handed it back to him. “It’s Sahara.”

“Sahara.” He repeated it slowly, as if
tasting the syllables as they rolled off his tongue.

“Yeah.”

She lay back on the cushion and sighed. She
would close her eyes. Just for a moment….

“Would you like to wash?” Jared asked.

She opened her eyes and realized that she
must have fallen asleep. Jared was crouching next to her, letting a
white cloth drip over a basin of smooth, rose-colored stone. She
sat up slowly and hesitated.

“You’ll feel better if you do,” he said,
holding the cloth out to her.

She snatched it out of his hands and rubbed
it over her cheeks, chin, and nose. It came away black with dirt,
smoke, sweat, and sand. Jared rinsed it out in the basin and handed
it back to her. She gingerly dabbed at her forehead and winced.

“Let me help you,” Jared offered, his voice
gentle. “I can see the cut—you can’t.”

He gently moved her tangled red hair away
from her face and started to cleanse the wound.

“This is very deep,” he said, looking down
into her eyes.

There was concern in his steady gaze, and an
unasked question. Sahara hesitated for a moment, wavering between
irrational anger and tears. Anger won out, as it usually did.

“Just leave it alone!” She pushed his hand
away and scrambled away from him.

She could sense his surprise, but she
couldn’t explain even to herself why she had lashed out at him.
Feeling wretched, she huddled down in the cushions piled in the far
corner of the cave.

“Just leave me alone,” she whispered.

With a shuddering sigh she turned to face the
wall, hiding her face so that he would not see the tears that she
could not stop. She wiped her nose and hugged her knees to her
chest.

She could feel Jared watching her in the
silence that followed, which was broken only by the faint dripping
of the cloth into the basin of water. She neither moved nor spoke,
and after a moment she heard him move to the other side of the
cave, and heard the trickling of water as he poured what remained
in the basin down a small drain hole cut in the stone floor. She
began trembling all over.

“Are you hungry?” he asked from behind her.
“We have food here—bread, some dried fruits, even a bit of dried
meat, if that is to your liking.”

“No.” The word was short, sharp, hurting.

“Are you cold?”

Sahara only shivered. Part of her hoped that
he would leave her alone, but the other part was silently,
wordlessly, crying for help. She felt him kneel on the rug behind
her, and a wave of relief, surprising her with its force, swept
over her. He had heard what she did not know how to speak.

Jared laid one hand on her shoulder and the
other gently across her wounded forehead.

“You’re radiating heat,” he told her. “A
fever is beginning. You were exposed to far too much sun today, and
that cut on your head is beyond my skill to treat.”

Sahara’s teeth chattered together and she
pulled her knees up closer to her chest in a futile attempt to stop
shaking. Jared left her and opened one of the wooden chests along
the back of the cave. He pulled out a soft blue blanket and brought
it back to her. Quietly and deftly he arranged some cushions, eased
her onto them, and covered her snugly with the blanket.

“I’ll make you something to lower the fever
for tonight. Tomorrow you’ll be in better hands than mine for
healing.”

Sahara watched him build a tiny fire in a
large beaten copper bowl. He placed a twisted metal tripod over the
fire and set a mug of water on top of that. She nestled further
under the blanket. It was softer than anything she had ever felt
before in her life, and her shivering melted away under its warmth.
But her body ached with fever now, and her eyes were burning so
that she could barely hold them open.

Jared took a leather pouch from one of the
wooden chests and sprinkled some dried herbs into a mortar bowl. He
ground them into a fine powder and then tapped it into the water
over the fire. He waited for a few moments as the water and the
powder swirled together into a fragrant crimson liquid. When it
began to steam, he removed it from the tripod and carried it to
Sahara.

“Here.” He slipped an arm around her
shoulders and raised her head so that she could drink. “This will
ease the fever and the pain. Then you should sleep.”

Sahara hesitated for an instant, hazily
remembering the pungent drink he had given her earlier. He gently
pressed the cup against her lips and tipped it. As the warm liquid
slid into her mouth, she swallowed. It was slightly sweet, and she
felt its warmth seep into her. She drank it to the last drop and
let him settle her back onto the cushions.

“Sleep,” he told her with a smile.

Sahara’s eyes closed, and she fell into a
dreamless sleep.

*****

Jared put out the fire in the copper bowl and
set the mug in the basket with the cloth. He took another blanket
out of the wooden chest, this one a rugged crimson, and pulled some
cushions onto the rug on the other side of the cave. He pulled off
his boots and tossed them against the wall, then laid his sword on
the ground within easy reach of his hand. All the while, his eyes
never left Sahara’s sleeping figure. He waited until he saw the
fierce red stain of fever leave her face pale but peaceful, and
then he lay down on his side, pulling his blanket up under his
arm.

Sleep would not come. Too many unanswered
questions lingered in his mind.

Who is she? And why do I feel like I’ve seen
her before? That I know her, somehow?

He remembered how she had stared up at him
from the sand, surprise and shock mingling with recognition in her
eyes.

And why do I feel that she knows me too?
Where did she come from? Why is she here? Is it a portent?

Jared rolled over onto his back and stared up
at the ceiling of the cave, watching shadow dance with light.

“I don’t believe in portents anyway,” he
muttered. “Portents are for fools.”

But he couldn’t brush away the feeling that
finding her in the desert was not an accident. She was meant to be
there, and he had been meant to find her.

Recognition.

It was a strange idea, really. He rolled the
concept over in his mind, considering how two people who had never
met, and—here he glanced over at her sleeping form—who weren’t even
from the same world, could have a memory of one another.

He rolled over again so that he was facing
the wall of the cave. He closed his eyes and told himself to sleep.
But sleep, like love, runs when forced, and he opened his eyes
again. Rolled onto his back. Laced his fingers behind his head and
stared upward.

A chill suddenly flashed through his veins.
He remembered now.

It came back to him in disjointed images that
flashed into his memory and left almost as quickly as they came.
The stone colonnade of the great house of Albadir, wavering, fading
into obscurity as something in his mind clouded his eyes. The
blazing contrail of a ship plummeting through the atmosphere. A
woman lying in the sand, blood caking her head and her left arm.
The arc of the sun, the heat, the sand. The woman, standing on top
of the sand dune, searching. The stone colonnade of the great house
of Albadir.

He sat up with a sharp gasp. His hands
trembled as he rubbed them over his face and then through his dark
hair. Those disconnected images had been enough for him to equip
himself for the journey into the western desert, bringing supplies
for two. He glanced over at her. She was still sleeping, but on her
side now, and anguish had formed a faint knot between her
eyebrows.

Suddenly her hand tightened convulsively into
a fist, and tears slipped from underneath her lashes. Her lips
moved as though she was speaking, but no sound came from them. Then
her face was quiet again. Peace smoothed the furrows from her
forehead and dried her tears, and she slept on.

Jared sighed and rolled over, closing his
eyes. There would be time for questions and answers soon enough,
but the time for sleep was almost gone.

His eyes snapped open some hours later. The
torches had guttered out, but the cave wasn’t totally dark. It was
morning.

Jared got to his feet and opened the door of
the cave. The violent night winds had stilled into a gentle
breathing, and the eastern horizon trembled with light. To the
west, the last of the night stars were ending their dance, drowning
in the glow that was spreading across the sky. He inhaled deeply as
the dawn breeze stirred his hair, and then he turned back to wake
Sahara.

To his surprise, she was already up, sitting
with her back against the wall and her knees drawn up under her
chin.

“How long have you been awake?” he asked.

Sahara shrugged.

“Do you feel better?”

She shrugged again. Jared arched an eyebrow
but said nothing more. He drew a cupful of water from the jar and
drank it down in one draught and then drew some for Sahara.

“Here,” he said.

She moved stiffly, wincing when she put
weight on her right foot, and reseated herself near the copper fire
bowl. She took the water and Jared watched with amusement as she
tried not to drink as greedily as she obviously wanted to.

“We have some distance to go today before we
get to the city,” he added, “so the sooner we begin the less we’ll
suffer the heat of the day. Are you hungry?”

She drank down the rest of the water,
watching him over the rim of the cup. When she finished, she said,
“No.”

“You should eat something anyway,” he told
her. “You walked a long way yesterday with nothing to eat.” He took
a piece of flatbread from one of the baskets and placed a handful
of dried fruits, some nuts, and a long strip of dried meat on it.
“It’s not much, but it will sustain you until we get to where we’re
going.”

She took the food mutely. Jared heaped up a
trencher of his own and sat across from her, watching her examine
what he’d offered her. She gingerly put one of the dried fruits in
her mouth, but when her teeth closed on it her expression
changed.

Jared grinned to himself. He remembered the
first time he’d tasted them himself. He’d expected them to be sour,
the way they were shriveled up. But they were spicy-sweet and still
juicy.

The taste of the dried fruit seemed to waken
her ravenous hunger, and she greedily shoved an entire handful into
her mouth. She barely finished chewing them before she started
gnawing on the dried meat.

Jared grinned. “So you were hungry after
all.”

Sahara glanced up at him, her cheeks bulging
with meat and bread, and there was a smoldering in the depths of
her eyes. Jared shook his head and swallowed his laughter with a
draught of water.

They were ready to leave the cave within the
half-hour. By the time they stepped out into the desert, the sun
had just risen above the horizon and the sands glowed like molten
gold.

Jared set an easy pace, following the rim of
the foothills into the rising sun, but they hadn’t gone far before
Sahara began to lag behind. He glanced back once to see her
limping, but as soon as she saw him watching her, she straightened
up and glowered at him. He shrugged and kept the pace for a few
more minutes, until he heard her stop. He turned around and saw her
sitting on the sand.

“We haven’t gone far enough for a rest yet,”
he said, jogging easily back to her side. “We’ve got to get to the
next ring of foothills first.”

She glared up at him, her face smeared with
tears and sand. “I can’t,” she said, her chest heaving. “I can’t
walk.”

Jared crouched and took her ankle gently in
his hands. It was badly swollen and the outer tendons were black
and blue.

“You did this yesterday?” he asked.

She nodded.

Jared took her arm gently and tore the sleeve
from her shirt, using the strip of cloth to bind her ankle. “It’s
all right, you know,” he said, with a gentle smile. “You can’t help
it that you’re hurt.”

She scowled at him. “Is it done?” she asked,
jerking her head toward her bandaged foot.

“It’s done. Let’s go.” He helped her up and
they set off again.

He had to imagine that it was a torturous
journey for Sahara. He knew the herbs he’d given her to reduce her
fever would soon wear off, and that field dressing wouldn’t do much
to ease the pain in her ankle. As the heat of the desert sand began
to shimmer with heat, he was sure that the flimsy sandals he’d
given her wouldn’t do much to protect her feet.

And yet, she never said a word.

He glanced back at her once or twice, but
every time, her frown only deepened, and he figured that she’d tell
him if things got bad enough. He hoped she’d tell him.