The Nine Tribes of the Deb Ytarr

[brian 333]

Wye jogged through windblown drifts of sand cradling an injured lamb. Behind him a sand elemental rose in its terrible majesty: a brown wall that extended in an arc from horizon to horizon, crowned in lightning, and churning the desert as it came ever faster, growing taller until its brown robes covered the blue sky above and turned the bright yellow Eye of Bas to a flickering, cold red. The wind which had been growing stronger and stronger into his face suddenly stopped. Dry, hot grains of sand fell like rain as a grumbling, growling brown wall ran up behind, determined to devour him.

With a scream he slid feet-first into a low, rounded boulder. He clutched the lamb to his chest as he slid into a crevice at its base, and rolled where the sand turned to bare stone. The lamb, released, shook itself and cantered down a dark ramp towards the sound of sheep echoing in the dark. Men rolled a stone wheel across the opening until it wedged into a track carved into the floor, left wall, and the overhead above the entrance. They were not quick enough to stop the first grasping claw of the elemental from reaching in to choke the four men and the young shepherd.

The guards praised Wye and promised to tell the tale of his courage. He thanked them for holding the closing of the door, praising their courage in return. He followed the lamb down into the black ramp, one hand brushing a wall that absorbed the flickering lamplight from above.

The ramp ended at a broad hall with a low, arched roof. Lamps hanging from the peak of the roof gave the illumination of Dei Galdra, the White Moon, over the pens of the families. He smiled to see his herd being divided into their pens by the herdmasters.

Under the watchful eye of Herdmaster Darjee he tended the hoof of the lamb whose luck it had been to get its foot wedged between two rocks just moments before reaching safety from the elemental. When his chore was done and he saw to the feeding and watering of his herd, he found another ramp down, into the hidden city of Dal Hibbaltha.

From his history lessons Wye knew that there were nine such cities and thirty or more winter towns where the shepherds took their herds in the cool, green winter. Only the old and the very young remained in Dal Hibbaltha in winter.

He went down two more ramps, past the family quarter and to the esplanades. His friends would be there. Tending sheep alone in the desert often gave him a craving for the company of his peers.

(to be continued...)

[brian 333]

Dal Hibatha was a hidden fortress. More properly it was the dungeon of a fortress which had been destroyed along with the city of Hibatha a thousand years before when the defeated god Kaladh Hao cursed the land of his rival as he was dragged away in chains.

Dei Bas cast Kaladh Hao into the Stream of Time and the Devourer, the Usurper, was carried ten mellenia into the future, but his slaves remained behind. The elemental beings of sand rose up in the spring and summer months and ravaged all they could reach, but the tribesmen were wary of their sudden onslaughts. Bolt-holes and sand-shelters had been built and maintained so that the shepherds and their flocks were seldom far from safety as the sheep grazed on what little summer growth there was.