The First Night

 Asphodel stepped back from her work and paused, turned half toward Tex and Neteth and half toward Hati, who recovered enough of his bearing to tell her to proceed. Some of the bandits shifted uncertainly, some looking to their leader or each other to renew their resolve.

“Are you two done?” the witch asked under her breath.

“Probably,” said Tex.

“I need them all looking the same way.”

“Then what?”

“Close your eyes.”

Tex's sword flashed and sang as it split the air. He held it aloft as though poised for a lethal blow and shouted with force enough that the men around him took a step back: “Go Cowboys!”

Neteth shut his eyes and a moment later felt the icy caress of magic. Once it passed he looked about to see the bandits lost in a daze. Some had dropped their weapons and a couple fell to their knees, lost and distraught. The prince, along with Tex and Asphodel, slipped through the ragged ranks. They ran, Neteth stooping to grab a spear and wishing he could overturn the litter and drag that murderous thief along behind him. For a moment he stopped and looked that way, but Tex grabbed his shoulder and they continued through and beyond the camp.

“What did you do to them?” asked the prince.

“The spell stunned them, but only for a moment. They'll regain their senses before long.”

“And what was that you bellowed? A battle cry?” he asked Tex.

“Pretty much.”

Little more was said for the next few hours as they assumed a punishing pace in expectation of pursuit, threading through vale and the shadows of rocky hills, stopping only periodically to listen for the clamor of riders. When sufficient interval had passed that there seemed nothing to fear, at least imminently, and they were all near the point of exhaustion, the three stopped at last to rest.

“We'll have to continue through the night,” the prince said.

“You think so?”

“If they haven't gathered their wits yet, they will in the morning. We can go south from here, to Gaser, and follow the river from there.”

“Where to?” Tex asked.

“My home, of course. The palace at Anu Ra. Even someone from such a distant land as you must have heard of it,” Neteth said, and taking his companion's lack of understanding for hesitation, added, “My family will repay your generosity.”

“And her?”

“She will be pardoned, most likely.”

“Most likely?” Tex said incredulously, which the prince met with a shrug.

“Whatever else she may be, she was a criminal and of low standing to begin with. She have earned clemency, but certainly no special consideration. It's the way of things.”

“You're not very generous people, are you. What do you think about this?” Tex asked the witch.

“I've nothing to prove to him,” she said quietly but severely.

“He's not the one asking.”

She was sitting on the grass, not fully facing them, staff laid at her side as if to partition herself from the others. “I didn't join them by choice,” she replied.

“So they all say,” answered the prince.

“I was sold to Hati's band for a favor.”

“Don't you have somewhere to go? Someone who'll take you in?” Tex asked.

“Not in this country.”

“I want to know how they acquired that ring. It belongs to someone I know,” said Neteth.

“Right now it belongs to me. If saving your life isn't enough to safeguard mine, maybe returning this to its owner will.”

The long, bitter silence that followed hung over them until at last Tex stood and climbed the hill before him, moving simply for the sake of having something to do. The air felt clearer on the slope, the night mysterious and refreshing as though he could pick any direction he wanted and some muse would then guide him to new wonders, new realms beyond the shabby conjurings of his own imagination.

A vast dome breached the horizon, bands of deep blue shot through with marmoreal streaks and patches like clouds drifting over an endless sea. Next to this giant, each surely a planet in its own right but reduced almost to pinpricks in comparison, a pair of lesser spheres turned, one pure white and the other the dull red of a scabbed-over wound. When another body began to crest the world's edge Tex nearly asked how many moons he'd see that night, then stopped himself when he noticed it to be a ring girding the larger world, what he assumed correctly to be Tanit-el. He wondered quietly what myths people would dream of, confronted by such vistas every night: a sun to rule the day and its equal stalking some lesser imitation in the manner of a child repeating things spoken by a parent and memorized without understanding. The eclipses, he thought, must be spectacular.

Though few stars were visible in that crowded sky, there were outlines of alien constellations that he knew must have stories of their own, special meanings inscribed in the hearts of men who gazed upon the unknown and sought in their own small way to lend it order. Every world must have an Orion to harrow the monsters haunting its shadows.

He returned to find Asphodel asleep and Neteth honing the spear's head.

“You going to wake her up?” Tex said.

“Leave her be.”

“Well, we're not leaving her.”

“I know.”

“You said we'd keep going through the night.”

“I know what I said.”

“All right then,” said Tex as he sat down. “Beautiful night.”

“Indeed it is,” the prince said. Seeing the other man's interest in the sky, he began to describe the planetary calendar his people had invented, the portents the scribes had foreseen in the heavens and rituals devised to appease those beings embodied in sun and stars, the panic engendered by the unheralded arrival on a tailed star – “Comets,” Tex added, a word the prince had never heard before but found pleasant – and what he could recall of which planets had been chosen by other kingdoms for their patron gods and goddesses.

“Ours is Tanit-el. Someday we'll be first among men as she is among the firmament,” he said.

“What about her people?” Tex asked, motioning toward Asphodel.

“You would do well to ignore anything they have to say.”

“About their gods?” Tex asked, and the prince nodded in reply. “Why?”

“You must have come an incredible distance. I've never met someone who had no idea of their iniquity. They must be known by a different name among your kind.”

“All right, humor me. What's the big deal? It's not that she's a witch, is it?”

“Of course not. There are witches in my own house who have served my family faithfully.”

“Then what is it?” Tex asked, but the prince would not say. It wasn't long before Neteth lay down and attempted to sleep, something he found elusive that night, and when it came to him it was slowly, reluctantly, as if dragging a terrible weight behind it. He woke before dawn more tired than when he'd drifted off.