Julia Gray - The Crystal Desert (Guardian Cycle)

Prologue

Mlicki was the only one who still believed they would hear the music of life again. Every morning, when he woke, he would lie under his chilouk and listen.

The darkness brought many sounds to him - the rustle of wind-blown sand, the scratching of insects, Erardi's rasping snores - but never the music.

Each morning was the same. After a while, he would be able to stand it no longer. Even though the day had not yet begun, he would get up and quietly leave the house, then make his way down to the river bank. And each morning he would be greeted by a moonlit scene that came from a nightmare from which there was no escape. It was unnatural - wrong - and all the more so because Mlicki knew what it ought to look like. Alone among the inhabitants of Bahriya, he had seen beyond the wind to a time when the music of life would ring out again. It had been as real to him as the outer world, but his visions had brought him trouble in the past, and so he had told no one of what he had seen.

The river will come back, he told himself stubbornly, as he did each morning.

It will!

Mlicki was the only one who still believed, though even he felt his faith beginning to dry up now, just as the mud of the river bed was drying

becoming a cracked pavement of desiccated clay, like a million shards of crude, broken pottery. The water would return, but he had no way of knowing when this would happen. Or whether by then it would be too late.

The ominous silence crowded in upon him, and he looked up, sensing the weight of the moons upon his thoughts. The White Moon was full, riding majestically across the star-sprinkled plain, but there was something else that was influencing his mood this morning. Neither the Amber nor the Red Moon was in sight above the horizon, and although they were both waxing and close to full, Mlicki wasn't able to identify their power. Which meant that what he was feeling must come from the Invisible. The unseen moon had changed its pattern recently, so that no one was really sure when or where it would appear within the dome - and this had had an unsettling effect on the people of Misrah. It seemed as though there was nothing left for them to rely upon. Such a change was supposed to be impossible - though Mlicki didn't understand why this should be so - and many people were saying that if there was chaos above, then there would soon be chaos in the world of men. Mlicki couldn't follow that logic either, but just at that moment he would have been willing to wager a great deal that the Invisible was at its most potent. The idea made him feel unaccountably nervous.

'Did you do this?' he asked aloud, searching the sky for the tell-tale emptiness that marked the passage of the Invisible. The moon presented exactly the same aspect whether it was 'full' or 'new', and the only way to 'see' it was when it blotted out the stars beyond, or occasionally eclipsed the other moons or the sun itself.

The dome brought Mlicki no answer, and when he looked down again, the eastern sky behind him was illuminated by streaks of pink and pale gold. The pre-dawn light was enough to confirm that his earlier impressions had not been mistaken.

There had been droughts before - when the river had shrunk to a muddy trickle, the fertile plains that lined its banks had begun to shrivel up, and even the wells had become unreliable - but there had never been anything as bad as this. The process had always been gradual before, and - to some extent

predictable, allowing those who lived along the Kullana's shores to hoard a little water in their underground reservoirs and ensure that they had enough to last until the following year. This time disaster had struck with incredible speed. One day the river had been running strongly, and then four days later it had gone, as if it had never existed. In full spate the Kullana was over a hundred paces wide, and at its centre the water rose to more than twice the height of a tall man. All that had vanished almost overnight, and now the only thing left was an arid gully, where even the air was without a trace of moisture. The river bed had become a patchwork of death. The music had gone, and it was not even close to the dry season. The meltwaters from the distant mountains - mountains that Mlicki had never seen - should still have been in full flow, but there was nothing.

Although no one could understand what had happened, what could have caused the drought, the catastrophe that had befallen them was undeniable. Misrah was an unforgiving land at the best of times, but this latest disaster threatened to destroy the lives of even those people who had believed themselves to be secure.

Mlicki felt the heat of the newly-risen sun on his back, and watched the first rays slanting over the desolate terrain before him. As the sunlight leached away the last drops of water, even the stones that had once shone from the depths of the stream seem to have been bleached. Where once there had been blue and green and flashes of gold, orange and black, everything was now the same lifeless colour of pale umber.

Even as he watched, a sluggish breeze was enlivened by the warmth of the new day. This raised a series of kwei, spirals of sand and dust that whirled and swayed like living creatures. Some people called them sun devils, the refuge of lost souls. Mlicki's mother had taught him to appreciate the beauty in their shimmering movements - to see how they sometimes spun in different directions so that two would seem to dance together like a pair of lovers

but he took no pleasure in watching them now. Their very presence in such a place, where once water had swirled and eddied, was just another omen of dread.

On the bank, the picture was similarly unpleasant. Tamarisk bushes, which would normally have been a mass of pink and green at this time of year, were turning brown, parched by the sudden drought - and it would not be long before the villagers' precious crops were affected in the same way.

As the morning brightened, Mlicki's gaze fell upon another dispiriting sight.

The wild chirkewa plant, which had seeded itself at the top of the bank, was deep-rooted, and had defied the devastation for several days, clinging to life so that its delicate green foliage still gave off the healing scent that made it such a cherished weed. Now it was drooping, the tips of its leaves turning black, as if scorched by fire. The imminent end of the herb's resistance felt like a sign - and the last of Mlicki's confidence began to drain away.

He was about to walk over to the plant, to see whether it was worth trying to salvage any of the leaves, when he jumped violently and almost cried aloud. He managed to stop himself, however, and forced a smile onto his face as he turned to look at his sister. It had been her hand, slipping into his own, that had startled him and, as always, he was amazed at the way she had been able to approach so silently.

Kalkara was eight years old now, four years his junior, but there were times when she seemed even younger still. Her bright blue eyes looked up at him with a mixture of love, concern and trust. It was that trust which he found hardest to live up to. She was his responsibility, his burden - but one he would not have relinquished for the world. There was also a constant sadness buried deep within her solemn gaze, and he would have given anything to be able to replace her sorrow with genuine contentment.

'You made me jump, Kala,' he told her, his smile more natural now. 'Why do you sneak up on me like that?'

There was no reply. Kalkara had not uttered a single word since the day they had been orphaned.

'I'll have to tie a bell around your neck, like a goat, so I know when you're coming,' he added, squeezing her hand and grinning to make sure she knew he was joking.

Kala grinned back, the expression lighting up her dark elfin face, and by unspoken agreement they turned and began to walk back towards the settlement.