Gold to Dust

Chapter Four

Four

A loud crack! snapped in Ellegra's ears when her feet hit the ground. A wave of pain washed over her leg as her ankle rolled and gave out under her. Her legs crumpled beneath her. The rush of blood in her ears increased in strength. What had before been a subtle background noise of pumping blood now sounded like someone banging war drums in her head. She couldn't hear the sand shuffling beneath her feet or the guards shouting from above her anymore. Reza's voice was snuffed out like a flame by the snap in her ankle. All she felt was the constant throbbing in her leg. But whatever the pain, she knew more than anything that she needed to find Tamshie. She stood and was rounding to the back of the building when she caught something flicker from the corner of her eye and then disappear. Then it came again, and this time she could depict the hairs and long tail.

Spinning on her good foot, she half jogged, half limped back to the front of the inn. She nearly gasped in relief at the sight of an unmanned horse tied to a post outside the tavern. It stared at her with large brown eyes, ears turned in her direction. "Oh, thank heavens," she whispered. The mare didn't even so much as budge as Ellegra hurriedly untied her reins from the pole and mounted her. She gritted her teeth as she climbed onto the saddle, sliding her swelling foot into the stirrup, then kicked the horse into motion towards the back.

Tamshie shrieked at the sight of the beast running and then coming to a halt in front of her, cowering to the ground and shielding her head with her arms. "Get on!" Ellegra shouted at her, holding out her hand. The girl cried out as she grabbed the outstretched hand and was swung over and onto the horse's back. Ellegra gave the mare a sharp kick and the horse bolted. Air roared in their ears and blew their hair out behind them like billowing banners of brown and red. People walking down the streets stared as they ran past, others shouting in surprise before having to dive out of the way. They passed the oasis, then a statue of the current Mastran. The farther down the street they went the brighter the city became. Ellegra turned the horse down darker streets to avoid keeping the same tracks, keeping notice of how people seemed to look at them with both bewilderment and anger. They were women still, and they were out at night. To these natives, who were they to break the law? Foreigners who think they had the right of hand?

They rode for an hour before stopping at the beginning of a long street with nothing but dilapidated houses of clay brick crumbled and nearly sunk back into the solid dust from which they were built on. Entire homes were now nothing but brick being ground back into dirt— completely empty. Not a single sound came from this area of the city except the horse's heavy snorts. Tamshie held on tighter to Ellegra's waist, her eyes locked on the house that looked the most intact, save the doorway that had been imploded.

"There," Tamshie pointed off further down the street to their right. To her surprise, she couldn't see the city anymore. The glow of fires dissolved into shadows behind them, giving way to a darkness that was nearly stifling. The markethouses and tall buildings were no longer in sight. There was nothing but sand.

"These are the outer sanctions of the city," Ellegra said, mainly to herself than Tamshie, but the other girl listened dutifully. "Before Mastran Nazad was crowned, his father Sehna had the poorer peasants living just outside the city. He claimed it was for their own protection against the discrimination of the wealthy, but in truth it was for strategy of war. Many of the Mastran's investing shares lived inside Shuvask. If the city was taken by foreign invaders, the Mastran would have lost his shops and many of the items that make this kingdom run. Without the resources and people to meet the demands of other countries, the kingdom would have fallen into a lifeless wasteland of nothing but depression. So he moved the poor outside the city limits as a first line of defense."