Oasis of the Moon

John Kilian

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Published by Ancient Tomes Press, an Imprint of Cyberwizard Productions 1205 N. Saginaw Boulevard #D PMB 224 Saginaw, Texas 76179 Edited by Erin Bassett Cover Artist: Miko Oasis of the Moon copyright © 2009 Cyberwizard Productions ISBN: 978-0-9815669-9-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2008937194 First Edition: 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher and the individual authors, excepting brief quotes used in connection with reviews.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: After the Storm________________________ 1

Chapter 2: The Traveller ________________________ 13

Chapter 3: The Forge of the World ________________ 20

Chapter 4: The Spoils ___________________________ 34

Chapter 5: Echoes of the Past_____________________ 36

Chapter 6: Mira ________________________________ 41

Chapter 7: Choices______________________________ 46

Chapter 8: Death Under A Crescent Moon __________ 51

Chapter 9: Eight Blades__________________________ 63

Chapter 10: A Subtle Call ________________________ 69

Chapter 11: Pain’s Children ______________________ 72

Chapter 12: Blood in the Mist ____________________ 80

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Introduction Its all here -- eldritch sorceries, voluptuous

maiden, strange locale, high adventure and a barbarian set against men of evil intent. All the ingredients of a Sword and Sorcery tale.

Sword and Sorcery. A hard to find genre amidst all the grand

tales of epic fantasy and mega-volume sets that has replaced it. A term first coined by Fritz Leiber, author of the tales of "Fafhred and Grey Mouser" and a genre started by Robert E. Howard during the pulp era of the 1920's and '30's. Other authors contributed, C.L Moore, Harry Kuttner, Charles Saunders, Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock, Lin Carter and L. Sprague De Camp amongst a few.

Though I feel that Sword and Sorcery can be found during the earlier periods of recorded history. The ancient stories of Nimrod, Gilgamesh, Theseus, Hercules and Beowulf to name but a few examples.

The essence of the genre is surmised by pitting a man or woman with only their strength and wits against monstrous circumstances, dark sorceries and even darker gods. Sword and Sorcery was popular during the pulp era and had a resurgence during the late 1960's and 1970's. The genre has dwindled down to a small portion found mostly in magazines such as Flashing

Swords and Blackgate. You hold in your hands one of the books that will bring it back to life.

Contributing to the genre of Sword and Sorcery had always been a dream of mine since I first discovered Robert E. Howard's "Conan" when I was around twelve. Being asked to paint the cover of this volume has been a high mark for me. And I hope that I did not disappoint John in taking his thousands of words to paint those words in a single image.

I applaud Cyberwizard Publications for publishing "Oasis of the Moon" and hope dearly that it will be the first of many volumes to contribute to Sword and Sorcery. Michael "Miko" Mikolajczyk 2009

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Forward In modern, that is, current thought, it might

be easy to forget the greatness of the culture found in Near and Middle East. We live in an era of war and turbulence as the modern West has conflict with a variety of states and cultures within the East. This is a replay of the medieval Crusades in many respects, but then the roles were reversed. The Muslim world was advancing, using science and arts to further society. The Christian world was alarmed by the rise and tried to strike at its heart. The eventual end of the Crusades saw a confluence of trade and eventual recognition of various realities and states and cultural movements involved as having their own valid identity. The present should offer so much.

The ancient Islamic and Near and Middle East cultural world contributed much to the present. Amongst many others, Islamic scholars include Ibn Zuhr, Avenzoar (1091–1161) who was an Arab Muslim physician, pharmacist, surgeon, parasitologist, Islamic scholar, and teacher. He was important as the father of experimental surgery. Another, Al-Idrisi was recognized as the greatest geographer and cartographer of the Middle Ages. Great literary contributions also come from the same cultures. One Thousand and One Nights collects of stories collected over a span of time, centuries, by numerous writers, translators and scholars the Near and Middle East as well as South Asia. Arabic, Indian, Persian, Egyptian and Mesopotamian literatures are all part of the offering, where the reader can explore a vast new world. Sinbad the Sailor was included in the text and

is just one of the cultural exchanges where the East shared with the West. Sinbad is a Persian name, but his tales are from Arabic origins. The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from Ancient Babylon and Sumeria and is among the earliest works of literary fiction. It is a tale of kings and the rise of a great hero.

Our shared world has exchanges in every direction of course, but the present world being divided into camps of religious and cultural difference lends many to forget that. But that works in author John Kilian’s favour when he creates a story and world that sounds and feels to new to the reader, but in fact is built upon ancient foundations.

Why discuss this to start for a book about swords and sands, and fantasy? We are largely forgetful of how the stories of the middle and near East are great fun, exotic, and not based upon so much myth as a flavour that is so different to our reading palate. We can travel, and escape in our minds, without going to a Neverland -- a fantasy world that has been visited by writers time and again, but a real place. No matter the fact that the fiction writer is telling a story that never happened in a fictional place, the setting is real.

Using the power of an exotic, yet, real setting gives power to the story. Much as in an action film, the more we know the characters, the more the situation they face strikes us as plausible and potential, the more we care when the action begins and goes along. Without a backdrop of reality, the loud explosions and flashing visuals are just loud and flashing noise to our mind. The more we understand the reality, the more we feel the events that threaten it.

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One aspect of writing outside your own culture is the elevating of things exotic to you the writer that are mundane to a person of that culture. The trade is one that can change the reality of the world written about by the author, with the mundane becoming inflated by being presented as exotic. It is a challenge that authors face, and John Kilian avoids the trap and creates a whole, valid world for the reader to explore.

Author John Kilian has transported the readers with his tale to a time that never existed, with people who never lived, with characters who experience things that never happened, in a place that doesn’t exist. That is fiction. But that he has done it so well without the stereotypical focus is to his great credit. Escapism is good, valid, and interestingly, Kilian presents a world to escape to that is founded in reality, despite being made of mythic components.

- Alex Ness

To Terry and Paul and the rest of the boys: Thanks for the games in the mind-fields.

John Kilian

1

Beyond the Shirki, the place where the desert scum meet, the Empire Road passes north of a desert they call the Alrik Khalba —the Forge of the World. It is a desert, my lord, perhaps half a thousand horse miles from east to west, and at least that much until it comes to the foothills of a mountain range to the south. Our surveyors state quite boldly that no caravan routes may be laid there — and I agree with their assessments. The nature of it makes mapping impossible as mountains of sand shift by night, and ruins that were old when the Empire fell appear and disappear with no reason. Caravan routes along the Empire Road, and perhaps south of the range called the Bandizar, will be sufficient to our purposes. For my part, I would rather contend with the depredations of the Ulbadai and the Fylgur than waste men and goods trying to find a way through that hellish place.

-Surveyor Kanta Messaina to Eminence Kevern of Syden The Forge of the World will reveal the truth of

a man’s soul. Truth, sadly, is not water. -Shmri Proverb.

Chapter 1

After the Storm

Irenkhazi of the Fylgur shifted his filthy burnoose from about his head and shook the sand that covered it down about his legs. He did not move to rise to his feet, but let himself wake from an exhausted and interrupted sleep slowly, feeling the aches and pains of his years. He was tall, though not

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overly so, but large across his shoulders. His upper body descended to a thin waist wrapped about with lengths of red silk and a drover’s whip bound of many leather cords, the hilt of it tucked in the front of his breeches. His flowing blue trousers, now covered in fine ochre sand, were draped over worn riding boots of cracked horse hide.

The sun had finally crested the horizon and revealed the details of the strange oasis that he and his party had stumbled upon in the night. The ride had pushed both he and his men to the limits of exhaustion. The pursuit forced them south into the desert, riding even into the depths of the night. A storm had risen in the twilight, blinding them while they were still in the flat trackless sea of dunes, blotting the moon and stars from sight. What began as a desperate ride became a fight for survival; men clinging to maddened animals as they kept moving by dint of fear and will. South was a memory, direction a joke, and some time in the small hours, scoured by the dust and foundering in the mire of swirling wind and sand, he had spied a rocky rise through the dark billowing clouds.

As soon as his horse’s hooves hit the flat stones in the lee of the shadowy rise, the wind had subsided, as if the hand of a god had somehow blocked it. He had shrugged himself from the saddle, covered himself with the horse blanket and waited out the remains of the dark and the storm. He could not track all of his men in the chaos of the night, and the wind made lighting a torch impossible. The exhaustion drove him from his feet to shelter beside his horse as the animal huddled with the others of his

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men. Sometime before dawn, the wind ceased and the sand fell to cover him lightly.

Irenkhazi looked to the horizon seeking some sign of wind and trouble. The last of the previous night’s blow left no trace in the now blue bowl of the sky. There would be another storm, or there would not — even with his many years as an exile in the lands south of the Empire Road, he knew that foretelling a sand storm was as rolling bone dice. There could be no certainty save that the dice would fall.

Before him, a clean pool shone like blue ice in the midst of strange club-like trees. Date palms, laden with rich fruit, shadowed the waters edge with broad verdure. Beyond the date palms, the desert vegetation gave way to other trees, lemons and figs, growing beside the keyhole shaped pool and dropping small leaves that floated on the still surface of the water. At his feet sand slid over fitted flagstones, ancient and scoured by the wind, but the central pool of the oasis seemed strangely untouched by the blow.

His band of cutthroats and thieves had fled from a cohort of Eshite soldiers patrolling the Eastern Reaches of the Empire Road. One his men, Subad of Gandahar, had disappeared in a patch of fine sand that swallowed him, mount and all, within the span of a single breath. In the worst of it Irenkhazi lost track of his men in the dark after Subad had gone under. Morning revealed what the night had hidden. He had lost five other men in the mad flight away from the mailed easterners with their fast horses and long shining lances.

Irenkhazi narrowed his eyes and stared at the burning line of the horizon in silent contemplation.

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Paces from where he sat with his elbows on his knees, a corpse lay in a pool of dried blood, its throat opened in an awful cut by his own sabre in a sudden, savage contest in the wee hours before dawn, when the wind had subsided and the stars were re-kindled. He let his eyes linger for a moment on the face of the fallen man, then set his jaw and turned away, spitting grit from a dry mouth. Stumbling to his feet, he kicked at a shrouded form covered with a light dusting of sand that lay beside the horse next to his, and grinned with teeth, black and sharpened by decay into a ragged set of fangs. The figure under the blanket stirred, grunting as he awoke.

“Inaya’s black stinking get!” Jhallah sat up slowly. “My mouth tastes like the bottom of a sandal and my body is all ache! I would kill my own mother for some…”The corpulent rogue stopped speaking as his gaze fell upon the corpse beside him. “Kharza?” He looked swiftly to the face of Irenkhazi. The rogue nodded impassively. “A triumph, oh Hawk.” The words were spoken quietly and with some irony.

Sadness descended upon Irenkhazi, and he bowed his head for a moment as he remembered the one man in the band that he had considered his friend. The attack in the night had been sudden, and vicious. He had defended his position before, but in truth was shaken by the attempt on his leadership. Kharza was one of his oldest. He had fled with the Hawk when his own people, the horse nomads called Fylgur, had cast him out. Uncounted evenings they had spent on opposite sides of a table, dividing booty, planning the next raid, drinking themselves into a stupor. His most trusted lieutenant; his oldest friend — if friends one could have amongst the desperate

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and the wicked. Kharza had attacked in the night with dagger and curved sword, seeking the Hawk’s life and position. He hadn’t had the chance to ask the man why — nor was it necessary. Both knew. With both men exhausted, it was a short fight, without even a singular clash of steel to mark it. Just a swing, a miss and a final whispering cut.

Jhallah shook his head and rested his hands on the stones. “I would not have expected Kharza to seek your life.”

Irenkhazi snorted and fingered the hilt of his sabre. “Are you surprised, then? What is the loyalty of a bandit worth, after all?”

“Surely my loyalty is not in question, Oh Hawk… Why I am surely the most loyal of all…”

Irenkhazi eyed the motley remnants of his Hundred. Once the kings of the Eastern Road, feared by all folk of the middle lands, raiding from the great pass of Gandahar to the shadow of Fort Orod in the West. He narrowed his eyes as he swept the remnants of his band still huddled snoring under their blankets. “A half year ago, they all trembled at my approach. They hung on my words; went pale at my wrath. Now they cast eyes at me when they think I am unaware. They are surly when I give an order. They move slowly and with insolence when they do follow them...”

“Not I, oh Hawk!” Jhallah’s eyes widened as he took in the tense emotion on the face of his leader.

“Peace, Jhallah. I trust you as much as any man here — more — you know enough to fear me.” Irenkhazi stooped to look the sitting rogue in the eye.

Jhallah blanched and looked away quickly. “It is a sign of favour that we found this place.” He

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changed the subject as he rolled slowly to his side before starting to get to his feet. He groaned as he did.

Irenkhazi frowned at this, then reached down and hauled the scruffy bandit to his feet. “At last you stand. You are limber as an old tree root.”

“At the best of times stones make for an uncomfortable bed,” Jhallah said sheepishly. “We are due some favour I should think, considering the last two months.” He brushed the sand from his shoulders and pawed at his face. “It was not our fault that the caravans were better defended. Those thrice damned Eshite bastards claiming more and more of the Empire Road all the time. It’s getting so a thief can’t stake anything for himself anymore!”

Irenkhazi nodded. “It was not your fault Hawk, that we lost that

last! The trap was masterfully done. Hagir passes us word of a fat caravan full of the good stuff from Esh traveling to Orod - pickings easy as cooked apples… no one could have known.”

Irenkhazi nodded again, but the voice inside gave him the lie. He should have known. A year ago he would have known. His scouts should have noted that the procession had too many men in fighting trim, too many caparisoned horses. The scouts should have noted that the normal ragtag motion of a trade caravan was absent. There were no stragglers, no carts with broken axles, no followers. But they had become sloppy and when the truth was revealed, half of his men were corralled in the blind canyon, caught in the midst of their own ambush, drummed into the ground by horse hooves and cut to pieces by sabres.

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“It was just a run of bad luck. Inaya tosses the bones in your favour, and against it by times…”

Irenkhazi stifled a grin. “So we are simply out of favour then, Jhallah? We blundered at Kastima, lost ten men there. We barely got out with our skins at Gopul and Harqashi. Both cost us more men. And the last? Twenty of us forced to flee a caravan too well defended by half - only to blunder into that sakka Eshite patrol. You attribute this to a lack of favour with some cow goddess?” Jhallah began stammering a reply, mistaking the gleam in Irenkhazi’s eyes for anger. “Favour indeed.” The sun-darkened leader swept his gaze over the small band of exhausted, slumbering raiders lying scattered around the oasis, covered under horse blankets, their gear still on the ponies or piled in sand covered heaps about them. Their horses milled in the dawn, scenting water and shifting where they were hobbled; long heads rose to taste the air, hooves shifting in anticipation.

The leader of the raiders turned back to Jhallah and looked past him to the clear water and vegetation of the oasis. As Jhallah rubbed at his eyes, blinking in the light, Irenkhazi grabbed him by his shoulders causing him to flinch. The fat rogue’s eyes flew open then, staring his leader in the face, fear written broadly across his own. Irenkhazi softened his features as much as he could and smiled at the cringing man.

“Truly Jhallah, you have the eyesight of a mole.” He turned the man about and pointed. “Perhaps you are right about favour, my friend.”

Jhallah turned, and gawped. “Inaya!” The broad area where they had collapsed in

exhaustion the previous night was cupped beneath

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the points of a low crescent shaped hill, blasted and cut by the wind into strange disturbing shapes. Past the oasis, lush beyond imagining, a strange square façade protruded from the living face of the cliff. The base of it, only slightly occluded by the vegetation, met the bottom rectangular part of the keyhole shape, the still water touching the low opening that yawned blackly into the depths of the cliff in the middle part of the crescent. Both arms of the crescent reached out on either side of the flat, flagstone plaza that lay before the oasis.

“It is not a mirage, anh?” Jhallah took steps hesitantly towards the lip of the pool before turning back to face his master. “It is not a mirage!”

“No. It is not a mirage.” Irenkhazi smiled at the shorter, corpulent man. He reached out and, grasping the desert rat by the scruff of his neck, he strode toward the water; propelling Jhallah stumbling towards the keyhole shaped pool. “Come then! Let’s drink to our good fortune.”

Jhallah smiled and capered about, using the excitement to shake free of the strong grip on his neck. He suppressed a shudder at the strength he felt in his leader’s arm. “What is this place, oh Hawk?”

“I know not… perhaps an opportunity. I have ridden these sands since I was driven from my tribe, and I have heard nothing of this place.”

Irenkhazi had wandered the barren places to the south of the Empire Road for a number of years since he had been expelled from his tribe for practices that even those fierce hawks of the grasslands could not abide. Aye, and they would have staked him out under the sky for the carrion birds had he not murdered and slew his way free. No man,

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not even the Shmri, knew all of the ruins that dotted these blasted lands. Perhaps a hundred spots such as this were hidden in the mind destroying vastness of the southern desert, and kept inviolate by the hammering heat of the sun over parched miles.

Jhallah nodded, and both kept moving towards the pool.

“A hidden oasis far from the caravan tracks and the haunts of desert tribes is too valuable a thing to leave unexamined. Take a drink, then wake the others. We have some exploring to do.”

Jhallah smiled and bobbed his head, half bowing, half nodding, and then rushed ahead to throw himself into the clear water, all hesitation gone.

Irenkhazi approached the pool at a walk, and after taking a long draught from his cupped hands, splashed the remnants over his face before raising his eyes to study the façade that stood strikingly from the weathered rock walls of the natural enclosure. For a moment he sought to decipher the frescoes that the distance made unintelligible, and then smiled his crooked grin again. From here, one could raid with impunity, striking fat caravans and melting into the desert. Water, a place to store loot and even hold captured slaves for trading. This is my new home, my base - the thought lightened his mood considerably. The time was now for washing the dust from his limbs and the watering of horses. There would be time later for blood and gold. He dropped his eyes to the surface of the pool and saw his image over the ripples and waves that moiled with Jhallah’s thrashings. He looked older than he remembered.

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I need a woman, he decided. The old sheik’s daughter had flamed his lust when he had seen her in the market of Shirki a month gone. Her eyes were the shape of almonds and her skin dusky and smooth; desert stock with some Hadjiri somewhere in there. She was young, but not too young -- not past youth. Ripe as dates that wait in sweet bunches under the frond; nomad girls were beautiful at 15 and hags by 25. He found himself responding to the memory of her immediately. Irenkhazi smiled in anticipation. She would be his for a month or two. Whoever buys her after I’m done can worry about her decrepitude.

“Jhallah!” His voice was a whipcrack, the earlier mask of camaraderie dropped. “Get your fat carcass out of the water and get the bastards awake!”

Jhallah stopped splashing and swiftly pulled himself out of the pool. Streaming water from his soaked clothing left puddles in the sand behind him as he rushed into the mass of sleeping men. “Up you ragged excuses!” He strode amongst the thirteen remaining men, splashing them with water from his rags, shocking them awake. “Look where luck, and the scaled goddess, have had us stumble into in the night!” The men, already disturbed by Jhallah’s earlier wallowing in the pool, were rising, moaning and protesting as they did. Xuris was the first to notice the water as he rolled to his feet. “Hakka!” He slapped at Guth next to him, “Look!” Guth blinked sand out of his one good eye. “Ayl, Father and Son! I thought I was dreaming the sound of it!” He crawled to his feet and stumbled toward the pool. The rest of the men awoke and soon hoots and shouts of joy filled the oasis. Bodies splashed into water as they rushed past their leader into the cool wet.

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Satisfied, Irenkhazi stepped into the pool. He sluiced water over his head and neck, and

rubbed it over his eyes. We can reach the place of the Shmri in less than a day of hard riding, he thought. They would fall upon the nomads in the early evening and be away in the night, before they could track or follow. In his mind’s eye, a vision of the bloody battle to come mixed with the thought of soft bronzed skin and lush curves. A shiver rode his spine and he shook himself free from his reverie. A successful raid would add some lustre to his tarnished leadership. He splashed more cool water over his face and cupped his hand to suck some down before he began to fill his water skins. He used to have men do that for him he realized angrily. He used to be a bandit king. Now? Now he filled his own skins and would until he rose again. One thirst slaked, he gave thoughts to thirsts of another kind.

He stepped out from the water and turned to look at the strange carvings along the structure; his boots splashing fluid on the dust of the stones. The rough surface of the façade was covered with pictures and forms hewn from the living rock of the cliff by ancient and unknown hands.

“Hamir!” Two of the Fylgur who had joined him in his exile turned to cast eyes upon him. “Both of you — secure the perimeters.” He strode amongst his men, warming to his own words. “Prepare. Water your ponies. See to your weapons. We leave when the sun passes the median.” The Hamirs began the shrill ululation -- the wavering war cry that the Fylgur used to strike fear into their enemies, and all men set at once to their leaders command.

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At the coming of the sun into its highest point, the horses were readied and the water skins filled. All weapons were honed and oiled, and bellies were filled with hard tack and thick sweet dates.

Arranged before the great round part of the water pool, the tents of fifteen desperate men ringed about a small fire pit. None, not even the Hawk himself, felt comfortable enough to move inside the looming ruins. Once the brothers Sandraste had scouted it gingerly and determined that it was naught but a central area with an altar covered in the dust of strange aeons, they relaxed somewhat, but enough superstition remained to raise a warning note in all of them. It was by instinct that they avoided that ancient edifice; all dwellers of the middle lands knew from campfire tales and raw experience that the remnants of the old dark, the Great Empire, were best avoided even by the light of day.

So it was that when the sun had passed its highest mark, fifteen horses thundered from the Oasis of the Crescent Moon, heading north and west. In a short time the dust of their passing settled. A light wind drifted across the open plaza, blowing sand along the flagstones. Afternoon burned with a bright light to evening, then evening into night.

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Chapter 2

The Traveller In the sea of sand, the storm from the previous

night had run its course. Under the half-buried, leafless crown of a Gazah plant that stuck up above the now quiet dunes, sand kicked and jumped. On the lee side of the cracked and battered remains of an old overturned wagon, the pile of amber began to shift and slide.

The man who had sought shelter beneath the wagon struggled with the suffocating weight on his back. Air! I must have air! The mass of sand balked him. Panic rose. It was too dark, the pressure was too great. He sucked heavily at the small clear area he had forced in front of his face, drawing dust into his mouth that he spit dryly aside. He coughed and flailed, but the clinging weight pressed down upon him, strangling him. Black spots swam before his eyes, flashes of colour shot under his eyelids. The tawny stuff, insignificant when measured by grains, took on strength and weight with its fellows, so that even the light covering over his tunic and burnoose taxed his strength.

His arms would not move, his chest struggled for each breath, but the helplessness he felt fired him to action. He shifted sideways and for the first time since the sun had set the day before, saw light.

Relief swept through him. I can see. I can see now. Wiggling and levering his torso, he managed to push the sand away enough to shove at the cracked

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wood of the ruined wagon and heaved himself an inch further from the pressing sand. His face, clear of the shifting grains, pointed skyward and he sucked in air in shuddering gasps.

I will not die here. I will not die like this. He snarled and threw himself against the smothering weight until finally he broke the tension of the mass and flung himself upright in a welter of grit.

“Lord of the Sky!” He tried to scream, but the words came out as

a thready gasp. Free and alive, he lay flat upon his breast on the hot sand gulping in sweet, hot air.

In his left hand he still gripped the leather thong attached to his bronze axe, his legacy from Yurok. He tugged the weapon free and spat dust from his mouth. It hit the ground dry.

Water! The thought joined with a sudden desperation. He looked about the remains of the camp, but of his water skin, he could find no evidence. He cast about for signs of his camel, but the beast had broken its tether in the storm and fled when the first scent on the wind had spooked it.

Valan sat up and as he did, a wave of dizziness washed over him; the wound in his side throbbed to life as he shook his hair free of the cloying dust. His hand clasped the edge of the wagon, cracking the wood, and he hauled himself close then glanced at the broken rim. What fool would drag such a thing into the anvil of the sun? Whatever their folly, it saved my life. The ruined wood buried in the sand by the small stand of Gazah bush was what had saved him when the storm hit the night before.

He had awakened from a fitful sleep under a rough blanket beneath the pale shelter of the broken

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wagon and the thin tough leaves of the lone Gazah to the bawling of his camel. When he opened his gummy eyes, the sky overhead was clear and cold with a crescent moon that shone with clear, silver light and stars spilled across it like white jewels upon deep indigo.

The fronds of the bush that spread above him moved in a breeze that wafted from the deep desert. The camel hawed and grunted, stomping the sand and tugging at the reins tied around the squat trunk until it pulled free and fled.

Valan rubbed his eyes with broad blunt fingers, knuckles like dark swollen knots in varnished wood, struggled sluggishly to his feet and set off after the camel. Realizing after a few minutes that he had no hope of catching the beast, he had returned to his small camp to wait until morning revealed the tracks.

There was a dreamlike quality under the moonlight that evoked memories in him of drug dens in the sprawling shanties that rested against the high blank walls of Fort Orod where the smoke cast a haze of unreality over everything within its cloudy embrace.

That most easterly outpost of the western powers along the Empire Road had been established by the Western men on their tall horses with double-edged swords and shining lances. The fort sat, squat and lonely, beside the ancient flagstone road that stretched some four thousand Westrayan miles across the middle lands from the great pass in the Whelgan range to the high fangs of the eastern mountains.

For the one hundred years since the West had turned its eyes again to the middle lands, they resurveyed the old roads and the ruins, and built a

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