56th of Winter, 511 AV Ever roving, the sultry sea of sand stretched forever. The sun blazed, scorching the ruddy folds of dunes, searing the harshly gritty gusts so they were nearly agony to suck into dry, dusty lungs. There was a skitter of a black, horny scorpion, quickly vanishing behind a cleft of rock. There wasn’t even a buzzard in the crimson sky. Nearly every gust hurled a plume of dust over the slanting, gently undulating ridges, to hiss as though they were in a frying pan. Trenchantly, the grit stung bare skin, caught in the folds of light fabric, crusting over scarves and probing at the tender eyes of a knot of parched, weary pilgrims who’d crept to a stunned halt. They were few, but hardy. Ehrim, squat and fleshy, with a bare shiny pate covered by a shabby turban and dirty robes. He had huge, craggy hands that could crack the hardest of nuts, yet his face was clenched by a perpetually confused frown, subjugated by the inner weakness of rheumy eyes. Ifiza, rangy yet flinty of eye, with her somber spear, the spiked bronze cap veiled by a winding coif. Ifiza, who’d once been a chattel, bowing and crawling over a haughty glint of marble, the myriad whorls of glazed mosaics. Enslaved no longer, though her wrists were clad in scars. Nearby knelt Hazan, offering up a fevered prayer to any god that would listen to his raving, let alone answer. He was a gaunt, elder mendicant, rustling noisomely in shreds of tawdry rags, crazy eyes under a hedge of gray hair, a whisper ever in his ears. Jeren, brought up the rear. He was, perhaps, the wisest of their paltry band. He was also a mule. His hide was blotchy, eroded by fleas, ears drooping lankly, but his bray was as sharp as ever. They gaped at a rarity, a dome of alien design, jutting from the ochre slope of dude. There were no rocks, no bricks of stray and mud. The surface was sheer, as though shaped from wet yellow clay. There were chunks of pink and purple quartz, and a knuckle of jade at the crest, tinged by magenta. The base, perhaps a dozen chimes away, was badly uneven, obscured by sand, but near the joint of two segments of wall there was a tapering, yet blocky gap betraying entry. The sun beat down. They barely moved, just sucked in air. Ehrim was the first to draw open his cracked lips. “Heresy,” he rasped, though he’d never begun to comprehend the word’s meaning. And yet, they all began to shuffle forward. The dome drew them in with ropes of elated longing, vaguely fused with dread. The glamour was no ruse. The dome exuded a brooding, yet intensely seductive power, drawing in any that ventured by like insects to honey. |