KRUSHITA CAME BACK INTO herself with a drawn breath. She was lying on the bed of her wagon, and she sat up now, smiling. The moment of deliverance was at hand. Soon the cruel Tyrak would be dead. And after he was finished, it would be the turn of an even more evil monster. Jarsun Krushan.
She was ready. She had regained her strength these past years, knowing she would need it for the final confrontation. She had eaten even when she didn’t want to eat any more, run and jumped and played all the games that Afranus and the other young people played.
But she was no longer a child. She was a young woman. Even her mother said so. At fifteen, she was of an age when most young men and women in Arthaloka married and had children of their own. Even younger, in some places. That was not the case in Aqron, where the legally permissible age of marriage was seventeen, but here in Reygar, there was no minimum age. One did as one pleased, so long as all parties consented.
Then, her joy diminished a little, as she reminded herself, We are not in Renshor.
Not yet.
She realized then that the wagon had stopped. The train had been on the move when she came inside and lay down to commune with Drishya. Why had they stopped?
She parted the canvas flaps that helped keep most of the sand out, and stepped out onto the “porch,” as they called it. It was only the raised shelf which served as the backrest for the wagon driver, but she was still small enough to stand on it. She had always been a delicately built child, and that had not changed—much. She was still petite in body, but inside, it was another matter.
What was that line from that old Vanjhani song Bulan and her mother sang together sometimes?
“The souls of men grow older than their faces . . .”
That described her to perfection.
On the outside, she was fifteen.
Inside, she felt a hundred years old.
Then she registered the reason for the train stopping and snapped back into herself.
The train was still spread out in its usual traveling pattern. But instead of open desert on all sides as she had seen before she had gone into the wagon, there was a sand cloud in the distance.
She turned and looked around, to the left, then to the right. The sand cloud surrounded them on all sides.
She froze in horror.
“Not now,” she said to herself. “Not! Now!”