A half mile on and we joined the rest of the sheik’s riders, standing guard around the laden camels they’d recovered from the surrounding desert.
“We’ll press on through the night.” The sheik stood in his stirrups atop his ghost-white camel to address us. “No stopping. Any who fall behind will be left.”
I looked over at Jahmeen, watching his father with strained intensity.
“The Ha’tari will deal with the dead, won’t they?” I couldn’t see mounted warriors being in too much danger from damp skeletons.
Jahmeen glanced my way. “When the bones rest uneasy it means the djinn are coming—from the empty places.”
“Djinn?” Stories of magic lamps, jolly fellows in silk pantaloons, and the granting of three wishes sprung to mind. “Are they really as bad as the dead trying to eat us?”
“Worse.” Jahmeen looked away, seeming less an angry young man and more a scared boy. “Much, much worse.”
THREE
“So, about these djinn . . .” We’d travelled no more than two miles and somehow it was daytime among the dunes, scorching hot, blinding, miserable as always. As we left the time-river rather than hasten into the next day we seemed to slip back into the one we’d escaped. The sun actually rose in the west in a reversal of the sunset we’d witnessed many hours before. The feeling was decidedly unsettling, and given my recent experiences “unsettling” is no gentle word! “Tell me more.” I didn’t really want to know any more about the djinn, but if the Dead King was sending more servants after the key I should at least know what I was running away from.
“Creatures of invisible scorching fire,” Mahood said on my right. “They will be drawn to the Builders’ Sun.” Jahmeen on my left. They had bracketed me the whole journey, presumably to stop me talking to their sisters.
“God made three creatures with the power of thought,” Sheik Malik called back to us. “The angels, men, and djinn. The greatest of all the djinn, Shaytan, defied Allah and was cast down.” The sheik slowed his mount to draw closer. “There are many djinn that dance in the desert but these are the lesser kind. In this part of the Sahar there is just one grand djinn. Him we should fear.”
“You’re telling me Satan is coming for us?” I scanned the dune tops.
“No.” Sheik Malik flashed a white line of teeth. “He lives in the deep Sahar where men cannot abide.”
I slumped in my saddle at that.
“This is just a cousin of his.” And with that the sheik urged his camel on toward the Ha’tari riding point.
The ragged caravan continued on, winding its way through the dunes, limited to the pace of the walking wounded, variously burned by the light of the Builders’ Sun, broken by the blast that reached us minutes later, and torn by the bones of men long dead, emerging from the sands.
I hunched over my malodorous steed, swaying with the motion, sweating in my robes and willing away the miles between us and the safety of Hamada’s walls. Somehow I knew we wouldn’t make it. Perhaps just speaking about the djinn had sealed our fate. Speak of the devil, as it were.
The Builders’ Suns left invisible fire—everyone knew that. There were places even in Red March still tainted with the shadow of the Thousand Suns. Places where a man might walk and find his flesh blistering for no reason, leaving him to die horribly over the next few days. They called them the Promised Lands. One day they would be ours again, but not soon.
I half-expected the djinn to come like that, like the light of the Builders’ Sun, but unseen, turning first one man then the next into columns of flame, molten fats running. I’d seen bad things in Hell and my imagination had plenty to work with.
In fact, djinn burn men from the inside.
It began with writing in the sand. As we snaked between the dunes their blindingly white flanks became scarred with the curving script of the heathens. At first, seen only where the sun grazed a slope at an angle shallow enough for the raised letters to throw a shadow.
None of us knew how long before Tarelle noticed the markings we had been riding between slopes overwritten with descriptions of our fate.
“What does it say?” I didn’t really want to know but it’s one of those questions that asks itself.
“You don’t want to know.” Mahood looked nauseous, as if he’d eaten one too many sheep’s eyeballs.
Either the entire caravan was literate or the anxiety infectious because within minutes of Tarelle’s discovery each traveller seemed to walk or ride within their own bubble of despair. Prayers were said in quavering voices, the Ha’tari rode closer in, and the whole desert pressed in against us, vast and empty.