FOUR

They traveled for a full day without further incident, with only the hissing of winds across the dry plains and the occasional crack of ghostly thunder from the Waste's storm-zones to break the electric buzzing of the silence, where the absence of noise was itself a continuous droning sound.

Night across the Wastes was a strange hybrid of twilight and stormfall.

The setting of the twin suns, sitting opposing one another in the dreary sky, gave way to a rising wall of grayish violet that encircled the horizon, seemingly rising up from the ground towards the top of the heavens into a bowl-shaped shroud speckled with jaundiced, sickly star clusters. A pewter-colored haze suffused the atmosphere. A line of dirty clouds lolled petulantly across the haze.

D'Spayr and Nygeia saw the approaching caravan just as the first flakes of shadowdust listed their way towards the ground. Shadowdust was a form of ashen snowfall that had plagued the night-time spaces in the Withered Land since the first appearance of The Wound. Flakes of black snow, some large as coins, littered the landscape to eventually clump together to form a black frost that smothered plantlife and drew heat from out of the spoil, leaving everything cold and brittle.

D'Spayr vaguely recalled an old nursery song, a dark lullaby sung so many times its true meaning had been lost over the ages as mother's sang it to their children at nights, and he recalled it being cold comfort as he would drift away to sleep as a boy...

"Sleep, dead prince...

The falling Night steals the sky

And with cold lips kisses the ground,

Bringing shadow 'cross small eyes

Winding the ticking clock down,

The finest of last light

Haunting dark hours

Growing long,

Shadowdust

Smothering sleeping baby's dreams.

Sleep, little dead prince, sleep..."

Looking at the black snowfall, D'Spayr suppressed an unbidden shudder.

The Knight was uneasy about the journey and its eventual destination, and about his own ability to protect his traveling companions. Derivan and Tuolenne were not veterans of outlaw life, neither were they possessed of any military training that could help them in a violent confrontation, and D'Spayr knew that, if they became embroiled in a battle situation, he may not be in a position to watch over them. They were Wytchborn and, perhaps, their mutated alien abilities could offer them protection, maybe even a defensive edge, but from what he'd seen and heard from their own lips, he knew that they were essentially no more than talented civilians, normal folk with a few extra abilities. They may not be hardy enough to survive the journey to Katamahr.

On the other hand, while he understood that Nygeia was a powerful and resourceful being, a warrior-princess cunning and fierce, he also harbored doubts about her reliability. There was a hint of amorality about her, a lack of obligation, which made her seem too liberal in the way she encountered risks. She did not think of others. Her motivations were entirely her own. He didn't feel he could trust her entirely.

Worse, he did not feel that Nygeia actually trusted herself.

On the couple of occasions when they had taken a rest during their trek, she had wandered away from the group and sat alone, her back to her three companions, and D'Spayr had overheard her speaking to herself, arguing it seemed, as if she were fighting some part of her own mind for control over her actions. When she'd stopped her furiously whispered discourse, she'd looked around with an anxious and embarrassed expression, as if afraid she'd been overheard ---

--- or as if she were worried she hadn't maintained the control she so desperately needed.

She'd noticed him observing her and she'd offered a weak smile to him in return, but she did not come over to talk. There was a conflict within her that might prove to be as much a danger to the small band as any outside attack.

He decided she'd bear much closer watching.

The caravan came up over a briar-covered dune, twenty-nine nomads strong, trailing a pair of wagons pulled by aged bison. The Knight could, even through the deepening gloom, see from their flowing geometrically-marked robes that the nomad tribesmen were Drattars, castoffs from the plundered kingdoms south of the equator, remnants of Warlord-King Dre'ggek's former citizenry. Dre'ggek was a wealthy landowner and robber-baron, a former mercenary once in service to the Emperium, who had married the idiot-niece to the Royal Vizier and so ingrained himself into the Royal Court as a Viscount. But the title and its duties grew too bloodless and too gentile for the hot-blooded reaver and he set his private forces across the Forever Plain in search of a territory to conquer where he could set himself up as king. He found one such territory, rich in a jewel-mineral called "fahdariss", a jewel used in the manufacture of coherent-light lenses for defractor rifles. He made the territory his own, supplanting the indigenous people there. Once he did this, he then renounced his loyalty to the Emperium and ruled his distant outpost with a tyrannical hand. After two decades thus, imagine his surprise when the soldiers of the Emperium marched into his domain and systematically began destroying his townships and enslaving his people. The war between the Emperium and Warlord-King Dre'ggek waged hotly for three years until Dre'ggek was at last assassinated by a team of Emperium special commandos. His goods were confiscated, his factories retooled and converted, his lands divided amongst loyal officers in the Emperium as a reward for services rendered.

His people, the very few loyal to his brutal totalitarian reign, were scattered. They became the tribe of nomads called "Drattars" and the Emperium declared them outcasts and outlaws.

The day The Wound appeared in the sky, all of that ceased to matter.

D'Spayr had very few experiences with nomadic caravanserai bands, being himself a mostly urbanized professional soldier, and so he eyed the approach of the wandering tribe with a leery eye. On the other hand, Nygeia's countenance immediately lit up with a huge smile as she saw them draw near in the dusk and she animatedly waved Derivan and Tuolenne up to the front of their small procession to greet the Drattars. D'Spayr gave her a look that was both a warning and a question.

"Why am I glad to see people such as they? Well, a break in this damnable boredom would be a start, but it's more than that. Food, drink, entertainment, comradery, and, more importantly, information", Nygeia said answering his unvoiced question.

"All kinds of information", Tuolenne chimed in, nodding. "And maybe a moment or two where we can forget our troubles..."

"The fact that they're here must mean that there's either an oasis or an outpost nearby", Nygeia added.

D'Spayr shrugged, saying nothing. Derivan, too, seemed vaguely uncomfortable with the large group's approach.

Nygeia looked at them both and shook her head, then uttered an exasperated groan. "Men", she remarked.

She marched out into the lead, towards the Drattars.

The Knight watched her, at once admiring of and irritated by her seemingly boundless self-assurance, and began to follow as a single thought ran through his mind...

"Of all the wild places in the Withered Land to travel, WHY stay willingly within the grim, dangerous boundaries of The Wastes? If I were free to roam wherever I wanted, I would have quit this place long decades ago."

After all, most caravans were essentially a mobile mercantile community offering trade and moving merchandise and valuables from one township to the next. There were very, very few civilized communities within The Wastes, no towns to speak of at all.

As he followed Nygeia, he unsnapped the pommel latch around his shatter-sword.

They were greeted by a pair of teenaged children, a boy and a girl, both not much younger than Derivan, both tanned and lean and healthy, their eyes clear and their faces open, clearly showing no hidden threats. The duo, brother and sister it seemed, had broken off from the main body of the caravan and were sent out to meet the small group.

"We are messengers from Qarrif, leader of the Veedehan Caravan. We are Drattar. We're making a stopover at the Oasis Azterhon, just a few miles from here. There is water and shelter there and trees bearing fruit. You look like you have traveled far and you seem to have so few supplies... would you join with us for dinner and conversation tonight?"

D'Spayr's band unanimously assented.

"Wonderful! We will tell the elders and Qarrif will order four more places to be set at tonight's banquet! Please follow us...", and with that the duo left, running swiftly across the plains, up onto the grassy dune, and they rejoined the caravan, gesturing excitedly.

"Odd", Tuolenne said after a time as the small band fell in behind the caravan and its vehicles, "They didn't bother to ask who we are and what our affiliations were..."

"Neither did they ask us what we could bring to the caravan to trade for dinner", D'Spayr noted.

"Relax, you two", Nygeia said. "The Drattar are a proud folk. They consider acts such as this a demonstration of their largesse, a way to show off a little. If they'd wanted anything from us, we'd have already been under attack."

"You seem to know a lot about them", Derivan observed as he trudged along.

"I am Nygeia, the spawn of the Pahrayah", the princess said darkly, "and there are many unexpected and unusual things that I know."

"Well, just so long as one of the things you know is that we are your friends...", D'Spayr said wryly.

She tossed him a look full of daggers and then turned away, dead set on ignoring him.

Derivan tried vainly to suppress a sarcastic smile as he looked at the Knight and commented, "Maybe it's just me, but you seem to be a tad untalented in the area of charm, soldier. Try saying something nice to her occasionally..."

D'Spayr grit his teeth and ignored the comment.

Inside an hour they wandered into a tree-ringed, kidney-shaped garden area that partially surrounded a huge crumbling ziggurat. The place was illuminated in a perpetual blue haze. Lit from within. The area was at least twenty acres square, partially hidden on the downslope of a mile-long dune, and it held in it a clear pool of water wide as the royal gardens of the distant City on the other side of the Forever Plain. Birds chirped and chattered, a few thin, spidery monkeys capered in the higher branches of the trees, and the grasses and bushes smelled of jasmine. It all would have been quite beautiful if not for the long rectangular graveyard that sprouted from off the pool's eastern edge. Brass monoliths, gryphon headstones and a trio of marble mausoleums sat central among the many headstones.

It was strange. The oasis seemed imbued of its own source of light, glowing a radiant clear azure in the deepening purple-black gloom of evening.

The black shadowdust snow continued to fall over the land.

The caravan settled into the routine of unpacking and setting up camp, parking their road-beaten ancient vehicles, some chemical fuel-driven, remnants of the technological heyday of the mid-Emperium years, and some drawn by hairy bison or even the odd insectivorid-steers, cattle sized beetles, that roamed the lower steppes, and the people worked in chattering groups as they erected tents and sectioned longhouses.

D'Spayr's group met Qarrif and his travel captain, Lumynn, by the edges of the glittering pool. A soft clean-smelling breeze blew over the pool. Qarrif was a very tall, lean man, bearded and mustached, with a hawkish profile, all cheekbones and angles, swathed in coarse robes over leather body armor. He had metal jewelry piercings all along the brow ridge of his face and wooden beads tied onto the ends of his beard. He was given to grand hand gestures and dramatic oratory. Lumynn was an ascete, his head shaven, a tattoo of the sun around one eye, dressed in a loose belted tunic of deep green and possessed of a quiet stern exterior.

"A Knight. We are honored. We've never before known your kind to travel through The Wastes...", Lumynn noted. He looked over at Nygeia, who stood apart from them, and said, "And a sorcerer, from the looks of her, perhaps even some distant surviving royalty from the old days. This new age we live in makes for strange traveling companions. The last we had seen of any former Emperium soldiery was back during the Cold Crusade of His Royal Celestialness, Makstarn the Greater, just before the Fall of the capitol, at Persyffonem."

D'Spayr offered a short bow to the caravan leaders. Nygeia smiled thinly from under the hood of her cloak. She seemed distracted, her previous adventuresome mood suddenly dissipated.

"The Cold Crusade", Qarrif said nodding, "It has been so long I had almost forgotten it had ever occurred. Hundreds of thousands sold into slavery, thousands more killed, the sands running red soaked under a sea of war and for what? The promise that The Wound did not herald the End of All Things, that the One True Religion would save us from a descent into Chaos, that the Emperium would somehow hold the Universe together even as planets crumbled in the sky, the gravity of The Wound ripping them apart and then sucking away the pieces into Nothingness. In those days, no one looked up at the sky... to look into the sky was to court madness."

"But that was then, this is now", Lumynn said, ending the grim reverie. "What brings such as you and the cloaked woman into The Wastes?"

"Katamahr", D'Spayr answered openly, looking for a reaction. He tossed a sidelong glance at Nygeia, but the princess was staring off into space. He momentarily gave up trying to figure her out.

Qarrif raised a metal-studded eyebrow. "Really now, Katamahr? Though it is not all that far away, the journey is quite a demanding one. It seems to be a somewhat popular destination these days."

"How so?", Nygeia asked quietly, her voice subdued, but friendly as she finally allowed herself to draw closer and come into the conversation.

"Others have inquired about the mountain city. Mercenaries, a motley band of armed strangers, they seemed like the forefront of a large military force. They seemed very focused on determining its exact location and getting what information they could about its armaments and defensive compliment. I think Katamahr has been targeted for takeover...", Qarrif stated.

"It has been rumored that Katamahr has been a ripe target for plunder ever since its birth at the fall of the Emperium", Nygeia noted. "Many warlords and Shahs of the Wastes have desired the mighty wheelworks and energy supplied by its icy waterfalls and lusted after its alabaster and gold towers. Its lore has been the fodder for a dozen legends about lost kings, exiled royalty and brave heroes tired of war and strife. It is supposedly a place of peace a place of sanctuary, without crime or strife. Food and medicine are abundant. And it is rumored that much of the Old Science survives inside the city's grand walls. Technology still works there. Yet for all that, it seems to jealously guard its resources and location. Odd, that a city and a people so dedicated to higher moral qualities does not share its good fortunes with others less fortunate who wander the rough plains below..."

"Sounds as if you've been there, Madam", Lumynn remarked, regarding her more closely. Nygeia's words inspired him to give her a closer, more thoughtful appraisal. She stared back at him from under her cloak's hood with an undeniably bold and haughty arrogance. She did not speak.

The ascete could not hold her gaze and quickly looked away.

"These mercenaries, what did you tell them?", D'Spayr asked, bridging the uncomfortable silence.

"Nothing. I don't know anymore about Katamahr than anyone else. I've never been there", he replied.

"Nor I", Lumynn added. There was no sense that either man was speaking false. They were only what they appeared to be: apolitical, lifelong nomads scratching an existence from out this far-flung, chaotic region of a fallen empire. "Though I admit that once, years ago, I did spy the city's fabled gold and ivory spires reflecting the setting sun through the mist midway up the heights of the mountains."

The Knight seemed to take that at face value and continued the conversation with, "Fair enough. So, what is it exactly that you are doing here? Why travel the length and breadth of The Wastes at all? Surely, there are richer kinder climes and territories for a caravan to traverse."

He was startled as he heard the first opening strings of a song being played by musicians in the encampment. It was unexpected. It was a sound of life-affirming beauty played openly amongst a dark and dreary landscape now draped under the mantle of night. D'Spayr had not heard the sound of music played for human voices since his early youth, when he had studied as a novitiate in the Church of the Emperium. He had not expected the sound to affect him the way it did, so immediately, so viscerally, moving him to smile, moving him to melancholy, making him suddenly hunger for the company of others. He had been alone too long a time. Even when he had ridden with the other Knights as a member of their roving band, he had kept mostly to himself, allowing himself to create only superficial friendships for the sake of easing tensions and easing workloads. This sound, this music, reminded him of the stronger bond of family.

Yet when he thought of family, all he could see in his mind's eye was the brutal armored figure of Bishop Bluhd.

He focused his attention back upon his exchange with Qarrif and Lumynn.

Qarrif smiled. "Yes, undoubtedly there are better places to live. But we Drattars are a fiercely ritualistic people bound by iron tradition. The world as it now exists beyond the Fog, outside the Wastes, is an ugly, unpredictable place of thievery, war and murder, of seemingly nonstop bloodshed. And for what? For dominance over a disease-ridden, ecologically-damaged, technology-poor dying planet in a solar system that is slowing bleeding itself to death through a spatial anomaly, caught in the grip of an inverse gravity well? Ah, I see surprise in your eyes... How does a caravanserai Shah know so much about science? To your mind, I should be mumbling superstitious platitudes and praying to dead mythological gods. Well, I was not always a desert nomad, Sir Knight."

"Apparently", D'Spayr said appreciatively.

"Please excuse me, but I am not feeling well. I fear my journey has taken more out of me than I'd first thought", Nygeia suddenly interjected, making her apologies to the group. "Think I'll walk down by the edges of the palms and sit, maybe catch the early night breezes."

Without waiting for their response, she slowly strolled away, looking small and insular, a lonely woman in a place she did not truly belong.

"Interesting woman", Lumynn commented to her back, "If a trifle thorny."

"The lovely sorceress is a close friend?", Qarrif inquired, looking at D'Spayr smiling.

The Knight shook his head. "Just a traveling companion. And a fellow warrior."

"And the old woman and the boy?", Qarrif asked.

"Family", D'Spayr answered, surprising himself at the sudden feeling of protectiveness he felt about his Wytchborn companions.