In her dream she was being hunted by dogs. She woke to hear them baying, closer than before. No. No, not dogs. Arghad’s hunters came on wings, not feet, and they had pursued her for two days, now. The Mahahmbi had no dogs, but their birds-of-prey had dogs’ loyalty to their masters, dogs’ ability to track by scent, and they could scream a signal from the sky when they detected their quarry. She had left her smell behind, on towels, on clothing, on all the baby’s things. There had been much of her to give the hunters!
Two nights she had moved over the desert, sometimes running, sometimes staggering,- almost three days she had hidden on the desert sleeping when she could. Through last night, the wind had been from the south, and she had fled into it, blinking its grit from her eyes. This morning, the third morning, it had swung around, coming from the west, and she had lain down on the lee side of a dune, in the shade cast by a line of bone bushes, her head to the north, her feet to the south as Tenopia had done, aware, even through her exhaustion, of the symbolism of the act. Tenopia-songs paid much attention to the interior meanings of simple things. Tenopia: the heroine of women’s songs sung by the malghaste in Mahahm-qum.
Lying with her feet away from the city signified that though matters of her mind were in the city behind her, her survival lay in moving away. Dovidi was behind her, and pray heaven he was safe. The menfolk were there, perhaps, if they were not dead. She could do nothing about any of them, but she might save herself. Any hope of doing so lay south, toward the refuge of the malghaste. If her mind struggled with this, her feet did not, for they staggered southward while she was only half awake, into the long shadows east of the stone dike that belted the base of the dune.
Long ago, when this world had been volcanic, the edge of a huge surface block had been thrust upright to make a mighty rampart running north and south. Within the block, layers of igneous rock had been separated by thicker layers of softer, sedimentary stuff, now much worn away to leave paths sheltered from the wind by parallel walls, stone lanes she could use now as Tenopia had used them long ago.
North was the sea, where the shepherds pastured their flocks on the seaweed washed ashore by the sea winds. East or west was desert scattered with hidden oases, already occupied by Mahahmbi. When Tenopia had gone southward, however, toward the pole, she had found refuges along the way. If one went far enough, the malghaste said, one might find Galul, mountainous Galul, with forests, shade, flowers, running water. Perhaps it was true. Or, perhaps it was only a prisoner’s myth, the Mahahmbi idea of heaven, achieved as a reward for some unthinkable virtue.
Though the rag-tatters over her sand-colored robe were the best camouflage she could have, though her feet left no lasting tracks in the windblown sand, still she stank of fear, of stale sweat, and of the breastmilk down the front of her bodysuit that had soured before drying. Now the stiffened fabric chafed her with every step, and the odor floated on the still air for the winged hunters to sniff out. When Tenopia had come this way, she had sung to nga tahunga makutu matangi, the wizards of the winds, asking their help in confusing her trail. She knew no invocation to bring the tahunga makutu to her aid. She would have to rely on her own two feet.
The dunes rose higher on her left, the sand ascended in the path she followed, eventually it rose to the top of the walls, burying the stone lanes. She took a sighting south, on a distant outcropping, and held to that direction, swerving only briefly between two thorny mounds, around another, hearing the shrieks from the heavens fade behind her. The hunters were going off at a northeasterly tangent, getting farther away. When the stone dike reemerged it was only a shallow ridge, rooted in the ribbon of shadow along its eastern side. She slipped into the shade, her feet plopping into it as fish into water, feeling the coolness rise to her knees, hips, to her waist as the wall loomed higher, topping her head at last and continuing to rise in erose scallops and notches. A few yards to her left a parallel wall emerged from the sand, and before long she moved in a blessed corridor of shade and calm air, away from the forge of the sun, the huffing bellows of the wind.