Sea God of the Sands: Book One of the Firebird’s Daughter Series (Firebird's Daughter 1) Read online

  On her twelfth naming day, the Yahlah had come back – this time with the High Priest in tow – for a formal audience with her mother. Her name had been quickly changed from Drena to S’ray in acknowledgement and celebration of her status among the Undias, and her training had intensified. Even the prayers she was required to recite had been changed from giving praise and seeking mercy from Sov, the Sun God, and Lumas, the Moon Goddess, to focus on the Sea Goddess, Amphedia.

  She had done everything in her power to make Jonath promise he would lay with her before the elders made her leave the desert. If she was going to be made to have a child against her will, it was only right he would be the father, and not some stupid, water-fattened, weak-willed Puj’hom! She had argued and raged and pleaded, even spilling precious tears in her war against the elders and their utterly stupid beliefs that every child who possessed the gift to find water had the potential to become the so-called “savior” of the water people. Or, at the very least, to bear the child who would, one day, become the prophesized hero of their race.

  But Jonath had refused, even then, when she’d roused him to stiffness in a desperate bid to negate her value to the Campania as nothing more than a borrowed incubator to produce a prize that might heal all wounds. Exactly what transgression her people had perpetrated against the Puj’hom and their vengeful goddess that required such a sacrifice had been a mystery to her. She’d had cursory knowledge of the myths and stories, of course – any child of five could recite the lore on demand – but it hadn’t been important to her then. No detail of any aspect of life had been important to her then, other than her skills and talents as a warrior. And Jonath. And he had refused her. He’d pushed her away, begging her to leave him be. He’d made a promise to the Yahlah – the sneaky old son of a goat had warned Jonath she would try to compel him in exactly the manner she had employed – and he resolutely refused to break it.

  She’d hit him then. Hard. She’d punched him with all her might, first in the stomach to double him over and then again in the jaw. And he had taken all she had to give without a single word of protest. And the very next night he’d held her without complaint or reproval, stroking her hair as she leaned against his chest, listening to him whisper that her dreams need never change.

  But they had. And Jonath was dead.

  Drena moved her hand from his chest, stroking his cheek, releasing her hold on his soul. He’d made his choices and now she must honor them. He had loved her all his life and now she must love him enough to take each painful step forward without him. Moving her head away from the touch of the goddess’ hand, she reached for the blade Jonath had laid so carefully within reach. The foul instrument had been out of sight while they’d made love, but he’d known – he’d known, damn him! – exactly where to put it so she wouldn’t have to move in order to reach it once it became necessary to actually wield it.

  “Not yet.” The goddess had spoken again. And this time, Drena could hear no waves crashing, no tinkle of a delicate cascade of icy water slipping over rocks as it made its way down some imagined slope of rocks. Amphidea’s voice was empty. The silence was deafening and Drena could feel the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. Every instinct buzzed with warning, every muscle tensed. She closed her eyes against the fear she felt welling up in her chest. The goddess was going to change the rules of the game. Drena could feel it in her very bones. Jonath was dead and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it now.

  Chapter One - Jarles

  Once again – as always – Jarles felt the water call to him. It was there, far, far beneath the feet and hooves and wheels of their caravan. He snorted to himself at the use of the word, even in his own mind. His Campania – the members of his close, if rather extended, family – insisted on using the antiquated terminology supposedly indicative of a “common language” among the various tribes, communities and clans littered throughout the vast expanse of desert they shared, when others were among them. With five other families traveling with his own – an event almost unheard of until recent years – his grandfather would most certainly insist on calling the heaving, sniveling, water-consuming mass of humanity in which he found himself embroiled by the distasteful title of “Caravan.” Jarles felt his eyes roll of their own accord and even felt his cheek rise in a small, wry smile of amusement. His grandfather was, indeed, quite the character.

  There were some, he knew, who refused to accept the old man as his true grandfather. And many more who whispered behind his back all the while smiling to his face. Of course, it wasn’t really their fault there were so many questions left unanswered about his birth and family. Nor was it their place to question him either, he thought bitterly, feeling the half-smile die on his face. Everything – absolutely everything – always came back to his mother; to his mother and the fact that he could call water to himself without even trying. It was all around him all the time. He could smell it on the wind, feel it in the texture of his skin, feel it in the layers of sediment, dirt and sand beneath his feet, and often worried he would drown in it in his dreams.

  Jarles stared out into the distance, seeing tiny whirls of sand dance in the shimmering light of Sov and knew a brief moment of peace. He closed his eyes, taking a long, deep breath, feeling the warmth of the Sun God fill his soul. He let go the sounds and smells, and all the expectations, of the people and animals behind him. He called the wind to himself, asking the element of air to dry the moisture from his eyelashes without even being aware of having done so. Everything about him screamed of his destiny as the ultimate Diviner and heir of the Sea Goddess, and so did he automatically counter each feature of his life that dared to proclaimed him as being of the sea. He inhaled the scent of the sand, filtering out the offending aroma of seaweed, swamps, fat lazy rivers and the vastness of the tangy salt-laden oceans he knew Amphedia had planted there for him and him alone. Spreading his arms wide, he felt the heat radiating off the dense plain of constantly-moving sands beneath him, purposefully shielding himself from the tentacles of water reaching towards him. For just this moment, he wanted to be from and of the desert. To reclaim his rightful position as a son of Sov and of the dunes. He envisioned himself sinking into the sand through the millions of shifting granules under him. He felt himself enveloped and embraced by Giya, welcomed within her arms, as if he’d never known water in any form other than as a liquid he might drink in order to sustain his life. Just like every other man, woman, and child who trod the pathways of the desert.

  As he felt his vision’s body settle further into the ground beneath himself, Jarles felt the roughness of the individual beads of sand against the skin of his arms where his sleeves were rolled up, against the flesh of his neck, where he’d opened his qatyeh so the folds of the headdress allowed him a full, deep breath without having to inhale through the cloth. He could feel the little trickles of sand as they tickled through his beard, could feel the abrasion of the granules against the skin of his cheeks as he sank deeper and deeper into the welcoming dunes. He wondered, for the briefest of moments, whether the Earth Mother would drown him in the sand, as her Sea Serpent counterpart, Amphedia, often tried to do when she forced her visions of water onto him, then decided he didn’t really care. If today was the day he was to die, then he would rather be suffocated by the desert than to allow the Sea Goddess her triumph in the depths of some body of water he would never see, feel, or experience other than in the twisted labyrinths of his own overtaxed mind.

  Jarles could feel the sand all around his body now, as if he truly had been buried alive. Yet he felt no irritation of intrusion from the depths of being immersed in the sand. No strange itching in the corners of his eyes, where wind-blown sand often gathered. No fear of being blinded by the scouring winds. No need to dig the dirt and debris from his ears or mouth or crevices where the nearly invisible granules usually gathered. And he continued to draw breath, to breathe without hindrance, or the pressure he knew he would feel crushing his chest, if his body had fallen into
some hole or sand trap. He laughed at himself then, feeling better for the humor he was still able to pull from the recesses of his soul. Wouldn’t it be just the greatest irony, the funniest joke, the most ridiculous of fates, if he managed to stumble into the lair of a giant sand spider? The heir of Amphedia, eaten alive by an insect! Ah, by the gods, it felt good to let go the anger he’d felt building!

  Taking another deep, unhurried breath into the bottom of his lungs, he held it for a moment longer, savoring the stillness he felt all around himself, then let it go. He heard the tiny sounds of the long line of people trailing behind him as they started to catch up with him. Since he’d stopped, they had begun to do the same, wondering if he’d managed to “find” water yet. If only they knew how it literally followed him around; Amphidea’s gift to her heir. He would never be free of it. And yet, if he stopped for more than a day or two, allowing the people and their livestock their fill, the gift would suddenly evaporate. Jarles knew his mother had hated the Sea Goddess; it was one of the few things he knew or remembered about her – but he wondered if it was possible for her loathing for the wicked deity to begin to match his own. Amphedia was using him, taunting him, doing everything within her considerable power to force him to go to her. And that was something he simply would never do. He’d promised.

  For years, after his mother had died, he’d done everything ever asked of him. He’d performed his chores obediently, kept his belongings tidy, and demonstrated his ability to call water unto himself exactly as asked. At first, he’d thought that if he was good enough, then maybe somehow everything would be all right again. Oh, he’d known he’d never have his mother again; there was no mistaking the fact she was dead and never coming back. But he’d hoped his own behavior would somehow reflect on her in some small way, maybe giving her a more comfortable life when she was reborn, or bringing her closer to be able to hear him if she was still between her life as his mother and the next life she would lead. And there was always the fear that if he didn’t do everything just right, or as he was told, that something terrible would happen to him too. After all, hadn’t he heard people say they weren’t surprised his mother had died, because she was always one to do as she pleased? She’d been “different” somehow all her life, from what Jarles had been able to discern, in a way that was displeasing to most of his Campania. And, despite her role as the mother of the savior of the water people, he’d found very few willing to speak to him of this mother of his, who had been both hero and outcast.

  His mother’s mother, P’onyem, had left the Campania just before his mother had died; for all intents and purposes, the woman had disappeared off the face of the earth. No one had heard from her in a long, long time now. Jarles had never known his mother’s father simply because no one had ever been certain who her father was. Everyone agreed, P’onyem had raised Drena by herself, refusing to name her father. Raising a child without one parent or the other – or sometimes even both – wasn’t all that unusual, Jarles knew. In fact, the frequency with which young women were forsaking their children at birth seemed to be a growing trend. It wasn’t a particularly alarming situation, he knew, as there were always plenty of willing hands and homes to accommodate every child. Still, he wished P’onyem had identified his mother’s father so that he might have a firmer connection to his own sense of identity. Jarles had heard plenty of disparaging remarks about the woman who was his maternal grandmother in his life; most seemed to blame her for her daughter’s “strangeness,” leaving Jarles feeling very odd himself. Nothing in his own recollections pointed to his mother being anything other than warm, loving, fiercely protective – and a lot of fun. As an adult, he realized that many of his perceptions about his mother were distorted because of the love they shared, and the fact he’d been a child. He couldn’t possibly have seen the woman that was his mother as others did. By Sov! Even today they couldn’t even agree whether to call her S’ray or Drena! Jarles shook his head, closing his eyes against all the arguments he’d overheard through the years, dismissing all the heated words he’d heard as irrelevant. His mother would always be the same to him, he was sure, no matter what cruel words others used to describe her.

  His father’s mother was another strange woman. In fact, she had gone quite insane when his own mother came back from her ordeal at the hands of the Puj’hom and their wicked goddess. What her real name may have been, Jarles had never learned. Everyone called her Maw’ki, a kind of affectionate slang word meaning “crazy one.” Jarles found her to be fascinating, and often wished he could spend more time with her, getting to know her and learning more about his father, Jonath. There were times when she seemed as normal and sane as anyone else he’d ever met, but most of the time she babbled about things that just didn’t make any sense to anyone. He hadn’t gotten to know this grandmother until he’d been almost 16, when she’d simply walked up to him and introduced herself. That’s when he’d learned everyone had shielded him from her out of fear she might harm him for the fact of his father’s death.

  That had been a most troubling and confusing time for the young Jarles, when bits and pieces of memories he’d been able to retain from his mother’s stories collided with what he’d been taught since she’d died. He realized he’d been slowly manipulated into leaving behind the blood connections of both his mother and father, as if they’d been nothing more than the human vessels needed in order to create him. He’d never prayed to Amphedia, as his mother had strictly forbidden him to do so, saying the Sea Goddess was never to be trusted; she only ever had her own agenda in mind and would trick him into doing her will against his own good sense if he ever let down his guard. That much he remembered from his mother. He’d always kept his promise, refusing homage and praise to Amphedia, despite being her heir.

  He remembered, too, that his mother had often said his father had been handsome. There were many who told him he looked like his father. He’d come to understand those who wanted him to be Jonath’s son made a point to say so. Those who didn’t believe his mother’s story wanted to know why he had blue eyes when Jonath’s had been as brown as her own. His mother had always told him that it was a cruel joke of the Sea Goddess; that she was trying to claim him as her own by giving him eyes the color of the ocean.

  He’d seen the color of the ocean more times than he cared to count; the waves heaving and rolling and washing over him. There were green seas, blue seas, gray, black, white, dirty brown, and even orange seas! Each time Amphedia tore him from the real world, dropping him into some vision she’d created, the only constant was the fact he was immersed in water. At first, he hadn’t even had the words to use to describe the places he’d found himself. At least the gods had seen fit to leave him one living relative; without his Grandfather Kerr, Jarles wasn’t sure how he would have retained his sanity. Of course, given that he was a true Diviner, and everyone knew they all went mad at some point, the question was still open to debate!

  Jarles shook the memories off, looking back over the long line of people headed his way, wondering where his grandfather was today. He was always looking for the prettiest girls to walk beside him. Jarles didn’t doubt for a moment he was able to persuade any number of them to spend a night or two in his company. Wiley old rascal. You really had to admire his stamina! Jarles turned his face away from the people who were starting to get restless, wondering why he was still just standing there, at the crest of a dune. Had he found water? Were they stopping for the night? Always the same questions. His entire existence was founded on water. So was everyone else’s, that much was true, he conceded. And certainly it was better to know there was always an abundance beneath his feet, than to truly have to wonder if there would be enough to go around for one more day. Still, this being pushed to the sea was unsettling. And tiring. He’d resisted a long, long time, letting more and more people follow him around the desert, one day after another, as he “found” just enough water to fill the skins and bladders and stomachs of each living being in their caravan. He felt
like a fraud. Still, even if he led each and every Tuq’deb to the sea himself, would Amphedia be satisfied? Or would he have to die before she would leave him be? And what exactly did it mean to be her heir anyway? Surely, it meant more than leading people to water. Or was he already insane and just didn’t know it yet?

  He’d promised his mother he would never to go to Amphedia, never praise her or acknowledge her as his deity. But his people were dying. Was this not the same situation in which his mother had found herself? Had she not consented to go to the Temple of Life because she knew her people were dying? It was so hard to get his facts straight, when nobody would talk to him about her, except one lone crazy woman. And even Maw’ki wouldn’t come to him unless she had something to tell him. He couldn’t order her brought to him. She’d blinded one man the last time he’d tried that tactic. No, he would have to go to her. And Grandfather Kerr wouldn’t like that one little bit. He didn’t like Jarles talking to his old wife. He said she’d never been truly right in the head to begin with; that he’d only deflowered her as he’d been requested to do, not because he’d loved her.

  Jarles sighed, feeling a headache beginning behind his eyes; the same ache he got every time he thought too long or hard about his family connections. Too bad he couldn’t seek out the same kind of distractions his grandfather did though, he thought, and not for the first time. But pleasures of the flesh were simply not his to be had. He simply would not risk getting a child on any woman. Not ever. If there was one thing he was absolutely certain of, it was that Amphedia would use any such child as a weapon against him. True, there were other men who were willing to allow him the use of their bodies. It wasn’t so long ago he’d availed himself of just such an offer – only to find that the young man in question had then set about telling everyone who would listen that he’d been the lover of the heir of Amphedia. The sex itself wasn’t the problem; it was the fact the jerk thought Jarles now owed him some kind of compensation or a seat at his right hand or some other … thing that just made no sense to him at all. Still, remembering the feel of the man’s buttocks as he slid his hands over them while thrusting himself deep inside of the man was a rousing memory. He could feel his cock stirring against the fabric of his pants. Great, he thought. I spend hours and hours each day alone, but now, when I’m standing in front of hundreds of people, I get a hard on! Jarles turned away from the line of people, their faces all staring at him, awaiting his word, and walked on into the desert. Let them wait another hour or two, he thought ruthlessly, or until I can at least get rid of this erection! Then he started to jog, increasing the distance between himself and those who so utterly depended on him to survive.