Excerpt: Red Sand

Chapter Six:
Ajer watched the girl squirm and only felt the smallest pang of regret for her discomfort. She had been mostly silent after Ajer had called her down, but it was clear from the inwardly focused glint in her round dark eyes that she was preoccupied and worried. When Ajer had sent her off to collect burn stuffs, animal dung and dried vegetation, she almost looked relieved, merely nodding at the vaguely heavy-handed command. Just after Bider and Ajer had taken the horses to the water troughs, working within their small budget to see that the horses were properly watered, giving them not even half of their want so as not to make them sick.

“She looked positively green when I told her I’d given her name to the Warden,” said Bider, standing off to the side of the watering trough. “I don’t think she was expecting us to exactly remember what she said.”

“Or she’d forgotten herself,” replied Ajer, running a hand over his horses neck. The animal kept it’s head down though, feet a little restless in the dust. “Not surprising that she might have other matters on her mind.”

“Strange girl,” Bider said, shaking his head. “Running away like that. What parent thinks their child to do the same? She must have been mightily unhappy.”

“Or mightily restless, wanting a different kind of life. It’s understandable.”

“Oh yes,” agreed Bider, scratching his wobbly chin. “To become a Water-Warden like her mother would have meant she was forever tied to that village. And she doesn’t really seem the sort to find any contentment in such a life.”

“So maybe we have done her a favor?” Ajer ventured with a rare smile. He nudged his friend. “Remember that tonight when we have to give double coin to fill her bowl.”

“Double coin?” Bider shook his head. “Your double coin, boy. Not mine.”

“We’ll half the cost and call it fair,” replied Ajer easily enough. “Think of it as a gift to Sop’ret for his complicated generosity.”

“You call it generosity,” grumbled Bider, picking at his sleeve. “I call it a keening burden, that’s what.”

“Before you called it the strange will of the gods.”

“Ah, well yes,” dodged Bider with a self-deprecating smile. “The gods are unknowable.”

“What does that mean?” asked Phet, and Ajer spun around, surprised to find her so close at hand. He frowned, wondering how much of the conversation she had heard.

“It means,” said Bider smoothly, “we cannot know the gods. They are mystery and hidden things and all kinds of secrets it is better not to ask after. We are less. We cannot comprehend. We cannot know.”

“Oh,” Phet nodded. She sounded let down, and the way her eyes traced the ground meant something, Ajer could feel it in his stomach but he didn’t know what. What a strange girl indeed. “It’s just that,” she added after a moment, looking up, “sometimes I think I know Sop’ret. I feel his will, what he desires of me. For me. I don’t know, it’s strange…”

“Yes, that is rather odd,” agreed Bider, watching the girl closely. “But an intimate impression of the god’s will is a mark of a Seal-Child. It is said that a child can better understand the complicated desire of the gods because children are not so much slaves to logic, which interferes with faith; that’s why when we’re confirming a Seal-Child we seek evidence of a connection between child and god.” This last was said with Bider’s sallow eyes pinned on Ajer’s face.

“I claim no connection like that,” said Phet, kicking at the dust. “I just know what I know…”

“And is it that you know, exactly?” Ajer asked, head cocked. Phet looked up him, her freckled face catching the sun so that it lay warmly along her small red mouth, the deep wide set of her eyes, the soft shadow of her lashes.

“I know that Sop’ret heard me and brought me a solution, the only right solution.”

“And the solution was…”

“You,” she said, shifting her chin up. “You and Priest Bider and this journey of yours. Of ours…”

“Ah,” Ajer said after a long moment. He licked his lips, turned his head ever so slightly. He wanted to know Bider’s expression, to gauge his reaction but Phet’s dark eyes held him fast and he could not look away. And then Bider cleared his throat and Phet flinched and the thing was broken, releasing Ajer with a relieved strained breath and a watering gaze.

“Come with me, Phet,” said Bider. “Let’s see what all you collected for our fire tonight.” He motioned Phet along, sparing not a look for Ajer who still stood rooted to the ground. Next to him, Ahm tossed her fine red head, her tail swishing at the natty little flies that buzzed in the air.

“How long will we stay?” asked Phet as she walked away, tucked safe into the shadow Bider caste.

“At least until tomorrow morning,” was the reply and Ajer could hear the lenient smile in the reply. Had Bider not used the same voice with Ajer when he was younger, placating and indulging and humoring without the tiniest touch of commendation? That was Bider’s gift, his ability to indulge those around him without lending to a pretentious outcome. Generosity, good company and a sympathetic turn was in Bider’s god gifted nature, and all this sage guarded under an umbrella of strewed understanding. It was what made him a good priest, Ajer knew, and what had kept Bider safe from the snaking tendrils of corruption and favoritism that had, over too many years snuck into the Ahnt-Nir’ah priesthood.

Ajer had great respect for Bider. Now, watching the older man waddle along, a warm hand on Phet’s skinny shoulder, Ajer had to wonder if Bider, his long time friend and superior in the worship-house, would support Ajer in what he planned to do, once returned to the self same place. Would Bider, whose faith was so much the same as his practicality, indulge Ajer in his…scheme? Would he support Ajer in using the desert girl in that scheme? For where Bider and the child might take her presence as something of a god-sighted happenstance, Ajer saw it as an opportunity. A key opportunity he’d been watching for, without even realizing it. Sometimes things aligned just so, and Ajer would not credit the gods with circumstances that he knew would have been laid anyway, their interference as unseen to Ajer as the bed in which the sun put itself to rest at the end of a day.

No, this whole strangeness with the girl would have happened either way. The only thing that changed the climate of circumstances was that Ajer had sighted a chance, a terrible and precious chance. And he was going take it and Phet was going to help him…


He looked different, clean. Phet stared at Priest Ajer from under her lashes. He sat close to the Warden of the oasis on the other side of their campfire. The Warden had come, just as dusk was falling, with much cheer, bringing the promised and coined food himself, long wooden bowls filled with hanks of roasted rabbit, reisca paste and brother with greens. All this swam together in a glorious greasy mess and Phet could hardly contain herself when she was handed her bowl.

There were also little wooden stools and camel dumpings for the fire, a fermented and smelling flagon of wine, toothy grins and much gesturing. The Warden was a man given to sharp outbursts of laughter and mockery and he liked best to grin at his guests dug with little grace, into their meals. Phet was content to sit quiet and unnoticed as she polished off her meal with her hands, licking grease and reisca from between her fingers.

Phet and Ajer sat on eitherside of the Warden on the proferred stools and passed the wine flagon back and forth. Phet had noticed that Priest Ajer was hesitant to drink the stuff, wincing when he’d first taken a swallow and then after only allowing himself the smallest sips, so that by the time Phet had finished her meal, having double checked the bones in her bowl to make sure she missed not bits of meat and muscle, it was First Priest and the Warden who were the most red faced with wine and laughter and firelight.

Phet watched the men with more curiosity than alarm, though she could feel from time to time Ajer’s dark gray eyes – seemingly all the more slate colored and wet looking in the firelight –watching her, measuring her. Phet maintained her silence though, even when the conversation turned to the shortened rains of late and Ajer mentioned casually that Phet was from a village much affected by the shortage of water. Phet had only nodded in reply and the conversation moved on, as she knew it would.

Thus being left nearly alone on the far side of the hotly boisterous fire, Phet was free to watch who she wanted and it was Ajer who kept drawing her attention back, time and again. At some point in the afternoon he’d secured himself a whole bucket of water (Phet shuddered to think of the cost) with which to bath, and the Warden, the same dark wrinkled man Phet had sighted upon first arrival, had arranged for give over the waste water for the Warden’s garden. Where exactly Ajer had bath Phet didn’t know, for Bider had kept her busy cleaning out the space under the lean-to and picking their campsite clean of rocks and other debris. There was also the horses to care for, to feed yet again and water and brush down and so on. Phet had been mightily sore, her backside aching, her bruises developing and the thud in her skull so loud Phet could practically count the rhythm of her heartbeat with it.

It was relief then, to sit on her stool, her belly cramping around so much food, her headache eased and watch, as if hearing a story told to her by her mama, the men around the campfire talk and laugh and murmur at each other. And in all that was Ajer, his mouth no longer stained red, his eyes free of the black smudge of charcoal, his hair a measure cleaner and brushed and glistening. His narrow feature caught the shadows, his shoulders looking a bit broader as he sat relaxed, his mouth not so thin when he wasn’t frowning.

He wore his dirty blue priest robes with a little more pride and for the first time Phet caught site of his holy-torc, a thin band of metal, strands interwoven with each other and etched with Ahnt-Nir’ah symbols of power and wisdom, around his neck. Before the priest had been wrapped in so many layers of robe and turban clothe and shawl that Phet couldn’t even glimpse his neck. Now it was bare, the turban and shawl gone and the collar of the robe unbuttoned and loose. He had pale sun burnt skin, and the line of his throat was very fine indeed.

Phet felt herself drifting. It was pleasant and in her drowsy way she continued to monitor the conversation, the ebb and swell of voices. Here, the Warden. “The pass is good this time of year. No rain to make the way muddy and the sun’s not so hot to blind your animals.” And then there, Bider: “How many people to do you through in the third season?”

Phet suppressed a yawn and blinked, hoping to stay awake.

“Oh, enough coin to keep in comfort,” shrugged the Warden, his small wrinkled face a mirror of humility. “The gods are good and generous indeed though, to have sent priests from Wyne.”

“Yes, well. After the dust storm we weren’t sure we’d make it,” came Ajer’s voice and Phet forced her drooping eyes open. She sat with her chin set in her hand, one leg crossed over the other and her bowl cradled in her lap. Her vision blurred a little, and then cleared to reveal Priest Ajer staring pensively at the fire. “I had forgotten the ferocity of such things…”

“Forgot?” asked the Warden loudly, sitting back on his stool, his robe pooling between his legs. “Then you’re desert familiar, are you?”

“I left when I was stripling,” replied Ajer. Phet felt her eyes closed again and this time she left them remain close, instead absorbing the sound of Ajer’s low soft voice. “It was a long time ago and long forgotten since.”

“Ah, forgotten but perhaps not,” came the Warden’s gravely reply. He had a voice like pocket marked rocks rubbing up against each other and Phet wondered if he’d given her any notice at all, since they were after all related. She wondered if the Warden would bother in trying to contact her mother about Phet’s sudden appearance at his oasis. Her stomach rolled unhappily at this idea and she sleepily debated the wisdom of perhaps asking the man to keep quiet.

“But tell me,” said the Warden, interrupting Phet’s meandering thoughts. “If you came from Wyne and ended up in the Pans – Majia’s village is right on the rim of the Pans, mind you – then you must have already crossed the mountains once. Don’t tell me you did that in the storm?”

“Well see,” said Bider hesitantly but the Warden broke in, adding in a speculative voice, “If you were destinationing for Bireth and come from Wyne, well there’s no need to cross the mountains at all, yet here you are on the wrong side. Strange, that is.”

“Yes, it is strange,” replied Ajer as Phet felt herself slip deeper into a doze. “I hadn’t thought of that before now, but so right… Bider, how we end up on the opposite of the range?”

“I can only think we made a crossing in the storm. It hardly seems right but we were traveling right until it came and then we were completely lost afterwards. And we traveled through the night you know, I didn’t dare think we could stop in such winds.”

“Yes, I remember the dark,” said Ajer. Phet’s hand slipped and her head dropped and she jerked awake with a snort. Ajer turned a little to look at her, Bider too and so Phet gave them a lopside smile.

“Best put the girl to bed, good Priests,” said the Warden, standing with a stretch. “And I expect you’ll be wanting to push off in the morning? Well and I’ll make sure feed’s made ready for your beasts, hm?”

“Hm, yes. That’s fine,” agreed Ajer and then there was much movement. Phet felt, more than saw, things gathered up, her bowl taken from her lap, the fire banked and night greetings given and taken by the priests and the oasis Warden. Somewhere off in the camp a camel groaned and a night bird called and Ajer said something soft to Bider that Phet didn’t catch.

And in all that she was pulled up from her stool and hastened to her sleeping mat and covered with her desert cloth all without much notice or fuss. She was asleep before she realized she was laying down, and exhaustion and relief pulled Phet deeply down.


It was the first night since the sand storm that Ajer had felt at all relaxed, so he was content to return to the fire with Bider once they’d settled the girl and bid the Warden a good night. Neither man were much for talking, but the Warden had kindly left behind his nearly rancid flagon of wine, and that Ajer passed to Bider, and took from Bider when he passed it back.

The fire had burned down to hot coals, the stones lining the fire pit were warm enough that Ajer could rest his feet against them and feel the soles of his sandals warming. He felt looser in body and limb, the sponge bath doing as much to restore his good humor as a proper (well, vaguely proper) meal had coupled with the knowledge that he had a safe place to rest his head.

He felt calm, drifting, much like the thin gray smoke caste off by the dying fire. He took a deep breath, catching the scent of burnt dung and sand and palm trees. His blood hummed warmly, throat a little raw from the wine but belly glowing and content with it. And while he was tired –exhausted and ragged with want for true rest – he wasn’t ready for sleep just yet.

“Bider,” he asked a little drunk, “how is it we crossed those hills in the storm and never noticed?”

“I was too busy keeping my head down, boy,” Bider replied with a lax shrug. “I trusted the horses could sort it out. I just sort of…”

“Clung on for dear life and prayed that when the wind stopped you still had flesh on your bones?”

Bider laughed, one of his wonderful round full belly laughs, the kind that was comforting as it was contagious. Ajer felt himself smile and then he was chuckling, the wine sweet and temperate under his skin.

Bider grinned all the more to see Ajer laughing and the hilarity was pleasant, a good change from the worried tension, the construed opinions and uncertain course. The laughter bloomed, bloomed and then burst, leaving both priest dizzy and buzzed and tired.

“Well, however it happened,” said Bider after a long comfortable moment silence, “I think it would good we ended up where we did. Certainly a god-handed path.”

“You mean because of the girl?” Ajer asked, leaning back on his elbows. While the Warden had taken back his little wooden stools, Ajer somehow didn’t mind sitting in the dirt again. Maybe it was only because his robes were already filthy beyond reckoning; perhaps it was simply that Ajer was beginning to become more comfortable in a rustic setting. Either way he was feel quiet unperturbed at the present, with the night at his back and the fire at his feet. It wasn’t a bad place to be, all things considered.

“Yes, because of the girl,” replied Bider, drawing Ajer back to the conversation. “It would certainly seem that she needed a little rescuing.”

“As did we,” Ajer agreed. “And she rescued us first, if you think about it. Surely we have an obligation to her on that account if no other.”

“Interesting that you make that point again,” said Bider, leaning forward once more. “You seem very certain that we owe this child such a gratitude that if justifies taking her with us all the way to Wyne. Never mind that she bullied us, Ajer. She did, in among all that water grace. At the heart of it, she very nearly dared us to take her along, and no amount of bleating about the god’s will and her little prayers has made me forget that. Have you?”

“Does it matter?” Ajer asked, tucking one ankle over the other. He eyed the wine flagon, now empty and set side. “Dared, cajoled, manipulated… The thing of it is that she’s with us now, and we must decide what to do with her now.”

“And sending her back to her mother is not an option?” Bider asked softly. Ajer’s head snapped up in surprise and he forgot his eased position, instead sitting straight up.

“You want to send her back?” he asked, surprised not just at Bider’s proposition but at the strange hollow way his conscious squeezed unhappily at the thought.

“It would be the practical thing to do, Ajer,” replied his companion with a softening expression. “I realize you’ve some sort of kindredness for the chit, but you’ve not thought on the long of what will happen to this girl, removed from her own and thrust into some other place she doesn’t exactly belong in.

“What happens, seriously, when we reach Bireth and very important merchant man and child realize we’ve got yet another whelp with us? One of no account and no prominence? And when we arrive – may be the gods be so merciful – at the holy halls of Wyne-House, what then? You have her confirmed as a Seal-Child? With what evidence? Her word that a prayer was answered?”

“There is more evidence than that,” snapped Ajer, pulling his knees up to his chest. He settled his arms on top of them and eyed Bider narrowly. “What about this afternoon? What about when she said she thought she understood Sop’ret’s guiding hand? Even you were hard put to brush that off as a devotee’s typical fanatics.”

“Yes, but—”

“Who is to say that a serious Confirmation wouldn’t turn up more evidence, hm? Evidence that this nothing child of a nothing village truly has a kindred connection to the Ahnt-Nir’ah, as all Seal-Children are supposed to have. What if,” Ajer went on, warming and earnest now, “she is god-sighted, Brother? What if she’s the one we’ve all been looking for, these many years gone. A God-Sighted Child, a Seal-Speaker…”

“Now Ajer, that is enough,” Bider said, suddenly and cleanly sober. He stared at Ajer in consternation and disquiet. Ajer didn’t blame him. Few dared to speak so hopefully of a Seal-Speaker, for truly not a single Ahnt-Nir’ah worship house had seen one in nearly a hundred years. A hundred years without a confirmed and named God-Sighted Child and the priesthood was feeling the lack, suffering for the lack. And not just the priesthood, but the people and the government as well, for a God-Sighted Child was the one to hold the Ahnt-Nir’ah Seal, the tool through which the ruler and the gods spoke, the last link between the two that could only be opened by a sincere God-Sighted Child. Without the ruler, one Hexmus Jerad at present, was left to the good advice and intentions of the Brotherhood for guidance.

But where the gods were intolerant of corruption, man was not, and a hundred years gone, and a hundred years more of greed and power and want behind that and the government and the priesthood were a far cry from the holy purpose of their calling. Nowadays Ajer felt like his Brotherhood was little more than a façade, a balancing game the priests played with the emperor and all his ilk, so that the status quo that had festered and bloom in the vacancy of a Seal-Speaker could yet be maintained.

Yet a true God-Sighted Child could change that, could change everything and Ajer longed for that change, felt it calling him in his blood, magnetizing his faith (or lack of it) and his purpose. Change was the lover Ajer desired the most, the thing which he’d only ever caught fevered desperate glances of but had been truly and irrevocably infected by. His zeal was no idle thing, to simmer low and deniable. Rather it burned him up, had him trapped in an eternal fire and while his flesh boiled and his mind seared and his faith evaporated bit by precious bit, Ajer had to try and maintain the careful appearance of his position. A very young Second Priest, tolerated and guided by a First Priest whose reputation had no account at all. Ajer was a body among many, answerable to another body among many. He, very much like Phet, was no one…

“Did you hear me?” Bider asked, tossing a pebble at the young man.

“What did you say?”

“I was telling you,” sighed Bider, much put upon and put off, “that it is fanciful, at best, to assume this child is God-Sighed and more over, certain parties will rankle at the very idea of a desert whelp being the one we so earnestly seek. She has no rank, no family, and no history and in current climate, all those things are as important to Confirmation as signs, omens and prayers.”

“Bider, you can’t mean that—”

“Of course I don’t agree, but that doesn’t change the fact others do,” said Bider patiently. “And you’ve a promise of future in the worship-house, Ajer. You’re intelligent and compassionate and careful, an excellent priest. You’re the youngest Second to come along in the last century. That’s momentum and peoples in power see that. You don’t really want to risk your chances for advancement…” This last was said as more a question, a plea than a statement and Ajer felt his face fall, his hands tremble just a little.

“None of that ever mattered to me,” he said, digging his heel into the dirt. The wind shifted and Ajer shifted with it, turning his face away from the smoke. “I only wanted to know that I did something that mattered, that…” Ajer trailed off. It was an old argument, one he mostly had with himself. He wanted to mark the world for better by being in it, but so often found himself disgusted with the people around him, the hypocrisy and farce. His disgust drained him, his need for change burned him and at the end of the day simple apathy was the easiest path. A path his life often forced him to take.

“I know,” Bider said without looking at Ajer. “Acclaim has never suited you, but improvement cannot be initiated if those in power will not listen to you. You must become someone who matters,” Bider add earnestly, now meeting Ajer tired eyes. “And you can boy, you’ve a real chance too.”

“But the girl—”

“Will likely as not be what you need. Find a different way, Ajer. This girl… She is earnest, but rustic and naïve. Even if you do insist on taking her to Wyne, I highly doubt she’ll last there.”

“I must ask,” Ajer said, chewing the inside of his lip, “if you’ll concede that whatever happens with Phet…to Phet, the final decision is mine.”

“Well the decision has certainly never been mine,” Bider replied, hands held up in a shrug. “But if you mean, will I contest your decision, you surely know that I will not.”

Ajer accepted this, silently and soberly and not soon afterwards both men parted for bed, Bider to the lean-to which he’d claimed earlier in the day and Ajer near the fire. The fire was well banked now, the coals having ashed over and the heat radiating slowly from the very center. Ajer refrained from stirring the embers more though; content to bed down next to the warm stones, his back pressed to the earth which was still warm from the sun, his face open to the cool night air. Above him was a lattice work of palm fronds and the spiny branches of the date tree’s. Above that was the inky night and it stretched on and on, reaching to places Ajer didn’t even dare dream about…

Later that night, when even the stirring of the animals in the pens has ceased and the wind was a dead as the dead hours that it occupied, Ajer suddenly came awake. He had rolled over onto his side, his face near the edge of the fire pit. His nose was filled with the scent of ash and earth and the priest held still, trying to pin point his reason for waking.

His body was stiff, the night chill having finally settled in his young bones. He tugged at the edge of his wrap, pulling it high along his shoulder. The silence of the camp was nearly absolute, but even so Ajer strained to catch a glimpse of something, he wasn’t sure what.

And then he heard it, a rustling sound, bare feet in the dirt and cloth moving against cloth. Slowly, gingerly, Ajer rolled onto his back and turned his head towards where Phet and Bider were sleeping. Ajer could still make out Bider’s form pocking out from his lean-to, but Phet’s sleeping mat was flat and empty.

Ajer sat up, head spinning some as he scanned the shadows for any trace of the girl. Perhaps she’d only gone to relieve herself, but still… He peered into the inkiness beyond the camp, where palms stood high and bent and scooped, their trunks like lines of blackest paint on a burnt gray background.

Then he saw her, at the edge of camp. She was on her knees, sitting in the dirt bent over something. Ajer made to move, thinking perhaps she was sick (too much food or the like) but then she moved again, bowing low, her forehead scraping the ground. After a moment she sat back up, silent, hands folded in her lap and Ajer pulled back in surprise. She was praying?

Unclenching his hands, Ajer decided not get up after all, and carefully laid back down, his body turned towards youthful Phet at the edge of camp, her absolutions company enough in the dark.

She bowed down one more time, stretching out in front of whatever it was she’d left in the dirt. She stayed prone for a breath, then another before finally rising to stand. She brushed off her knees and Ajer saw the distinctive rise and fall of her shoulders as she sighed, or yawned. Then she turned and walked softly back to her sleeping mat and that was that. Ajer sighed himself, and rolled over again, knowing he’d have to wait til tomorrow to see what it was Phet had left at the edge of camp.