The nights grew darker as the riders meddled deeper into the south.
For two nights straight they rode toward the village, a small settlement compared to those on the outskirts of Ghurd. The village stood isolated in the desert wilderness, tall palms rooted deep in the rough sands surrounding it.
As the riders neared the village, they spotted a tent beaming with dim lights, while dozens of others lay in the darkness, quiet. "It seems empty," said Laris, one of the riders, putting his camel into a trot. Ebid nodded in agreement. He towered over his two fellow riders on a whitecamel, where they mounted normal camels.
A man emerged as they approached the tent, holding a lighted lantern. He inspected them with a dubious look, shivering as a wave of cold breeze passed through.
"You're far away from the city," he announced, a big moustache covering his upper lip.
"I could say the same of you," Ebid retorted. "We're looking for a merchant. Goes by the name of Yazir."
The man hesitated. "And what business have you with him?"
The sort of business that would put a man's life in danger, Ebid thought. "That is a matter between us and the merchant," Ebid said instead.
The man faltered anxiously. "If it is a dispute of money, I promise you, I will pay."
"I have no dispute of such things." Ebid circled around the tent. "You are alone here. Where are the others?"
"People trade. They come and go. They don't stay at one place. Very bad for business."
"I have been told that you saw something… someone we are pursuing. The whiterider," Ebid said, pressing the last word in his mouth. His whitecamel ruffled in the sand.
The man held the lamp high, trying to make out Ebid in the dark. "What of him?"
"You saw him?"
"Yes, I saw him…" The merchant hesitated. "There were other things, too. Things I did not see, but felt in the deepest deep of my heart. These are bad times, I tell you."
The stars breached through the sky, white and blue, shining bright in the naked night; yet the night darkened. Darkness seemed endless in these parts, sifting alongside the dunes of sand that stretched as far as the eye could see.
"Other things? What do you mean?"
"I cannot describe it to you. I felt as though the sand was moving. I felt it watching. There are old, disturbing tales of creatures that live deep in the des—"
"That's absurd." one rider cut him off. He circled around the merchant on his camel.
"Gemal," Ebid said, throwing him a sharp look. Then he turned to the merchant. "I'm not here for shams. You said you saw the whiterider, where would that be?" Ebid rested a hand on the pummel of his sword and let it drift through the smooth cloth. He pressed his black cloak against him with the other hand. Or was it what the merchant had said that put a shiver in his spine? Even his whitecamel stirred back and forth in the sand.
"We were taking some goods from Bylad, heading for Ghurd. We stumbled on a sandstorm. More like it stumbled on us. And we had to change course off the main road, we're lucky to be alive, really…"
"A sandstorm," Ebid interrupted. You were lucky. Sandstorms are very common these days, growing deadly by the hour. "And that's where you saw what you believe you've seen?"
"No… Yes. It was a long journey. It felt as though the storm was following us, yet it did not catch us. Some of us died of cold, others of thirst. As time passed, water became scarce. We had too little to drink, but we had the food that we were bringing to Ghurd. By day we kept the tents hiked up and hid from the sun, and by night we traveled. Day and night we did so, and day and night we kept losing men, and good men they were… It wasn't far from the Walk of Death, I wager; I couldn't be sure of it. Only myself and other two men were left, we'd lost the fourth on that very dawn, he just couldn't take it anymore. He'd become delirious from the dunes, I wager. On the break of that dawn, as the sun came up, we were just making camp. I was feeding the camels, the other two were setting fire and starting our breakfast. And then, I saw it… him… I wasn't sure what it was. I thought I've gotten delirious, too. A man cloaked in white, riding away on a camel, just like yours." Pointing at the whitecamel, his hand came down, shaking. "I called the others to see if what I saw was true or the fever had caught me, and they saw him too, fading away into the first light of day."
Ebid gazed at him for a long time, then turned back and looked at the two riders that came with him. They wore faded, dark-blue cloth that looked black to an unknowing eye, covering them from face to feet. A weary train of thought came and went through Ebid's mind. He needed more than that. He wanted to ask more questions, to know more answers, but he knew the only way to get these answers is to travel south.
"The men that were with you, where are they?" Gemal asked.
"One of them is dead. The other's in Ghurd," he said.
"That's not good. Not good at all," Gemal said.
Ebid dismounted, stroking his whitecamel's haunch smoothly with one hand. Then he walked closer to the merchant and said: "You know that we need to find him," he paused. "You know who we are, yeah?"
"Covered faces. Black cloaks. Yeah. You're the Ansar," the merchant gave a nervous laugh, stretching the last word.
Ebid removed the cover from his face. "Yes. Yes, we are." He grinned. "Be it as it is, we need to find the whiterider. And to find him, we need to know his whereabouts, but only us must know it. I'm sure you understand."
The merchant nodded. "His name's Lurke…the merchant," he said. "Ask about him in the Red Market, everybody knows who he is." Everybody knows who he is. Damn these merchants, he thought. He knew that if the news were to reach Ghurd, it will all amount to nothing. The whiterider was the leader of the Ansar, and both of them were a threat to Ghurd. If the Yellow City finds out he's alive, they will send an army after him, after all of them.
"And all this happened…" Ebid said questioningly.
"One week ago." Damn you merchants. Ebid turned and gave a nod to Laris, the second rider. Laris urged his camel to turn and hurried towards the darkness, towards Ghurd.
"Have you told anyone about what you saw?" Gemal asked the merchant, towering over him from behind.
"Well, of course not." The merchant gave a nervous smile, turning back and forth nervously as Ebid stepped closer to him. "Even if I d-did, who would b-believe me? Delirious they'd call me, or even a fool. I'm a merchant; such things damage my business." His moustache twisted sideways as his nervous smile turned into a sly laugh.
Ebid grinned. He stepped closer to the merchant. "You're a good merchant, then. Tell me, do you have a family?"
For a moment the man stood in silence, shaking from cold. But also from fear, his eyes showed it. "I do… Please," he pleaded. "I have a daughter, a wife, I… I…"
"Shhh, don't be afraid," Ebid said, his face now inches away from the merchant's. "We don't kill people for no reason." He felt the merchant's heart beating out of his red cloak.
For a moment, Ebid hesitated, his eyes fixed on the merchant's. A daughter and a wife… It must be done, he thought.
"But for you," Ebid reached a hand to his side. "We have a reason."
The merchant's eyes grew large as a full, pale moon as the dagger dashed forward.
It cut through his neck before he could react to it. The hard steel licked through his flesh like butter, blood gushing. He fell to the ground, gasping for breath, holding the wound with both hands. The sand around him dried the blood into brown clumps. The lighted bugs flew out into the night as the lantern fell.
"We're moving out." He commanded Gemal, mounting his whitecamel.
"What about the body?" Gemal asked, turning his camel around.
"Leave it. If there are sandstorms around here, that should take care of it."
It was nearing dawn as they started south, putting the city of Ghurd to their backs. The moon prickled through the clear sky; its light seemed to show them the way. The sky was clear and vibrant with silence, and the stars flickered, their light danced, surrendering to the moon's. The wind had dwindled, stirring nothing but sand.
The two riders rode south and east and southeast, and then south again. They took a sturdy road as their path. The sandstorms and the hard winds, as frequent as they were becoming, had taken the old roads. And there are no maps of the desert. The common roads were prone to disappear more than the moon in a cloudy sky, and the one they took will mostly be gone when they were on their journey back.
They covered a good amount of distance to one night's ride, starting from Iqrab, the Ansar's camp site, to the small village the merchants stayed in, but they were exhausted, and their camels, too. It was tough enough to travel in the desert in a clear path at dusk, with a group of riders and a good stash of food and water, but in the heart of night, and in the heart of desert, Ebid and Gemal rode through thick dunes, alone, probing for what the Order of the Ansar had been at for long a time.
"Do, you believe in it, Gemal?" Ebid asked as they slowed into a trot.
"The whiterider, you mean?" Gemal took a gulp of water from his satchel. "Or you mean the old myths and tales of creatures made of sand?"
"Both," he retorted.
"If people say they saw the whiterider, who am I to argue. But tales of dragons and giant scorpions and sand creatures, that I wish not to believe. I've had enough of that as a child."
Ebid grimaced. "I've heard tales of dragons so big that one flap of their wings would start a sandstorm."
"And I've heard that The Divide was a dragon's lair. They're all tales told by those to have free food and drink."
They started again. Gemal mentioned his story joining The Ansar, something he always recounted over and over again. He was a tall, robust man, past forty, but joined as an orphaned boy. Now, a grown man, seasoned with the desert wilderness and the cold nights. It's been a long time, Ebid thought. He remembered his old life before joining the Order. He lived with his family in a tent outside of Ghurd, selling spices and weeds and ornaments, much like a merchant, but he did not travel. His wife made them, and his daughter took filled pouches and sold them door-to-door in the city. That was a long time ago, and since then the desert has grown more perilous. He remembered joining the army for the war, leaving his family for hunger, as was the case for many families. Sawad take Ghurd. Sawad take Ghurd and all those northerners.
They rode for a while that it was apt for the sun to rise, but the desert only darkened. Ebid perked his head up. Dawn came and went, but the sun was nowhere to be seen. When he turned to Gemal, he could only make out his figure as the darkness shrouded him in a black cloak. Ebid felt it spreading around him, and his heart dropped.
A shadow appeared in the distance.
It felt like the darkness rose from the sand like heat. It covered the sky and circled around them. The lights of the moon and the stars shrank to mere dots, far away atop, like a dream. Something stood in the distant where everything lay still. It moved toward them as they halted to take a look, and the sense of doom closed in with it. The figure of the shadow towered over them, grains of sand shifting through its carcass, shivering in the dwindled moonlight. The shifting sands formed tall legs and wide arms. The figure's face was half eaten by the dark, and the other half, merely apparent in the fading light, had no distinguished features, no mouth, no ears, just sand stirring in an empty, human-like shell.
Ebid dared not move. His heart sank even lower than before, and his hands, holding the reins, froze. The whitecamel grunted and took a step back. Danger crept along with what lay in front of them. It swarmed the area and tugged at his heart. The figure felt very ancient a creature. It felt as though time itself stood before them.
"Who is this? Come no further!" Gemal unsheathed his sword; his face was as horrorstricken as Ebid's. No, don't, Ebid wanted to say, but the words stuck in his throat.
The figure came further still, sand moving through its legs, interacting with the ground. Gemal held his long sword forward and went for it. The steel slashed the figure in half like it would slash through air. The grains of sand parted, then gathered again and formed around it. A hand of sand grains rose and swept across Gemal, forcing him into the ground as a hammer would, without touching him. Laying on the sand, he gasped. The figure landed its hand on him as he tried to gain his feet.
When the gasping stopped, Gemal's body turned into sand.
Ebid looked in dismay. The hair on his back stiffened. A shudder crept up his spine. He tried to turn his whitecamel, to run far away from it, but he saw something. Two other figures rose from the sand, forming, shaping into human figures. Slowly, they turned into a woman and a little girl, as clear as the moonlight permitted. It can't be. Ebid gasped.
His wife stood there, smiling. His daughter waved at him. They were both calling for him, gesturing with their hands. It can't be…
… He stepped down from his whitecamel, and walked towards his family.