Susurrus

Prologue

PrologueThe wind whispers to her. In its hot, harsh voice, it whispers soft, cool lies. Oh, how it lies. Above the hiss of sand, the murmur of dunes, the wind lies about Shade, and Green, and, most of all, Water.

She can smell it sometimes, the fresh clean scent of water, of trees, sometimes even flowers. Once, there was the sharp tang of citrus. But about her now is only desert, an endless landscape of smooth, shifting sand, of dunes that grow and move and change, but always stay the same. A landscape where her magics of permanence and youth can find no footing, except to keep her alive, day after endless day.

One night, one day, they said. Come back then, and all we have is yours — our magic and our lives. Of lives and men she had enough and more to spare. But magic she must have, ever more and ever new, and so set out into the desert, assured and safe.

One night, one day. But it’s a week that she’s been out here, or a month, or a year. It’s hard to tell; it seems forever. Once, though, she was somewhere else. Once, she was a witch, a queen, a power. A girl from the mountains, who conquered valleys and plains, took on magics of forest and field, of winter and of water. Of water! She took them all — the art of air, the craft of creatures, the wizardry of war. Nothing could evade her.

Until, at last, she found this hapless, pointless land of sand and gold and desert druids. She came to take their simple magic of illusion and misdirection, to add it to her store. They put up no resistance, welcomed her hard soldiers into their tented camps, fed them fruit and nuts, watered them from the fetid mudholes that were their pride.

We accept, they said, your majesty and sovereignty, your power and possession. But the desert must accept you too, for the desert is our master. If we should have a mistress, you must be his as well. And if he takes you, he will teach you such magic as we have.

One night, one day, they said. She remembers it, vaguely, sharp contours of memory eroded by the swirling sand around her.

She remembers water, though, and the clean, cutting smell of fruit. Yellow, green, there were different kinds, but they were fresh and moist, all of them. Juicy. It’s a concept that’s hard to hold onto, but she hugs it close. Liquid running down her chin, sticky, sweet, refreshing. Liquid.

She licks her lips, but it’s no more than habit, a rote movement she no longer notices. Her stiff, dry tongue does no more than shift the dust on cracked and shrunken lips. It hurts, but so does everything else. She will not die, cannot die, but her enchantments can only hide the pain from others, not keep it from herself.

She pauses now, in her constant, drifting journey. Two more steps and she’ll crest this latest dune, a swell of sand like any other. Up here, the wind is cleaner, stronger. But its lies differ only in scale, not in nature.

She looks behind at the steep slope she has conquered, trudging, climbing, crawling. It tells her nothing, its slope a constant, maddening dance of a myriad myriad grains, already settling to fill and hide her footsteps, to erase the little progress she has made. And at the bottom,… She thinks for a moment that she has seen something, a speck of green, a flash of palm. But it’s gone, no more real than her memories, of no more value than her dreams.

She still has dreams. When she sleeps, curled tight against the cold of desert night, or dug deep in sand against the desert day, she dreams. But where before she dreamed of power or of wealth, now she dreams of treasure. She dreams of Lake, sometimes, and River, of pitchers of cool wetness that quench her endless thirst. But often, now, the dreams turn bad. The servants that bring her water turn away, slipping into a clear, inviting pool, disappearing in its depths. And when she can drag herself to follow, to drink from that sweet source, it turns against her, its freshness and its bounty turning to salt and sea, and leaving her choking, gasping, thirstier than before.

She sinks to her knees, exhausted by another day of effort and agony. How many dunes has she climbed today? One? A dozen? A thousand? There is no way to tell, when they are all the same.

She digs her hands into fine, dense sand, disconcertingly slick as it scours away flaking layers of skin. Skin that once was smooth as water, hands as soft as… She can’t remember now, can’t remember anything soft. But there was Soft once, and her hands were like it. Men came from far off countries once to tell her so, to beg for the touch of those hands, to kiss them.

She lived in a castle then, a castle on a hill. She scoops up sand in a heap, shapes it roughly round, smooths the top. But when she forms the keep, its tall central tower slips away, slides down to leave a mound upon a mound, her home no more than tiny treacherous grains.

She tastes them sometimes, just to taste salt and home and youth once more. The white grains look like salt, but they taste no different than the brown, or the black. Some are clear, some opaque, but none of them are salt. They’re just tiny stones, a desert trick to taunt her, to make her mouth water with desire. But now even that is gone. She wonders if perhaps there is salt now among the grains, her mouth too dry to dissolve it, her tongue too numb to taste. That grain, perhaps, that big one. That could be salt. It has the look, the translucent, slightly cloudy surface, the square, sharp-edged sides. With trembling fingers she searches it out, loses it in a tumble of beige and brown and grey. If she could cry, she would.

The desert has won, she knows, though still cannot accept. Queen! Empress! Mistress of magic! Defeated by a desert. Her, whom no army could conquer, no ruler could challenge. Brought down by nothing more than wind and sun and broken stone.

She sinks her face into her empire, into its shifting, unrelenting surface, each grain too small to measure, each dune too large to move. Dry sand pushes past her tired lips, a mockery of food. The hard grains scrape against fragile teeth, teeth weary of fighting brown specks that are not seeds, white specks that are not salt. Her mouth almost waters at the thought, but not quite, for her mouth is dry as the sand around her, hot as the sun that beats her down onto the unforgiving surface.

She does not forgive herself.

One night, one day. She has been out here now for an age. She wonders, sometimes, if the world still turns outside this empty land. Perhaps there is no other world, and never has been. Perhaps these dunes are all there ever was, her kingdom, her palaces, her woods and gardens no more than fever dreams, the product of light and heat, and no more real than salt and rain.

She smells it, though, still. Mixed in with the lies the wind tells, she smells water and palms and safety and hope. She drinks it in, building her will for one more try, one more dune, one more conquest. Her body is still tired, but she gathers up her strength, and, with the determination that won her empire, forces her body to a crawl.

Around her, the wind swirls with promises and lies. And in the valley just beyond this shifting dune, an oasis cloaks itself in a mirage of sand and sun.