Dune Runner

by Christopher Paul Carey

Chapter One: The Storm

Searing heat and abrasive, sand-laden winds burned the exposed patches of skin around Jasilia's stylized brass goggles. She slipped a hand beneath her tightly drawn burnoose and adjusted the scarf around raw cheeks, her other hand thrust up under the half-buried opening of the tomb's great stone lip so the wailing winds wouldn't sweep her away.

Beside her, what looked like an oversized scarab in human form gestured frantically at her to get below. Nekhtep the Constant, the Risen Guard assigned to protect her, lived up to both his duty and his honorary title, but the sight of him tore at her more fiercely than the khamsin's fury. She looked away, watching streaks of blue-tinged flame soar up over the desert and scorch the charcoal sky.

The ages-old struggle between the elemental chieftains would go on forever, it seemed. But then, wasn't that built into their natures? Fire consumed air and air fed fire—not unlike her and Nekhtep, each forever seared by the other's presence. Like the elemental forces of nature, there was no arguing it. After their indiscretions came to light, Nekhtep had chosen to end their relationship and die under the pharaoh's blade. A fortunate development, the Ruby Prince had remarked. Better than my sister disgracing herself by marrying a commoner.

The screaming sands drowned out her curse. It was just as well. She would rather Nekhtep not hear it.

A Risen Guard gives his life for the Pharaoh—and that's just the beginning

Jasilia turned from the storm and descended into the tomb. A few moments later, a heavy scraping of stone on stone grated above. The silence that followed was filled only by the ringing in her ears and the coughing fit that seized Nekhtep as dust and sand settled in the enclosed space. She knelt on the narrow ramp, removed a foot-long rod from her bag, and struck it against the rough stone at her feet. The tip blossomed with silvery light.

The glow revealed a steep, limestone-walled corridor barely wider than her shoulders, its ceiling crawling with hieroglyphs from a forgotten age. Keeping her weight on her heels, she shuffled downward while Nekhtep's half-plate scarab armor clanked and clattered behind her. After they had proceeded what Jasilia judged to be about thirty feet below the surface, the floor leveled. A pile of rubble strewn beneath a dark, yawning hole in the far wall marked the corridor's end.

"We'll be down here a while." She placed a boot heel on the uneven rocks to judge their stability. "Might as well make our stay useful."

"Let me go first, O Heritor." Nekhtep tried to sidle past Jasilia in the narrow corridor, but she held out an arm to block him.

"Not a chance. You know I always go first. Royal privilege."

"But the tomb may still be guarded—"

"You did read the inscriptions on the way down?"

Nekhtep looked sheepish beneath his beetle-headed helmet.

"Oh. Right. We really do need to get you back to school, Nekhtep. The glyphs indicate interment of one Sebti Heptna. Minor nobility. Probably could barely afford to construct the tomb, let alone an eternal protector."

She almost felt bad for needling him. After all, the glyphs were an unusual regional variant, and she could read only about a quarter of them herself. Besides, Nekhtep was doubtless more proficient in the ancient tongues of the region than most of the foreign "scholars" her older brother had crawling all over the country. But she couldn't help herself. Anything to get through that Risen Guard stoicism.

Nekhtep relented and stepped back, but he drew his khopesh from its wide leather scabbard.

She rolled her eyes, then climbed over the rubble into the darkness.

The passage led her through five feet of solid, jagged-edged rock before opening onto a shallow ledge running along the perimeter of a small chamber. Above the ledge, depictions of humanoid figures painted in burgundy and turquoise danced across high limestone walls in sunk relief. Funerary ceramics lay overturned and broken along the room's far side. A large chunk of the east wall showed only bare, uneven rock where the smooth stone had been chiseled out, presumably so the vandals could abscond with some treasure embedded in the stone.

Two sarcophagi—a massive one that doubtless once held Sebti Heptna's remains and another that appeared to be sized for a human infant or small child—lay in the chamber's center. The limestone covering of the smaller sarcophagus still lay in place and seemingly undamaged. The heavy stone lid of the larger sarcophagus was cracked and lay toppled to one side, and from her position on the ledge Jasilia could see that the inner coffin was missing.

But thank Abadar, the thieves had left behind the greatest treasure of all: a small, unassuming row of hieroglyphs cut into a plain limestone ribbon circling the chamber's uppermost reaches. Now if only she knew enough of the regional dialect to make sense of the glyphs.

Jasilia tossed her glowing rod to the basalt floor and hopped down to retrieve it.

"Come on in!"

She turned to find Nekhtep already emerging from the tunnel onto the ledge above her. The Risen Guard removed his helmet and proceeded to doff his armor. She snuck a look at the muscular form that emerged from the half-plate, though she winced when she saw the burns the khamsin sands had seared on that handsome face. Earlier on their journey she had teased him for carrying along the heavy, suffocating armor. Now she saw that it had saved his life. She would never forgive herself if she got him killed.

Again.

A sick feeling crept into Jasilia's stomach. "You're sure Ojan made it to the eastern tomb?"

Nekhtep nodded down to her. "He signaled to me that he'd be fine, and to get you below. Then he led the camels down with him. I waited long enough to see that he'd sealed himself up."

She sighed with relief. "Then there's nothing we can do but wait out the storm."

While Nekhtep extricated himself from his armor, Jasilia walked to the south wall, removed a decorative torch from an ancient stone sconce jutting from the ledge, and affixed her glowing rod in its place. She took a field-book and stylus from her bag and knelt down, craning her neck as she began to transcribe the glyphs from the limestone ribbon above. She heard Nekhtep jump down into the chamber, trying her best to ignore him as he made a circuit of the tomb, presumably to verify with his own senses that nothing in the chamber presented a threat to his royal charge.

"Early Second Age?" Nekhtep asked.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jasilia could see him examining the glyphs on the child-sized sarcophagus's stone casing.

"No," she said. "Khamos's tip was wrong this time. The tomb is Late Apsu, or maybe Middle Osezis Period. See the Pahmet influence in the murals? Definitely not as early as Khamos claimed. But that's what I get for trusting a ghoul."

Stone grated, followed by a loud thunk. She looked up to see Nekhtep dusting himself off, the covering of the smaller sarcophagus lying off-kilter. Jasilia cursed. "At least watch that you don't damage the inscription."

Now Nekhtep was leaning into the sarcophagus and probing its bottom with the point of his khopesh. Jasilia tried to concentrate on transcribing the glyphs, translating what she could as she sketched the archaic symbols. She felt she was on the verge of deciphering the meaning of a particularly troublesome glyph when an eruption of Nekhtep's clattering blade caused her to break the tip of her stylus.

"Stop it!" she snapped. "You're worse than a Pathfinder, compromising the site like that!"

The scraping of Nekhtep's khopesh ceased, but she could still hear him rustling about in the well of the sarcophagus. Jasilia threw her notebook and stylus to the dusty floor and stood, whirling to confront him.

"If you don't cut it out, I'll—"

An unearthly yowl filled the chamber. Nekhtep raised his arm out of the sarcophagus, and a small feline head—skull-like and with eyes that glowed red in the torchlight—emerged with it, the creature's sharp teeth clamped onto the man's leather armband.

Jasilia shook off a shiver fear and, drawing her short sword, ran toward Nekhtep. The man didn't wait for her, however, and his khopesh made short work of the ubashki. He held the undead cat aloft by a loose wrapping, coolly examining the creature as it spun slowly before him.

"Too poor for a guardian?" Nekhtep mused. "I guess the poor make due." He dropped the ubashki back into the coffin and rubbed his hands together as if trying to flick off the creature's filth.

"You call that a guardian?" Jasilia slid her sword back into its leather sheath. "When it's my time to kick off, I'll find myself a proper protector to have strangled and stand vigil over my tomb, not a harmless little housecat." She looked Nekhtep up and down, as if appraising his value.

Nekhtep's expression was as still as the limestone walls. "Dying once for you wasn't enough?"

Jasilia heard her own breath catch in the silence of the tomb.

She straightened and walked across the chamber with feigned aplomb. "In any case," she continued, picking up her field-book from the dusty floor and tracing over a glyph with the half-broken tip of her stylus, "at least the looters who came before us were smart enough not to disturb that sarcophagus. Now can you stay put and let me get back to my transcription?"

It was dark enough in the tomb that she might have imagined Nekhtep's smirk.

∗ ∗ ∗

When they estimated that morning had come, Nekhtep heaved aside the great stone slab that sealed the tomb. After unburying themselves from the deluge of sand that fell down into the passage, Jasilia and Nekhtep emerged into a world that looked very different from that of the day before. Morning's golden rays skimmed through small valleys of sand, dappling the seemingly unending field of dunes that had risen up overnight. That the barren plains of the Glazen Sheets lay a mere few days' journey to the east only made the sudden appearance of the great sand mountains that much more astonishing.

Jasilia looked about the site, her anxiety mounting. Where was the entrance to the other tomb in which Ojan had sealed himself to escape the khamsin's wrath? She tried to orient herself by the sun's position in relation to the tomb opening they had just exited.

Her stomach turned. The other tomb had been to the southwest, just about where an immense wall of sand now rose from the rolling scape—a mound so high she and Nekhtep could never hope to unbury it by themselves.

She took off across the sands and ran up the dune's convex rise, her leg muscles straining as the sand gave way beneath each desperate step. When at last she reached the crest of the dune, she looked down its leeward side. Some twenty feet below, an arcing shadow darkened the bottom of the slipface, but not enough that she couldn't see the black opening at the base and a rectangular block of limestone cast aside next to the hole. A whitish trail, perhaps a vein of salt unearthed by the storm, ran from the edge of the hole and snaked eastward, disappearing into a valley of sand. A few yards from the opening lay the bloody corpses of two of her party's three camels.

A moment later, Nekhtep was beside her, looking down over the dune's crest. Then they were both heeling their way down the slipface into the dune's cool shadow, sand sloughing from the great mound with each footfall.

When they reached the base, Jasilia entered the hole and scampered down the tomb's steep entryway, the scuffing tread of Nekhtep's boots following close behind. As the dim light from the surface fell away, she removed another rod from her bag and struck it on the floor, bathing the narrow corridor in an ashen glow.

The passage opened onto a tomb much plainer in design than the one in which she and Nepkhtep had spent the night. Bare stone walls enclosed the small chamber, in the center of which lay an open sarcophagus, doubtless plundered of its meager treasures in some lost age. Three dromedary saddles sat stacked against one wall alongside Ojan's supply pack.

But the tomb's architecture and her party's equipment weren't what grabbed Jasilia's attention. No, it was the stink of undeath that assaulted the confining chamber, and the two humanoid forms that lay unmoving before the sarcophagus. One had been decapitated, by the swing of a khopesh if she judged correctly. The other had been cleaved nearly in two at the waist.

She knelt to examine the severed head and wrinkled her nose.

"The flesh is still rotting," she said.

Nekhtep began examining the chamber and disappeared behind the sarcophagus. When he rose, he held a finely crafted khopesh in his hand.

"Ojan's," Jasilia breathed.

She stood, feeling the blood draining from her face. "No. It can't be that."

"What?" Nekhtep said. "Can't be what?"

But Jasilia was already bolting back up the passageway on her way to the surface. When she emerged, she fell to her knees beside the whitish trail leading from the mouth of the tomb and scooped some of the substance into her hand. Instead of the dry grit of salt or some other mineral, she felt only cold.

Nekhtep came up out of the tomb entrance and stood over her.

"What is it?"

Jasilia rose and sieved the mix of melting frost and sand through her fingers and onto Nekhtep's open palm.

"I know where they've taken Ojan."

Coming Next Week: Death in the desert in Chapter Two of "Dune Runner"!

Christopher Paul Carey is an Associate Editor at Paizo, and the coauthor of Gods of Opar: Tales of Lost Khokarsa with Hugo Award-winning author Philip José Farmer. His short fiction may be found in anthologies such as Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, The Worlds of Philip José Farmer, Tales of the Shadowmen, and The Avenger: The Justice, Inc. Files. He holds an M.A. in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University, and has edited numerous collections, anthologies, and novels. Visit Chris online at www.cpcarey.com and follow him on Twitter.

Illustration by Damon Westenhofer

Dune Runner

by Christopher Paul Carey

Chapter Two: Pursuit

Nekhtep looked down at Jasilia as they stood in the shadow of the great dune, his expression puzzled. "How could you know where they've taken Ojan? And who's 'they'?"

Even in her distress, Jasilia noted that Nekhtep had broken protocol and chosen not to use one of her twin brother's many formal titles.

She looked off into the east, tracing the trail of frost-laden sand until it disappeared among the dunes. "Have you ever heard of Mekshir?"

"Mekshir?" Nektep beetled his brow. "An ancient outpost or fortress or something, right?"

"That's the one."

"But Mekshir was supposed to have been buried by a khamsin thousands of years ago."

"Well, it looks like it got unburied."

Jasilia grabbed her brother's khopesh from the Risen Guard's hand and set off along the roughly three-foot-wide band of frost, ignoring Nekhtep's calls for her to stop.

A moment later, Nekhtep was beside her. A hand fell on her arm. "Jasilia."

She turned on him, her anger welling up. "What, Nekhtep? No 'O Heritor' or 'My Most Spectacular Pain-in-the-Ass Princess'? My brother—heir to my other royal brother, the all-powerful, know-it-all Ruby Prince—has been taken by undead, and now you want to take the time get personal?"

Nekhtep winced, and Jasilia immediately regretted her words.

"Look, I'm sorry," she said, "it's just—"

Jasilia doesn't give up easily.

Nekhtep threw down his heavy bag of armor and equipment. "Just tell me about Mekshir," he said, in that calm and reassuring voice she used to love. "You were about to explain who took him and how you know."

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

"It's the trail." She motioned to the strip of icy sand beside them. "Pick up your bag and let's get moving before it melts. We can talk on the way."

Nekhtep did as he was bade and they set off, footing their way between the dunes.

"I've read about the history of Mekshir in the royal library at Sothis." Jasilia panted her words as she proceeded at a brisk pace over the sand. "It was a military base guarding what was then a border of the Osirian province of Thuvia. A khamsin struck it toward the end of the Apsu Dynasty, and it was never formally heard from again."

"'Formally'?"

"Anathepses mentions two more accounts of Mekshir in his Desert Empires. The first was in –598 AR—" She made a mental calculation. "Two hundred and forty-three years after Mekshir was buried, if you want to be exact. Seems a caravan on its way to Eto came across a trail of frost on the sand just like this one. They sent off one of their scouts to follow it, and when he never came back, they sent off another. A few nights later, a band of undead attacked. The caravanners fought them off, but in the aftermath they found the two scouts among the fallen enemies, both rotting with the stench of the undead they'd become. The other attackers—skeletons with putrefying flesh still hanging from their bones—were all wearing military regalia, and their shields bore the ancient seal of Mekshir."

"And the other account?"

"According to Anathepses, it didn't end quite so well. Legend says a squad of Xerbystes I's army ran across Mekshir after a monstrous khamsin struck western Osirion and unburied it. The commander and his soldiers were captured by the fortress's undead sentries and brought before the skeletal lord that ruled over the place. The strange thing is, when the ruler interrogated the captives, he seemed to have no clue about the Keleshite interregnum. Banged his scepter in a blind rage whenever the commander mentioned it."

"You said it ended badly," Nekhtep said.

Jasilia nodded. "While Xerbystes's soldiers were holding court with the fortress's lord, another khamsin swept up out of nowhere and reburied Mekshir, along with the captive Keleshites."

Nekhtep laughed. "Then how did anyone learn of their story?"

"Anathepses doesn't say." When Nekhtep gave her a skeptical look, she said, "Look, you know how spotty the details are in these old histories. Presumably one of the party escaped."

The Risen Guard stopped walking and placed his hands on his hips, surveying the seemingly endless dune field from the top of the rise as sweat beaded down his brown cheeks.

"You're not going to like what I'm about to say," he said, "but hear me out. We're not going to get far without the camels. We should head west, follow the Junira north until we hit the caravan route. Then we can hitch a ride east to Shiman-Sekh and get aid from the Risen Guard contingent stationed there to mount a rescue mission. If we head out into the deep desert alone and the trail melts before—"

Jasilia cleared her throat and pointed to Nekhtep's left. The Risen Guard turned slowly to be greeted by the bleating of a camel strutting up the side of the dune, its reins dragging over the sand. When it reached the top, the great dromedary loped past Nekhtep and knelt down on all four legs directly before Jasilia.

"There, there, Yamala." She rubbed the beast's side. "I wasn't going to leave you behind." She leveled an accusatory gaze at Nekhtep. Then, taking up the reins, she swung a leg over the low point between the beast's shoulders and mounted bareback. "You coming?"

Nekhtep didn't look happy, but finally he spread his hands in surrender and got onto the beast behind Jasilia.

Jasilia felt herself shift back against Nekhtep's muscular form as the camel rose to its feet. For a brief moment she allowed herself to be comforted by the feel of her ex-lover's embrace. Then, as the camel swung them forward, she squirmed and tried to scoot forward out of his encircling arms. He only held on to her tighter.

"Don't get any ideas, Risen One," she said. "You gave up that option when you decided to die under the Ruby Prince's blade."

"For the record," he said, "I still think this is a bad idea. We've only got so much water."

"Then you'll die again, but this time for a worthy cause: trying to save the life of Osirion's royal heir."

"Or we'll all die and I'll lose you twice."

"Hey, you could have had me, remember? It didn't mean anything to me that you were a commoner. I agreed to flee the country with you, but you wouldn't have it."

"When I swore an oath to the pharaoh that our relationship was over, I had no idea he would show his 'compassion' by making me your bodyguard." Nekhtep's jaw tensed. "But I don't regret my decision to go under the blade."

"Why?" Jasilia's heart pounded.

"There were... other considerations."

"Like what?"

The only answer was the throaty roar of the camel as she guided it toward the trail of unearthly frost. Jasilia urged Yamala into a trot and they made their way east into the sun's ruthless gaze.

∗ ∗ ∗

Though the trail left by the undead lasted longer in the heat of the day than any mundane frost had a right to, by noon it had all but vanished. Within the next hour, it was gone completely. Still, Jasilia and Nekhtep pushed on to the east. They had followed the trail, threading through valleys of sand and climbing the faces of myriad dunes and down their precipitous slipfaces, long enough that Jasilia, with her long-practiced desert senses, had a rough estimate of their quarry's direction. Even so, they were heading into the deep desert, and she knew how far off course they might find themselves if they deviated even a tenth of a degree from their intended destination.

Nekhtep, for his part, had remained quiet since the outset of their journey. It was as if he had decided it was better to let Jasilia come to understand the futility of their quest on her own rather than press the matter. At least that was her best guess. Who knew what the man was thinking? It wasn't important anyway. All that mattered now was getting Ojan back.

Jasilia cursed. "We must be halfway to the Glazen Sheets by now!"

"Not even a quarter of the way, I'm afraid." Nekhtep shook his flask, his features creased with worry as the water sloshed hollowly within. "You know the old saying. 'A walk in the desert is worth four in Sothis.'"

Jasilia said nothing. She could feel the truth of the adage as the sand gave way beneath the camel's every step. She could feel it in the rise of every dune they climbed, in every slight detour they took through the valleys of sand. All of these things conspired to elongate the distance to their destination, wherever it might lie.

The hardship of desert travel was a lesson she had learned in her bones from an early age, when she and Ojan had been but rebellious children escaping into the sands to elude the ever-watchful eyes of their strict and ever-so-boring royal keepers. Dune runners, one of their tutors had once spat at the two twins, as if it were a curse. The intractable royal siblings had immediately seized on the epithet, pridefully signing their runaway notes with the sobriquet before each escape attempt, setting it in the royal case to give the title the proper respect: Give our regards to our brother, His Majesty the Pharaoh. Yours truly, The Dune Runners.

The memory brought a smile to her lips, and she mused on how little things had changed. Did not the Ruby Prince still forbid their research expeditions into the deep desert? Were not multiple squads of the Risen Guard at this very moment scouring the every crook and qanat across the land in search of the now-adult twins? Had not her older brother—knowing full well Jasilia and Ojan would stubbornly ignore his royal command not to leave Sothis and instead run off to pursue their insatiable inquiries into Osirion's past—assigned Nekhtep to be her ever-present bodyguard to ease his worries?

She licked her cracked lips, feeling the scant moisture upon them immediately evaporate into the dry air. As they paused to let Yamala catch her breath after cresting a steep dune, Jasilia looked back and noticed Nekhtep staring intently to the northeast. She turned to follow his gaze, a thrill of both exhilaration and fear running through her as her vision settled on the object of his interest.

Wavering in the heat perhaps two miles ahead, immense turreted bulwarks of reddish stone rose up, half buried, out of the steep and drifting sands. Figures made tiny by distance swarmed like ants between the crenellated wall walks, while droves other of small forms swathed the great rises of sand shrouding the lower portions of the massive structure. The latter figures seemed to be concentrated along the base of the walls, where great clouds of dust wafted on the wind as if kicked up by the workers' furious excavation of the fortress from the dunes. All told, the horde swarming the sands must have numbered at least a hundred, and that didn't account for any others that might reside within the walls.

"What was that you said about going to Shiman-Sekh to get reinforcements?"

In answer to her question, Nekhtep began to turn Yamala back around the way they had come. Even as he did so the strong winds shifted, buffeting them with a malodorous gale. It was a stench all too familiar to Jasilia—the fetor of the crypt.

Yamala reared back, bleating in terror and nearly throwing her riders to the scalding sands. Nekhtep's arm tightened viselike about Jasilia. She heard the sound of steel on leather as the Risen Guard drew his blade.

The patrol of undead soldiers came at them from all directions.

Coming Next Week: Mekshir revealed in Chapter Three of "Dune Runner"!

Christopher Paul Carey is an Associate Editor at Paizo, and the coauthor of Gods of Opar: Tales of Lost Khokarsa with Hugo Award-winning author Philip José Farmer. His short fiction may be found in anthologies such as Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, The Worlds of Philip José Farmer, Tales of the Shadowmen, and The Avenger: The Justice, Inc. Files. He holds an M.A. in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University, and has edited numerous collections, anthologies, and novels. Visit Chris online at www.cpcarey.com and follow him on Twitter.

Illustration by Damon Westenhofer

Dune Runner

by Christopher Paul Carey

Chapter Three: The Lost Fortress

With a cry, Nekhtep kicked his heels into the camel's sides and swung the beast toward the ghastly soldier on their left, charging down the dune's face. The move seemed to take the skeletal thing by surprise. Moldering flesh hanging in loose patches from its skull, the creature raised a longsword only to see the weapon driven out of its hands by a powerful blow from Nekhtep's khopesh. The Risen Guard's next swing lopped off the unliving soldier's head, which rolled down the dune's side, leaving behind shreds of rotting skin on the baking sand.

As Nekhtep swung the camel around to face the other soldiers, Jasilia pried herself free from his grasp and flung herself onto the sand. She tumbled down the dune's face, for a moment out of control. She thrust out a leg and dug a foot into the sand, sliding to a halt beneath a man-sized shadow.

A putrid stench wafted over her. She looked up to find a skeletal form looming, the desert sun glinting through the thing's partially exposed ribcage. Jasilia kicked with all her might, her boot heel slamming into the creature's shin. The thing stumbled and fell on top of her. She gagged on the nauseating smell even as her sword's point scraped along the unliving soldier's lacquered-leather breastplate and lodged somewhere in its bony neck.

The skeleton screeched like something out of a nightmare, its bony frame shuddering violently, and then was still.

Jasilia heaved the loose assemblage of bones and armor to one side and leapt to her feet. Another wailing skeleton was running at her, an ancient-looking axe of black iron raised over its head in two gauntleted hands. She turned a shoulder and hurled herself at the thing, her sword angled forward. The collision knocked the air from her lungs. It took a few moments to realize she had succeeded in thrusting her sword beneath the creature's jaw, completely skewering its skull.

She leapt to her feet, casting about for her next attacker, only to find Nekhtep hacking the sharp edge of his khopesh into the face of the last skeleton still standing. The thing fell at his feet.

Nekhtep brought the camel to Jasilia's side and made to dismount, but Yamala bleated when it neared the rotting corpse at her feet and refused to let him down. Nekhtep circled his mount around her, dark eyes filled with concern. Apparently satisfied that she was unhurt, he nodded for Jasilia to follow while he strutted Yamala some distance from the corpses and finally managed to bring the beast to a halt. Though Yamala's large brown eyes still seemed uneasy, she lowered to her knees and allowed Nekhtep to dismount.

"With any luck, no one saw what just happened." Nekhtep motioned to the dune that blocked their view of the bulwarked military garrison and the hordes of unliving soldiers that were digging it from the sands.

Panting from the exertion of battle, Jasilia scabbarded her sword and fell to her knees on the hot sand. "Those soldiers," she said, trying to regain her breath. "They—"

Not all skeletons are created equal

Nekhtep's stare cut off her words.

"What is it?" she asked.

The Risen Guard said nothing. Instead, he signaled for Yamala to rise and walked the camel to Jasilia's side. His face was solemn, almost mournful. "Wait here."

Jasilia did as instructed, eyeing the man quizzically as he passed her the reins.

Nekhtep walked back over to the corpses while Jasilia tried to soothe the skittish camel. She watched as Nekhtep knelt beside one of the skeletons and wrenched something free from its neck. Then he took a bag from the corpse's hip and shook out its contents, kneeling over the scattering of coins that had fallen onto the sand. A few moments later he was back at Jasilia's side, a silver medallion dangling from a chain that he held in his hand with a kerchief, as if he didn't want to defile the object with his touch.

Jasilia gasped, her stomach roiling with fear and sickness. The royal seal of the Forthbringers stamped upon the medallion's face.

"Don't worry, that's not Ojan back there," Nekhtep said as if reading her thoughts. "I'd thought it might be, but I was wrong. Here, take a look." He dropped the medallion and chain to the sand and thumbed a gold coin from the folds of his kerchief.

"Stamped in Thuvia over five thousand years ago, like all the rest in the thing's possession." Nekhtep twirled the coin and presented its face to Jasilia. "These soldiers lived—and died—during the reign of Yafeha I."

"My brother... None of those things is..." Jasilia began to choke up, then steeled her will and began again. "My brother isn't among the corpses, then?"

"No. But if this was the group that captured him and he isn't among them, it can mean only one of two things." Nekhtep left his statement hanging.

"That he's dead, or that they brought him there." Jasilia pointed through the dune that stood between them and Mekshir.

Nekhtep nodded. "I'm sorry. I should have insisted that we go to Shiman-Sekh for help. But I've never been able to say no to you."

Jasilia knelt on the scalding sand and began rifling through her sack. "You've never been able to say anything these past six months. But now's not the time to get sentimental, guardsman." She dug deeper into the bag. "Now where is it? Ah, here we go."

From the depths of her sack she pulled out a small bundle of crimson linen.

"What is it?" Nekhtep asked.

Jasilia smiled grimly up at him. "Our ticket into Mekshir. I hope."

∗ ∗ ∗

Jasilia drew Yamala close and whispered in her ear, then clapped the beast on the rear. Instantly, the camel took off, heading away from the fortress until she was lost from sight among the dunes.

With great care, Jasilia unwrapped the little bundle she had removed from her bag until she exposed the treasure swaddled within the cloth: a dried and neatly pressed desert rose shot with the colors of a spectacular Osirian sunset. She placed the flower on her open palm and began tracing the air with her other hand, outlining the archaic hieroglyph for Ra, the ancient sun god. As her hand continued to sketch the invisible character, she began to mutter in low tones the tongue of her long-dead ancestors. She was thankful she had forced herself to pause long enough at the outset of their journey to prepare the spell. The hope it gave her was faint, but she had to try.

She concentrated, forcing every thought from her mind. Just as she succeeded in losing herself in the antiquated words and phrasings, a flame roared up from the desert a half-dozen yards before her. A gust of hot air swept over her as the flame took on a fiery, snakelike form, vacillating in size from three to four feet tall as it undulated, coiling and uncoiling like an agitated asp.

"You've been practicing, I see." Nekhtep took a step back from the elemental being, as if unsure of her ability to keep it under her command.

Jasilia ignored him and addressed the fiery creature in Ancient Osiriani, her voice charged with regal authority. "I am the holy heir to Osirion's throne. Obey me, servitor."

The being's serpentine head lowered in obeisance.

She gave the creature its instructions while Nekhtep looked on in awed silence. She finished her behest by jabbing a finger to the northeast. A mouth formed out of the reddish-orange flames of the elemental's ophidian face, a smoldering tongue of fire flitting out of the orifice as if to taste her words. Then the thing sped off in the direction Jasilia had indicated, slithering along the scalding sands toward its goal.

"Now follow me and do exactly as I do," Jasilia said.

Nekhtep nodded curtly, and Jasilia took off into the dunes without looking back to see whether the Risen Guard was behind her. She knew Nekhtep would follow her to the ends of the earth—not because of any lingering sentiment, but because the pharaoh had commanded him to protect her at all costs. So be it. Anything that helped her save Ojan was good enough for her.

She ran on, drawing on many years of desert living to choose the best route through the dunes that would keep them from being seen. Nekhtep's bootfalls thudded softly in the sands behind her, his breaths becoming increasingly heavier. Though the guard was much stronger than she, the desert had taught her endurance, and Jasilia only felt barely winded by the time they emerged from a little valley of sand and found the fortress's western wall looming a couple hundred yards away.

All along the steep bank of sand rising up to Mekshir's half-buried walls, the undead soldiers had risen from their tasks and were shambling off to the east. High on the wall walks the soldiers were also moving to get a glimpse of the elemental burning its way across the sands below the eastern ramparts. Though the nearest skeletons were still but a few dozen yards away, Jasilia motioned for Nekhtep to follow. The spell would only buy them so much time.

They ran up the dune toward the western wall, leg muscles straining. When they reached the wall, they sprinted along it until they reached the southwestern corner.

Jasilia cursed softly when Nekhtep grabbed her by the arm and pushed her roughly behind him, holding her back as he peered around the corner. She struggled in his grip to no avail; he was simply too strong. But not too nimble, she thought, and drove her heel into the back of his knee.

Nekhtep thrust a hand against the wall's rough red stone to keep from falling, and Jasilia broke free from his grasp.

She clucked her tongue as if she were chiding a small child. "Now, now, we'll have none of that." She stepped around him and gazed along the southern wall. To the east she could see a tiny flame in the distance, scorching its way across the sand at great speed as the legion of unliving soldiers swarmed after it. The elemental was doing exactly as she had commanded, slithering in among the soldiers and then slithering quickly out, taunting them with its proximity. The fiery being from another plane sped along at almost twice the speed of the soldiers, zipping off after each brief penetration of their ranks and drawing them ever farther to the southeast.

She punched Nekhtep hard in the shoulder. "Now cut out the chivalry bit, all right?" Then she sprinted along the wall for the nearest ladder the undead had been using to clean sand from parapets.

When she reached it, she jumped up and began climbing, Nekhtep close at her heels. Only a short distance up, she lost her grip as she placed her hand upon a slick board. She managed to grab another board and cling to it, but found it was also wet to the touch.

A violent retch threatened to surge up as she realized the reason for the boards' slickness. Spongy patches of rotting flesh, bits of internal organs, and various bodily fluids spattered the ladder's wooden steps. She clamped her teeth together and tried to swallow back the rising bile, focusing her thoughts on her mission—to rescue her brother from the horrific things that inhabited the fortress—and resumed her climb.

Her hands filthy and her once-white burnoose now streaked with the detritus of undeath, she could finally see the rim of the wall walk just above. She pulled herself up, hand over hand, driven only by the thought of getting off the disgusting ladder as quickly as possible. When at last she reached her goal, she pulled her head up over the ledge—and gazed into the face of her worst nightmare.

"Welcome to Mekshir, O Holy Scion," the towering skeleton rasped. "Your brother and I have been expecting you."

Coming Next Week: Desperate ploys in Chapter Four of "Dune Runner"!

Christopher Paul Carey is an Associate Editor at Paizo, and the coauthor of Gods of Opar: Tales of Lost Khokarsa with Hugo Award-winning author Philip José Farmer. His short fiction may be found in anthologies such as Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, The Worlds of Philip José Farmer, Tales of the Shadowmen, and The Avenger: The Justice, Inc. Files. He holds an M.A. in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University, and has edited numerous collections, anthologies, and novels. Visit Chris online at www.cpcarey.com and follow him on Twitter.

Illustration by Damon Westenhofer

Dune Runner

by Christopher Paul Carey

Chapter Four: The Mad Pharaoh

Jasilia tried to go back down the ladder, but it was too late. The giant skeleton on the wall top—crowned with a royal blue khepresh, holding a jewel-encrusted scepter of pure gold, and dressed like the pharaoh himself—reached out a massive bony hand and grabbed her by the wrist.

She felt herself lurch up into the air, her head spinning as she looked down at the army of skeletal soldiers swarming up the ladder beneath Nekhtep. A moment later she and the Risen Guard, who'd had no choice but to follow her up, were both standing before the regally dressed skeleton.

"This way, my honored guests." The towering creature whirled, his shendyt kilt swishing, and strode off with royal bearing, flanked by a dozen skeletal guards. Several other fetid warriors surrounded Jasilia and Nekhtep, prodding the captives with ancient-looking spears that were nonetheless still effective.

The wall walk led them to an enclosed ramp set in the stone, which they descended for some time, making countless turns along torchlit corridors until a weary dizziness overcame Jasilia. Finally, the steep passageway ended and the captives found themselves passing through a doorway into an elaborately furnished banquet hall. A great teakwood table stood at the spacious room's center, set with golden dinnerware and fancifully decorated ceramic plates that Jasilia recognized as dating from the late Apsu Dynasty. At the head of the table sat a gold-painted, throne-like chair, to one side of which sat a man—a living man—with his back turned to her. At hearing the entourage enter the hall, he turned, a wide smile breaking on a face that bore a remarkable likeness to those of the Ruby Prince and Jasilia herself.

"Ojan!" she cried.

The regal-looking skeleton grinned with a flap of moldering lip still attached to his lower jaw and motioned to the guards to stand down. At the signal, Jasilia ran forward and threw her arms around her brother, tears of joy welling in her eyes.

Ojan and his sister are alike in more than just appearance.

"Sit, O Heritors of Yafeha, and let us discuss business!" The rasping voice of Mekshir's skeletal lord carried an eerie cheeriness that raised the hairs on the back of Jasilia's neck.

She slid onto the wooden bench beside her brother and looked at him questioningly. "Heritors of Yafeha?"

The joy in Ojan's eyes disappeared. "Watch it," he whispered, eyeing the regal skeleton as he settled into the throne at the head of the table. "He's as mad as Nethys."

"What?" she whispered back.

"Just wait, you'll see."

Once Nekhtep had joined the others at the table, the skeletal lord clacked his bony hands together and addressed the ghastly soldiers who had gathered near a doorway on the far side of the hall. "Guards! Have the wait staff bring me and my guests the first course so that we may begin our negotiations." One of the skeletons marched out of the room while the others stood at attention.

The lord of Mekshir settled his hollow orbits on Jasilia. "Forgive me, my dear Hephre, for not introducing myself earlier. But perhaps you've recognized me already? Does High Theurgist Fentet-Pesu, the honorable royal governor of Thuvia, sound at all familiar to you? After all, your father, Pharaoh Yafeha I, tried to have me assassinated—by the hand of my own lover, no less!" Fentet-Pesu banged the pommel of his scepter against the tabletop, the finish of which Jasilia noticed was deeply pitted, as if Mekshir's lord had made a habit of striking the end of his baton there. Jasilia recalled from Anathepses's account how Xerbystes's soldiers had witnessed their undead captor bang his scepter in just such a manner.

"My name isn't—"

Ojan silenced her with a glare and a barely perceptible shake of his head.

"But of course my sister Hephre recognizes your most honorable lordship," Ojan said. "Don't you, sister?"

"Uh... well, of course." And in fact, she did recognize the name, though only from some musty scrolls she'd read in the royal library of Sothis. The last Osirian governor of what was then the province of Thuvia had indeed been assassinated by his lover, though if Yafeha I had been behind the act, that knowledge had been lost to history. The idea of such a conspiracy made a kind of sense, however, as the murder of Thuvia's governor had occurred in the final days of the Apsu Dynasty, just as Osirian power had begun to wane and the ancient province of Thuvia was abandoned. Perhaps Yafeha had wanted to tie up loose ends and eliminate a potential rival.

She was about to question Mekshir's lord about Yafeha's motives when suddenly the remnants of putrescent flesh on Fentet-Pesu's face took on what Jasilia could only interpret as a puzzled expression. "Hephre?" the skeleton rasped, tilting his skull as if he were trying to recall something. "But didn't Yafeha's daughter die from an asp's bite as a young child? You... you can't be her! You're all trying to trick me into—!" With no warning, Fentet-Pesu's entire frame began to shudder, his bony arms clattering on the tabletop as the seizure took hold. Then, as abruptly as it began, the shaking ceased.

"Ah, beautiful Hephre!" said Mekshir's lord, his tone once again cheerful. "Perhaps after you poison your father for me, I shall make you my queen and together we'll bring back Osirion's glory! Of course, I'm no fool. I'll have to hold your dear brother Tenshep hostage to make sure you go through with the assassination."

"Poison... my father?" Jasilia said. "You mean Yafeha?"

Nekhtep began to rise, looking like he meant to attack their mad host, but Jasilia kicked him under the table. The Risen Guard sat back down.

Ojan cleared his throat and addressed Fentet-Pesu. "We accept!" he proclaimed cheerfully. "My sister will poison our father, Yafeha I, and then you will marry Hephre and ascend to Osirion's throne. Done and done!" Ojan slapped down his hand as if to seal the agreement.

The skeletal lord rose and banged the pommel of his scepter against the deeply scored tabletop. "You dare refuse me?" he cried. "You dare say no to me?"

Ojan spread his hands in exasperation. "Here's me saying yes! Yes, and only yes. We'll do it! Won't we, sister?" He shot Jasilia a desperate look.

"Absolutely!" Jasilia exclaimed, turning back to Fentet-Pesu with an eager smile. "I'll poison my father and then we'll rule Osirion together. When do we start?"

"Nobody refuses the will of Pharaoh Fentet-Pesu and lives!" Mekshir's lord shrieked. Again, he banged his scepter. "Soldiers, lock them up until I can think of the most painful way for them to die! Now take them from my presence!"

The skeletal soldiers shambled across the room and roughly seized their lord's three guests. There was little to do but allow the soldiers to drag them away. It was clear to Jasilia now that Fentet-Pesu was as mad as a rabid jackal and there was no use in trying to reason with him.

After passing down a long hallway, Jasilia and her two companions were pushed through a towering doorway. The soldiers swung the massive stone door on its pivots, sealing their prisoners in a spacious chamber. From the jewels, gold coins, and other riches heaped in great piles across the room, Jasilia knew it could only be Mekshir's legendary treasure vault.

Ojan beat his first against the cold limestone door, then turned his back to it and sank to the ground in apparent defeat. "What did I tell you, Jas? Thuvia's honorable governor is hopelessly insane. He's going to kill us, no matter what we say or do."

Jasilia began pacing the chamber, heedless of the riches at her feet, her mind working furiously. There had to be a way out of their situation. She couldn't just give up.

She told herself that for the next hour as she strode back and forth across the room. Finally, with no solution having come to her, she lay down on a pile of coins and closed her eyes, exhausted.

∗ ∗ ∗

When Jasilia stirred to wakefulness an indefinable time later, she found Nekhtep kneeling beside her, his warm, calloused hand holding her own. She rose to an elbow, questioning Nekhtep with her eyes.

"It wasn't supposed to end this way." The normally stony Risen Guard countenance was gone from Nekhtep's face, replaced by one of deep sorrow.

"By Abadar's gavel, I don't care about the ending," she said, pulling her hand from his. "It's the middle I wanted. You know, the part with the living in it. Why couldn't we have had that?"

"I had to protect you."

"You what?"

"Damn it, Jasilia, I didn't die for the pharaoh! I died for you."

Jasilia sat up, her heart pounding. "Say again?"

"I couldn't tell you." Nekhtep looked away. "You're too stubborn. You'd have gotten yourself killed."

"I'm the stubborn one?" Then the echo of man's words finally reached her. "Gotten myself killed?" She rose to her feet, flushed with anger and confusion. "Spill it, Nekhtep. Now."

The Risen Guard stood and shrugged. "No reason to hold back anything now. The Ruby Prince explained to me in no uncertain terms that if we continued our relationship, he wouldn't just murder me—he'd kill you, too, to keep dishonor from the Forthbringers."

"He'd murder me," Jasilia said flatly.

Nekhtep nodded wearily. "I had to die under his knife, and in so doing bind myself to him and swear never again to speak of the matter or to show my feelings for you. In exchange, he would let you live."

"Oh, he'd let me live, would he?" A sharp laugh escaped Jasilia. "You idiot. But then, you never had an older brother, did you?"

Now it was Nekhtep's turn to be stunned. "What?"

Ojan, who couldn't help but overhear their conversation, snickered from the other side of the chamber. "Our brother would never harm Jas. We've broken every rule he's ever made for us—and trust me, we've broken some big ones—but has he touched us?"

Jasilia looked down at Nekhtep, her arms folded. "Don't you get it? I was never in any danger. You let my overprotective big brother bully you, plain and simple."

Nekhtep's eyes took on a faraway look, and then hardened as he fell to his knees on the mound of treasure. His fist slammed into the pile, coins and jewels flying.

Perhaps it was the sudden shock of Nekhtep's revelation—that the man had only turned away from her out of a misguided sense that he had to protect her—that jolted Jasilia's mind into a state of utter focus. As if everything was unfolding in slow motion, she watched as Nekhtep's fist again slammed down onto the pile of treasure, but this time, instead of gold coins and rubies flying into the air, she saw only sand. She could almost hear the mill of her mind grinding away at the problem.

"That's it!" she cried suddenly.

"I'm sorry." Nekhtep looked glumly up at her. "How could I have known...?"

"No, no, you big beautiful idiot!" Jasilia knelt down and kissed a surprised Nekhtep on the lips. "We can work out our mess of a relationship later." She rose and strode over to the great stone door. Sensing her excitement, Nekhtep and Ojan both got up and followed her.

Jasilia turned to Nekhtep. "When you hit the pile of treasure and sprayed coins everywhere, I had a thought: There has to be something triggering the khamsins that keep burying and unburying Mekshir over the centuries. Then I remembered the story I'd told you from Anathepses's Desert Empires. And how one of the party of Xerbystes's soldiers must have escaped."

"And?" Nekhtep asked.

She grinned back at him. "And now we test my theory." She began slapping the stone door with her palms and yelling at the top of her voice.

"I'll do it!" she cried. "I'll murder my father and help your lord become pharaoh!"

Ojan shook his head skeptically. "We've already tried that."

"And you don't think he's crazy enough to change his mind?" she said. "All I need is a moment in his presence. Just one moment."

Her brother shrugged. "I'm game," he said, and began yelling and beating his palms against the door as well. Nekhtep joined in, until at last the door swung forward on its pivots.

∗ ∗ ∗

Jasilia and her companions were back in the banquet hall, standing before the mad governor of ancient Thuvia, who sat on his throne at the table's head as if he had never left it since ordering their deaths.

"Welcome, dear Hephre and honorable Tenshep," the skeleton lord said with great cheer. "And..." He waved a bony hand dismissively at Nekhtep. "...whoever you are." Then the dark cavities of his eyes settled on Jasilia. "I have a proposition to make, O daughter of Yafeha. Before you dismiss it, hear me out. It involves poison, the death of your father, and the ransom of your brother..."

Before Fentet-Pesu could go on with his all-too-familiar proposal, Jasilia jumped up onto the table and bolted across it, skidding to a halt just before the enthroned skeleton. So unexpected was her outburst that Fentet-Pesu merely gaped up at her, the fleshy piece of rot that was once his lower lip swinging beneath his exposed jawbone like a morbid pendulum.

While Mekshir's lord was thus frozen by surprise, Jasilia reached down and plucked the scepter from his skeletal hands. She twirled the ancient artifact over in her hand until she at last saw the triggering mechanism jutting from the back of the baton's head.

"Been nice chatting with you, Fentet-Pesu," she said. "Enjoy the next few hundred years of oblivion."

Jasilia smashed the scepter's head as hard as she could against Fentet-Pesu's skull, directing the blow so that it would engage the artifact's trigger. The crown flew from his head upon impact, and the skeletal lord screeched in rage.

Bitter cold ran up Jasilia's arm, until her hand felt as if it would shatter like ice. Reflexively, she dropped the scepter, which fell back into Fentet-Pesu's welcoming grasp. He thrust out his bony arms to grab her legs, but she was already jumping down from the table.

A howling, dusty wind swept into the chamber from both of its entrances, guttering the torches in the wall sconces.

Jasilia grabbed Nekhtep and her brother by the shoulders and shoved them toward the door through which they had first entered the hall. "Unless you want to wake up as a skeleton in a century or two—run!"

Her companions didn't need further coaxing. Jasilia joined them in barreling through the confused band of soldiers that stood before the doorway. Together, the three adventurers ran up the winding passage, hot dust and sand blowing into their faces. When they finally emerged onto the wall walk outside, they could barely see one another through the sandstorm's fury.

By now the storm had already blown away the gruesome ladders up which she and Nekhtep had climbed to enter the fortress. But the gale had already heaped up mounds of sand against the parapet. Though the drop to the ground was still precipitous, they might just survive the fall. There was nothing for it but to jump, which the three did, hand in hand.

Jasilia landed hard, and for several moments she lay there, stunned and unable to move. Then Nekhtep was pulling her to her feet and half-carrying her from the fortress.

She couldn't see Ojan anywhere in the black, roiling sands. Thankfully, the slow-witted undead of Mekshir hadn't thought to take her satchel from her. She reached into it and felt for her goggles. Even once she got them on, she was still practically blind.

Suddenly a hand reached out of the maelstrom and grabbed her own. She barely made out Ojan's form, but she knew he must be suffering worse than her, since he had no burnoose to protect his face from the suffocating winds. Bowing into the storm's fury, they ran from the fortress.

As they made their way into the desert, a familiar bleating came out of the dunes. Jasilia whistled through her teeth over the storm's deep roar, and Yamala trotted up to her side. The camel was spooked, but apparently glad enough to see her mistress that she obeyed Jasilia's command to let her and her two companions mount.

She felt a hand touch her arm, and instantly she could breathe normally again. Ojan, seated behind her and Nekhtep, must have cast a spell on each of them, including Yamala, who forged ahead with renewed strength.

Jasilia looked back into the khamsin, knowing the sands must be growing higher around the fortress with each minute that passed. She wondered how many decades or centuries would pass before Fenete-Pesu stirred beneath the heavy sands and reactivated his scepter, summoning a khamsin to unbury Mekshir once again.

Leaning back into Nekhtep's embrace, she realized she didn't care. It was time for her to break free of such pointless cycles in her own life. It was the future that mattered.

The gloriously messy and uncertain future, she thought, and smiled.

Coming Next Week: The long-awaited return of Salim in a sample chapter of James L. Sutter's The Redemption Engine!

Christopher Paul Carey is an Associate Editor at Paizo, and the coauthor of Gods of Opar: Tales of Lost Khokarsa with Hugo Award-winning author Philip José Farmer. His short fiction may be found in anthologies such as Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, The Worlds of Philip José Farmer, Tales of the Shadowmen, and The Avenger: The Justice, Inc. Files. He holds an M.A. in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University, and has edited numerous collections, anthologies, and novels. Visit Chris online at www.cpcarey.com and follow him on Twitter.

Illustration by Damon Westenhofer