Aiur dredged himself up from another dream-filled sleep. Yet he did not awaken suddenly as he had since their onset. Instead, he slowly rolled back into consciousness, pulling himself out of the abyss. The memories came with crystalline clarity.

  He had fallen into the void once more, but it was languid, slow and almost gentle this time. He felt cushioned by some unseen force as he glided. And with this new sense of control, he had the wits to take note of the singular thing in this void.

  A light. A mote of golden light.

  Perhaps it wasn’t there before, perhaps he was in a different endless void. But he wasn’t imagining mote of light, it lurked at the very deepest point of this place, if it even had an end. He reached out towards it, extending fingers that he could not see to grasp the light as it came closer and closer.

  It grew larger and larger, until a mote was a fist-sized orb. In the next moment it was the size of his body, then larger and larger still until the blinding light consumed his vision entirely, driving out the darkness.

  He had awoken then, slow and gentle as if easing out of a deep, peaceful rest. Consciousness rolled back like a piece of driftwood carried to shore by a wave, and he pulled it up to the surface.

  His memories before the dream were hazy and vague, but he knew he had collapsed from exhaustion as they drifted downriver on the craft. He had laid there, sprawled out on the rough wood that had pressed into his back and neck at awkward angles, making sleep elusive until his remaining energy was gone entirely.

  As he came to, he realised he was wrapped in warm and tender linen. His vision was unfocussed and bleary when he opened his eyes, but without a doubt he was indoors. It was warm, the air was still and the walls around him were the brown-yellow of sandstone.

  He tried to sit up, but pain rippled through his chest and he slumped back with a heavy groan. Resigned to blinking his vision clear, he took a moment to orientate himself. The air tasted of strange concoctions and was filled with the heady smell of expensive tinctures. All was deathly quiet.

  Pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth he pondered, but his thoughts led only to a series of dead ends and false starts. He laid there not quite knowing when or where he was, letting the pain subside before he tried to move again.

  He was not left alone for long. A figure with pale yellow scales, emerald eyes and ankle-length green robes strode elegantly into the room. Charms around her wrists and neck rattled as she carried in a deep clay bowl filled with a strong-smelling concoction that stung Aiur’s nose.

  She paused as his eyes darted to her, cocking her head to one side before moving to the bedside. Her voice was soft and gentle, her accent adding curious undulations to her tone that gave Aiur the clue he needed. “It is good to see you awake. Worry not, for you are safe here,” she said, with what was without a doubt a Balanzarian accent.

  “Who are you?” Aiur asked, his voice coming out as little more than a hoarse croak.

  “I am Timasa, a Priestess dedicated to Aten through the healing arts. You and your companion have been here for some time, but you have been recovering well.”

  Memories fired through Aiur’s mind; vague images of Daiss sprawled on the raft, and Rexis’ body sinking into the water. “Daiss? Where is he?”

  “Your friend is down the hall. He is…stable. Recovering,” she said after a momentary pause, a note of concern buried beneath her accent.

  “When can I see him?”

  “You need bed rest. A few more days perhaps before we can get you up and moving,” she said as she applied the concoction in the bowl to her fingers. “You were in a poor state when you arrived.”

  “How bad was it?” Aiur grumbled as she began applying the cold, viscous substance to his right arm, making him jolt at the sudden sense of feeling.

  “Your arm was infected. Your ribs cracked. You can be up and moving in a few days. It’ll be no strenuous activity or armour for you, at least for the next thirty days.”

  “I can’t do that. I can’t stay here,” he groaned. He tensed and relaxed his arm repeatedly as the infernal cold of the curious substance spread through his limb. She continued working the gel into his arm with splayed fingers, focussed on an ugly scar on his bicep.

  “I’m afraid you don’t have any choice in this, sir. Even when you can walk, that will not mean you are better. Any strenuous activity, any pressure beyond the norm on your chest could puncture a lung,” Timasa said, her tone stern. “Cracked ribs are a serious matter. There is a full regimen of recovery you must go through before I will even consider letting you leave my care.”

  “I cannot stay here…There is a Naga in the desert.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  She paused at that. Her hands stopped and she looked him in the eye. Her face slowly contorted into a frown as she leaned towards him, as though she would smell any deceit on him. He held her gaze for a long moment, his breathing deep but steady.

  She suddenly leant back, pushing herself to her feet. “I’ll get the Consul.”

  ***

  Aiur spent the following hours drifting in and out of a mercifully dreamless sleep. Knowing what was coming he allowed himself the rest. He needed to be ready.

  He heard their arrival in good time, heavy thumping footsteps on the flagstones lining the corridor outside his room and Timasa’s voice getting closer and closer. He held his breath as he tried to gently prop himself up in bed and make himself somewhat presentable.

  The Consul pushed the door open, filling the entrance with his broad frame, though he stopped dead when he saw Aiur. He wasn’t exceptionally tall, simply muscular from a life at sea. His body was wrapped in the tight-fit leathers and loose cloth of a sailor. His scales were a scattered mix of blue and green, his jaw sharp and angular, and his glare hard. Crimson coils marked his caste around his eyes, but the eyes themselves were a light brown, indicating his origins and his elevated status.

  “Do you know who this is?” he rumbled, his accent far harsher than the priestesses, but still with that rolling Balanzarian signature.

  “I do not believe that matters,” Timasa said, appearing over his shoulder before slipping elegantly past the brutish lizard.

  “Aiur Zerkash,” he snarled with contempt, turning to the priestess. “Consul of Ra’ven. Oathbreaker. Our enemy.”

  Everything he had said was true. Aiur had broken a treaty between Houses Zerkash and Amunet with a surgical strike across their borders and earned himself the curse of oathbreaker. It had all been at Ra’ven’s command, of course, but he had been burdened with the title.

  “That does not concern me. He is an injured man in need of my attention.”

  “Then leave,” he growled. “I will handle this myself. The authority of the Archon allows me. Sanu would agree regardless, as would your High Priestess.”

  Timasa interposed herself between the Consul and Aiur, using her slight advantage in height to its full extent over the Consul. “Neither your Archon nor Zalia’s authority matters here. I am bound by my oaths to Aten as the healer, I cannot willingly allow lives to be lost on this holy ground irrespective of even the High Priestess’ desires.”

  Aiur and the Consul both stared at her, one in shock and the other in annoyance. She stood her ground, her head held high. “He has something to say to you, Rateph. You will listen, or you will leave.”

  Rateph growled, folding his arms and thumping his tail against the floor. “Fine. Speak, oathbreaker.”

  Timasa stepped to the side, remaining within arm’s reach of the Consul.

  “There is a Naga in the desert,” Aiur croaked, his throat dry.

  “Bullshit,” Rateph rumbled. “Are we done?”

  Aiur shook his head. “It’s coming for Balanzar.”

  “Evidence?”

  Aiur sighed. He pushed himself further upright to take several deep breaths. “You know of Sturva?”

  “I do. Small mining hamlet to the north-west of here. Mostly abandoned after the iron dried up. We ceded it to you as part of a peace treaty that you violated two seasons later.”

  Aiur winced. “It’s gone. Burned down so we could escape…it seems so selfish now, it all does. I had taken some scouts out on a training manoeuvre, alongside my head scout.” Aiur stared off into the distance, his eyes glazing as he recalled the horror of it all. “I just wanted time away from the politics…Sturva was to be the site of a little trial against some legionaries. They never arrived, the snake did instead with a screaming horde at its back.”

  “Yet you, out of them all, survived.”

  “Barely. They chained those they could and killed those they couldn’t. The creature used some kind of magic, left me unconscious. The moment I awoke it cracked me over the well and started to take cuts at my arm with a rusty cleaver. Make an example, I think. Some of the scouts were more…competent. They stayed hidden and they started fires to distract it.”

  Rateph’s face was thunder; his great brow was furrowed and his slab-jawed face remained implacable and firm. “You burned a village down so that you could escape, how noble.”

  Aiur’s gaze hardened. “Judge me how you will, but that was not my doing.”

  “How did you end up here then? You washed up in the Ahbek, that river is a long way from Sturva.”

  “How do you think?” Aiur hissed, spitting his words between his gritted teeth. “We. Walked. For days and nights, all the while expecting an arrow in the back. Myself, Rexis and Daiss. Not enough food, not enough water, and the last scraps of our uniforms used to hold a raft together.”

  Rateph did not reply immediately. His tongue pressed against his teeth and a finger slowly tapped on his bicep. “How many people did you say you found?” he asked finally, glancing at Timasa.

  “Two,” she said quietly, still wary of the brutish Consul.

  “Where’s the third?” he said with a flash of his teeth.

  “Dead,” Aiur croaked, the words eliciting a deep ache within his chest.

  “Just dead? Surely there is a little more to your fanciful tale.”

  Aiur tensed as he shifted his weight again, sending a twinge of pain over his broken ribs. “I don’t know what killed him. It was dark…we were pushing the raft off. But it wasn’t a damn crocodile,” he said, a grim laugh tailing off abruptly into a series of hacking coughs.

  “hm…its plausible,” Rateph conceded with a grunt. He still did not sound convinced. “It would be no surprise for a serpent to burn down half the countryside just to keep its movements concealed…but where did it land? My fleets ply the waters, east to south, all along the coastline. We are not missing a single ship.”

  “The Abyss,” Aiur groaned.

  “The Abyss,” Rateph snarled, “is a mass of sudden reefs and deep trenches filled with sea monsters. The waters to the north are not passable.”

  “The Naga would be the only ones insane enough to try!” Aiur shouted with great effort, tensing at the physical toll.

  Rateph held his tongue this time, his eyes falling from Aiur as he receded into thought.

  “Would I be here,” Aiur spat through gritted teeth. “Stuck in one of your hospital beds. With cracked ribs, and an infected arm.” He snarled each half-sentence now, the pain forcing him to take breaths just to relieve the pressure for a moment. “If I had any other choice?”

  Rateph remained silent.

  Timasa moved in, putting an arm under Aiur and forcibly, yet gently, pushing him back into lying on the bed. She shot Rateph an ugly stare. After a few moments he relented, arms dropping to his sides.

  “Fine,” he said, a slight smirk still upon his face, appearing to find some contentment in seeing Aiur in pain. “Sanu will hear of this.”