Hyam felt roundly abused when they set off from Olom the hour before dawn. After the crisis, he had managed a few hours’ troubled rest. Meda and Fareed had both slept on the floor at the foot of his bed. Shona had stayed there beside him, cradling his head in her arms. Now she rode slightly slumped, her shoulders bowed, her young face creased with exhaustion.
They rode a motley assortment of desert ponies. Hyam’s head pounded such that each clop of a hoof was matched by another pulse of pain. His sense of guilt fashioned a pain worse than his head. His weakness had wreaked havoc on his closest remaining friends.
He listened as Meda related the night’s experience to Selim. Meda made it sound as though the entire experience centered upon the release of the eye’s other prisoner. Twice Hyam started to correct her. Confess the temptation that had snared him. Apologize again.
But his admission would only focus their attention on a threat that had passed. Hyam lifted his gaze to the unseen road beyond the reach of their mage-lights. Out where the shadows waited and new dangers lurked. He remained silent.
When Meda finished her telling, Selim said, “I wonder who the prisoner might have been.”
This much Hyam retained from his ordeal. “His name was Dyamid. More I cannot say. But the name was the last clear thought I had.”
“The name is enough,” Selim declared. “I will explain when we have left the city well behind.”
Olom still slept, yet they could see testimony of the recent crisis all about them. From the road, the dwellings revealed long, dusty brick walls with guard parapets anchoring each corner. But the doors to many hung like wooden flags of defeat, revealing interiors void of life.
As they arrived at the city’s eastern gates, the rising sun offered a rose-tinted glow to their departure. The road passed between two springs feeding streams that ran like sparkling veins through vast fields of green. The cultivated valley was rich and verdant and lined by blooming fruit trees. The pastures held thousands of bleating sheep.
Meda asked, “How many animals can one city need?”
“Not us, but the golems,” Selim replied. “They eat more than a dozen each day. Rather, they did. Now it is as you see. The shepherds keep raising flocks in hopes that the golems will return, and for the few who still remain. When our last golems depart, the city perishes.”
The green farmlands and bleating sheep stayed with them for several more miles. Eventually they gave way to empty meadows starved of moisture. The buildings became little more than hovels. Most revealed gaping doors and empty corrals.
Hyam waited until they passed the last gnarled olive grove. Ahead of them now was only the empty yellow desert. Then he asked, “Who was Dyamid?”
“Elven rulers take names that are permitted to no other,” Selim replied. “The name is used once and buried with their king or queen.”
The sun was climbing overhead, the heat swiftly building. Hyam found the intensity helped clear his head. “I did not know that.”
“Nor is there any reason that you should. Dyamid was Ethrin’s last ruler. The tales of my clan’s early days include stories about him. The year before Ethrin fell to the Milantian hordes, Dyamid’s wife and only child perished. Some say it was due to a sudden fever, others to poison. Then two months before the hordes invaded, a wandering mage offered Dyamid an amulet or mirror or some such thing that granted him access to the other world.”
The gorge rose in Hyam’s throat as he recalled the needle-sharp teeth gnawing at his life. From his other side, Meda said, “He was given the eye.”
“No,” Shona said, her voice a full octave lower than normal. “The eye was made for him.”
“That is my thinking as well,” Selim agreed. “For the legend states that Dyamid perished while his body still lived. He became a puppet that breathed. And the last command Dyamid gave was for his warriors to open the hidden portal and allow the Milantian horde to invade the Elven kingdom.”
Hyam heard the rush of voices surround him. But the words no longer mattered. He rode convicted by Selim’s tale. It was not the loss of his own life that assaulted him. Rather, how he had almost shared Dyamid’s fate. Failing in his responsibilities to all those who had placed their trust in him.
Hyam found it helpful to focus upon the empty realm. Gradually the road became erased by the sweep of yellow dust. Up ahead there was no trail, no hint of what awaited them beyond the veil of shimmering heat. He swallowed the guilt with a determined strength. He would not fail his company or his lover again.
They needed him to be strong. They needed him to live.