The border between the Kingdom of Aethel and the Tribal Lands of Zahram was not a line on a map, but a slow, brutal transition. From Finnian's perspective, it was like watching the world die. The last of the stubborn, golden grasses of the plains gave way to cracked, red earth. The familiar oak and birch trees were replaced by skeletal, thorny acacia. The sun, which in the Heartland had been a source of warmth, became a merciless, white-hot eye in the sky.
Weeks of travel had forged the Company of the Serpent's Tooth into a single, grim unit. The initial friction between them had been ground down by shared hardship and a constant, unspoken dread. The encounter at the crossroads with the hooded stranger had changed them. The enemy was no longer an abstract concept; it was a cold feeling in their bones, a memory that haunted the edges of their campfires at night.
Finnian, the sailor, found a strange, bitter kinship with this new, desolate landscape. The endless expanse of sand and rock was a desert, but he saw an ocean. The waves of heat, the sharp, rocky outcrops like reefs, the way the wind carved dunes like sea swells, it was a familiar language of navigation, just with a different vocabulary.
He had become the company's pathfinder. While Praxus's ancient maps gave them a general direction, it was Finnian who found the game trails, who could spot the almost imperceptible dip in the terrain that hinted at a hidden, half-dry spring. He taught the others how to wrap their heads in the southern style to ward off the sun's glare, how to conserve their sweat, how to read the signs of a coming sandstorm. He was no longer just a navigator of the sea; he was becoming a navigator of the world.
The desert tested them all. Praxus, a man of archives and cool, northern climes, suffered the most. The relentless heat and the scarcity of water left him weak and dizzy. More than once, Hanna had to force him to rest, applying a cool poultice to his forehead and making him drink a bitter tea she had brewed from a spiny desert succulent.
"You must drink, Magister," she would say, her voice calm but firm. "Your knowledge is useless to us if your body fails."
Eva, a pillar of iron will, seemed immune to the physical hardship, but Finnian could see the toll the responsibility was taking. She ate little and slept less, her eyes constantly scanning the horizon, assessing every shadow, every distant dust devil, as a potential threat.
It was after a week in the wastes, their water skins nearly empty and their spirits at their lowest ebb, that they saw it: the dark, low shapes of tents, a small nomadic encampment huddled in the shadow of a great mesa.
"We are low on water," Eva stated, her voice raspy. "We have no choice. We approach, and we trade. Praxus, Finnian, you are with me. The rest of you, stay with the mules and be ready."
The three of them approached the camp cautiously. It was a small encampment of perhaps fifty souls, their dark canvas tents arranged in a circle around a central fire pit. The people who emerged to meet them were as harsh and weathered as the landscape itself. They were wrapped in deep blue and terracotta cloth, their faces lined and their eyes sharp and wary. They were the people of the sand, and they did not welcome strangers easily.
An elderly woman, her face a beautiful mask of intricate wrinkles and her eyes as dark and clear as desert obsidian, stepped forward. She held a simple, unadorned spear, and her bearing was one of absolute authority.
"You are a long way from the green lands, soldiers of Aethel," she said, her voice like the grating of sand on rock. "There is nothing for you here but sun and silence."
Praxus, summoning his scholarly knowledge, bowed his head slightly. "We are a humble merchant caravan, Matriarch, on our way to the markets of the Jade Oasis. We have lost our way and our water is low. We wish only to trade."
The Matriarch's eyes settled on Eva's hidden sword-hilt, then on Finnian's youthful but hard face. "There are no humble merchants in the Age of Fear," she said. "Only the desperate and the predatory. Which are you?"
"We are merely survivors," Eva replied, her voice steady. "Like everyone else."
The Matriarch considered them for a long moment, then gave a curt nod. "We are the Al-Sabil. We do not turn away the thirsty. You may have water. But you will pay for it. What goods do you have?"
They traded two of their steel axes, a treasure in this mostly stonework culture, for a full complement of fresh water and a basket of dried, leathery fruit. As the trade was being made, the Matriarch, whose name was Soraya, studied them.
"You follow the King's Law, then?" she asked, her tone unreadable. "You believe his proclamation of defiance?"
"We believe in survival," Eva said carefully.
Soraya spat on the sand. "Survival. A noble goal. The Reaping comes for us here, as well. But it is the Covenant that rots the soul. The weak-willed in the cities make the bargain for a full well or a bag of coin. Here, in the sands, we know a bad bargain when we see one. We do not pray to the Tyrant. We endure."
"Have you heard word of a new prophet?" Praxus asked, his voice casual. "A man from the north, who preaches the glory of the Covenant?"
Soraya's eyes narrowed with contempt. "We have. A man of poison words. He has found a welcome among the jackals. He and his black-robed filth have taken refuge with the upstart Emir in the oasis-city of Qar-Teth."
Praxus and Eva exchanged a look. Their intelligence was confirmed.
"He promises them power," Soraya continued, her voice laced with disgust. "He claims the Tyrant will make the desert bloom for his true followers. Only fools and cowards listen to such songs. They are a blight on our lands." She gave them a final, grim warning. "The desert will test your body. But men like that prophet will test your soul. Be wary of both."
As they left the Al-Sabil camp, their water skins full but their minds heavy, a new sense of urgency settled over the company. Their destination was no longer an abstract name on a forgotten map. It was real. It was occupied.
That night, Finnian took the first watch. He stared out at the endless, alien sea of sand under the cold, starless sky. The quest had felt vague before, a desperate chase after a fleeing shadow. Now it had a focal point. He could picture it in his mind, a cursed city in the heart of the desert, where a mad prophet was trying to tear down the walls of the world. He was no longer just a survivor running from a monster. He was a hunter, and he finally knew the name of the beast's lair.
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The Chronicle of the Fallen
Time Period Covered: Approximately Days 116 through 140 of the Age of Fear
Victims of The Reaping: 8
Victims of the Covenant: 94 (The Covenanter ideology is now spreading rapidly through the fractured city-states of Zahram, finding many desperate converts)
Deaths from Civil Unrest: 3
Total Lives Lost: 105
Of Note Among the Fallen:
— The last master of the ancient art of water-witching (dowsing) in Zahram, reaped.
— A famed composer in Aethel, who made a bargain for one final, perfect symphony.