The Silver Sparrow

A Rock with Ten Men On It

Hasheem had time to look behind his shoulder just before the arrow struck. The girl who had seemed so harmlessly small and thin in the stable was no longer what he thought she was. She was riding at his heels the way no girl should be able to ride on an unsaddled horse three times her size. The moment she drew back her bowstring and straightened her spine on top of the stallion was when he came to realize he would never make it to the Djamahari.

And he didn't, make it to the Djamahari. The arrow, despite the ridiculous distance between them, struck him from behind on the deadliest spot as if she'd driven it in by hand at close range. Had it gone through the way it should, it would have pierced his heart right in the middle and came out cleanly on the other side. By sheer luck, or fate, or whatever it was that had been keeping him alive this long, it didn't, and he fell off the horse with an arrow halfway in his back, still breathing and alive. For the time being.

The next thing he saw was her standing over him with another arrow already nocked to her bow. She looked at him and the embedded shaft, then frowned as if she'd missed her target. From her expression, she seemed to be contemplating whether to shoot him the second time or wait for the dozen or so guards now riding toward them to finish the job. When the stallion he'd stolen trotted back to her, she snapped back to her senses and decided the horse was more important.

He could have said something then that might have given her the urge to finish him where he was, knowing the consequences of being captured and brought to trial. For some reasons, he didn't, and would always wonder from time to time afterward, if that had been the right decision or the biggest mistake of his life.

They took him back to camp instead of killing him on the spot. She rode in the middle of the procession, surrounded by five White Warriors who guarded her like escorting chest of gold through the lair of bandits never mind the fact that there seemed to be no other living things in sight. It made sense in a way. Bharavis were becoming rarer and rarer even out here, deep in the heart of the White Desert. These silver-haired, yellow-eyed, so-called direct descendants of the moon goddess Ravi were the only ones who could give birth to oracles, and having an oracle could mean winning a war.

And he'd struck her, Hasheem realized, on top of everything else. The punishment for that, if he had to guess, would probably be close to being skinned alive and left to die on a spike.

They threw him into a tent, bound hands and feet and tied to a post with the arrow still sticking out of his back. For the very least it was warmer inside, and they'd been thoughtful enough to give him a blanket. Then again, they wouldn't want him to die before the trial in the morning. Desert people, Black or White, treasured their codes and honor like water. He was beginning to wish the arrow would kill him before they had a chance to finish move on to other means. But they would have thought of that, too, wouldn't they?

They had thought of it, because some time later the girl who'd shot him, the young Bharavi of Visarya, returned to make sure that didn't happen. She had changed into a form-fitting white gown of a healer. Her near-white silver hair had been tightly braided and gathered away from her face. He could see now, more clearly in the light made by the small fire in the tent, that otherworldly, characteristic yellow eyes shared by all Bharavis.

It wasn't the first time he'd seen one. Having lived in the Black Tower for years, he had seen the Salar's Bharavi wife a few times from a distance, but this was the first time he'd seen one up close. She was prettier than average, like most Shakshi girls and boys tended to be, but there was a hardness to her that made one appreciate her beauty the same way one might admire a well-made, carefully sharpened sword rather than a flower or a piece of jewelry. Then again, no person in their right mind would equate anyone who could shoot that way, girl or boy, with something so delicate.