Both the shadowed lane and the hunters’ misdirection were blessings. Perhaps the wind wizards had decided to help her without being asked. Or perhaps Awhero had sent someone into the desert with a sack of the baby’s diapers, to draw the hunters away. Several times Genevieve had heard either men or birds frighteningly close, but they had always turned aside. She caught her breath at the memory of panic, yesterday’s fear adding to this moment’s weariness. She bent to ease a sudden pain in her side, aware of an overwhelming thirst. She reached for her waterbottle . . . Gone. Left where she’d been sleeping!
She collapsed against the stone, head falling onto her knees, arms wrapped around her head, holding herself together, denying the terror that threatened to erupt in hysterical screaming or laughter or shouts of nonsense. Think, Genevieve, she told herself. Think. The bottle had only a swallow or two left in it, not worth going back for. Besides, if the men gave up on their current line of search and backtracked into the wind, they could still come across her trail before dark. Also, when Tenopia had escaped from the Shah of Mahahm-qum, she had reached a sanctuary on the third evening. This was Genevieve’s third evening, and she might already be within sight of the place the old woman called te marae, he wahi oranga. Water or no, better go on than back.
She stood up again, putting one foot in front of the other, fighting the urge to lick her lips. They were already split and bleeding. Licking them only made them worse. The Mahahmbi wore veils across their faces when in the desert, and they carried unguents for their lips and eyelids. That is, the men did. Women had no need of such stuff, for women did not go into the desert. Except for Tenopia. And, come to think of it, she didn’t know what time of day Tenopia had run from Mahahm-qum. Genevieve herself had fled at noon, or thereabout. She might have another half day to go.
She climbed drifting sand as the walls on either side of her were covered once more. Beyond the dune was an area of gravelly hills, spotted with thorn. She stopped to take her husband’s locator from the pocket of his robe and check her direction, following the line into the distance to find a landmark on the horizon. She had come this far from landmark to landmark, south on south, and thank God for the locator, though now, with the sun almost on the horizon, she could almost set a track at right angles to the shadows of the thorn, streaming away to her left, shadows that went down the dune and all the way to the top of another . . .
Color! At the shadow’s end, a flicker of green, seen out of the corner of her right eye. There, and again. She veered to the left, across the buried walls, and followed her own attenuated silhouette up the dune, gray granules flowing as she slipped, plunged, wallowed the last few meters, struggling to the top on hands and knees.
Below was the valley described in Tenopia’s song, skullstones and dry bones, a dry streambed littered with round white rocks. On the south and east, black-streaked cliffs made a barricade against the sands, underlining bald and wrinkled mountains. Across the dried streambed the walled refuge squatted ugly as a toad, built of the same stone as the cliffs and topped by one stubby tower that flew the long triangle of the banner: a licking flame of green bearing a single gold leaf.
“In desert, hope is small,” Awhero had said. “Leaf is sign of hope, small, almost unnoticed. Yet it holds infinite promise, does it not?” There were no leaves in Mahahm-qum. The banners of Mahahm were black, with a blazing yellow sun, and there was sun enough in Mahahm-qum to make ashes of anything living.
Light flashed in her eyes, reflected from the highest window of the tower, only a glint. Lenses. Someone knew she was here. She paused, wondering if the gate would open to emit an attacking horde. Or perhaps just one strong man. Either way, she could do nothing about it. Almost three days of walking in the sand had taken her strength. Too little sleep and water had taken her resolve. Fear had taken her will. She floundered downward in another scrambled avalanche and staggered onto the flinty soil of the riverbed. From there it was only a short distance up the equally hard packed slope to the walls.