The Parched Sea Read Online Free PDF Page A

continued hanging in the sky, steady as clouds. The widow waited. She did not exert herself by searching for non-existent shade. In the summer, Mar rode proud in the sky, and it would have been futile to attempt escaping her heat. Only a tent or a palm tree’s gaunt fronds could offer shelter from the sun, and the only sign Ruha saw of either was in the oasis. Everywhere else, on the gentle slopes and steep slip-faces of the dunes, and in the rocky valleys between them, Mar blazed down on the parched sands in all her fiery radiance. The yellow goddess could not be avoided.
    Ruha could feel herself growing perilously weak, but she resisted the dry voice whispering to her to sneak back to the oasis. Whoever the strangers were, their desecrations made it clear that-they were no friend of the Bedine, and from what she had seen last night, the instincts of the oneeyed stranger were too sharp to challenge.
    As she thought about the stranger, Ruha’s mind wandered and she once again found herself standing in last night’s shadows, the dead straggler lying in the sand beside her. The stranger was crouched atop the dune, where he had appeared so suddenly in the wake of the caravan. As the screams of dying Qahtanis began to drift over the sands, he continued to watch the battle, his attention fixed impassively on the oasis.
    Ruha wondered if he was the man who killed Ajaman. Confident of the magic that kept her hidden and unheard, she gripped her jamblya and prepared to take vengeance.
    As she picked up the handful of sand she needed to create her magical lion, the oneeyed man whirled about and drew a straight-bladed dagger. He stared into the quiet darkness protecting the young woman, seeming to sense her presence in spite of the spells hiding her. The stranger shook his head once, then sheathed his dagger.
    Was he warning Ruha not to attack, or did he doubt the instincts that had alerted him to her presence? Before Ruha could decide, the stranger slipped down the other side of the dune and disappeared. The widow’s knees were ready to buckle and her stomach felt as though her heart had dropped into it. She did not follow.
    With a start; Ruha realized that the ache in her stomach was more than fear, and that her confused mind had again lost track of reality. Heat cramps were causing the Pain she felt, and the reason it seemed like night was because her eyes were closed. She had lost track of reality again, drifting into a dream of last night.
    Ruha held her head with both hands, vainly trying to stop the fierce pounding inside. The young widow realized she had to risk going to the pond, even without any spells to conceal her. With his acute instincts, the stranger would probably see her as she drank, but to wait was to die.
    Ruha slid a few feet down from the dune crest, then turned toward the rocky labyrinth behind her.
    To her surprise, a string of ten white camels stood two hundred feet away. Believing that her mind was playing tricks on her, she dosed her eyes and whispered, “Husband, by the last drop of water in my mouth, if this is a mirage, I will be slave to N’asr himself before I wash your filthy corpse:’
    When she opened her eyes again, the beasts were still there. Though clearly mature riding camels, they had no halters or saddles. Instead, their driver had looped long ropes around their lanky necks and run lines from one beast to the next. The sight puzzled Ruha, for any man who owned ten matched camels could certainly saddle them properly.
    Only the lead camel, an indistinctive brown gelding, carried a proper saddle or hatter. Upon this beast sat a lone tribesman, his bow strung and his lance resting across his thighs. He wore a tawny aba similar to Ajaman’s, and a white keffiyeh covered his hair. Though Ruha could not see his face at this distance, his head seemed turned toward her. Ruha guessed by his dress that the driver belonged to the Qahtan tribe, perhaps even her dead husband’s clan.
    Continuing her