The Juncture - Part 1 of 2

    "Song preserve us... We are all going to die..!"

    Rakim's mud-brown eyes stab a pitiless glower at lanky young Bilar. I will fucking not, he vows to himself. But you might, runt.

    Yet even he can't pretend that things don't look grim.

    What's left of the ragtag bandit gang stands in a haphazard circle around a pair of corpses tumbled into the leeside of a steep golden dune. These comrades didn't die cleanly; sightless eyes bulge bloodshot in purple-black faces, their tongues swollen in screaming mouths. Even with the winds high and the sand in his eyes, Little Ritt - a Kiliku outcast and the company's foremost tracker - followed their trail easily. The deaths are still fresh and yet already putrid.

    Unnatural.

    As the rearguard, Jasaad arrives to the grisly scene last. His camel lollops into the dune's sloping shadow, and he springs from its back to sprint the last few yards. Grizzled old Wisik steps aside to make way for him, weathered features set grave. Jasaad rocks to a staggered halt when he sees the foul end made for the deserters. Or rather, one of them in particular.

    Detached, Rakim watches the first wave of pain shatter across the taller man's sharp face, and wonders why Jasaad didn't try to escape with these two. Well, no matter. He made the right call, even if it may not feel that way right now. His lover is dead and he is not yet.

    "... So," rumbles Wisik through his shaggy silver beard. Like closing a metal gate over his heart, he folds thick-bracered forearms across his stout chest, and looks among his fellows. He finds the lesson here. "There is no running from it... Now we know."

    Ritt rises from where he had been crouched examining sand clumped with bile. "Who here can blame them for trying," he mutters wearily, tugging his scarf up over his snub nose.

    Not Rakim. He'd thought about bailing out too.

    "So what, then?" asks Bilar, looking from face to face among the older bandits, sepia eyes bright with despair. "We sit around and wait for our turn? Take bets on who is next?"

    "—I wager 20 dirham on the hope that it is you," sneers Rakim, tolerance grated away.

    Bilar reddens and glares down at his patchy khuffs. The retort is bitten back. For now. Bleakly, Rakim predicts that if things get much more desperate, fear will drive this one to try something foolish. These trials have worn the group down to a red-raw nub. Loyalty and respect are always somewhere in the sequence of casualties. Rakim knows from experience.

    Wisik glances between them, then speaks again. "We must face facts. None of us possess the power to end this before it ends us." Not this again... Yet Rakim finds himself more receptive this time. He mulls it over while the old man repeats what he's been saying for days now: "We must seek someone who does."

    The mere suggestion rings of taboo — Ritt recites a prayer in an unfamiliar tongue, traces a quick series of notes in the air, and spits over his left pauldron.

    "And invite an even greater damnation?" argues Bilar, mopping sweat off his hairless lip with his sleeve. "We should be praying, not questing after devils. Only God can grant mercy to anyone so thoroughly fucked."

    "We are not fucked, whelp," Wisik contradicts in a growl. "Not yet."

    Bilar rounds on the older man, voice cracking. "Tell that to Aqi and Fe—!"

    "—Do not speak their names!" forbids Jasaad through grit teeth.

    A tense hush falls. Wordlessly, Wisik settles a big hand onto the Tessouare's shoulder.

    Kicked over by the wind, sand dashes off the dune's curving peak in a fine powder. It swirls around the five men, tugging at sweaty hair and tatty clothing. Above, the sky is a crisp larimar blue like the disc of a giant's cold eye, pale and pristine. But the hazy wall of brown air on the eastern horizon threatens change before nightfall.

    Rakim supposes that if there really is anything to be done, it should be done now. Things are growing more dire every day.

    It started with their food and water, turned to ash and sludge. When it moved on to the animals, Rakim first grew disturbed — the way their broken bodies were found, arranged just-so, all bent to the sun as if answering a call.

    Then the first man died, drowned in his own blood. A strange sigil blistered the underside of his tongue where it wilted on his chest, bitten off. While his Brother succumbs to a slower death, five others have passed. Some of them, Rakim even liked, and now misses.

    One, however, was because Rakim poisoned them, taking advantage of the chaos to cover the murder. The man was a liability, and his Brother had been talking of cutting him loose. The drained casks of heqet Rakim had pierced in the night were blamed upon these strange miseries too. He couldn't afford to let the men turn to drink in their anguish — nothing productive ever comes of that. The last of the qat was shared out as consolation; better to be alert than stupefied.

    But with each additional death, each uncanny misfortune, it's become harder to deny that something is very wrong. As much as his practical Omrazi heart - solid all the way through - might reject such superstition... what other explanation is there?

    Maybe she really did curse them.

    Nothing else for it then. If Rakim is to die, it will not be due to inaction. He sucks in a deep breath, fights back a gag when the sweet pong of rot hits, and shakes some energy into his weary frame.

    "Well," Rakim begins as he stalks forward, feeling all their eyes trailing after him like the tattered cloak at his heels. "The rest of you slugs can stand around and cry, if you like." He approaches the bodies, pausing by Little Ritt to lash him with the fire of his eyes. "But I will not lie down and surrender to the witch, however terrible her power may be."

    Ritt holds his gaze steadily. Ritt never balks. Rakim likes that about him.

    So Rakim pushes his luck and helps himself to the bone-handled kard on Ritt's belt, tugging it free. The shorter man frowns, but doesn't protest. He only asks in his soft-spoken way, "What will you do, then..?"

    There's no reply at first. Rakim turns away to pop a squat in the stained sand beside the younger of the dead men. He slashes a scrap off the end of his cloak and wraps it around the cadaver's hand. Then he hacks into its blackened pinky finger without so much as blinking.

    Behind him, he can feel Jasaad react. When he casually turns to look over his shoulder, he sees that Wisik is holding the Tessouare back, and Rakim is only being savaged by a pair of murderous peridot eyes. Rakim just blinks at him, unbothered. He supposes that he could have taken flesh from the other corpse. Whoops... How insensitive of me. But what's done is done.

    Bones crunch and snap before the finger is ripped loose, wrapped up, and stashed away. Congealed blood spackles the site like beads of black dew.

    Rakim stabs the kard into the sand there and rises to his feet to look among the men. Then he finally tells Ritt, "... Burn the bodies and go back to camp."

    That's not an answer — it's an order. Reactions are as mixed as the cultures here represented; depending on who you ask, that is not a Godly way to send off the dead. But nobody argues. Jasaad shakes Wisik off to tend to the smaller corpse himself.

    With that, Rakim turns his back on his comrades and goes, scuffing his way through the churned-up sand toward where the mounts wait and ignoring the churning of his own guts. He rode here on a camel, but now gathers into his gloved fist the reins of Ritt's scouting steed: a small horse, thin-coated and lightly-muscled, built for speed, stolen from a patrol encountered south of Koba last year. Up until two days ago, they had three such beasts. This one is the last.

    "I will go with you, Spider," is called after him. Rakim doesn't have to look to know that it's Wisik, but he looks anyway. "You will not," he snaps, unstrapping Ritt's saddlebags to let them thud to the ground. "You will only slow me down."

    "—What? You— what?" Bilar drops the ankles of the dead man he'd been shifting and pops up like a meerkat. He grabs at Jasaad's sleeve. "—he is not really going, is he? To the devil? He will not truly..."

    "Why not wait until morning?" This time it's Ritt, watching Rakim with the same frown from before. He points east. "The Jinn are on the march. It is reckless to cross in their path."

    If Rakim rolled his eyes any harder they might pop out of his ugly skull. "And it is suicide to cross mine!" he barks back as he swings up into the saddle, patience scattered like sand on the wind.

    In truth, he'd gladly take any one of these excuses not to go. He's arguing against himself as much as the others.

    But before he can so much as wheel the horse about-face, a pale hand latches onto his knee. Rakim blinks affront and bewilderment down at Bilar as he's jostled by the horse now nickering and stamping. "Do not go, brother!" the boy yells up at him, wild-eyed, making a frantic grab for the reins. "You will damn us all! Do not go, brother! Please, brother!" An explosive pressure is building in Rakim's chest. Behind, Wisik is lumbering up to intervene. But too slow.

    Does Rakim only imagine the flash of steel in Bilar's other hand? Does he see it because he expects to see it? Was it perhaps a bit of jewellery or a buckle or clasp? These ideas are given no time to air.

    Brother. Brother. Brother.

    Rakim snatches Bilar's wrist. He yanks it high and hard, pulling him off-balance. And into the boy's yelping face, he snarls a hot severance: "I make no kinship with sniveling cowards."

    The draw of Rakim's shotel is a singing arc extended in crimson. A cry, a whinny, a shout. And hooves beat sand flat in a receding thunder.

    Rakim doesn't look back to see if there are now three bodies to burn.

   1.5

   Once again, the desert tries to kill Rakim.

   The sandstorm falls upon him at dusk, but this is not his first, and he knows that his infamous stubbornness is outmatched. Unwrapping a coil of his shemagh to cover his nose and mouth, he and the horse bend into the abrading winds long enough to get behind the nearest dune. There, the beast is deprived of its saddle blanket for use as a makeshift shelter. He keeps the fraying downwind edge propped up so that he can watch the sands blast by while he huddles beneath.

   There have been worse Hazari storms than this one in the last three years. He resents them all equally.

   Three years of exile, and two of them spent riding with his current company. Much has changed. He used to think of Omrazir every day, hotly plotting his vengeful homecoming like a starving man dreams the perfect meal. But as the years scraped by, that immediacy lessened and other concerns took the fore.

   With gale-force winds deafening, unable to take any rest, Rakim supposes this decline began when he met Uzzush. Uzzush, who lies now dying in the sagging, weathered tent that he and Rakim have shared many times together, drinking and scheming and swapping histories.

   "Why not simply return?" he asks after another lazy swallow of shit whiskey.

   Rakim accepts the half-empty skin from him and answers, "I intend to. But it is not simple; it must be done just right. I will be looked for."

   "And so? That is nothing special. Every man in this camp is a wanted criminal, from one end of the desert to the other."

   "Yes, but this is different. The city is not the desert."

   "No, it is not, and what a pity that is.” Rakim must roll his eyes here, for he does not share in this infatuation with the Hazari. Uzzush ignores it and presses, "But go back a step, tell me again.

   Why did you kill him?"

   That one is much more simple. Killing is the toll for living. Throughout Rakim's life, he has been brought to a precipice, and there made to answer a question.

   Annur asks: 'Who will go? Him? Or you?'

   The answer is never Rakim.

   To someone who kills as a lifestyle, perhaps this sounded basic and empty. Survival is a God-given right, and Uzzush himself places traders and caravan guards on a similar precipice once a month or so. This he calls the Rule of the Desert, and he preaches its power and freedom to his faithful congregation at the Holy Church of Banditry after each plunder, with flames leaping at his back and blood rinsing along the curve of his shamshir. The sermon closes with inspired shouts of accord, weapons thrust toward the stars. Then they all smoke stolen hashish through dead men's pipes and speak longingly of the women for whose affection and comfort too many pretend this endless violence is done.

   A steaming heap of dusky bruulshit, but that's why Uzzush is the chief and Rakim, very gratefully, is not. He misses Omrazir, but he doesn't miss leading.

   They make a fine enough team though. Rakim may not be able to make the men love him - which suits just fine, for he bears them no love either - but he can make them obey. Uzzush is the shepherd, a respected guiding force; Rakim is the sheepdog, snapping and snarling to keep the bleaters in line. They call him Spider or Snake or Jackal. Sometimes they call him Hyena, for the only time he smiles is when blood is shed.

   Uzzush calls him Brother. It means more to him than it does to Uzzush, Rakim knows.

   The worst of the sharp wind dies down well before the rose-gold pact of sunrise blooms into its radiant seam. Crawling out from under the half-buried blanket and rescuing it from the piled sand takes enough effort to leave him sweaty and panting regardless. A few minutes to catch his breath, then he folds the blanket, waters the horse, and continues upon the trajectory more resolute than his meandering thoughts.

   He's exhausted. Like a phantom limb pain, he can feel the strength and condition he's lost over the past few difficult moons. Difficult and costly, as had been many other months before. In such times of hardship, his Brother would always offer the dubious comfort of sonder, unprompted and to mixed effect.

   "Somewhere in the Sentinel's shade, triplets are being born," while dead fellows were buried.

   "In Zalawi, a great flood is washing a whole village away," when the water reserves ran low.

   "The Bey of Rahoum is tucking into the second course of his Pavana feast," when rations were halved again.

   "How can that not anger you, Brother?" Rakim had bellyached for his aching belly.

   "Why should it?" asked Uzzush through a smile undimmed by hunger. "Without these dips and swells, there is no Song."

   As the climbing sun sears an outline of horse and rider into the creeping miles of shifting dunes, Rakim dimly contemplates how this particular dip compares to those past. Deeper? Shallower? It's hard to tell when you're at the bottom; you can't see any landmarks from down here.

   Except for that one up ahead. His mind is so far away, he doesn't register it until he's almost there: the great red mesa, just as Wisik described, like a fortress of rock punched up out of the earth. Rakim has seen it on the horizon before, but the bandits always steered well clear, marking it as a waystone of the Angrosh.

   Time is moving strangely, slow and fast by turns. Wiping sweat from his bleary eyes, Rakim reflects that this is likely a symptom of further deterioration. He takes another swallow from his canteen and presses the horse into a reluctant canter.

   When he circles round to the mesa's southern face, he sees a figure waiting there, a bleached flare of white against the hollow black of a cave's craggy maw.

   The first real trepidation steals in behind Rakim's ribs. Maybe the cautions of that fool Bilar were not without merit. But what else is there to try? Uzzush has been brought before three different healers and subjected to all manner of remedy. Everything from holy rites chanted unbroken for days to being half-drowned in medicinal waters taken from the great salt bowl of Lake Alewa. Nothing helped.

   There is nowhere else to turn, and so turn, Rakim does not. The horse bears him within a few yards and he dismounts to walk the rest, using this time to steady himself and tamp down his clawing desperation.

   The one who receives him is an elderly man in a spotless thawb. His beard is short and greyed, his turban is tall and precise, and his eyes are a starry black like water at the bottom of a well. He sits cross-legged and serene, unbent beneath the high sun, and addresses his visitor in a calm, weary voice.

   "You have left things very late," says the Seer.

   Rakim suppresses a scoff. He's no stranger to the tricks of mentalists — conmen, one and all. It's common practice to open with something grand and portentous like that to hook one's mark. He is unimpressed.

   "Yes, yes," he rasps, pacing nearer. "I am come to—"

   "I know why you are come, son of Malik."

   Rakim freezes like he just got smacked across the jaw, which now hangs slack. He stares.

   ... But that's impossible. No, he must have misheard; that odd accent is thick. "—What did you just—?"

   The Seer dusts yellow sand from himself as he rises and speaks over Rakim. "Waste no more time," he bids as an overtaxed parent might, and turns to shuffle into the yawning cavity behind. "If we delay any longer, I may lose my nerve."

   It's with his own nerve that Rakim is then left to grapple. He swallows thickly and looks over his shoulder at the pale world of adjoined orange and blue, rippling with heat. Perilous, yet navigable. A bead of sweat rolls down the side of his long face, and he hesitates.

   Easier. It would be easier than this.

   2.

   Rakim steps into the cave with the skin-prickling sensation of being drawn into the black of the old man's eye.

   The soft scuff of his khuff is thunderous and echoing in this foremost chamber which feels both close and immense. Unseen somethings are silenced upon his entry, like a hushed conversation cut short by intrusion. Heedless, the Seer pads across the cavern. His visitor stays put to let his eyes adjust to the low light of clustered tallow candles.

   A grass broom leans beside the stony entrance, as one might expect to find in any tidy residence. More striking are the unfamiliar things: a large table outfitted with peculiar tools for a craft Rakim can't begin to guess at, the decorative outline of a complicated but nonfunctional door chalked and chiseled into the flattest span of solid rock wall, and upon a smooth shelf in one dark recess, a life-sized woman’s hairless head, sculpted from what looks to be unfired red clay. There's a profound sorrow in her featureless face, too round and too blunt. He shivers and looks away.

   The Seer has taken a candle in hand, and stands waiting beside an offshooting tunnel. Rakim makes himself follow deeper, each step heavy with the knowledge that the sun has never touched this place.

   The tunnel is a thin and branching vein. He imagines he hears the rush of water down one fork, and faint voices that strike more like visiting memories down another. As they press on, a cool breath whispers by, as though the rock itself were sighing, and the candle flame gutters. Ahead, warm light grows to supplant it, and they soon emerge into a cavern shaped like the roughened dome of a crumbling mosque, a modest cookfire at its heart. There's a sleeping pallet half-buried in books and parchment, and a few shelves of many utensils and vessels. All else is bare. The lemony pinch of cut camel grass sits too high in the nose to quite mask the scent of something oily beneath.

   There are no signs of any other inhabitant; this man dwells here alone. It’s a familiar state of affairs to Rakim, as his own life has been one isolation after another. He is diligent in his failure to examine how many of them were his own making.

   The Seer snuffs the candle and collects a few objects before seating himself by the fire. Rakim sits too, the stone warm beneath him.

   Each now faces the other with a wooden board set between, as though they were settling down for a game of Kholabi's Eyes. The old man produces a small knife and carves an illegible glyph into the wood, which wobbles and clatters atop the uneven floor. "Place it here," he then directs.

   Rakim gingerly extracts the stained rag from his pocket and unfurls it. The severed finger rolls out. The Seer makes no inspection of the blackened bodypart — he simply places a small woven basket over it.

   The knife is then offered handle-first to Rakim with another simple instruction. "Bleed," bids the Seer.

   A kind of grim surreality has settled like a fog over Rakim. Without a word of protest, he shakes his sleeve out of the way and slides the blade across the back of his sinewy forearm. The Seer reclaims the knife and guides the dog's arm out to dribble blood onto the basket, where it leaks in between the weaves. Seconds later, smoke leaks back out, rising in greasy ribbons. He speaks words Rakim doesn't understand, and then he lifts the basket again.

   "—Aiye!" Rakim squawks as he scrambles a full metre back, kicking up a cloud of dust. Spinning with its fat tail poised high, a scorpion scuttles atop the board, sin-black and glossy, its squat body pressed low and defensive.

   Untroubled, the Seer scoops it into the basket and traps it with the lid. He produces a thin leather lace and ties the basket closed, sealing it. Then he sits back, his work complete, and lifts his unsettling stygian gaze onto Rakim.

   "Deliver this to your Brother and the curse will be broken."

   Rakim blinks. Shock is replaced by a painful twist of futility. Ruffled and bristling, he can fake no composure. In disbelief, he snaps, "... This is your solution? You want me to finish the witch's work for her??" Bilar was right: a devil, for certain.

   "I want nothing of you," the old man states. "I only give what you came for."

   Rakim can't take hold of that, can't reason with it. He doesn't know how these things work; he's out of his depth. The world he understands is one most deplorably mundane, of greed and selfishness and fear and hate. He tries to reframe all of this in those more comfortable terms.

   "I came here to thwart her, not to help her. But you— you are in league with her? Or you worry that she will come for you next?" he accuses, sly, shifting forward to reverse his retreat. "—Are you in exile? I am too. We can band together, I– I can make you rich, old hermit. I can get us nour enough for a lifetime of ease and security." He throws a hand toward the books and aims a shrewd dart there. "You can buy a whole fucking library of hidden knowledge to arm yourself with!"

   All this is weathered with an abiding patience. Wearily, the Seer repeats, "I want nothing of you."

   The fire fills the burdened pause with a crackle. "... No," Rakim refuses, though his voice weakens. "There must be another way. Tell me what else can be done. I cannot accept this."

   There is a gentle pity in the Seer's tone as he quietly reminds, "You grieved all the way here."

   Rakim doesn't often feel guilt. Its sour pang now lances sharp through his lungs and deflates him with a tight exhale, leaving him to slump forward and hang his head. It's true. Shadow take him, it's true.

   Some minutes pass wherein nothing settles. Eventually, the old man says, "When one shortcuts through dark places, the exit is as costly as the entrance. Yet it was cruel of her to lay her curse so broad. None of you can be free of it until you are free of him. But tell me..." Sincere curiosity enters his tone. "Seeing is not the same as understanding, and I do not understand why he risked her ire in the first place. Do you?"

   Rakim has his head in his hands, as though he can dampen the tight clanging in there with his palms. He wets his chapped lips and whispers ragged, "It... it was for love, he said..." The fool. Naive moron. Weak. It still disgusts him.

   "Ah..." breathes the hermit, understanding indeed. "A good cause to die for."

   Something is implied by that, and an expectation steeps in the space after it. Rakim's mind is busy swimming with ache and helpless outrage. It follows that trail back into the sagging tent one more time.

   "... Me?" asks Uzzush, brows high with surprise. He lowers his drink, smiling and confused. "I hate the city, you know that. No, no, my heart belongs to the sand. You can take some of the men with you, if you like. But my place is here."

   "And my place is Omrazir." The mongrel seizes his Brother's arm with an abrupt intensity that startles them both. "Come with me."

   He begins to realize now that Rakim is serious, and his smile slides away. He shifts, grown uncomfortable. "Brother... What sore game do you play at now, to draw me in with one hand and push me away with the other so?"

   Incredulous - almost mocking - Uzzush reminds, "I do not even know your name."

   So here it is again. The question.

   'Him? Or you?'

   Rakim fathoms now with perfect clarity that it was never Annur who asked this.

   But the answer is still not Rakim.

   Does it cost more or less each time? He isn't sure. When you're at the bottom of the dip, it's hard to tell. There are no landmarks down here. Only fire.

   He draws those flames into himself and lifts his head, meeting the Seer's knowing gaze with one grown fierce. The basket is collected into his satchel and he rolls forward onto his knees. If costly it must be, he will not pay alone.

   "A life for a life, then," he rasps, raw and toothsome. His jambiya is drawn into his shaking hand. The old man watches, tired, and puts up no struggle.

   "By that measure, Rakim, you are already in debt."

                                    ✦            ✦            ✦


   He wakes with his own trembling fingers closed around his throat. His breaths come shallow and rattling, his heart an ailing bird in a heavy paper cage.

   His withered body aches. Iron chains clink and drag as he turns his poxed face to the distant warmth of the galley and feels cold boards against his gaunt cheek. He looks through an orange door in a purple room that sways, its rectangle framing disheveled figures performing fragile firelit smiles. Their gentle words and care for one another is a tender language he doesn't comprehend, but the crisis of uncertainty beneath that feels just like home.

   Speech is difficult - his tongue is thick and clumsy in his dry mouth - but he persists in a broken croak.

   "... Somewhere in the Windswept Reach, a caravan is under siege, and the Rule of the Desert lives on."

   No one hears it.