Quest for the Scorpion's Jewel Read online

  “Samariyosin,” Jesse said thoughtfully. “It’s a long name, isn’t it?”

  He shrugged. “All of my people have long names.”

  “Do you mind if I call you Sam?”

  Samariyosin frowned, and Jesse was afraid he had offended him. “Sam has no meaning in Da’armon.”

  “How about Samar, then?” Jesse tried. “I would think that ‘He who has no fear’ is far more impressive. And much easier to pronounce.”

  Samariyosin’s leathery face broke into a grin. “That it is, young Jesse. You may call me Samar if you like.”

  Tilting his head back, Jesse looked up at the stars. Once again, Jesse was amazed at their beauty. “You could never count them all,” he mumbled to himself.

  “Marakondanset,” Samar said, offhandedly. “It was my father’s name, meaning, ‘Servant of the Numberer of the stars.’ That is one of the titles the people of Da’armos give their god of justice and the afterlife.”

  Justice. The word made Jesse think of Parvel. “Do you believe in God, Samar?”

  “I have never given it much thought,” Samar said, after thinking for a few seconds. He too looked up at the stars. “Perhaps there is a Being of sorts who made all of it. How else would you explain the stars?”

  Jesse just grunted. It was not what he wanted to hear.

  “But,” Samar added, “in all my years, I have never seen evidence of any sort of personal God, one who listens.” He paused, threw more chips on the fire. “Then again, I have never made any attempt to find one either. Never saw the need.”

  Then perhaps that is why you’ve never heard Him. Jesse shook his head to rid it of Parvel’s words. He wanted to forget the whole business, but everywhere he turned, it seemed, something would remind him of Parvel and his God.

  They fell back into a comfortable silence. Looking at Samar, Jesse remembered all the guests at his uncle’s inn. The merchants and traders especially, whether they traveled by land or sea, had the look that Jesse saw in Samar’s face now. It was the lonely look of someone who has no one to talk to. Those were the people, Jesse knew, who told the best stories of all.

  “Samar,” Jesse began, “traveling around the desert with a caravan this large, you must have encountered some trouble in your days.”

  “Of course,” Samar said, a deep laugh bubbling up like water from the oasis. “Of course I have, young Jesse.” Then he stared into the fire, lost in his memories. “But surely you don’t wish to hear an old man babble.”

  In that moment, instead of a blustering man with a dozen servants at his command and a caravan of fine goods, Jesse saw a lonely old man with no family and no close friends. “I do,” he said simply.

  Samar’s deep-set eyes seemed to brighten, and he leaned back in the sand. “I remember it as if it was yesterday, the day the Amarian soldiers thought I was a spy for Da’armos….”

  An hour later, Jesse crept to his tent, a small linen cloth pegged to the ground near the edge of the oasis, his mind full of tales of betrayal, pursuit, and adventure. He must have fallen asleep as soon as he lay on the mat, because the next thing he remembered was someone shaking him. He almost cried out, then stopped himself.

  “Jesse,” an urgent voice whispered. “You must get up at once.”

  Samar. But it can’t be morning yet, can it?

  The old man crouched above him, and he was clearly agitated for some reason. He splashed some cold water on Jesse’s face, making him gasp slightly. “Make haste,” he whispered again. “Grab your belongings. You and your friends must leave here at once.”

  “What?” Jesse muttered sleepily. It was an easy thing to gather his possessions: they were right where he had laid them before falling asleep. He took his walking stick, leaning against the side of the tent. “Why? What’s happening?”

  Samar grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the tent. “Not a word, not a sound,” he said. “The camels are packed and waiting, but we must hurry.”

  “Stop,” Jesse commanded in a whisper, and Samar did, staring back at him with wide, frightened eyes. “Please, Samar, I need to know what is happening.”

  “I could not do it,” Samar whispered hoarsely. “Though it may cost me my life, I could not do it.”

  “Do what?”

  Samar took a deep breath, which seemed to calm him down some. “The Patrol members who came earlier…they are assassins who are coming to kill you. I do not know why. I do not know what you have done. All they asked is that I let it happen. But I could not do it.”

  There would be time for more explanation later. “I’ll wake Rae,” Jesse said. “You get Silas.” Jesse practically ran to Rae’s tent. “Rae!” he hissed. “It’s Jesse.”

  “Be grateful that you identified yourself,” Rae growled from the dark. “I nearly stabbed you.”

  That made Jesse take a step back. “Rae, our lives are in danger. Get up, grab your things, and follow me.”

  Outside the tent, Samar was waiting with Silas. “Come,” Samar said, motioning them forward. He carried a wicker basket lashed to his back, the kind that hung from the saddles of the camels, and a large water skin. “We must go on foot now.”

  “Where are we going?” Jesse asked.

  “No more questions,” Samar insisted. “Just follow.” He shoved a thick palm branch at Silas. “You—wipe out our tracks as we walk. I fear the patrol members are already nearby, but if they are not, we will not leave them a trail.”

  Jesse remembered that trick from one of Samar’s stories. But I never thought I’d be in one of them.

  “Do not look back, and move silently,” Samar advised them. “Riangen da’ede. ‘Even the sand dunes have eyes.’”

  Someone is watching us? But why?

  Old as he was, fear had apparently made Samar quicker than his years. He hurried through the camp and over the hills near the oasis. Even with the use of his walking stick, it was hard for Jesse to keep his pace.

  The moon on the white sand made it easy for Jesse to see where he was going. Which means it will be equally easy for anyone to see us. The thought made him hurry to the topof the first of the hills.

  “The Patrol did not know of the smugglers’ pits when I came last year,” Samar said, leading the way. “Let us hope that they have not learned of them since then.”

  Even though Samar had warned him several times not to turn back, Jesse took one last look at the camp from the top of the hill.

  There, three men with swords hacked their way into his tent.

  Chapter 12

  The pit, a gaping hole in the ground, was so deep Jesse could not see its bottom. There was nothing but blackness below, and Jesse almost felt that he would be sucked in if he stood too close.

  “I suppose you’re going to ask us to jump in,” he guessed, trying to prepare himself for the worst.

  Samar snorted a laugh. “Hardly. You would contaminate the water supply. These cisterns are used by shepherds and nomads. I’m sure they’d rather you didn’t waste what little water we can store in these parts. And,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “it would be a very long fall.”

  “If there’s water below,” Rae said, a worried frown creasing her face, “then how can we hide? I don’t know how to swim.”

  “I used to,” Jesse said. “But now, with one good leg, I can only stay above water for a few minutes.”

  Samar waved at them impatiently. “Just watch.” He crouched down beside the pit and reached down inside of it. “It should be here,” he said, groping around in the darkness.

  Silas lurched forward to grab the old man’s shoulders as he started to tip.

  “Here!” Samar said triumphantly, seemingly unaware that he had nearly fallen into the cistern. He pulled out a stretch of thick, coiled rope with large knots spaced evenly along it.

  “So, we’re all going to hang from the rope and w
ait until the Patrol members pass by,” Rae suggested, raising an eyebrow.

  “I’ll take my chances and hide myself in the sand,” Jesse said immediately.

  Rae shuddered. “Not me. Never again. It felt like I was being buried alive.”

  “If you don’t stop talking, you will be buried dead in a few moments,” Samar snapped. They stopped talking. “Climb down the rope into the cistern. At the end of the rope, you should find a ladder to your left.”

  “Should?” Jesse asked pointedly.

  Samar ignored him. “The ladder leads to a cavern dug into the side of the cistern. There is enough room for all of us.” He glanced back over the hills. “Now, hurry, before the Patrol finds us here!”

  “I’ll go first,” Silas said. “I’ll be able to help the rest of you.” Without wasting another second, he grabbed the top of the rope and slid into the cistern.

  The rope held.

  Jesse breathed a sigh of relief. If it could hold Silas, it would hold any of them.

  “You next,” Samar said to Rae. “I will go last.”

  Rae is supposed to climb while Silas is still on the rope? “I don’t know if….” But Rae was already edging into the darkness of the cistern.

  Jesse knew that he was next, and he willed his hands to stop sweating. He wondered if he would be able to climb. Perhaps Silas and Rae had been through exercises like this in their training, but since the accident, all he had done was help with farm chores and clean tables.

  Relax, he told himself. It will be just like the bridge. You can do it.

  “Now you, Jesse,” Samar said. Jesse glanced at the walking stick in his hand, and Samar followed his gaze.

  “Leave it,” Samar advised. “We’ll be back up eventually. Bury it in the sand.”

  “Won’t the assassins find it and know we’re here?”

  Samar’s weather-beaten face was grim. “If they’re that close, they’ll find us too. Now, hurry.”

  Jesse started to bury the stick, then stopped. “No. I’ll take it down myself.”

  “You’ll never make it with one hand.” Samar sighed, then snatched it from him. “Here.” He thrust the walking stick into a loop of his belt that held his sword, money pouch, and other valuables. Cinched tightly against his waist, the staff barely moved. “Now go.”

  As soon as he crouched down on the ground, Jesse knew that the hardest part would not be the climb: it would be the first drop into the darkness. His mouth was as dry as the desert around them as he began to climb down.

  It was dark in the cistern, but cool, a nice change from the hot, dry night. Jesse had little time to enjoy it, however. Since only one leg was strong enough to support him, almost all of his weight rested on his arms. He clung to the first knot for a few seconds, then loosened his grip and slid to the next.

  Each drop made his stomach turn over. I must not vomit into the cistern, he thought. The shepherds and nomads wouldn’t appreciate that at all.

  “Eight knots,” Silas called up. He must have reached the ladder.

  Jesse had just reached the fourth knot, and already his arms were trembling. A bit of dirt fell from above him. Samar must be beginning the climb.

  Jesse grasped at the rope with his good leg, trying to give his arms a rest, but it was no use. “I’m not going to make it,” he gasped, already out of breath.

  “Keep coming,” Silas said, from below him somewhere.

  He doesn’t understand! Jesse loosened his grip again, slid to the next knot. This time it was harder to tighten his grip again. One hand fell away, and he jerked it back again.

  “Look up, Jesse,” Samar said.

  In the dark, Jesse could barely make out the old man’s hand, reaching down toward him. He tried to grab it.

  No! As soon as Jesse let go with one hand, the other lost its grip on the rope, and he felt himself falling.

  Then a jolt knocked the breath out of him. Hard stone wall, but no water. Someone was holding onto him with a grip like an iron clamp.

  A voice was shouting in pain, and Jesse joined it. He opened his eyes. Everything was blurry.

  He blinked. The ladder. He reached out, grabbed the rung in front of him. The shouting stopped, the iron grip relaxed. For the first time, Jesse realized that it was Rae who had grabbed him, who had held him and kept him from plunging into the water below.

  “Go,” she said, pointing down.

  Jesse climbed the ladder, which was really just a set of iron rungs welded onto the stone wall of the cistern. They looked old enough to make him nervous.

  Three rungs later, Jesse saw a gash of darkness in the wall, like a giant black stain on a dark gray blanket. The cave.

  Silas, standing in the opening, helped him jump from the ladder to the rocky ledge. Rae followed soon after, and Samar after her. They all stayed on the edge of the cave, almost as if they were afraid to go any deeper.

  Samar shoved the walking stick at Jesse, and he clung to it, the familiar wood giving him a bit more confidence. Then Samar felt along the side of the cave. “There ought to be…ah!” he said with satisfaction, pulling a torch from the darkness. “And some flint on the ledge below. Just like I left it last year.”

  With a swift and practiced motion, he lit the torch. It provided only a dim light, but it was better than the darkness.

  “Are you sure we should start a fire?” Silas pointed out. “The Patrol members might see the light or the smoke.”

  Samar grunted. “With all the noise we made, if they were anywhere nearby, they will find us anyway.” Jesse looked at the ground, ashamed. “Besides, we will need it, at least for a little while.”

  Jesse picked up his staff as Samar led the way deeper into the cave. “This is the largest of the smugglers’ pits,” he said, holding the torch in front of him. It was barely higher than Silas’s head, but big enough to hold at least a dozen men. “It is most often a drop-off place for stolen goods, used to hide them from the Patrol of Nalatid, but sometimes smugglers with a price on their heads hide here until the king’s men stop looking for them.”

  Jesse looked around the cave. From the gouges on the wall, it appeared to be hand-carved. It must have taken years, he marveled.

  He was trying to figure out how high they must be above the cistern’s water level when he saw something move to his right. In the shadows of the cave, Jesse could see the coiled form of a snake behind one of the rocks on the cave floor.

  Silas, next to Jesse, saw it too. He shouted and jerked back, shoving Jesse with him.

  It was not a good thing to do. The snake reared back to strike.

  Without thinking, Jesse hit it with his staff, dashing it against the stone wall. It appeared dazed for a moment, then hissed loudly.

  I’ve got one shot, Jesse thought with desperation. At the same time, he lunged forward with his staff, slamming it to the ground with all his might. The hissing stopped.

  Jesse refused to look down, and instead turned back to Samar, Rae, and Silas, trying to calm his quickly beating heart.

  “Thank you,” Silas said, lowering his bow. He had not yet fitted an arrow to it. “I wouldn’t have made it in time.”

  “And that” Samar said grimly, “is why we needed the torch. Pit vipers, we call them. I didn’t want to worry you by telling you.”

  “Thank you for your consideration,” Rae said sarcastically. “I’m much less worried now.”

  “They never stay in groups,” Samar assured her. “Very territorial. We won’t find anymore tonight.” Still, Jesse noticed that he made a careful check of the cave with the torch.

  “Well,” Silas said with a shrug, “we might as well get comfortable.”

  As if that’s possible in a cavern made of solid rock. “Try the far wall,” Samar suggested, seeming to read his mind. “The original builders—I was one of them—made grooves in the stone for
just such occasions.”

  Jesse didn’t understand what he was talking about until he examined the far wall more closely. Sure enough, there were large, deep indentations in the stone, rubbed smooth by years of use, and large enough to cradle the back of a man sitting in them. Although he was smaller than those for whom the grooves were designed, they were fairly comfortable.

  Silas did the same, spreading the blanket from his pack over his lap. Rae chose instead to curl into a small ball at the side of the cave, using her pack as a pillow. As he leaned against the cold stone, Jesse realized all at once how tired he was.

  “You built this cave?” Rae asked, opening one eye. “I suppose that means you are a smuggler too.”

  Samar shrugged. “Perhaps,” he admitted. “Now, no more talking.” Samar put the torch back into its holder at the cave’s mouth. “This deep, noise does not travel easily, but I do not wish to take chances. Our lives may depend on it.”

  With that, he blew out the torch, leaving the cave in total darkness.

  Chapter 13

  It was raining in the desert. Pouring, actually, with large, cold drops falling on Jesse’s face and jolting him out of a pleasant dream. Even before he opened his eyes, Jesse thought something must be wrong.

  He blinked. Rae and Silas were leaning over him, trying not to laugh. A drop of water fell off of Silas’ outstretched finger onto Jesse’s nose, and he jerked his hand back guiltily.

  Jesse was hardly awake enough to glare, but he gave his best effort anyway. “Good morning to you too.” He wiped his face on his sleeve, hoping he hadn’t left streaks of dirt and sand on his face.

  “Well, it was about time for you to wake up,” Rae said. “It’s already almost noon.”

  Jesse blinked in surprise. The only light in the cave came from the torch, relit and in its holder. I guess not much sunlight gets down here, no matter what time of day it is.

  Silas handed Jesse the water skin he had been holding, and Jesse gulped a mouthful gratefully.