ABISHAG

"Toil!"

The whip cracked.

"Faster!"

Leather tore into flesh.

"Up!"

Feet kicked. Clubs cracked against bone. Screams rose across the desert.

"Toil! Faster! Up!"

Abishag swayed. She stumbled forward, ankles hobbled, the sun beating down. Her hands trembled around the handles of the cart.

"Faster!"

A whip cracked, and pain blazed across Abishag's back. She nearly fell. She bit down on a scream. She had seen what happened to those slaves who fell. Some still lived upon the crosses.

With thousands of other slaves, she trudged forward, step after step, barefoot on the hot stones, wheeling the cart forward. In the wooden cart rose piles of rock, sand, soil, and mortar. Abishag's hands blistered. Her feet bled. The welts rose on her back, and sweat soaked her, stinging her eyes and cracked lips. The other slaves of Beth Eloh toiled around her, wheeling their own carts of soil and stone. Their Aelarian masters moved around the slaves, lashing whips, tearing skin. When Abishag lost a step, she screamed as another lash tore into her, and she smelled her blood. Under the blinding sun, she toiled on.

Ahead of her, she saw the mesa. A monolith of stone soared from the desert, taller than any mountain Abishag had ever seen. Jagged cliffs formed its flanks, leading to a flat plateau. The mesa was so tall Abishag had to tilt her head all the way back to see its crest. From down here, she could just make out the fortifications atop the mesa: towers, turrets, a round fortress lined with columns, curtain walls, archers' embrasures, and ramparts. The greatest and last stronghold in Zohar.

"Damn it, slave. Faster!"

An Aelarian approached her, one of thousands who had come here, waiting to break into the fortress above. The man raised a club and brought it down hard on Abishag's shoulder. She yowled. She nearly fell and spilled the cart's contents. She moved on.

Ahead of her, hundreds of slaves were overturning their carts, then packing down the soil and earth, filling a massive wooden framework. Abishag didn't even know what they were building. It was larger than a wall. Larger than a hill. It drove across the desert like a dune, many times the height of men, pointing toward the mesa.

She climbed the pile of rock and sand already there. It rose taller even than the walls of Beth Eloh. When she finally reached the top, Abishag tilted her cart over, adding its contents to the construction.

For a brief moment, Abishag paused for breath, here high atop the pile, and looked around her. Ahead, still a good distance away, soared the mesa and Tarath El atop it. Directly below and behind her, five thousand slaves, the last survivors of the slaughter in Beth Eloh, toiled at filling and wheeling forth more carts. All across the desert spread the legions. Fifteen thousand Aelarian warriors were here. Several hundred served as masters to the slaves. The others surrounded the mesa. More slaves were toiling elsewhere, building crude walls around the mesa, complete with towers for archers, as if the Aelarians sought to cut off all escape, to surround Tarath El with prison walls.

They not only want to climb the mesa and break in, Abishag realized. They want to block escape.

A crude circumvallation wall, large enough to enclose a city. Slaves toiling at a massive structure, its purpose unknown. A soaring mesa. A citadel at its top. And all around them, the parsa'ot of desert, leading to nothing but ruin. This was all the world that remained.

"Slave! Back to work!"

Abishag nodded, her back stinging with too many lashes. She climbed down the pile of stone and earth, rolled her cart toward the quarry, and refilled it.

She toiled on.

Hour by hour.

Day by day.

And still the slaves labored.

Whenever Abishag thought the work might be complete, that the wooden framework was finally full, the Aelarians commanded more wooden frameworks built over the existing edifice, forming more places to add soil and sand and stone. The structure kept rising. First the height of a wall. Then the height of a palace. And still the earthworks rose taller. Eventually the structure soared even taller than the Temple had risen in Beth Eloh. And still they toiled.

During the nights, Abishag trembled in the darkness, pressed between the other slaves. During the days, she struggled under the blazing heat, sweat and blood dripping across her, suffering lash after lash. As the great structure grew taller, so did the wall around the mesa. Within weeks, the circular wall where other slaves labored rose as mighty as the walls of Beth Eloh, lined with legionaries. No aid could come to Tarath El now, and none could escape it. The mesa of stone, and the citadel at its top, was now isolated from the world not only by desert but by ramparts and guard towers and ditches.

You came here for safety, Epher, Abishag thought, gazing at the mesa through the sweat in her eyes. But you found yourself in a trap.

And she worked on.

The structure she and others built rose taller, longer, a dune the size of a mountain. Its soil was soaked with her sweat, blood, and tears. Every day more slaves died, and they buried them in the earthworks, and they built higher.

As she labored—bleeding, weak, perhaps dying—Abishag thought of Maya.

She thought of Maya's teachings, her wisdom, her kindness, and Abishag knew that she had to survive this. She had to live. She had to spread the word of Maya's wisdom throughout the world. When so many slaves fell dead around her, slain by thirst or whip or weariness, Abishag took another breath, took another step, added another stone to her cart. She toiled on. She survived.

The days and nights rolled by.

The structure grew.

And finally, when it rose so tall it was half the mesa's height, Abishag understood its purpose.

She stood at its top, holding her cart, and gazed toward Tarath El, and she knew.

It was a ramp.