Tathea Read online

  “Yes.”

  The man turned to Ta-Thea, looking at her closely. “Did you see anyone ride past here or stop? Did you give water to anyone? A groom or a woman dressed like one? Answer me truthfully, or I’ll cut your throat.” He ran a broad thumb across the blade of his knife meaningfully.

  Ta-Thea shook her head.

  “She saw no one,” the woman said coldly. “She was about her duties. She only came outside once, concerning the food.”

  The man on the other side of her shook her roughly. “Tell us again what you saw! What are you doing here, anyway? Why do you live here?”

  “I live here because I choose to,” she answered him. “I am a widow. I provide for travelers when they pass. My husband was a traveler on these routes. You are not desert men or you would understand.”

  “Which way did the rider go?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Along the road towards the town, of course. There is nowhere else to go, unless you know the secret trade routes and how to find the hidden oases. Otherwise you could die in the heat.”

  He pushed her, and she stumbled against the table; then he swung round and left the hut, followed by the others.

  The woman looked at Ta-Thea and held a finger to her lips, commanding silence until the men had been gone several minutes.

  “There are your clothes. Go and wash them in the pool,” she said at last.

  Ta-Thea understood. The men might well not have believed the woman’s tale. One or more might remain.

  Slowly, with an aching body and a numb mind, she washed her clothes and then worked steadily at simple, manual jobs in the small house. At noon the woman ministered to her, gently and in silence. She prepared some simple food of fruit, cheese, and bread for her, and water from the spring. Then, still without speaking, she poured oil and a sharp-smelling unguent into a shallow dish and anointed Ta-Thea’s blisters and abrasions and bound them in linen.

  “Now sleep,” she said gently. “I will wake you when it is dark. Your horse will be rested.” She smiled. “Fortunately you had rubbed it clean and walked it before those men came. They did not realize how hard it had been ridden. I told them it was mine, and they believed me. That is when I knew they were not desert men.” She looked at Ta-Thea. “How did an empress learn about beasts? Don’t you have a score of grooms to do such things for you?”

  “Five score,” Ta-Thea said blankly. “But my father was of the desert, and my mother of the sea. That is why I was chosen.” She did not add that her mother was from the Lost Lands, those shores beyond the Maelstrom to the south of the Island at the Edge of the World, where not even the bravest Shinabari mariner dared sail.

  “Sleep,” the woman repeated. “You will need your strength. Trust in tomorrow and the years of tomorrow.”

  Ta-Thea had thought she could never sleep again, but physical exhaustion covered over her like a drowning wave, deep as oblivion.

  When she awoke the fire of sunset colored the walls of the small room, and the suffocating heat of the day was already touched with a breath of the dusk wind. She stared around her, sitting up slowly. For a strange, calm moment she could not think where she was. She was used to silence. The palace walls were thick, and the servants wore soft shoes. But the close smell of mud brick and sand was different.

  Then she moved her legs and felt the ache of muscles, and it all came back in a suffocating sickness, a pain that took her breath away—the shouting, the blood, Habi’s small body curled over, limp and still warm. She bent her head and wept for him with terrible, rending sobs until she had no strength left.

  When the sunset was over and the desert sky was purple, the woman came in carrying a lamp and set it on the bench.

  “Now you must leave,” she said firmly. “I cannot come with you, but I can set you on the right path to find the sea by morning if you do not slow down.”

  Ta-Thea had not thought where she was going, only where she must leave. Her flight had been blind. There was no future, only the need to know. Why? Was there any purpose to her life? Her child was dead when he had barely realized the gift of being alive. The man who lay in the desert grave here in this oasis had wasted himself. Was all life as futile, a moment of consciousness between one oblivion and another?

  She could not believe it! There was too much passion and will in even the smallest of living things, too much caring. Surely someone she loved as much as Habi could not pass into nothingness. There had to be something more, something that lasted.

  A memory flashed across her mind, as vivid as if it had been real only a moment before: her mother sitting in the evening light with the wind coming in off the desert with this same bitter-clean tang she could smell now. Her mother had a piece of embroidery in her hand, but it was forgotten as she spoke of life and love and a sage she had heard of on the shores of the Lost Lands who was said to know the meaning and purpose of all things.

  Perhaps there was such a man and he could tell her what she needed to know. Perhaps he could answer the greatest question of all—why?

  Ta-Thea stood up. “Thank you,” she said. “I owe you my life. I cannot pay you for that, but ...”

  “No,” the woman said quickly, her curious face half ugly, half beautiful. “You owe me nothing.” A fleeting smile touched her mouth, unreadable in the lamplight. “My family has served the Isarch for years for little reward. My husband died for him, and Mon-Allat never knew his name. That I would do this for you has taken my bitterness from me. Perhaps you have given me my life as well. Here is a chart of the way to the sea. Follow the stars, as the desert ships do. If you are truly your father’s daughter, you will be there by sunrise.”

  Ta-Thea rode as the map directed, studying the sky rather than the ground. The woman’s face lingered in her mind. She had seemed full of peace as she had bidden farewell, as if the grief that had so torn her and bowed her spirit only a few hours before had been eased from her. The meaninglessness of the man’s life who now lay in the hasty grave had somehow been resolved in her compassion for a woman to whom she owed only servitude.

  Ta-Thea moved steadily north, disregarding the marked track and crossing the sand and shale, finding the way along gullies long dried out and up ridges and escarpments rather than around them. The moonlight painted the desert floor with pale brilliance, blackening the shadows.

  Towards dawn she saw a caravan moving slowly along the trail ahead of her, camels’ feet silent on the sand, lurching like tall ships, heads silhouetted against the paling stars. There was no sound but the wind stirring the sand and the tinkle of camel bells. They were following a known track from the inland cities towards the great seaport of Tarra-Ghum.

  Without thinking, Ta-Thea spurred her horse forward so she would reach the trail as they came level with her. She breasted the last shallow ridge and picked her way down the other side.

  The leader of the caravan held up his hand, and the score of camels behind him came to a halt. He turned towards her, his bearded face darkened by sun and wind till in the shadow it seemed ebony.

  She rode towards him and stopped. “I travel to the sea,” she said quietly. “May I journey with you?”

  “Why do you travel alone, woman?” he asked, not harshly, but he would not be denied an answer.

  “My husband is dead.” She found the words strange and hard to say. It was difficult to accept that the statement was true. She felt as if it must be a lie, an invention. “He was killed ... yesterday.”

  “Then why are you here and not at home mourning him?” he pressed.

  There was no evading an answer. The truth was best. “Because those who killed him would kill me also.”

  “Then ride with us,” he replied. “We shall protect you.” His answer was immediate and unequivocal, as was the way of the desert. With a jolt of familiarity and loss, it reminded her of her father.

  “Thank you.” She bowed her head in acknowledgment and moved to the rear to follow with the last camel.

  Within an hour they stopped
, just after dawn, to rest the beasts and to eat. As she was drinking, the leader came to her again. She could see his face more clearly now in the first light, hawklike, high-browed. He squatted beside her.

  “We travel to Tarra-Ghum,” he said so quietly she could barely catch his words. The others a dozen yards away could not have heard.

  “I know.”

  “You cannot come with us.” His voice was final.

  “Why not? I ask nothing of you but to journey behind.”

  He looked at her steadily, recognition in his eyes. “I will not give my men’s lives for you, Majesty. If we were found with you, we should all be forfeit. Eat with us. Take water. Then go your way.”

  She looked at him steadily. He might pity her; old loyalties might tug, but today she was not an empress, simply a liability he could not afford. If they were found with her it would be a sentence of death to those who had trusted him.

  So fleeting was the crown, the power, even the identity.

  She knew that what he said was true. There could be no argument. It would be futile and shaming to try.

  He looked at her in silence for several seconds, then turned and pointed to the horizon. “Follow the five ridges and you will come to the sea where you will find a small harbor. The mariners of the Lost Lands use it sometimes. They will not be afraid to take you. May your household gods guide you from yesterday to tomorrow.” And he rose and turned away, walking with easy strides across the sand without looking back, his pale tabard fluttering.

  She rode through the sunrise streaming azure and silver across the sky and smelled the salt in the wind. When she saw the shimmering blue of the sea, it was full daylight and the sun was already sharp and hot, stinging the bare skin of her face and so brilliant on the water it hurt her eyes to look.

  She found a Lost Lander ship and paid for her passage with Mon-Allat’s gold finger ring. It was the least recognizable of his jewels, a personal possession, not part of the royal regalia. The captain did not ask any questions. If he knew or guessed who she was, there was no shadow of it in his face. She told him her mother was a Lost Lander and that her husband was dead so she was returning to her people.

  They set sail on the afternoon tide and by dusk Shinabar was below the horizon. Ta-Thea stood on the gently heaving deck of the narrow barque with its single sail and was overwhelmed with an exhaustion of the soul so deep she could imagine no end to it. Her aching body and blistered feet were irrelevant. She was as lost as this tiny ship on the ocean, with no land and no stars in sight.

  On the second day, the numbness in her mind began to lift. Grief was a dull, constant pain within her, and anger was returning. Who had done this thing? Why? Who had caused this unbearable hurt?

  She stood on the forward deck, the salt wind pulling her hair, tightening her skin, and watched the ever changing surface of the water seething dark blue beneath her. Above, the blue cavern of the sky shimmered with light.

  The ocean was an immensity she had never seen before. There was an unimaginably savage strength to it. Never for an instant was it still. In other circumstances she would have been afraid. Now her heart was too full of rage and loss.

  Someone had let in the assassins. At night the great doors to the household were closed and locked; they had been ever since a jealous prince had attacked Dar-Somet II five hundred years ago. Who knew Mon-Allat’s habits well enough to catch him by surprise? He died without a cry. Could it have been someone he trusted? His mistress, Arimaspis? One of his body servants? Again the question—why?

  Fury filled Ta-Thea, but she was helpless. There was nothing she could do. She stared ahead, gripping the railing with white hands, waiting for the Maelstrom she knew lay somewhere beyond, a vortex in the ocean so terrible that no stranger ever tried to sail through it. It had kept the Lost Lands safe since the dawn of time, a place of mystery at the heart of old dreams and fables.

  On the twelfth day she felt a change in the air, a sudden drop in temperature, and she shivered in the sun. White crests curled on the waves, and spume whipped from the tops of them. There was a clean, bitter scent in the wind.

  “Is that the Maelstrom?” she asked, pointing to a thin veil of gray on the horizon.

  The man nearest her straightened up, narrowing his eyes against the light. “Aye, that’s it,” he agreed, shading his face with a gnarled hand scarred by rope burns. “Reckon we’ll be there by tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? Not tonight?”

  He smiled at the impatience in her voice. “It’ll come soon enough, missy. You’ll smell the fear of it tonight. You’ll feel the sharper pitch of the boat beneath you and the prickle of terror in the pit of your stomach. It’ll be naught but a cold whisper in the dark night, but you’ll know what it means, and you’ll be in no hurry then.”

  She did not answer. The sun dropped, and the sky burned a dull red, angry and brilliant like the embers of a fire. The mariners stood double watch, sails reefed tight. They told wilder jokes than before and laughed too quickly, stood with bodies tense, eyes always to the westward as the wind grew colder.

  At dawn Ta-Thea was on deck again while they reefed the sails still tighter and swung round into the wind. The ship strained and came alive, hitting the wave crests and plunging forward.

  The captain advised her to go below, where at least she would remain dry, but she declined. She would be lashed to the stanchions, as the crew were, and see the Maelstrom, not hide in a cabin to be tossed around, blind, bruised, and unknowing, as her soul had become.

  He told her it would be unlike anything she could imagine; he had no words to describe it. He could not see in her face that she already understood. They were closing on the Maelstrom and he had no more time to argue. He turned away to his duties.

  The mist grew heavier, clinging to her skin in droplets, catching in her throat. She was bound at the waist, as were the mariners, and tied with double ropes to the deck stanchions. Even the mast might be carried overboard. She had seen two extra spars below decks and wondered what they were for. Now she understood. A shiver of fear passed over her, but it was physical only. In her mind and heart she welcomed the violence of the elements; it matched the agony of spirit within her.

  They were heading into the veil of mist before them, the sun creating bright prisms of color on its face. The water became choppy, but underneath it was a strengthening current, carrying the boat forward with increasing speed.

  Ta-Thea could feel the power of the sea in the straining of the timbers beneath her, the tight canvas pulled to whipping, the high-pitched wail of the wind in the ropes. It was exhilarating. Her blood beat faster. She saw the men staring with wide, fixed eyes, their knuckles white where they clung to the rails.

  Minutes passed, and she became aware of a roar, deeper-throated than the wind or the hiss and crash of water. It was a vast background thunder growing steadily louder as they were drawn towards it. The waves became steeper, the white tops brilliant in shafts of light, sheer sides translucent.

  Then suddenly with a great kick the boat leaped and was caught in seething, swirling water. They were in the hollow of a howling tunnel as the ocean hurled itself from the depths in shining, pellucid towers of every shade of blue and green. It was the most beautiful and fearful thing Ta-Thea had ever seen. It was a primeval fury of nature, creation itself in the grasp of an unendurable passion. Light was caught glittering in dazzling mountains of glass, toppling, overbalancing, and spewing out sheets of smothering foam, blinding white. The noise was indescribable. It crashed and roared and screamed, obliterating every other sound.

  She was drenched to the skin. Her clothes were ripped by the almost living power of the water. She was stung raw and bruised. The wet ropes tore at her skin till her wrists bled. She gasped for breath between the deluging waves, her lungs bursting, fighting, thinking it would never end. But even the withering shock of the cold could not blind her to the Maelstrom’s awful beauty, nor could the fear of it make her look away.

  For
an hour that seemed like a lifetime they were sucked through the heart of the Maelstrom, then hurled out the far side into bright sunlight, terrified and exhausted. Only a sullen roar was audible behind them, like an unforgettable beat in the blood.

  The captain himself came to unlash Ta-Thea. His face was lined with weariness, his clothes were stuck to his skin, as were hers, frayed by the repeated drenching and battering of the sea.

  He met her fierce black eyes and saw pride in them, and also vulnerability, and perhaps he guessed the fear and the grief. He smiled and said nothing, but there was respect in his manner, and he untied the ropes gently.

  “Thank you,” she said simply, biting her lips against the pain.

  He nodded.

  She went below to her small cabin and dried herself. Then she crept into the bunk, pulled the rough blankets up to her neck and sank into a sleep as deep as the dark ocean floor.

  The piercing cry of seabirds woke her. It was late afternoon and the boat was barely moving. Ripples whispered against the hull. She sat up slowly, seeing the patterns of light on the walls through the thick glass porthole. Her body ached in every muscle. She was bruised, and her waist and her wrists were raw from the rubbing of wet ropes. Even the touch of cloth against them shot pain through her.

  She rose and dressed in the robe the woman at the oasis had given her and climbed up to the desk, her hands shaking as she gripped the rail of the ladder. She had reached the end of her journey, her mother’s land which she had heard of a hundred times in childhood tales but never seen. All the past, her own life and love in Shinabar, had been torn away as one pulls up and burns a weed, destroying the future. This was a bright link with the past. It was somewhere she might make a place for herself where she could belong.

  She stared around her. They were anchored in a small harbor amid ships of rich, dark colors, hulls of russet and chestnut wood, some dark as sable. The colors of the furled sails were as soft and hot as the desert sands at sundown: ochers and golds, burning browns, here and there daubs of vermilion.

  Beyond the blue water she saw the town of Orimiasse, built of stone, bleached or lime-washed white. Narrow streets sloped up the hill. There were flights of steps, arches covered in vines with bright purple flowers as thick as leaves, and across them from window to window fishing nets hung to dry. All around her was the smell of salt, the cry of gulls, and the shifting, moving reflection of sunlight on water.