The Desert Spear

to do this?
Khevat had asked.
A
dama’ting
is no ordinary wife you can order about, or beat when she is disobedient.
    Jardir swallowed. Was he sure?
    “I do,” he said thickly, and the assembled
dal’Sharum
gave a great shout, clattering their spears against their shields. His mother, Kajivah, clutched at his young sisters, all of them weeping in pride.

    Jardir could feel his heart pounding, and part of him wished he was in the Maze, dancing
alagai’sharak,
rather than the dimly lit, pillowed chamber they retired to.
    “Do not fear,
alagai’sharak
shall still be there tomorrow!” Shanjat had laughed. “You fight a different kind of battle tonight!”
    “You seem ill at ease,” the
dama’ting
said as she drew the heavy curtains behind them.
    “Should I be another way?” Jardir asked bitterly. “You are my
Jiwah Ka,
and I do not even know your name.”
    The
dama’ting
laughed, the first time he had ever heard her do such. It was a beautiful, tinkling sound. “Do you not?” she asked, slipping off her veil and headwrap. His eyes widened, but it was not at the youth and beauty he saw.
    He did indeed know her.
    “Inevera,” he breathed, remembering the
nie’dama’ting
who had spoken to him in the pavilion so many years ago.
    She nodded, smiling at him, more beautiful than he had ever dared to dream.
    “The night we met,” Inevera said, “I finished carving my first
alagai hora.
It was fate; Everam’s will, like my name. The demon bones are carved in utter darkness, by feel alone. It can take weeks to carve a single die; years to complete a set. And only then, when the set is complete, can they be tested. If they fail, they are exposed to light, and the carving must begin anew. If they succeed, then
nie’dama’ting
becomes
dama’ting,
and we don our veil.
    “On that night, I finished my set and needed a question to ask. A test to see if the dice held the power of fate. But what question? Then I remembered the boy I had met that day, with the bold eyes and brash manner, and as I shook the demon dice, I asked, ‘Will I ever see Ahmann Jardir again?’
    “And from that night on,” she said, “I knew I would find you in the Maze after your first
alagai’sharak,
and more, that I would marry you and bear you many children.”
    With that, she shrugged her shoulders, and her white robes fell away. Jardir had feared this moment, but as the flickering light caught her naked form, his body began to respond, and he knew that he would pass this last test of manhood as he had all the others before it.

    “Jardir, you will take your men to the tenth layer,” the Sharum Ka said.
    It was a fool’s decision. Three years after he had donned the white veil, every
kai’Sharum
assembled knew that Jardir’s unit was the fiercest and best trained in all of Krasia. Jardir pressed his men hard, but the
dal’Sharum
gloried in it, their kill counts exceeding any three other units combined. They were wasted in the tenth layer. It was unheard of for the
alagai
to penetrate the Maze so deeply.
    The Sharum Ka sneered at Jardir, daring dissent, but Jardir embraced the dishonor and let it pass through him. “As the Sharum Ka commands,” he said, bowing low from his pillow to touch his forehead to the thick carpet of the First Warrior’s audience room. As he sat back up, his face was serene despite his disgust at the man before him. The Sharum Ka was supposed to be the strongest warrior in the city. This man was anything but. His hair was streaked with gray, his face deeply wrinkled like a
Damaji’s.
It had been long years since he had stood in the Maze, and it showed in a belly gone to fat. The First Warrior was supposed to lead the charge in
alagai’sharak
and inspire the men to glory, not conduct the war from behind his palace walls.
    But for all that, so long as he wore the white turban, his will in the night was inviolate.
    Dama Ashan, his unit’s cleric, and his lieutenants, Hasik and Shanjat, were waiting outside the Sharum Ka’s palace to escort Jardir back to the Kaji pavilion. He was only a
kai’Sharum,
but there had already been attempts on his life from jealous rivals, even within his own tribe. The Sharum Ka would not live forever, and with the Andrah having come from the Kaji tribe, it was all but certain one of the Kaji
kai’Sharum
would be appointed to take his place. Jardir stood in the way of many older
kai’Sharum’s
hopes of ascension.
    The three men were never far from his side ever