They had sent a dozen Shantasi east immediately after O’Gan had made his decision. Their army was spread across the desert between here and Hess, and they were to initiate a chain reaction of orders all the way back to the Mystic City. O’Gan expected the bulk of the army to be with them within half a day, and then he said they would head southwest toward Kang Kang.
“I see no horses,” Lucien said. “No transport. That desert creature we rode on was fast, but will there be enough to carry four thousand Shantasi?”
“O’Gan said they would move quickly enough,” Kosar said. He had drawn his sword and touched the blade to his fingertips, smearing blood across the metal and leaving it to dry to a crust.
“I could heal those,” Lucien said.
Kosar looked at him. “You told me that before.”
“I meant it.”
Kosar touched the sword again and watched a bubble of blood run down to the handle. “I like myself as I am,” the thief said.
“The offer remains open.”
“The offer isclosed!” Kosar stood and walked away, sheathing his sword and approaching the Mystic.
I killed his love, Lucien thought, trying to remember that fight in the woods around the machines’ graveyard. The rage had been fully upon him then, and he could not recall much of the Shantasi other than her ferocity. He’d had an idea that she had fought Red Monks before, and the fact that she was still alive to take him on had inspired an element of respect for her. But respect was weakness, and Lucien had triumphed. And from that moment on, his and Kosar’s paths had been destined to cross.
He finished dressing his wounds, rested his arms on crossed legs and stared out across the desert.
THE BIG THIEF approached, walking awkwardly and holding his arm across his ribs. Behind him the Red Monk sat staring into the desert, hood hiding his grotesquely scarred face.
O’Gan feared the journey and fight to come. They had their means to reach Kang Kang, and they had their weapons and training, but everything else O’Gan was hoping for to help them in the battle…well, they might no longer be available. These were desert things that craved the sun.
“What are you gathering?” Kosar the thief asked.
“What do you think?” O’Gan recognized a naive intelligence in the man’s eyes; they held experience, but his manner also displayed an ignorance of many things. Someone out for his own gain, not interested in information and learning. Before all this, at least. Now, seeing the wounds he bore and the hatred he still harbored for the Monk with whom he had ridden across the desert, O’Gan knew that Kosar was much changed. He wondered whether the thief even realized that he was a new man.
“Pace beetles,” Kosar said. “Just another drug.” He sounded disappointed.
“A’Meer didn’t tell you everything,” O’Gan said. “It’s no drug. The beetles live a different time from our own. It’s…complicated.”
Kosar raised his eyebrows. “I may not understand, but I’m ready to believe.”
O’Gan nodded and smiled. “They age a hundred years in their lifetime, yet they exist in our world for only a few months. Things arefaster for them. By eating them, we borrow their time.”
Kosar nodded, frowning. “And age faster in the process. We killed the thing we rode in on.”
O’Gan nodded. “We can’t use it too much. It hurts.”
“Have you just told me a Shantasi secret?” the thief asked.
O’Gan stood, jumped from the rock and landed softly beside Kosar. He rested his hand on the man’s shoulder and squeezed slightly, and he was pleased when Kosar smiled. He’s glad I believe him, the Mystic thought. Glad I’m ready to help. He sacrificed so much to get here.
“I think,” O’Gan said, nodding toward the Red Monk, “that our secret is already out.”
“He said he read lots of books in the Monastery,” Kosar said. “I think he was fooling with me.”
“The whole history of the land is written in books, somewhere,” O’Gan said. “Most of them will never be found, most have never been read. But they’ve all been written.”
“Who’s writing this one?”
“You, thief. Me. All of us.”
Kosar nodded. “And to talk of the end?”
“The land is full of seers and prophets, visionaries and those who purport to know the future. But every next breath is the future. Every blink of your eyes marks your progress from one moment to the next, and you never know what you’re going to see when they next open.”
Kosar blinked. “You,” he said. “The desert. The dying spice farms. I knew they’d be there.”
“Youtrusted them to be there. But you never know for sure.” O’Gan picked up a handful of sand and let it slip between his fingers, holding out his other hand beneath to catch it. Some grains he caught, others fell back to the ground. “You trust this sand to fall, but one day it may rise.”
“I saw a river flowing uphill,” Kosar said. “It turned and wiped out a whole village.”
O’Gan nodded, dropped the remaining sand. “Between one blink and the next, the world will change.”
Kosar sighed and sat down. He held his head in his hands, elbows resting on his knees, and groaned as his soft rocking motion aggravated his broken ribs. “I’m just a Mage-shitting thief! I don’t need to be here. I don’t deserve it.”
“Does he?” O’Gan said, nodding at Lucien.
Kosar did not even look. “He calls himself a human.”
O’Gan blinked several times in surprise, and each time he looked again, the Monk was still there. “Has he seen what we saw?”
“The mimics? I’m not sure. I don’t care.”
“Without him, would you be sitting here now?”
Kosar continued rocking, looking down at the ground between his knees and groaning each time his wounded ribs shifted. It was almost as if he was welcoming the pain. O’Gan felt sorry for him. “No,” Kosar said. “Without him I’d have been dead twice over. He rescued me from a band of Breakers. Then he took on a sand demon, and-”
“The Monk fought a serpenthal?”
“If that’s a sand demon, yes. Weird. Lots of parts. He said it spans, whatever that means.”
O’Gan’s stomach felt heavy, and his throat suddenly tasted of bile. He stared at the Monk and the Monk looked away, drawing shapes in the dust with one long finger.
“They’re deadly,” O’Gan said. “They live deep in the desert. Prey on desert animals, or lone travelers and small bands of traders.”
“Don’t they prey on you?” Kosar asked, looking up.
O’Gan shook his head. “Most Shantasi know better than to go into the deep desert alone.”
“Well, we met this one almost before the desert began, back to the west. Lucien killed it. Took some time, and he got hurt, but he cut it to pieces.”
“Theyare pieces.”
“Smaller pieces, then. So yes, he’s saved my life, but I don’t like that any more than you.”
“If you hadn’t reached us, I would still be sitting in the desert with the remains of an army,” O’Gan said. “Waiting for a sign. Waiting for hope to present itself.”
“So you believe me?” Kosar said. “Even though I have these brands, and I travel with a Monk, you truly believe me?”
“You’re a thief, but that doesn’t make you a liar. And we both saw A’Meer.”
“We saw mimics imitating her death,” Kosar said. “They could have their own end in mind.”
“I’m sure they do. They’re as unlike us as a shade to a sand rat.”
Kosar went to stand, cried out in pain and accepted O’Gan’s helping hand.
“I can give you something for the pain,” O’Gan said.
“More drugs?”
“Medicine. It’ll not heal you, that’s for your body to do. But it will dull the aches.”
“I’ve got too many pains to dull,” Kosar said.
O’Gan smiled sadly and squeezed the big man’s arm. “The physical pain,” he said. “Any other is, I’m afraid, beyond my control.”
Kosar nodded. “So,” he said, “when your army arrives, how does it travel?”
“We have our ways and means,” O’Gan said. Kosar frowned and looked at the ground. He’s heard that phrase before, the Mystic thought. Ways and means.
Kosar grunted. “I only hope we’re not too late.”