Clouds blanketed the sun as we rode the next few days, and it grew cold as we advanced into the mountains. Wind whipped down the heights, and though it was but early autumn we knew the chill of winter. The trail steepened and we passed sheer drops of hundreds of feet. Then, in late afternoon of the third day, we reached a plateau several leagues across. High grass waved about our horses’ hooves, a sea of yellow broken only by occasional islands of scrub, pine, or boulders. My spirits had brightened, for we had passed two landmarks shown upon the map, a great mottled rock shaped like a goat skull, and a small oval lake shimmering like a mirror. Tranquil as the next leg of the journey looked to be, a strange foreboding filled me. I saw nothing as I searched the distance, but I felt certain we were watched from behind the boulders. Lions, perhaps, or bandits.
Yet the hours passed, and nothing ventured close but birds. All was well after evening prayers. Even the weather was kinder, for the cold breeze lessened beneath a gray blanket of clouds. For all that he harbored some strange ill will toward Dabir and me, Sarsour seemed to know his business, and I found no flaw with the way he set up the camp or his sentinels. As with the preceding nights, I lay awake for a while, listening to the sounds of the insects and howls of distant wolves.
A scream woke me to nightmare. My hand found my sword as I rolled from my bedding. The watch soldier stared open-mouthed at a monster looming out of the starless night, the thing that even now doubly impaled poor old Ari on gigantic mandibles. The dying fire sketched a horse-high beast with a lobster’s segmented carapace and two waving antennae. A sickly number of legs skittered beneath its shell, and its mouth, inside the circle of its great mandibles, dripped foam as it opened and closed spasmodically.
It smelled of the grave, but the sight of it alone was enough to take a man’s breath.
Dabir roused even as I yelled to God to give me strength. Sarsour shouted for his soldiers to take up arms, but I paused only to draw my sword and slap a stunned soldier on the back. “To battle!”
He picked up his courage and followed.
The hakim’s body shook this way and that as the monster insect turned to us. The mandibles opened and he dropped like a grain sack.
Many were the monster’s legs, and they were swifter than I supposed. Its mandibles clacked like dancer’s bracelets. I was close enough now to see the black eyes set in the horror of a face. I cried out and cut. It was a mighty stroke, and sheared the beast’s mandible in half. So great was my blow that I lost balance and followed the direction of my swing. It was a beginner’s error not to have better planted my feet, and I attribute it to my fatigue and the uneveness of the ground; moreover, that Allah had not written my death for that moment, for there came a hissing noise from behind me and then a man’s scream that did not cease. I rolled to my feet to see the face and tunic of the soldier covered in smoking black ichor. He threw down his sword and reached for the pitted ruin of his face, then wailed all the more as he yanked his hands away.
The remaining mandible slashed through his neck and he fell silent.
Two of the soldiers plied their arrows against the thing, but that was folly, for the arrows stood out from the carapace but did little harm. Sarsour cursed his men. “Lances, you fools!” He picked up one and tossed it to one soldier, then charged forward with a lance of his own. He did not lack courage.
I readied to follow, but Dabir called to me. “Asim!”
I looked past the bulk of the monster and saw Dabir holding something aloft. His oil flask. “Get fire!”
He dashed past Lina, who crouched in her blankets, her eyes like white pearls, and strode determinedly for the monster.
I leapt to obey, though I did not like it. The caliph had charged me with protecting Dabir, yet what was I to do when Dabir sent me one way while marching to death the other?
Even as I raced to the fire I saw a smoking black spray hiss from the creature’s mouth and burn through another soldier’s tunic. He wailed only for a moment before falling. Sarsour and the remaining two stabbed the thing with their lances.
I snatched a thicker stick from the pile of kindling, wrapped its end with someone’s discarded turban cloth, then thrust it into the dancing flames. The fabric was ablaze in only a moment, and I looked back to Dabir.
Sarsour shouted for him to stay clear, but Dabir sidestepped one of the guards and the mandible I’d chopped, then hurled the contents of a cup he carried into the creature’s face. The thing hissed its anger as the oil splattered.
The nearest soldier pulled Dabir back, then tackled him as a smoking stream spewed from the thing’s orifice. It missed them by mere handspans. The other soldier danced away, but Sarsour jabbed the monster’s mouth.
“Asim!” Dabir cried even as I dashed forward, the flames trailing from the burning brands in my hand. “Aim for its face!”
I was not so witless to have failed to divine his plan. I closed on the bug. I threw my improvised torch, and my aim was good. Flame licked up across its front. “Get back!” I shouted.
But Dabir did no such thing. As the creature turned its flaming head from us my friend ran forward to its side and splashed it yet again with oil. The fire streamed up along its carapace.
At Dabir’s urging we hurried back from it. I scooped up Lina and we three watched as flame ate at its body. The creature tossed this way and that, as if trying to dislodge a rider. Twice more it sprayed forth ichor, but we all remained a safe distance off, and soon it slumped and was still. Flame consumed it for a while yet, and the smell was, if anything, more foul than when it had lived.
We relocated the camp, bearing the bodies of the fallen with us. Fadil, the stocky soldier who had saved Dabir, helped me recover the horses, for they’d had the good sense to flee. Upon our return I discovered Dabir and Sarsour confronting each other beside the crackling fire. The girl wept nearby while Fadir’s comrade, the handsome Tarik, looked on curiously.
“…to be an expert on such things,” Sarsour was saying.
“Do you suggest I should have foreseen the insect’s coming?”
“We delayed for two days so we could have an ‘expert’ who’s useless! I’ve lost two men, her hakim, and Lina’s nurse. Now you tell me you don’t even know medicines!”
“You will watch your tone,” I told him, and rested my hand upon my sword pommel.
The captain snarled and placed a large knuckled hand on his own hilt.
“Stop!”
As one, Dabir, Sarsour, and myself turned to the girl.
Lina’s eyes blazed with fever or fury. Her voice rose as she gasped out a question. “Four lie dead and you would duel?”
“This is men’s talk,” the captain said gruffly.
“Am I not the governor’s daughter? Am I not your charge?” Lina swung a hand to indicate my friend. “He is no hakim, but Dabir has pledged to aid me, and I accept his offer. Captain, I treasure your bravery, but save it for your foes.” She paused again to gather her strength. Her breath came rapidly. Yet her words made sense. “Dabir could not have guessed a monster would attack us any more than you could.”
Sarsour frowned, saying nothing, but the tension was broken as Dabir bent to a pack beside him that I recognized for the hakim’s.
Dabir prepared a potion for the girl from the healer’s notes and bedded down near her. I kept watch next to him, trusting neither Sarsour nor the dark grasslands, which might vomit up another horror at any time. The girl passed soon into sleep, and I thought Dabir had as well, but after a time I heard him whisper my name.
“Asim.”
“What is it?” I answered softly.
“I am certain now we should not have come,” he said quietly. “I think Ahmed has lost the final days he might have spent with Lina. A better friend than I would have talked him out of this quest. Now folk have died. Ari’s was a good soul.”
To this I nodded. “But we have seen some of the map’s landmarks already. It is no fake. And you have mastered the hakim’s medicines.”
“I do not recognize all of the medicines.” His voice was softer even than the nearby crickets. “Many of them are unknown to me, and even though some are labeled, I do not understand their use.” He paused briefly. “Even if I can induce her to live another few days…there is something awry, Asim. If such waters existed, surely the ancient map would not have been left rotting in the governor’s archives. Would not the world overrun with immortals? Would not the fountain be fortified behind great walls and manned by the caliph’s finest?”
Dabir’s words were wise, and troubled me. I thought on them for a long moment before responding. “Are not God’s miracles unknowable? It may be that such a thing shall come to pass.”
“It may be so,” said Dabir. But his voice did not betray hope.
I woke late, to hear Dabir in conversation with Lina. A short distance away, Sarsour, Fadil, and Tarik had set to grave digging.
“No, I shall not,” Lina was saying, as emphatically as she could, though her voice betrayed her fatigue. She coughed then.
Dabir did not give up. “The bhang would help ease your sorrow, and any pain—”
“No.” Her voice was suddenly sharp. “No more bhang. I’m dying.” Once more she coughed, a deep racking cough. She leaned over and coughed more, then spit blood. Her look was bleak as she faced us, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand like a hardened soldier. “No more,” she said softly. “It makes a fool of me, and if I am to die this day it will not be as a fool.”
The steady chunk of spade into dirt paused for a moment, before Sarsour mouthed a low curse at the finding of a rock. The spade work resumed. Why, I wondered, did they have spades at hand on this journey in the first place? And then I realized that they must have been packed for the girl.
At that grim thought I sat up and stretched my arms.
“I would have done things a little differently,” Lina said, seemingly to herself, “had I known all this would happen. Been kinder to my cousins. Paid more heed to the words of the holy men—”
Dabir showed no indication of his own fears when next he spoke to her. “There’s still hope, Lady.”
“Do you think?” she asked, and her eyes were bright.
“There is still hope,” I echoed. “Allah’s ways are unknowable, and your fate is surely written, but do not presume to guess the end of your thread.”
She hugged her knees to her chest. “This was all Father’s idea. I didn’t want to come out here. I wanted to spend my…last days in the palace. And I certainly didn’t mean for anyone to die because of me and some stupid old map.”
“Lina.” Dabir stared at her until she met his eyes. “That wasn’t your fault.”
She shook her head wearily. “No one would be out here if it weren’t for me.”
“Each of us volunteered, for we love you and your father.”
“You love me?” she asked doubtfully. She did not sound skeptical so much as curious, as the young do when love is mentioned.
“I love all that is wise and beautiful.” Dabir’s voice was gentle. “I would see you come into your years. I would see your beauty flower and watch the poets wrestle one another with couplets of praise for your intellect and charming gaze.” He bowed his head.
She smiled then, and despite the disheveled locks of her hair and her tired eyes she was lovely. Aye, the sickness had thinned her, but as a gardener can name a perfect rose when a bulb is only a quarter open, I could see the beauty she might one day be.