Ascending Nidyum

Chapter Three

C h a p t e r T h r e e

A deeply unsettled pall had draped itself over the shoulders of every remaining member of the caravan now, which we wore heavily and silently as we continued on towards the River Jipaa. As it was my turn to guard our dwindling group later that same night, I found myself huddled around the fire, under the clear, cool desert sky with nothing but my own leaden thoughts to accompany the crackling flames.

He looked right at me.

That split second of hateful recognition in Urbara's eyes would have been enough to keep me awake even if I was not scheduled to be on duty. I had half a mind to think that, had he not collapsed so suddenly, I would have been the next intended victim of that axe. Or had I been the first? Had Mekash merely been in the way? Was it possible that Urbara had still been mad from our rather unremarkable confrontation in Laanur?

It matters not, I convinced myself, pulling my cloak tighter. Urbara is as good as dead.

"Your shift is over, enka. Get some rest."

Only one trader in the caravan was young enough to feel the need to use the honorific "enka" with me. Anbir was his given name, and he was barely halfway through his second decade of life. If he had ever embarked on the trader's journey to the South before, it could only have been one time at most, and likely then with his father.

"Rest will not find me tonight," I answered. "Consider your shift covered."

The boy was undeterred. He joined me near the fire, more for the warmth than anything – despite the drop in temperature, he wore only a simple rag garment with no cloak, all of his gangly limbs exposed to the night.

"Sleep evades us all, it seems," he said. Then, a moment later, "Why do you think he did it?"

I was not keen on conversation, but for the boy's sake, I entertained it. "The desert heat has charred many a mind stronger than Urbara's. It is possible that the sun just brought out the violence hidden in his soul."

"Do you think it was an anti-god's work?" Anbir asked eagerly, firelight glinting off his dark curls.

"Perhaps," I said. If he needed a concrete justification for the abhorrent scene he had been made to witness, I would not deny him. "Let me ask you something in return, then. The sky – have you noticed anything unusual about it lately?"

Confusion passed through his eyes, but he turned his youthful face upward, peering into a solidly black abyss that stretched endlessly in all directions around our little glowing campsite. I watched as he gradually came to the same unsettling realization that had struck me earlier that night.

"The stars..." he whispered. "They're gone."

*

It was hardly three days' time from the Urbara incident to when we spotted the lush landscape of the river banks, and we had begun to put the strange, unexplained occurrence behind us. After all, Urbara was currently bound and forgotten somewhere near the mountain range; his fate was his own. We had the fate of the caravan with which to preoccupy ourselves now.

The first settlement of any substance up north was the town of Minzur – a land fortunate enough to have escaped Yadid's clutches thus far, owing solely to the fact that it was so far north that it required crossing two deserts to reach. Past that, Minzur was nothing spectacular, lacking any great wealth or prestige. At best it could be considered a farming community that had expanded somewhat into a small town.

Here we stopped for the first time to set up in their modest marketplace.

The road on which we pulled our carts into town was dirt, not sand, and framed by patches of green grass. As we neared the center of Minzur, the fields gave way to a scattered collection of mud-brick buildings, none more than two stories tall. No one lived in this part – they all had houses on the edges of their farmland – so every building was for administrative purposes, and painted with motifs that signified their use. The largest was the temple, sprawling across the end of the roadway with four columns holding up a flat roof, atop which had been set a zuara. A symbol of the gods, the zuara was a statue of stone comprised of two stacked spheres – the human realm and the divine realm – with an upwards-pointing spiral meant to act as a receiver of messages and blessings from beyond. Two thin, curved horns like those of a bull arched up on either side – protection against the anti-gods and the very force of evil itself.