“Can you spare them?”
“I can’t spare you. It’s worth it to do without them if it means you’ll do whatever it is your dreams want you to accomplish out there and then return to us quickly.”
“Very well,” she said. “Will you tell them, or shall I? I’d like to leave today.”
“I’ll tell them,” Welton said. He rose to his feet, drawing her up with him, and wrapped his arms around her in a tight embrace. “You be careful out there. This family needs you.”
“Not as much as it needs you,” she said. “I’ll take no unnecessary chances, and with Sellis and Koyt along, I should be as safe as if I were right here with you.”
Having procured her brother’s unwilling but necessary consent, she kissed his stubbled cheek and then roamed off to empty her own bladder, her staff chunking into the earth beside her as she walked unevenly up the slope of a low dune. She appreciated his concern for her, and his belief that the caravan needed her. She had spent most of her life believing she needed it, but the truth was for more than a year she had found herself hating the unceasing travel, the uncertainty of life and location, the fact that every beautiful view or delicious sip of water from an oasis or spring would be nothing but a memory in a day’s time.
Myrana wanted nothing more from life than to find someplace she could stay, somewhere to become rooted. She’d been born into he nomadic life, but did that mean she could never try any other?
She didn’t know if these dreams had anything to do with that goal—if at the end of whatever trail they sent her down, she would find her spot to stay in—but sticking with the caravan would only guarantee that she would never have it.
It wasn’t Myrana’s intention to desert her brother. She said she would try to return, and she meant it. But intentions were only that. Dreams or no dreams, no one knew what the day after tomorrow would bring.
Today, though, would be a busy one. She had to pack, had to say her goodbyes, and had to set off early enough to put some distance between herself and the caravan by nightfall. Sellis and Koyt were not family but they were loyal, and they would go where she led them, without complaint. They would die to keep her safe, if need be.
She honestly hoped it would not come to that. But since she didn’t know her destination, or what would be expected of her once she found it, she knew it was a possibility. They might all die.
That and the heat of the sun were two of the surest constants on all of Athas—on any day, anyone might die.
She hurried back to her tent, anxious to tell her sister and cousins before they heard the news from someone else. They would fuss, but they would not dissuade her. Myrana had made up her mind, and once she did that, as even Welton would admit, changing her course was no simple task.
She couldn’t help wondering where that course might take her this time.
VII
Into the Wastelands
They gathered at Sage’s Square, one of the few spots in the city with room for them all, and left through the Mekillot Gate. An expedition of such size couldn’t be kept a secret, and people had climbed the fifty-plus dense, blue-trunked agafari trees of Sage’s Square for a better view. Others lined the wide stone thoroughfare running from there to the gate to watch them go. Some cheered the procession, others shouted taunts or insults, though none knew the expedition’s purpose.
There were twelve argosies in the expedition, with four axles and many wheels, each of them pulled by a pair of mekillots. These armored wagons were largely empty at the journey’s start; people would ride inside them, and they carried water and supplies for the trip, but primarily they were meant to carry the metal from Akrankhot back to Nibenay. As the journey progressed, food and water would be consumed, making space for the return cargo.
Fifty goliath soldiers of Nibenay accompanied the argosies, along with an assortment of slaves, many of them muls, to do the hard work of lifting and loading. For now, the templar Kadya walked at the head of the expedition, although Aric suspected she would be riding within minutes of passing through the gate. He and Ruhm had chosen to leave the city inside a wagon. Although the expedition itself was common knowledge, being too large to hide, its goal was not, and Kadya had instructed them not to talk about it, even with friends. They had decided that staying out of sight would make it easier to avoid anyone who might want to ask questions.
Even so, they could hear the shouts of onlookers, and as they approached the gate, they shifted their shoulders and tapped their feet to the musicians playing from balconies suspended above it. Aric watched out a side window, better to watch the half-giant soldiers try to maintain their military bearing while swaying and strutting to the hypnotic melodies of the gate’s musicians.
The lumbering beasts, some thirty feet long, pulled the armored wagons at a steady, stately pace. People could have walked faster, but the strength of the animals would be needed to haul the steel back to the city. Aric tried to prepare himself for a long, uncomfortable journey.
Ruhm stayed in his seat, swaying gently with the rocking motion of the wagon. In front, beneath the seats occupied by the drivers, was space for storage. The main section had rows of sturdy wooden benches, with legroom between—although not much, considering most of the soldiers on the trip were half-giants. Because there were so many argosies and so few riders, some of them were filled stem to stern with supplies. “Will it be like this all the way?” Aric asked. He rocked back and forth, exaggerating the effect. “I think I’ll get sick if it is.”
“Oh, no,” Ruhm assured him. “It’ll be far bumpier out there, once we’re off the cobbled roads of Nibenay and the caravan road beyond the gate.”
“You’re joking!”
“You can walk any time,” Ruhm reminded him. He had traveled more than Aric, to Raam and Draj and even Gulg once. “Just don’t get too far ahead or stray into wilderness. Nibenay only sent one of you. What will the rest of us do, we can’t find metal under the city?”
“I definitely will walk as much as I can,” Aric said. “Better than being stuck in here.” He sniffed the air. “It already smells bad in here, worse than my rooms in Nibenay.”
“Worse when ten or fifteen soldiers in here trying to stay out of the sun. Stifling hot in these. Outside at least some hope of a breeze.”
“This is going to be a long trip, isn’t it?”
“Always are.”
Aric kept shifting from his seat to the window to watch their progress. Once through the gate, they passed between four giant statues of Nibenay, collectively called the Omnipotent Receivers. Each was sculpted in a different style, and from Aric’s recent experience meeting the Shadow King he knew the representations of him were more than a little idealized. Beyond those statues, the road sliced through the sparse farmlands of the sorcerer-king, then fields of sandgrass interrupted at irregular intervals by small tenant farms and clutches of adobe buildings.
Sure enough, within the first hour of travel, Aric had had enough of the stuffy air inside the argosy, which windows on the sides and the opening in front used by the mekillot drivers barely alleviated. He and Ruhm got out and walked alongside the wagons, enjoying the slight breezes and the changing scenery. Soldiers cursed and complained, slaves hiked on in stoic silence, occasionally breaking out into song but stopping when their overseers grumbled.
The caravan road they traveled would take them through the Blackspine Pass, between the Windbreak Mountains that shielded Nibenay from the worst of the northern winds, and the Blackspine Mountains. If they stayed on it, they would end up in Raam, but they had been told that they’d veer off the road long before that, and journey overland to Akrankhot.