Mark Lawrence
The Wheel of Osheim
PROLOGUE
In the deepness of the desert, amid dunes taller than any prayer tower, men are made tiny, less than ants. The sun burns there, the wind whispers, all is in motion, too slow for the eye but more certain than sight. The prophet said sand is neither kind nor cruel, but in the oven of the Sahar it is hard to think that it does not hate you.
Tahnoons back ached, his tongue scraped dry across the roof of his mouth. He rode, hunched, swaying with the gait of his camel, eyes squinting against the glare even behind the thin material of his shesh. He pushed the discomfort aside. His spine, his thirst, the soreness of the saddle, none of it mattered. The caravan behind him relied on Tahnoons eyes, only that. If Allah, thrice-blessed his name, would grant that he saw clearly then his purpose was served.
So Tahnoon rode, and he watched, and he beheld the multitude of sand and the vast emptiness of it, mile upon baking mile. Behind him, the caravan, snaking amid the depths of the dunes where the first shadows would gather come evening. Around its length his fellow Hatari rode the slopes, their vigilance turned outward, guarding the soft alEffem with their tarnished faith. Only the Hatari kept to the commandments in spirit as well as word. In the desert such rigid observance was all that kept a man alive. Others might pass through and survive, but only Tahnoons people lived in the Sahar, never more than a dry well from death. Treading the fine line in all things. Pure. Allahs chosen.
Tahnoon angled his camel up the slope. The alEffem sometimes named their beasts. Another weakness of the tribes not born in the desert. In addition, they scrimped on the second and fourth prayers of each day, denying Allah his full due.
The wind picked up, hot and dry, making the sand hiss as it stripped it from the sculpted crest of the dune. Reaching the top of the slope, Tahnoon gazed down into yet another empty sun-hammered valley. He shook his head, thoughts returning along his trail to the caravan. He glanced back toward the curving shoulder of the next dune, behind which his charges laboured along the path he had set them. These particular alEffem had been in his care for twenty days now. Two more and he would deliver them to the city. Two more days to endure until the sheikh and his family would grate upon him no longer with their decadent and godless ways. The daughters were the worst. Walking behind their fathers camels, they wore not the twelve-yard thobe of the Hatari but a nine-yard abomination that wrapped so tight its folds barely concealed the woman beneath.
The curve of the dune drew his eye and for a second he imagined a female hip. He shook the vision from his head and would have spat were his mouth not so dry.
God forgive me for my sin.
Two more days. Two long days.
The wind shifted from complaint to howl without warning, almost taking Tahnoon from his saddle. His camel moaned her disapproval, trying to turn her head from the sting of the sand. Tahnoon did not turn his head. Just twenty yards before him and six foot above the dune the air shimmered as if in mirage, but like none Tahnoon had seen in forty dry years. The empty space rippled as if it were liquid silver, then tore, offering glimpses of some place beyond, some stone temple lit by a dead orange light that woke every ache the Hatari had been ignoring and turned each into a throbbing misery. Tahnoons lips drew back as if a sour taste had filled his mouth. He fought to control his steed, the animal sharing his fear.
What? A whisper to himself, lost beneath the camels complaints. Revealed in ragged strips through rents in the fabric of the world Tahnoon saw a naked woman, her body sculpted from every desire a man could own, each curve underwritten with shadow and caressed by that same dead light. The womans fullness held Tahnoons eye for ten long heartbeats before his gaze finally wandered up to her face and the shock tumbled him from his perch. Even as he hit the ground he had his saif in hand. The demon had fixed its eyes upon him, red as blood, mouth gaping, baring fangs like those of a dozen giant cobras.
Tahnoon scrambled back to the top of the dune. His terrified steed was gone, the thud of her feet diminishing behind him as she fled. He gained the crest in time to see the slashed veil between him and the temple ripped wide, as if a raider had cut their way through the side of a tent. The succubus stood fully displayed and before her, now tumbling out of that place through the torn air, a man, half-naked. The man hit the sand hard, leapt up in an instant, and reached overhead to where the succubus made to pursue him, feeling her way into the rip that hed dived through headfirst. As she reached for him, needle-like claws springing from her fingertips, the man jabbed upward, something black clutched in his fist, and with an audible click it was all gone. The hole torn into another world- gone. The demon with her scarlet eyes and perfect breasts-gone. The ancient temple vanished, the dead light of that awful place sealed away again behind whatever thinness keeps us from nightmare.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! The man started to hop from one bare foot to the other. Hot! Hot! Hot! An infidel, tall, very white, with the golden hair of the distant north across the sea. Fuck. Hot. Fuck. Hot. Pulling on a boot that must have spilled out with him, he fell, searing his bare back on the scalding sand and leaping to his feet again. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! The man managed to drag on his other boot before toppling once more and vanishing head over heels down the far side of the dune screaming obscenities.
Tahnoon stood slowly, sliding his saif back into its curved scabbard. The mans curses diminished into the distance. Man? Or demon? It had escaped from hell, so demon. But its words had been in the tongue of the old empire, thick with the coarse accent of northmen, putting uncomfortable angles on every syllable.
The Hatari blinked and there, written in green on red across the back of his eyelids, the succubus stretched toward him. Blinked again, once, twice, three times. Her image remained, enticing and deadly. With a sigh Tahnoon started to trudge down after the yelping infidel, vowing to himself never to worry about the scandalous nine-yard thobes of the alEffem again.
ONE
All I had to do was walk the length of the temple and not be seduced from the path. It would have taken two hundred paces, no more, and I could have left Hell by the judges gate and found myself wherever I damn well pleased. And it would have been the palace in Vermillion that I pleased to go to.
Shit. I levered myself up from the burning sand. The stuff coated my lips, filled my eyes with a thousand gritty little grains, even seemed to trickle out of my ears when I tilted my head. I squatted, spitting, squinting into the brilliance of the day. The sun scorched down with such unreasonable fierceness that I could almost feel my skin withering beneath it. Crap.
She had been gorgeous though. The part of my mind that had known it was a trap only now struggled out from under the more lustful nine tenths and began shouting I told you so!
Bollocks. I stood up. An enormous sand dune curved steeply up before me, taller than seemed reasonable and blazing hot. A fucking desert. Great, just great.
Actually, after the deadlands even a desert didnt feel too bad. Certainly it was far too hot, eager to burn any flesh that touched sand, and likely to kill me within an hour if I didnt find water, but all that aside, it was alive. Yes, there wasnt any hint of life here, but the very fabric of the place wasnt woven from malice and despair, the very ground didnt suck life and joy and hope from you as blotting paper takes up ink.
I looked up at the incredible blueness of the sky. In truth a faded blue that looked to have been left out in the sun too long but after the unchanging dead-sky with its flat orange light all colours looked good to my eye: alive, vibrant, intense. I stretched out my arms. Damn, but its good to be alive!
Demon. A voice behind me.
I made a slow turn, keeping my arms wide, hands empty and open, the key thrust into the undone belt struggling to keep my trews up.
A black-robed tribesman stood there, curved sword levelled at me, the record of his passage down the dune written across the slope behind him. I couldnt see his face behind those veils they wear but he didnt seem pleased to see me.
As-salamu alaykum, I told him. Thats about all the heathen I picked up during my year in the desert city of Hamada. Its the local version of hello.
You. He gestured sharply upward with his blade. From sky!
I turned my palms up and shrugged. What could I tell him? Besides any good lie would probably be wasted on the man if he understood the Empire tongue as poorly as he spoke it.
He eyed the length of me, his veil somehow not a barrier to the depth of his disapproval.
Hatari? I asked. In Hamada the locals relied on desert-born mercenaries to see them across the wastes. I was pretty sure they were called Hatari.
The man said nothing, only watched me, blade ready. Eventually he waved the sword up the slope hed come down. Go.
I nodded and started trudging back along his tracks, grateful that hed decided not to stick me then and there and leave me to bleed. The truth was of course he didnt need his sword to kill me. Just leaving me behind would be a death sentence.
Sand dunes are far harder to climb than any hill twice the size. They suck your feet down, stealing the energy from each stride so youre panting before youve climbed your own height. After ten steps I was thirsty, by halfway parched and dizzy. I kept my head down and laboured up the slope, trying not to think about the havoc the sun must be wreaking on my back.
Id escaped the succubus by luck rather than judgment. Id had to bury my judgment pretty deep to allow myself to be led off by her in any event. True, shed been the first thing Id seen in all the deadlands that looked alive-more than that, shed been a dream in flesh, shaped to promise all a man could desire. Lisa DeVeer. A dirty trick. Even so, I could hardly have claimed not to have been warned, and when she pulled me down into her embrace and her smile split into something wider than a hyenas grin and full of fangs I was only half-surprised.