Desert Wind Read online

  On the shore, Bhaskar still sat astride his mighty warhorse. He did not turn his eyes from the undulating ocean until what he had been watching disappeared completely from view, swallowed up by the high cresting waves far out to sea. A grim smile tugged at the bodyguard’s lips. He had watched the events unfolding on the barkentine, unmoved by the death being dealt among the rowboats. His attention had been riveted on one boat in particular, and when two bodies fell into that boat, the ocean swelled and spun the small boat away from the barkentine, he had relaxed his grip on his pommel. His shoulders had dropped and he had let out a long, satisfied sigh. Pulling on his mount’s reins, he started up the beach, urging the horse along the switchback trail.

  He had news of great import to give his maharaja. There was a death to be reported.

  The death of an infidel called The Evil One.

  Chapter Ten

  Sitara sat quietly, her hands folded primly in her lap. Her father had been in to see her and now her mother was striding about the room—giving orders, issuing demands, casting her irritated looks when Sitara refused to speak. Words tumbled from her mother’s lips but Sitara did not hear them. She saw her mother’s mouth moving but no sound came out. Watching her mother fling her hands about, stomp her feet, would not make the sound return. It was as though the young princess had fallen down a long, deep well and was lost amid the utter stillness of impenetrable silence.

  Shashi and Anumati, Sitara’s twin sisters, and Ahalya, her youngest sibling, had accompanied their mother just as her other sisters— Tapati, Jyotis and Sandhya—had come with their father. None of them were able to break through Sitara’s silence and none of their words had penetrated the fog into which the young woman had sunk.

  “Has she lost her reason, Mama? Should we confine her to an asylum?” Ahalya asked. As the youngest of the maharaja’s daughters, she had been spoiled rotten by her parents as well as her sisters and took liberties the other girls would not.

  The Maharani Kalindi Santhanam heaved a long, tired sigh. “Of course not. There is nothing wrong with your sister a good beating would not cure.”

  “Mother!” Shashi exclaimed with a gasp. “You would not!”

  The maharani waved aside her daughter’s words. “Of course I would not, but your father? He just might.”

  “Sitara is suffering from a broken heart,” Anumati said. “She pines for her love.”

  “Be quiet, Anumati!” her twin snapped. “You know nothing of broken hearts or love!”

  “And you do?” Ahalya challenged.

  “He has bewitched her,” the maharani stated. “That is exactly what The Evil One did. He cast a spell upon your poor sister and we must find someone to remove it.”

  “She eats, she sleeps—if her tossing and turning can be called sleep—and she carries on normal functions, but her heart is broken,” Anumati insisted. “Can no one see that but me?”

  Exasperated with her daughters, the maharani ordered them from the room, shooing them out and locking the door so neither they—nor their siblings—could enter Sitara’s room.

  “You act as though you are the only woman to ever lose the man she loves,” the maharani snapped as she drew up a chair and sat down in front of her daughter. “You are not, nor will you be the last to suffer such pain.”

  Sitara stared straight ahead of her as though she were alone in her room. Her head was tilted slightly to one side as though the only thing she could hear was far, far away and she was listening intently to whatever had staked claim to her consciousness.

  “I was forced to give up the man I loved,” the maharani said. “As an obedient daughter, I took the man my family chose for me and have made the most of it.” She folded her arms. “Neither you nor your sisters would be here if I had sat around and moped over the loss of Mehtar Chaudhari.”

  Since being carried into her room and laid upon her bed, Sitara had uttered not one word. She had barely blinked. It had been nearly a week since that fateful day on the coast when Ardalan Jaleem had vanished in the turbulent sea. One whole day had been spent riding out the violent storm, locked in the arms of a man she hated with every ounce of energy in her body. Lying in the bunk that would have been her bed with her new husband, hell had opened up and she had taken a look inside. Now, her soul was wandering somewhere beyond where her physical body resided.

  “Thank the gods Sahan was there to rescue you from the infidel,” the maharani said, staring into her daughter’s still face, searching for a reaction—any reaction to her words.

  There was a rattling of the doorknob, a loud knock upon the door, then before the maharani could tell whoever it was to go away, her husband’s voice demanded she open the door.

  Sighing deeply, the maharani got to her feet and marched over to the door. She unlocked it and flung it wide. “What is it now?” she asked.

  Bhishma Santhanam was accustomed to his wife’s sharp tongue, her narrowed eyes and tapping foot. He stepped around her and went over to his daughter. “Has she spoken?”

  “You know she hasn’t,” the maharani snapped. “If she had, I would have sent word to you, Bhishma.”

  The maharaja took the chair his wife had been sitting in and leaned forward, laying his hands over his daughter’s. “Sitara,” he said softly. “My precious, please speak to us. Tell us what is wrong.”

  His wife snorted. “You know very well what is wrong, Bhishma.”

  Lowering his head, the maharaja closed his eyes. “I spoke at length with Sahan. He is still willing to take her to bride as soon as we have word back that the Asaraban sultan has declared his son dead.”

  “And you believe the infidel will accommodate you by sending you word?” his wife asked with a rolling of her eyes.

  “Our spies will let us know when the matter has been settled,” the maharaja told her. “We need no formal declaration from the infidels. It can be announced to our people that our daughter is a widow and that her hand still belongs to Prince Sahan.” He glanced up at Sitara. “People will feel great empathy for her, for she was nothing more than a pawn in The Evil One’s game.”

  “And what will you do if she is carrying that man’s seed?” his wife demanded.

  The maharaja winced. “Pray to the gods that is not the case, Kalindi.”

  “But if it is?”

  Her husband shrugged helplessly. “Our people are not like the infidels. We hold all life sacred. If she carries the child to term, we will then send it to The Evil One’s father. What that man does with his son’s bratling is no concern of ours.”

  “You would let our first grandchild go so easily?” the maharani questioned.

  “You would have us keep a muwallad? A half-breed?” her husband asked.

  “Would you finish crushing her by stealing away her child?”

  “The infidel’s slimy get, you mean!” the maharaja snarled.

  “It would be all she has left of him.”

  “She needs no reminder of what the fiend did to her!”

  “Look at her, Bhishma!” she ordered. “Bhaskar told you she was laughing as she boarded the rowboat. Whatever caused this was done after she was aboard the ship, not before. Something has broken her spirit. It is not just a matter of her heart being bruised by all this. No woman sits as she does without something terrible having happened to her.” She narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure Sahan did not overstep his boundaries when they were alone on the ship? After all, he sent his men to shore in the midst of a raging storm so no one could see what he might have done.”

  “How could you suggest such a thing?” her husband challenged. “Sahan is an honorable man and—”

  “I would not put it past him,” the maharani interrupted. “I told you from the start I did not like the little boy he was and I absolutely loath the man he has become.”

  “Be still, woman,” her husband ordered. “Gossip has destroyed more than one good man!”

  Sitara could see her parents arguing. She could feel the vibrations in the air a
round them and see the angry color of their auras, but it didn’t have meaning for her. Her body was sore. Her heart was aching. Her soul was thirsting for something that had been taken from her on the swell of a wave. All she wanted was to be left alone. Life had become a burden for the young princess.

  “But, Bhismah, what if he did ravish her?” the maharani asked. “What if it is Sahan’s seed and not the infidel’s she carries inside her? Have you thought of that?”

  “Stop borrowing trouble!” the maharaja ordered.

  “Would you send that child away to the infidel’s father? A Kishnu child to be raised by heathens?”

  The maharaja looked at his daughter and took in the sorrow etched upon her young face. He was not a sensitive man but he knew true grief when he observed it. “You are suggesting we keep the child not even knowing the sire?”

  “Sitara was Joined legally to the infidel. Everyone knows that. If there is a child whether of his loins or Sahan’s, we must state it is the Asaraban’s lest there be scandal attached to our daughter’s name. If you insist she Join with Sahan after a reasonable time, then so be it, but the child must be declared the infidel’s!”

  “Sahan would know—”

  “If he did what I strongly suspect he did, what do we care what he thinks? He is without honor to lay hands to a woman not his to touch!”

  “All the more reason to have them Joined as soon as possible,” the maharaja said.

  “No.”

  The one word—spoken with venom and filled with something neither parent had ever heard from the mouth of their child—made the maharaja and his wife look to Sitara.

  Sitara turned her head toward them. “No,” she repeated. “I would rather die than have him put his filthy hands on me again.”

  Stunned by both the viciousness in his daughter’s tone as well as the words she had just spoken, the maharaja slid off the chair and hunkered down before her, his hand hovering over hers for a moment until he drew it back. “Are you telling me Sahan…?”

  “Do not speak that vile one’s name to me,” Sitara hissed. “Not ever again!”

  Twisting her hands in agitation, the maharani moved closer to her child. “Sitara, you could be with child and if you are…”

  Sitara’s dark, brooding eyes flicked to her mother. “That child will be my husband’s,” she said forcefully. “It will be Ardalan’s.”

  “The Asaraban is dead, Sitara,” her father said gently. “You are now a widow. Would you want to raise an infidel child on your own?”

  There was such anger, such blazing sorrow on Sitara’s face as she locked her gaze with her father’s. “You are the cause of my husband’s death. You gave your word to him and you dishonored that word.”

  The maharaja shook his head. “No, I did not say my men would not attack him on the high seas. I said—”

  “I saw what your men did,” Sitara said. “The arrows may have flown across the waters but they came from Kishnu land. You lied to him, Father, and I will never forgive you.”

  “Sitara…” her father began, his own anger rising, but she cut him off.

  “All he wanted was to leave our country in peace. He was in retreat when he made the mistake of directing his men to our sacred caves. Ardalan was an honorable man, a good man, and you betrayed him in the most brutal way. You are no father of mine!”

  Lashed by the sting of his favorite daughter’s words, the maharaja got clumsily to his feet. He opened his mouth to deny her charges but there was really nothing he could say. He had listened to his advisers and not to his own sense of what was right, and because of it, he might have lost his beloved child for all time.

  “What is it you want us to do?” Sitara’s mother asked.

  Sitara looked at her mother. “Let me leave Kishnu for I have no desire to stay where honor is nothing more than lip service.”

  “And go where?” her mother demanded. “Surely not to Asaraba!”

  “Send me to Oceania,” Sitara said. “I will content there.”

  Her mother and father looked at one another. There was no way either of them could allow Sahan to take Sitara to bride now, and if the girl were carrying either man’s child, she would be gossiped about and her child the object of speculation all its life.

  “In Oceania I can make a life for myself, and if I am carrying Ardalan’s child, I will raise him there to remember the great warrior his father was.” She turned her eyes to her father. “But I will never tell him it was his own bloodkin who made it impossible for him to ever know that father.”

  The maharaja flinched at her words and lowered his head. “Perhaps it would be best for you to leave Kishnu.”

  “Where is the ship?” Sitara asked.

  “It was taken to our southern harbor at Madur,” the maharaja replied. “We recovered five of the rowboats and…” His voice dwindled off for he could see the grief building on his daughter’s face again. He cleared his throat. “Could you sail upon that ship?”

  “As long as I am not asked to go into the master’s cabin,” she replied through clenched teeth. “A pallet on the deck would be better than that evil place!”

  Her parents exchanged a look and they both agreed to allow their daughter to leave, although from the looks on their faces, it was a decision that was causing them great distress.

  “What of my husband’s men?” Sitara asked. “Were they buried? Did any survive the attack?”

  The maharaja looked away. “No, Sitara. There were no survivors and we did not bury them.”

  There was a long moment of silence then Sitara’s eyes filled with tears. “You left them on the beach?”

  Lifting his head in defense of his general’s decision, her father reminded his daughter the Kishnu did not bury the dead.

  “Were they cremated, then, or did you just leave them there to rot?” she demanded.

  “If it is your desire that I send my men back to the beach to—”

  “It is not just my desire, Your Highness. It is my most fervent demand.”

  The maharaja nodded and turned to leave the room. He motioned his wife to accompany him, and when she hesitated, he hissed at her, ordering her to his side.

  Her mother took one last look at her eldest daughter and fled the room, her hands over her eyes.

  Sitara called for her servants and bid them pack the private belongings of her room. She went to the window and stared out at the courtyard of the palace as the servants bustled about the room, readying their mistress’ departure from Kishnu.

  * * * * *

  The rain had ceased by nightfall so there was nothing to wash away the stench of the bodies that had lain upon the sands nearly all the day. Some of the dead had been washed out to sea during the storm but three dozen or so of them littered the blood-soaked sand, their bodies riddled with arrows and the brutal wounds left behind by the lances.

  Only a portion of one of the rowboats remained on the beach. The rest of it had been dragged back into the sea to sink to the bottom. That portion resting upon the rocks, its keel to the sky. Water spread under it from the low tide gently washing to shore and the timber creaked in the bright moonlight shining down from the full moon overhead.

  Halim Evren knew he was lucky to be alive and thanked the Prophet as he lay shivering on the beach. It was all he could do to turn over to his back and look up at the sky. He swiveled his head to the destruction that lay scattered all around him and felt his heart aching with sorrow. He too might well have been lying with his men had the rowboat not capsized and broken apart, trapping him beneath it. Stunned, his body pinned down while he was in a weakened state he had heard the slaughter taking place on the beach but could not get free. As his world shut down from the nearly unbearable pain pressing into his lower back, he had slipped into unconsciousness to the sound of his men being butchered.

  He had caught a glimpse of Prince Sahan on the deck of the barkentine, had seen his beloved Prince Ardalan fall to his death, and through the wrecked side of the boat holdin
g him temporarily down before the ravaging waves retook possession of the object and actually freed him, he had witnessed the bastard Bhaskar aiding in murdering wounded Asaraban warriors. Now as he lay there staring up at the moon, he made a vow that he would avenge his men if it was the last thing he ever did.

  The sound of oars slapping against water went through Halim like a knife and he struggled to raise his head. What he saw made his blood run cold and he flipped over, biting down on his tongue to keep from crying out at the pain that lanced through his back.

  A trireme lay at anchor on the nearly calm seas. Over one hundred and twenty feet long, eighteen feet wide, the pirate vessel’s three files of oarsmen on each side could easily total one hundred seventy men. The twenty men rowing to shore on a scavenger boat was more than one man could fight.

  Halim dug his elbows into the wet sand, pushed with his toes, tears of pain gathering his eyes as he tried desperately to get away from the threat he had seen anchored out in the bay.

  “Sobreviviente!”

  Halim did not know the language but he understood the excitement in the voice of the speaker and knew the man had spotted him, knew he had survived the massacre. He slammed his elbows into the gritty sand, struggling to drag himself up the beach.

  “¡Tenemos un sobreviviente aquí!” another man yelled.

  Spitting like a mad cat, Halim felt hands on his arms and he was dragged to his feet, screaming in agony as the pain in his back sliced through his body, severing all feeling in his legs. He bent over—sick to his stomach—relieving himself at the feet of his captors.

  “Tenga cuidado de él. ¡Él está lastimado!”

  Halim felt his chin gripped in a firm but gentle hand and his face was lifted slowly. He found himself staring into a darkly tanned face.

  “¿Quiénes son usted?”

  Halim shook his head, unable to answer the man’s question because he could not understand the language. He was in such agony he heard himself whimpering.