[predic]tive models estimate that complete containment may be achieved within twenty-six days if there are no significant changes in scenario or deployment. Local populations are accepting the official explanation without significant unrest. Evacuation of the unaffected areas can be accomplished on a shorter timescale if increased air transport is allocated to rural locations. Major roadways remain impassible. Transport of potentially compromised individuals was impa[cted]

Unattributed fragment, early Aejha script on unknown material. Not handwritten. Royal archives, Ce Raedhil.

The sun had yet to rise, although the brightening sky promised that its scorching wrath was not far off. The world was painted in a gradient of blues and blacks with light pink accents barely creeping over the far edge of the sky. Tesvaji Ma Meguzha stood with his back to the sunrise, alone.

In front of him stood at least fifty men of the Aedrem, glowering silently across a bare stretch of ground that separated them from the Madi of Ademen Tacen.

“Tesvaji Ma,” a voice called out. “You look so lonely, standing there by yourself. Did you not bring any others to meet us?”

“Mosidhu Ma,” Tesvaji replied, his voice low and steady. “Do I have need of them?”

Mosidhu’s mouth stretched wide into a rictus grin, although there was no amusement there. He was tall and powerfully built with dark hair shorn close to his scalp and a prominent chin. His armor was hardened leather over his desert clothes, and in the center of his chestpiece gleamed a disc of metal wrought with countless lines of twisting script.

“You know why I’m here, Tesvaji!”, he screamed, his voice suddenly wild with rage. “My son! My son is dead, and his killer is here!” His words echoed from the desert around them, fading into the morning stillness. “So bring out your people,” he continued, his voice silky calm and mocking once more. “Unless you are here to confess and die.”

Tesvaji inclined his head towards the Aedrem, then whistled sharply. Behind him figures straightened up to reveal themselves from the twilight shadows of scrub and rocks. They walked forward to stand beside their Madi, although when the last had arrived they numbered less than half the count of the Aedrem facing them.

Gusje stood to one side of her father, her brother Mevi glaring angrily across the sand from the other. She saw Mosidhu’s eyes roving across the group, pausing when they landed on her. “Tesvaji Ma,” he said in mock surprise. “Don’t say that this girl is your daughter. I will not believe it! She is too beautiful. You have a face like the bottom of my sandal.” He leered at her as his men laughed, his eyes raking across her body. She stared back at him, willing herself not to shake. She remembered the other Aedrem looking at her the same way, remembered their hands roughly grabbing her body. She focused on her father standing beside her instead, solid as a pillar of rock. He did not react, except to slightly tighten his grip on his war club.

“I think I’ll take her for my own when we’re done here,” Mosidhu shouted. His men cheered, and he grinned wider. “And maybe I’ll have a turn with her mother as well, for she must be beautiful indeed to make such a daughter with an ugly piece of tari shit like you.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mevi take a furious step forward, stopping when Tesvaji laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder. The Aedrem jeered, and Tesvaji stepped out in front of her seething brother. “Mosidhu Ma,” he called out, his tone dangerously calm. “To think you were concealing such stamina! If you had but thought to spend it at home, perhaps you would have had more sons.”

Mosidhu and his men went deathly quiet, and their leader’s face darkened. “You dare mock me?”, he hissed. “You, who murdered him?” His hand twitched spasmodically, grasping at the hilt of his ornate sword.

Tesvaji’s face showed an expression for the first time, a humorless smile growing on his face. “I did nothing, Mosidhu Ma. Like you, your son thought my daughter beautiful. Like you, your son was an honorless man. Like you, your son was led by thoughtless lust and greed into a confrontation he could not win.” His smile faded, and his eyes were burning coals in the low morning light. “I say this as the Madi: we here bear no blame for his fate. I give you one chance to take your men and leave. Have another son, and raise him to be better than his father.”

“And if I choose not to leave?”, Mosidhu spit, stalking closer. His men unsheathed their weapons to cluster behind him. “You spew lies and empty words, dirt-eater. You hide behind your daughter like a coward. Do you expect me to believe that this girl killed my son and his companions while you sat at home like an old woman?”

“I apologize, Mosidhu Ma, if I have spoken words you found confusing,” Tesvaji replied evenly, his voice raised so that it echoed from the near ridges. “My daughter did not kill your son, nor did I. That honor fell to others, who have been our guests these past days.”

A roar shook the air as the travelers’ chariot charged over a low hill, skidding to a stop alongside the villagers of Ademen Tacen. Mosidhu’s men scrambled backward as blinding beams of light tore into the dim morning. Gusje could see Mark’s shadowed form sitting behind the front windows, and Jesse’s outline was visible atop the chariot. He was sitting behind a thin device that he pointed toward the Aedrem, and one of the beams of light followed his motion to settle squarely on Mosidhu.

“Leave now!”, Mark’s voice boomed, rumbling from the chariot with the din of a rockslide. The Aedrem looked between each other nervously, milling behind their leader.

Mosidhu paced back and forth in a manic rage, glaring daggers at Tesvaji. “Coward!”, he roared. “Does a Madi hide behind foreigners and nobles when he is threatened? Does a man?” He drew his sword and held it high, letting his men see the shining disk inset into the blade. “I am Mosidhu Ma Gu!”, he screamed. “I will have vengeance for the death of my son!”

Mosidhu set his shoulders and begin to run forward, followed after a moment by two of his men, then five. Their sandals pounded the hardpan as yet more of the Aedrem charged forward, shouting for blood. Gusje saw Tesvaji and Mevi brace themselves, unlimbering their weapons and screaming defiance at the onrushing attackers. She had a dagger bound at her waist, but she made no move to draw it.

“Cover your ears!”, Mark shouted, his amplified voice carrying over the charging Aedrem.

Tesvaji glanced at the chariot, confused, but Gusje remembered. She clapped her hands over her ears-

The world shattered. Sound unlike she had ever heard pounded at her in a brutal drumbeat, shaking her ribs and seizing the very air in her lungs. Tongues of fire lashed from Jesse’s position atop the chariot in time with every beat. The fire cast sharp shadows on his face, grim and focused. Five times it spoke, then five more.

The noise stopped, though she could barely register it as such. Her ears were ringing and she felt dazed. She shook her head to clear it, her gaze wandering over the others doing the same, past Mevi wincing and clutching at his head - and finding Tesvaji, staring in naked shock at the scene before him.

The advance of the Aedrem had halted. Of the ten that had charged six were left standing, and those were staring in horror at the remains of the other four. Gusje’s vision blurred as wet masses of shadow became visible through the dust. One was gurgling wetly in the dirt, his life’s blood spurting from his neck to coat what little remained of his jaw. The other men were less recognizable, their dark silhouettes broken into too many parts. She forced down bile and shifted her gaze to their leader, determined not to lose composure here in front of her father. Mosidhu was flat on his back, grasping weakly at the dusty soil. His left leg was a mangled stump pulsing gouts of blood.

“Leave!”, Mark’s voice thundered, sounding muffled behind the roaring in her ears. The Aedrem did not hesitate; they fled immediately, abandoning the fallen to bleed and die.

Tesvaji broke free from his shock first, walking forward to stand over Mosidhu as he lay dying. “I wish we could have grown old without meeting again, Mosidhu Ma,” he said softly.

The wounded Madi coughed weakly, his eyes struggling to focus on Tesvaji’s face. “We will meet…”, he rasped, “soon, soon. The stones crumble, Tesvaji. It will come.” Mosidhu winced, shuddering. He opened his mouth to speak once more, but gave only a rattling gasp before he slumped lifeless against the bloodstained sand.

Captain Grande paced over to where his XO stood nervously sheafing through a personnel listing. “Final count?”, he asked impatiently.

“Five more missing,” Sandy replied. “Nobody’s seen Dr. Kerr since yesterday, and Sergeant Zielinski’s fireteam never came back from patrol.” She looked up at Grande, her face pale. “That’s nine total, including Dr. Yin and the merchants.”

“And nobody’s seen anything?”, Grande fumed. “Nobody is this good. There should be footprints, disturbances. People don’t just vanish without a trace.”

“The merchants knew something, sir,” Diaz said, sounding shaken. “They wouldn’t stop talking about how dangerous it was here, how we shouldn’t be this close to the mountains. We could never get them to give any details - hell, I’m not even sure they had any to give.” She shook her head. “I kept telling them that they were safe with us.”

“I hate to suggest it, sir, however… we may want to pack up and address the problem from safe territory,” Sandy said hesitantly. “It’s an extreme move, but we have no idea what we’re up against.”

“No,” Grande replied immediately. “No, we can’t justify that yet. If we hit the panic button without even an operating theory they’ll just send someone else back in to find out what we couldn’t. They won’t abandon this base without a concrete reason to do so.” He sighed, rubbing his temples. “We’ll send the civilians back through,” he said. “There’s no reason to expose them to risk. We’ll operate cautiously and report back to HQ every hour. We treat this as hostile territory now.”

Sandy nodded. “I’ll have the survey teams pack up,” she said, a note of relief in her voice. “First platoon is still handling the perimeter and everyone but the missing nine are on the base. Jen, can you let them know?”

Diaz nodded, and all three of them stood to leave. “All right, let’s be expedient,” Grande sighed. “Once the civilians are out, prioritize getting the MRAPs ready for use. We have to secure our perimeter, and we’ll have greater protection and range using those for patrols. Our enemy has already shown they can overwhelm a fireteam on foot.”

He followed Diaz and Sandy out of his office, squinting in the sunlight. The low tents and tarp-covered piles of supply crates spread across the basin, loosely encircled by a ring of sandbags and T-walls. Past the barricade was only scrub and sand. He stared out across it for a long minute, searching in vain for any trace of their mysterious antagonist. There was no cover, no place to conceal an approach to the camp. The sentries were at their posts, monitoring every vantage. And yet, they had struck right in the medical tent.

Grande shook his head and sighed, heading down the low hill to the DFAC. Anyone would have been excited about this posting, but it was quickly turning from dream to nightmare. Nine disappearances, two of them civilian contractors, and he couldn’t account for any of them. He cast a resentful glare towards the rabbit hole, reflecting that Colonel Park was going to tear him a new-

He paused. The camp was built around the doorway back to Earth. It hung in its center like a luminous curtain, rippling and waving even when the wind was still. At night, it emitted a soft glow like fireflies that gave the space around it an eerie aspect. At first he had been unable to keep his eyes off it, but after walking past it every day for a few months he was finally growing accustomed to the unreality of it - which is why it took him several seconds to process the fact that it was gone.

He began to run towards the empty space at the center of camp, his eyes still frantically pinned to the spot where the doorway should be. There was only the hot, dry air hanging above the sand, a cloudless dull-blue sky and sun-baked ridges behind it. He reached the clearing and stood where the doorway had been, then looked back out at the camp around him.

For a long moment he stood at a loss. The shouts of soldiers began to echo through the camp, their eyes drawn to the missing doorway by the sight of their sprinting captain. “It can’t be a coincidence,” Grande muttered, grabbing at his radio. “Hearts Five, Hearts Actual,” he said. “We’re being observed. The rabbit hole is gone.”

He barely heard Sandy’s incredulous request for confirmation. His mind was racing, tallying inventories of water, food and ammunition. How long could they last, without resupply? What would his first orders be? Try as he might, Grande couldn’t escape the feeling that he was being mocked, toyed with. The wind gusted sharply, then fell still.

“Any… fours?”, Jackie said, narrowing her eyes.

“Go fish,” Arjun replied smugly, grinning as Jackie made a face. “Sevens.”

Jackie tossed a pair of cards on the table. “You’re cheating, somehow,” she accused him. “I’m not sure how, but you’re cheating.”

“I assure you, I’m not,” Arjun grinned, picking up his spoils. Beside the table, a pair of wide eyes tracked his every move - Gusje’s younger sister had wandered by some time ago and had been fascinated by the colorful cards.

Jackie picked a card from the center pile and stared at her hand discontentedly. “Fives?”, she asked.

Arjun shrugged and tossed a single card her way. “See? You were just unlucky,” he said. “Twos.”

She glared at him. “I already asked you for twos, you said you didn’t have any,” she said accusingly.

“Three draws ago, Dr. Hicks. Come on, fork them over.” Arjun added his card to Jackie’s three and laid them down on the table. “There’s little enough strategy to this game, and remembering your opponents’ calls is all of it. Otherwise it’s just playing what you’re given.”

Jackie sighed and rested her head in her hands. “Sounds familiar,” she muttered. “Seems like that’s all we’ve been able to do.”

“Yes, well,” Arjun said, setting his cards down. “I think things should ease up from here. We’ll have directions when we leave, and hopefully enough supplies to see us across the rest of the desert.”

A smile worked its way onto Jackie’s lips, and she shook her head. “You’re optimistic,” she grunted. “Directions to where? We can’t go back the way we came, and I have my doubts that this kingdom we keep hearing about is going to give a warm welcome to a bunch of weird giants with boomsticks no matter how nice we are.”

“We can talk with Saneji about it,” Arjun said. “Unless things are very different from Earth I would imagine that the people here don’t get a red carpet put out for them either. If they’ve traded there before they should have contacts that are a bit more open-minded.”

She shrugged. “Maybe,” she sighed. “I just hope they’re willing to share. I didn’t get a chance to ask the guys much before they racked out, but I’ve been getting some strange vibes from the villagers ever since they got back.”

“Part of it was probably just fatigue, they were up all night keeping watch. The other part…” Arjun frowned, then steepled his fingers. “Jesse said that he killed four of these Aedrem. Up until now, only Gusje had seen our weapons in action.”

She pursed her lips, thinking. “So, what, they’re freaked out by the guns now?”

“Have you ever seen someone shot with a fifty-caliber bullet?”, Arjun asked grimly. Jackie shook her head. “I have,” he said. “Here and there, while I was out surveying in some less settled parts of the world. It’s not an image you rid yourself of quickly, and right now I would wager it’s all some of them can think about.”

“But we saved them!”, Jackie protested. “Mark said the Aedrem showed up with way more than they could have handled on their own.”

“And I’m sure they’re grateful,” Arjun sighed. “But they don’t know us. We were very strange to them before they knew what we were capable of, and now the most distinctive thing about us is that we’re giants who kill in the most gruesome manner they’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t count on warm treatment for the remainder of our stay here.”

“Tooz”, Gusje’s sister said, firmly placing four random cards down on the table. Arjun and Jackie looked over in surprise.

“Oh God, she’s adorable,” Jackie gushed, picking up Arjun’s twos and setting them down in front of the girl. “What’s your name, sweetie? Um…” She hesitated, looking at the girl’s face. “Erat… ra? Re?”

The girl giggled, hiding her mouth behind her hands. “Zha,” she answered shyly. “Sasid vena gajhi.”

“I don’t understand, but I feel personally attacked,” Jackie said dryly, watching the girl fight back laughter. “All right, Zha, let’s see.” She ruffled through the cards, drawing out several. “One, two, three, four, five,” she said, laying out the corresponding cards. She pointed at herself, then at the cards. “One, two, three, four, five,” she repeated.

She pointed at the ace, then at Zha. The girl gave her a confused look, then studied the cards for a second. “Ma, ti?”, she said, pointing at the first two. Her face brightened when Jackie nodded, and she continued with the next three. “Er, vej, tai.”

“Ah,” Jackie said brightly, “now we’re getting somewhere. Come on, Arjun, they’ll all be napping for a while yet. We may as well make the best of it.” She dealt out the six through ten, naming them for Zha.

“As long as it’s on the record that I won that game, Dr. Hicks,” Arjun said, cracking a smile as he scooted closer to Zha. “I’ve been around too long not to recognize a convenient shift in topic.”

Jackie smiled at him mischievously. “Why, Dr. Patel, I can assure you the timing was completely coincidental.”

“Di,” Zha said firmly. “So, can, jhi, ris.”

Gusje spent the rest of the morning in a haze. Many of the others had gone to take a nap or sit in solitude, others had returned to watch the perimeter in case more of the Aedrem decided to return. She didn’t think it likely.

Mark and Jesse had helped Mevi and her father bury what remained of the four dead men before they could draw scavengers. She had gone over to offer her assistance only to find herself reeling as she caught the charnel stench from the bodies. Her father had taken pity and tasked her with carrying Mosidhu’s precious saon draim back to the longhouse, but even that had proved to be a nightmarish task. She was only partway home before she noticed the blood that had dripped from Mosidhu’s chestpiece onto her hand.

She had run the rest of the way in a near panic, dumping her armful of treasures unceremoniously in the corner of the house before fleeing to the back for water. She wasted most of it scrubbing and splashing ineffectually, and when she calmed down enough to wash properly she saw dark red droplets on her shirt as well.

Her mother found her sobbing, half-dressed and half-soaked in the dark. For once Saneji didn’t speak, gathering Gusje into her arms and stroking her hair gently. Gusje wasn’t sure how long they sat together in the washing-room. She simply held on, feeling the shivering panic seep from her bones until darkness took her. When she awoke, she was in her bed.

“Good, you’re awake,” Saneji said, shutting a dusty ledger to peer over at her. “I think you were a bit overtired from this morning.”

Gusje felt a stab of shame, remembering. “I’m sorry, mother,” she mumbled. “I didn’t-” Her breath caught in her throat, and she looked up at Saneji in a panic. “Father didn’t see, did he?”

“Of course he did,” Saneji replied, giving her a reproachful look. “He would be a poor Madi indeed if he didn’t know what was happening with his own daughter. Besides, it’s been a long time since you were small enough for me to lift.” She smiled, caressing Gusje’s hand. “I doubt you’ll ever be too big for your father to carry you to sleep.”

She tore her hand away, curling into a mortified ball on the bed. The shame returned, hot and pulsing, racking her with guilt for her weakness. Her mother tutted softly. “Oh, little flower,” she murmured. “You did well this morning. He said how proud he was when you were asleep.”

“Why?”, she asked miserably, her voice muffled by the mattress. “I couldn’t…” She sobbed, the words catching in her throat.

“You think this makes you weak?”, Saneji chided her. “This, after all you did? You were run down in the desert by Aedrem, caught and beaten, then watched them die at the hands of foreign giants. You brought them back here, helped us prepare for the threat and stood with your father to face it. I heard enough to understand what it was you saw, but you stood with him until the end. You were strong when it was what we needed - and now you are free to be what you need.”

“Nobody needs this,” Gusje mumbled, hauling herself upright. “I won’t be the one still lying in bed. Where is Mevi? Where are Mark and Jesse?”

“Still lying in bed,” Saneji chuckled. “None of you slept much last night. Daughter of mine, you will be a happier woman when you realize that other people only show you their best. If you measure yourself by it you’ll be grey before you’re married.”

“But this was my fault,” she insisted, her voice cracking. “If I had been more watchful, if I had been faster, I wouldn’t have been caught. Nobody would have come here, nobody would have died.”

“Oh?”, Saneji said archly. “You think that would have been it? That had you escaped, the Aedrem would have left the area and never returned?” She shook her head and smiled sadly. “No, daughter of mine. If they missed you, they would have simply waited for fresh prey. You on another day, perhaps, and without any friendly giants nearby I would be left explaining to Zha why she would never see her sister again.”

Saneji’s face turned grim. “No,” she repeated. “Do not steal blame from others. The Aedrem have been moving ever closer, growing more aggressive every year. It worries your father, and all the Madim besides. It’s long past time that someone did something about it - and if anyone recounts the events of today they will say only that Gusje, my daughter, stood to fight evil men with her family and her comrades from the ashlands.”

Gusje looked up at her mother and saw only fierce pride on her face. She hugged her tightly before the tears twinkling at the corners of her eyes sparked more from Gusje’s own. “Vazheva,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

“Freely given,” her mother murmured. “Now - if you insist on being up, you should be useful. Go thank your father, and give him someone to talk to who isn’t his wife. He’s been brooding just as much as you ever since this morning.” Saneji shook her head and smiled. “You two really are too much alike. See if together you can figure out how to enjoy a victory.”

She nodded and excused herself from the room, wiping her eyes on her sleeve and making a token effort to fix her hair - a total disaster at this point, but it made her feel better. It didn’t take long to locate her father. He had a tendency to pace when worried, and now his heavy footfalls set the floor shaking with sympathetic tension.

“Madhema?”, she asked tentatively, poking her head into his study.

He looked up at her and smiled. “Daughter of mine,” he rumbled, walking over to her for a bone-creaking hug. “It’s good to see you up.”

She felt a hot flush grow over her face again. “I wasn’t feeling well, after-”, she stammered.

Tesvaji’s eyes twinkled. “I wasn’t feeling well myself, to be honest,” he said breezily, ignoring her mild expression of shock. “I didn’t understand why Mark was so jumpy when we were talking earlier, but now…” He let his breath out in a puff, shaking his head, then turned to her with a more serious expression.

“Your friends are dangerous people,” he said. “I do not know from what land they come, but I wouldn’t set one foot there for all the treasures of Ce Raedhil.” He held up a hand to forestall her protests, seeing the look on her face. “I don’t dislike them,” he clarified, “but they are dangerous. As we were moving this morning I saw Jesse preparing the device he used against the Aedrem. His hands moved quickly, with practiced motions. He has used it many, many times, daughter of mine.”

“I can’t imagine,” she said, shuddering. “Once was more than enough for me.”

Her father let out a long sigh and paced away to the far corner of the room. “As much as I would love for a return to peace, I don’t think that will be our fate.”

“The Aedrem?”, she asked, her brow furrowing. “You think they’ll return?”

Tesvaji shook his head. “Not anytime soon,” he sighed. “No, it’s something Mosidhu said to me before he died - ‘the stones crumble.’”

Gusje frowned. “I heard,” she said, nodding. “What did that mean? Was it a threat?”

“No, no,” Tesvaji said absently. “At least, not the way you’re thinking. When the Madim open or close a meeting we say to each other, ‘the stones protect.’ It’s a tradition older than age, one that dates back beyond all memory - and he spoke his dying words with the same cadence. We’ve always held that it refers to the draam je qaraivat.”

“The warding stones,” Gusje nodded, puzzled. “But they don’t crumble. You can’t chip them, you can’t scratch them.”

“So it is believed,” Tesvaji said grimly. “But something has pushed the Aedrem towards our territory, daughter of mine. They would not risk open confrontation with us unless they were desperate, and we renewed our boundaries amicably not long after your sister was born. Something has changed, and it drives them towards Sun’s Rest.”

“A change in the stones?” Gusje wondered, feeling a chill. “But why? What do the stones do? What would happen if one were to crumble?”

Her father turned toward her and smiled, and the tiny glimmer of fear in his eyes unnerved her more than anything she had seen that day. “I don’t know what they do,” he admitted. “And I would have told you they would stand forever if you had asked me yesterday. For all that I have traveled and learned, I know only what the desert tells freely.” He shrugged. “It has given me many answers and many more questions, but not these.”

Gusje moved beside her father, feeling the reassuring warmth of his presence. He smiled and tousled her tangled hair, pulling her in for another hug. “So what do we do?”, she asked.

“Right now?”, Tesvaji asked. “Food. I could eat a tari,” he said, his face cracking into a brief grin. “After that, though, we need to talk to the travellers. What happens when a stone fails? What could drive the most fearsome warriors I’ve ever seen across the desert as fast as their chariot could take them?” He shook his head, laughing darkly. “I hope these questions have the same answer, daughter of mine. One such terror is enough.”