Gold to Dust

Chapter Four

Tamshie cringed. Generally servants and slaves were considered poor, but from the way women were treated now, she could imagine what some of them might have lived like then. "Why are they abandoned?" She cast a long, sorrowful glance out at the homes again before bowing her head.

Ellegra felt sorry for her. It was hard for her to see people of the her same class treated so cruelly. "Mastran Nazad demanded them to be taken down and moved inside, but their living conditions might as well have been better outside the city than in. They live no better there, and they are still segregated, now even more so."

"Like the women," Tamshie said.

Ellegra frowned. "Like the women." And to think that this kingdom could have one day become hers.

They fell into a deep silence while the horse trekked across the sand. Their hearts fell back into normal rhythms, the horse slowed its heaving footsteps and galloped lightly, jouncing them along its back. It was so quiet that one would think they could hear the stars twinkle. For what seemed the better part of an hour, the runaways were clear and fast approaching dark walls of winding rock and jutting cliffs stretched up towards the sky. The canyon came as a slight surprise to them, and the horse seemed even more skeptical to enter. The mare backed up and then repeated several steps forward, then retreated and turned, repeating the process twice before Ellegra gave her a kick and nudged her onto the trail. Even as soundlessly as they passed the cavernous walls still echoed their steps. The mare distrusted the ground wherever she stepped, retreating and then advancing with loud snorts and snickers of protest. Insects buzzed and other unknown creatures hissed and howled. The feeling was altogether more ominous than anticipated, but they pushed forward blindly and let the horse navigate them through the darker parts of the valley. The path widened and branched off several ways, and every so often they would come across thin streams flowing out of the rocks and through gulches in the ground. The sand began to thin and become hard clay ground, compacted with moisture. The midnight blue sky above them provided them with enough starlight to see their way and move on, but the deeper they went the more they began to question the end.

"I think we should go back," Tamshie finally whispered. Her skin was beginning to crawl with unchecked nerves.

Ellegra shushed her and reached down inside her boot. Her slim fingers grazed along the cool hilt of a knife before seizing and retracting it. She flipped it in her hand and gripped the guard, pointing the pommel back towards Tamshie. "Hold onto this."

The girl's hand felt around before grasping the blade in her head. Even in the dark Ellegra could sense the stiff confusion and alarm beginning to rise inside of her friend. "Why?" She shoved the tip into her boot, scraping her skin.

"Just in case of—"

Tamshie crashed against Ellegra's back with a bone-rattling scream. The mare reared. Nails dug into Ellegra's arm. Tamshie slid first, grabbing onto Ellegra and clenching her fingers as tightly as she could around locks of her hair and clothes. Tamshie hit the ground with a sharp, bellowing cry, and yelped another sob when Ellegra tumbled on top of her and crushed her back into the ground. The mare reared, narrowly escaping stomping on the them before bolting forward and vanishing. Voices and light began to shatter the darkness with several distinct voices calling out in Asaani, looming closer and closer. Panic reached a new level inside of Ellegra.

"Tamshie," she pleaded. "We have to move. Tamshie, come—" Ice wrapped around her heart. Her body stilled. She was a picture frozen in time. Blood was already soaking through Tamshie's shirt and leaked in a pool around the gaping shaft of an arrow protruding from her back. The bright red and black feathers on the arrow brushed her fingertips. "Tamshie?" Sitting up, she pulled Tamshie off the ground and leaned against a boulder, pulling Tamshie onto her lap and wrapping an arm under her shoulders. "Tamshie." Her hand hovered near the rod, unsure of what to do. She had seen men shot before; some she'd killed herself. But she'd never seen someone she loved be pierced by an arrow. Fear kept her from wrenching the shaft from her friend's back.