"Lord of the Desert Storm" by David Michael

            Dry and hard was the desert wind as it slid through the peregrine falcon’s banded gray feathers, carrying with it the smells of dust and distant markets.  Sunlight glinted from the bird’s black eyes as it chased its undulating shadow north over shifting dunes and valleys, searching through the oppressive wind for the one thing which it knew would not fully be engulfed by the gradually rising sands.  A warm updraft lifted it higher, and it beat its wings to outpace the wind itself and shoot up towards the sun, so that from such a height it might cast its piercing gaze even unto the shimmering horizon.  Brownish red plateaus stretched in from the west like giant ships moored at the far mountains’ feet.  The falcon dove beneath some marshaling clouds and soared over a wide but towering canyon, which deep in its recesses harbored Setali Mora, the Climbing City of Lord Armistad, the highest reaches of which were carved into the rock walls and overlooked the canyon and its river.

            Silently, like an anxious cloud, a horde of robed riders galloped down from the city through the great ravine.  They did not stop when they left it, but moved purposefully into the increasingly angry whipping sands and disappeared as if no longer meant for living eyes.  The falcon saw this and flew with greater speed over the open desert.

            The roar of the growing sandstorm was left behind, and a wall of silence, the only cool element in this place, rose off the burnt, powdered ground.  With a mournful look in its glinting eyes, the falcon passed over the last green oasis.  A long ridge of snaking dunes stretched out below, marking the northern border of Aymara, Lord Armistad’s domain.  Beyond, the desert stretched unbroken for leagues on end with no rock or shelter.  It was impassable to all but the lord of the desert winds, and perhaps those with unusually strong magic.

            As if responding to a call resounding deep within its bones, the falcon dove towards the border dunes and alighted smoothly on a black-gloved hand outstretched in the air.

            “Ah, what is this?  A friend so far from home and nest!”  Armistad brought the bird close and smiled as it nudged its beak into his dark goatee, disrupting the finely greased curl.  “Thank you.  I must start this alone, but it is nice to see a friend first.  And perhaps it shall not be long before my riders come.”

            He raised a jeweled saber in his right hand and watched its keen blade splice the yellow sunbeams into ribbons that fell down the hill, unraveling at its foot.  Far off behind him, and falling from the clouds from the direction of Setali Mora, he thought he heard the strains of a wavering love song strummed on a five-stringed oud…it was the one Ibrahim the luthier had played at his wedding feast.  Humming to himself, and with a slow, dance-like movement that used his whole body, he extended the saber back, up, and then down into its ivory-enameled sheath.

            The wind, which had died down, suddenly leapt up again, catching both the cloth at the back of his neck and the long folds of his black robe and jerking them out in front.  A loose burgundy tunic was held down by a tan leather vest with wide shoulders that also harbored numerous knives of various lengths and shapes.  The falcon cried piercingly as its feathers were ruffled out of place.

            “Ah, sh sh!” cooed Armistad, sheltering the bird with his body.  “‘Tis time for you to take wing before the battle.  The arrows of Sheik Shethar will cut anything out of the sky, and the sandstorm surely will not give way to even a king such as you.  You must start now if you are to escape.”  He looked behind him, where far in the distance an enormous brown wall of dust and sand covered the horizon, boiling madly as it sped over leagues of rocky desert, flattening and tearing all in its path.  It sounded now as a lion’s purr, but growing steadily in volume and violence.

            He felt a light nudge by his heart and looked down into the falcon’s glinting eyes.  Something burned in them that he had never seen before, and in that moment, the bird looked right into his soul.  It beat its wings quickly, smoothly, and pushed away from Armistad’s arm to hover before him in a manner more like a dragonfly than a bird of prey.  A golden shimmering light fell from the gray wings, forming into an image shifting in the wind but gradually solidifying.  Armistad laughed and stroked his beard in astonishment.  It was a head…and a face…a beautiful woman’s face.

            “Kelita!” he cried happily, recognizing his wife, and thrust his arms into the fast-beating winds.  The shimmering image, washed in the burnt gold of the desert air, laughed with him, love in her eyes.  Hands of the same magic light appeared and reached out to caress his face, and unconsciously his own hand reached up to hover at her immaterial, delicate wrist.  She leaned forward and kissed him, and then the wind blew the elegant, smiling vision away from his grasp, back to Setali Mora.  Cheeks burning as he laughed, he watched the falcon turn and, as it winged gracefully higher, vanish into the wind.

            “Ah, what skill she has!  In all the kingdoms of the world, there is no woman as skillful as my wife.  Thank you, my desert rose, you have brightened my eyes and quickened my blood at the time I need it most.”

            As his eyes fell upon the barren northern horizon, his brow furrowed and his jaw hardened.  He saw a low dust cloud rising up – rising, he knew, from thousands of tramping booted feet.  A thin black line soon became apparent, the vanguard of Sheik Shethar’s army.  Armistad watched it with interest, the roar of the sandstorm growing behind him.  “So, they have survived the leagues of dead lands!  The ambition to conquer is a strong one indeed, I know, but he has more in him than I gave him credit for.  Magnificent.  Of course, I did call him a flea on the rump of a diseased goat in front of his mother, so perhaps that has extended his stamina.  But still he is a fool.”

            Sheets of sand glided by all around him, tearing into the rocks on the dune and shifting all the sands in a violent fury.  A giant, buzzing shadow fell over Lord Armistad as the sandstorm blocked out the sun, and he rolled his head back and sighed in satisfaction.  In all the cacophonous madness, not one grain of sand touched his body.

            He stepped forward and still was untouched by anything but the wind, which pushed him forward in eager waves, rushing between his legs as if to lift him up.  His laugh was drowned in the shrieking roar of the blistering storm, which was now only three bowshots away, and eating up the desert like pride of starved lions.  Once more his saber was drawn from its sheath, and he held it aloft as he strode down the sand dune bordering his realm.  He could no longer see Shethar’s army on the horizon, for the sands were swirling about him to thick and furious.  They were there, all the same, coming closer, exhausted from their long march but still hoping for the taste of blood and the rumored wonders of his city.

            Lord Armistad ran over the sands, his wrapped boots barely touching them, his black robe straining around his sides to pull him forward.  With a shout of triumph that came either from the man or the wind itself, or both, the red boiling sandstorm engulfed the desert lord, rolling onward towards the horizon.  Still the sands did not touch him, but split and curved around his body, lifting his legs into greater strides and clearing the way under his feet.  All about him he heard the pounding hooves of stallions, and the flitting shapes of their silent, robed riders could be glimpsed between the sands.  The storm seemed to heave and puff like him as he ran, and from his lungs poured a deep song, an old song…one of the oldest of Setali Mora, written by one of their ancient bards, and the one he had sung for Kelita his wife on their wedding day.  Far back in the direction of his city, the strains of the song played on Ibrahim’s oud still reached though the winds’ mighty roaring, and above it all he heard the hunting call of the peregrine falcon.