knew the heat of the day would be punishing, so he sought out shelter. None was evident. He decided to spend a while along this old military road, for if nothing else it offered him a vantage point. He allowed himself one long sip of water, then replaced the stopper in the waterskin. He had no idea how long it would be before he found another supply.
The snatches of conversation he had overheard the night before led him to believe water was a source of concern to his former captors. He assumed they would be heading for a new source, so he decided to walk the trail in parallel to their course.
An hour went by and he noticed that the distance between himself and his captors was growing. They walked their horses, but they were traversing flat terrain and he was picking his way along broken stones. The roadbed was flat for a dozen yards or more at a time, then would be interrupted by breaks, overturned stones and gaps due to slides in the hillside below. Once he had to climb down half a dozen yards in order to circumnavigate a collapsed section.
By midday he was exhausted. He removed his shirt and tied it around his head as a rudimentary covering. He didn’t know how he knew, but he vaguely remembered as a boy being told that the body could withstand sunburn as long as the head was shaded. He drank another swallow of water and then chewed the jerked meat. It was tough and with little fat, and very salty. He resisted the urge to drink more, determined to permit himself just one more mouthful when he had finished the food.
It took a while to chew the meat, but at last he finished and he took that one long drink. He sat regarding his surroundings.
Kaspar was a hunter. Perhaps not the hunter Talwin Hawkins had been, but he had enough wilderness lore to know he was in dire circumstances. Whatever rain visited this harsh countryside did so infrequently, for there were no signs of vegetation save the tough trees that scattered the landscape. The rocks he sat upon had no grass pushing its way up between cracks, and when he turned a stone over, there was no moss or lichen growing on the shaded side. This country was dry most of the time.
He let his eyes follow the ridge upon which he walked and he saw that it ran towards the south. To the east he saw nothing but broken plains, and to the west the arid valley. He decided he would take this trail for a while longer, and look for anything that would keep him alive. The nomads were heading south, and if he didn’t know anything else, he knew that eventually they would be heading for water. And to survive, he needed water.
For that was the task at hand: survival. Kaspar had many ambitions at the moment, to return to Opardum and reclaim the throne of Olasko, and to visit vengeance on his traitorous Captain Quentin Havrevulen and Talwin Hawkins, formerly of his household. As he walked, a thought arose. The two men weren’t actually traitors, he guessed, as he had condemned both to imprisonment on the isle known as the Fortress of Despair, but whatever the legal niceties were, he’d have them both dead.
He’d probably have to rally forces loyal to him and seize the citadel from them. Most likely Talwin had forced his sister Talia to marry him, to claim his throne, and Havrevulen was almost certainly in command of the army. But he’d find men who remembered who was the rightful ruler of Olasko, and he’d reward them handsomely once he was back in power.
His mind churned and he advanced plan after plan as he trod the roadway, but whatever plan presented itself he first had to overcome several significant obstacles, starting with the fact that he was on the wrong side of the world. That meant he would need a ship and crew, and that meant gold. And to get gold he would have to contrive of a way to earn it or take it. And that meant finding civilization, or what passed for it on this continent. And finding people meant he had to survive.
He glanced around as the sun reached its zenith, and decided that right now, survival looked improbable. Nothing stirred in any direction he looked, save a small cloud of dust marking the passage of the nomads who had captured him.
However, he considered, standing still only guaranteed his death, so he would keep moving as long as he had the strength.
He marched on.
KASPAR LAY DYING.
He knew his time was short as he sheltered under an overhang from the afternoon sun. He had been three days on the trail and his water had been used up at dawn. He was lightheaded and disoriented and had stumbled down the side of the ridge to a shaded area to wait out the heat.
He knew that if he didn’t find water by nightfall, he most likely would not awake tomorrow morning. His lips were cracked and his nose and cheeks peeled from sunburn. Lying on his back, he ignored the pain from his blistered shoulders as they rested against the rocks. He was too tired to allow the pain to bother him; besides, the pain let him know he still lived. He would wait until the sun was low in the west, then work his way down to the flat land below. The landscape was bleak and unforgiving: broken rocks and hardpan lay in every direction. He realized that the magician who had transported him here had given him little chance for survival; this was a desert by any measure, even if it lacked the flowing sands he associated with that name.
The few trees he had encountered were lifeless and dry, and even the underside of rocks were without a hint of moisture. One of his teachers had told him years ago that water could sometimes be found below the surface in the desert, but Kaspar was certain it wouldn’t be at this elevation. Whatever streams had graced this landscape ages before, any water was now long vanished; if any remained, it would be in those gullies that were his goal, down below the cracked surface towards which he staggered. For a brief moment he paused to catch his breath, which now laboured; no matter how deeply he inhaled, he couldn’t seem to get enough air. He knew it was another symptom of his plight.
Kaspar had never seen so bleak a place. The great sand ergs of the Jal-Pur of northern Kesh had seemed exotic, a place of shifting forms, a veritable sea of sand. He had been a boy with his father, and a lavish entourage of royal servants from the Imperial Keshian court at his beck and call, amid a mobile village of colourful tents and opulent pavilions. When his father hunted the legendary sand lizards of the Jal-Pur, servants were always nearby with refreshing drinks – water scented with herbs or fruit extracts, cleverly kept cool in boxes packed with snow from the mountains. Each night was a royal feast, with chilled ales and spiced wine.
Just thinking of those drinks caused Kaspar near-physical pain. He turned his fevered thoughts to his current surroundings.
Here there were colours, but nothing remotely attractive to the eye, just harsh ochre, dingy yellow, the red of rusted iron, and a tan muted with grey. Everything was covered by dust, and nowhere was there a hint of green or blue indicating water, though he had noticed a shimmer to the northwest, which might be a reflection of water on the hot air.
He had only hunted once in the hot lands of Kesh, but he remembered everything he had been told. The Keshians were descendants of the lion hunters who roamed the grasslands around the great lake called the Overn Deep, and their traditions had endured through the centuries. The old guide, Kulmaki, had counselled Kaspar, ‘Watch for birds at sundown, young lord, for they will fly to water.’ For the last two days he had scanned the horizon in vain; but not a bird had he seen.
As he lay exhausted and dehydrated he lapsed in and out of consciousness, his mind alive with a mix of fever dreams, memories and illusions.
He recalled a day as a boy when his father had taken
