The wagon struggled over dense sand, trundling along the trough between dunes. Sojo, Eyn, and Brehen walked ahead of the horses. The animals disliked walking in the sand, and tended to slow if they didn’t have someone to keep pace with; the wagon was a heavier burden than before.
They’d had to carve up one of the water barrels to widen the wheels, as without the extra span it would dig into the ground anytime the sand loosened. They’d set out with three of the containers, and had nearly emptied the barrel before it had been repurposed, but seeing even a trickle of water seeping into the sands stung.
And losing the barrel hadn’t diminished the load. The cloth-wrapped parcel that nobody would look at or acknowledge still weighed heavy to the horses. To them, though, it was simply one burden added to the many they’d been subjected to on the trek. No dreams of rebellion stirred in their minds – not so long as Brehen’s kind hands and attentive care still lingered. For the three other voyagers, however, thoughts were varied.
Brehen no longer slept well. He woke at the slightest whispers in the night and sometimes thought he could hear a wry voice calling to him. He’d always slept soundly before this, hard ground and rough weather only bothering him when he woke to aches and creaking joints, but now each day was a fugue of checking Sow and Fallow and trying to think when questions were asked of him.
Thinking of his restless nights made his chest ache, and he tried to banish the notion before it could confront him. Walking so close with the others, he wouldn’t be able to hide if his vision blurred and he had to blink back tears. Eyn had consoled him on the one evening he hadn’t been able to control it, and he expected Sojo would do the same, but how could he impose his grief on them? To force those grieving to care for another seemed unjust, to him, so he held his gaze firm and walked on. Time blurred instead, but in the desert sands it felt as if time never really passed.
Eyn, on the other hand, was well aware of the days they spent walking. She was constantly considering the rations they had, tracking how far they’d gone and in which direction, and contemplating what they’d need to make the trip back. Without someone to plan out their meals-
Eyn had taken over cooking for the party. It wouldn’t have been her preference, but Brehen was obviously incapable and Sojo could barely light a fire on her own. She’d been trained in preparing meals from limited supplies, and was scraping at every remembered lesson to make things palatable. It helped that she was only cooking for two-
It helped that Brehen wouldn’t touch her food, even if she worried about his health. He was getting thinner, noticeably so. She just made the food how she liked it, and Sojo tried to manage spices herself. Of the two women, their decisive leader was the pickiest about her meals.
It also let Eyn prepare and pack a few bags in the wagon without undue suspicion. She’d charted out the distance covered, and it didn’t look good. There was no way she could cover that much ground or carry enough supplies on her own. Even to get to Eastgate would be a stretch, and she’d likely have to travel by night to conserve water. Every day they walked she couldn’t help but track the hours, each second stepping in the wrong direction.
Sojo had none of these worries. To her, the dunes were a curtain slowly being pulled back, to inevitably reveal the wonders of this forgotten land. Their rations, water stores, draw-horses, even the health of the party members fell by the wayside to the beating drums inside her chest. A certainty born of equal parts desperation and disbelief called to her, leading her over the sandy wastes and ever further into the heart of the sink, where she knew there must be a place of the grandest importance waiting.
But her determination waxed and waned, as it must in the face of another wall of sand behind each one the party surpassed. In her lower moments, she remembered a face staring up at her in the soft starlight, unrepentant yet somehow also desperate for absolution by her hand, staring at her as she realized there would be no mending what was done. She could trace the shapes mouthed by those lips, as if to read a final message unspoken in the dead of night. None had been grasped at the time, nor would they be revealed now.
But slowly the cart rose along the back of a great wave, and her hopes budded despite being cut down time and time again. The party crested the dune to see an endless ocean of sand unchanged before them, and she sighed as they began the slow path down. She knew that one of these times, there would be a grand temple laid bare before them, and she would break the clay seal ravaged by time’s hand, stepping through a window to the past and returning with the artefacts of a former glory, to be the bedrock of her own.
She knew this somehow, and it kept her spirits light as they began the slow march down. She was the only one.
-
Night fell in the desert, shrouding the party in shadow for the fourth time. Nearly sixty miles behind them rose the stone walls of the Sink, well out of sight behind the rolling dunes, and marking the break in the evening sky where purple streaks coloured the air overhead. The group was accustomed to crimson sunsets by now, but it was hard not to be discomfited all the same.
Sojo sat in the middle of the pitched tents as sunset faded. She’d been the only one awake enough to keep first watch and had sent the others off to bed, watching the colours darken as the moon rose. As she stared at the stars blooming overhead, she could almost see the wisps in the night sky where those coloured lines would be. She imagined them as a heat shimmer, like she saw in the air above the campfire. Something exuded from the desert sands and flowing out of the shallow bowl, nigh-invisible but bountiful.
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She sighed. Hers were not the only sounds in the night, but they were the only ones of concern. Eyn snored and Brehen rolled over every few minutes, nothing more. They hadn’t heard sounds outside their camp since…
Not for four nights. Sojo let her gaze fall back to the dunes, ignoring the tears lining her cheeks. They’d dry eventually, in the empty air. She stretched to muted pops of joints and bones under her skin, and felt a rush of energy pass through her. She wanted to be marching onwards, each step closer to the discovery she could feel waiting for her.
Instead, she thought of the temple she’d find rising from the desert floor, faced by tall pillars. The surfaces would be worn by the blowing sands, inscriptions smoothed over as if to dull the edges of the harsh words sculpted into the rock.
She dreamed of the shattered mosaics lining the temple floors, a grand eight-sided room with an altar on each wall save the entranceway, the house of a seven-faced god. They would be ornately decorated with different stone, jade, marble, granite, obsidian, letting the subtle earthen hues and whirling patterns within the rocks form backdrops to the symbols of these deities.
In her dreams there was a pale man standing within the temple, trying to explain to her the names and roles of the gods she’d found. He spoke in a quick voice but she knew nothing of the language, and his words faded until she heard nothing from him at all. He stood in front of the altar opposite the doorway, a rough affair with dark, jagged lines, and-
She jolted upwards as the sounds from Brehen’s tent grew louder. The rustling grew more pronounced, until the flap opened and the tall man stepped out. His eyes were bleary and thick with sleep, but he stood all the same and lurched over to sit beside her.
“You’re up,” she remarked, trying to gauge in the moonlight whether he’d be functional to speak to. He grunted in return but his eyes stayed open.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he whispered.
Sojo paused, wondering if he’d come for a particular purpose, but he just looked at her as if waiting for something.
“It’s been quiet tonight,” Sojo said, even as Eyn’s snoring continued from her tent. “No sounds from outside our camp. I’m not tired yet, but my mind has been wandering far.”
Brehen nodded, and his face seemed to invite her to continue. His vision seemed glazed even as he focused on her, but maybe if she kept speaking he’d come to.
“I’ve noticed it since we started the first week, I’m drawn down different paths of reminiscence every time. I think I remember more of my life at home now than I did when I lived there.” She smiled lightly under the twinkling stars. “Maybe it’s just the lack of distractions that lets the thoughts go. Today it’s mostly been about what’s ahead, though. I’ve been having the most vivid imaginings of the temple we’ll find.”
“Temple?” he asked, his voice rusty. She noticed a gleam had come into his eyes, some interest sparked, but his expression was unusual. It didn’t match his face as she remembered it, with something cold in the gleam. It was the first time his eyes had looked anything but kind to her.
She shook her head. “Yeah, a temple. I’m entirely certain that we’ll find one within the next week or so. Don’t you think?”
Brehen didn’t answer.
“Okay, maybe that seems like a weird claim, but let me explain.” She stretched again and grinned, marshalling her thoughts to persuade. “I think we can agree that the Sink is a place to inspire awe. The massive cliffs of stone, rolling waves hundreds of miles from the nearest sea, it’s an unbelievable sight. The second thing is that, even in such an arid and desolate land, I can’t imagine we’re the only ones who’ve ever journeyed here. At some point, there must have been a nomadic people that passed through, at the very least.
“And when I first laid eyes on it, the idea that it sparked to me was a battlefield of the gods. As if massive hands had reached together and smote the earth itself, crushing the land beneath. It’s a place to inspire belief, because the features themselves are so unbelievable. With that in mind, what do you think would happen if a people settled near here?”
Brehen still didn’t answer.
“It would cause a pilgrimage,” she continued. “People would travel to see the Sink and imbue it with meaning. So I think there’s going to be a temple here. Convinced?”
He stared at her placidly, his shoulders rising and falling with each breath, almost audible in the still air. She tried one more time.
“So the people who lived here, they would have naturally found the centre of it the best place to build. That’s where the temple will lie. And these dunes run nearly straight across the Sink, so following them should bring us to the right place. Just over a hundred miles to the centre, two weeks there and back. We have the food, the water, and the time.” She lay back in the sand, staring up at the night sky.
“I keep getting images of it, altars of stone showing the faces of foreign gods. In my head there’s a guide there trying to tell us about it, but not even my imagination thinks they’d speak our language.” She turned towards him, eyes beaming. “I can’t be the only one who’s imagined this, right?”
Brehen didn’t answer. At first. His eyes were still sharp, and he seemed to be choosing his words. “Have you noticed anything… that made you think we’ve been imagining this?”
She scratched the back of her head. “Not really, but I was assuming there were more reasons to be… unenthused.”
“We have noticed, you know,” he continued, raising a hand to keep her from interrupting. “That you’ve been more energetic, more spirited. That you’re at the front of the party every day, tireless almost.” He gingerly started to de-sock a foot, breaking eye contact. “We’ve noticed that you don’t blister anymore.”
She looked at his foot, words lost. It was a mess of raw skin and scabs, blistered by the sand. Parts were salved and bandaged, but even what he’d decided to leave untended was ugly to see.
“The salve doesn’t work right, not anymore. It doesn’t work here. Except for you. As we’ve gone further in, you’ve gotten better. And I don’t think you’ve noticed, but we’re getting worse. We tire faster, think slower, make rash decisions and lose our tempers. Just not you.”
Their eyes met, and Sojo could feel her heart fluttering, her breath coming in ragged gasps despite her efforts to control herself. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the light in his eyes went out.
“I should sleep,” he muttered, and the tall man tenderly replaced his sock. He levered himself up and stumbled to the tent, disappearing inside with a quiet sound as Sojo tried to breathe.
They found the temple the next day.