Page 51 - Microsoft Word - FANG EMPIRE - NOVEL.docx

“Daka!” Zuba shouted, now recognizing the voice.

“Captain of the Royal Guard,” Daka replied.

“You’re alive!” Zuba exclaimed. “But the bloody sand?”

“Moroccan scouts have blood as red as ours,” Daka said with a smirk.

Zuba could now see that Daka was dressed in a cobalt blue robe and black head wrap.

“You look like a Rhune Mystic,” he said.

“What happened to the tent?” Raki asked.

“It became too dangerous to stay in the open desert,” said Daka.

He jumped down from his mount, grabbed a large lion skin water bottle that hung from his

saddle and handed it to Zuba, who bowed but did not drink first. He handed the water bottle to

Cane and Raki. They received it with gratitude and drank their fill.

Daka pointed. “We had to move to secret caves in the west.”

“Is the prince—?” Zuba asked.

“Alive? Barely. Sooth is a wizard. I don’t know how he does it. He stays with Omar every

minute of the day and night. The man never sleeps.”

“And the queen?” Cane asked.

“Her body is healing but her heart is dying with Omar. Rhune Mystics brought bad tidings.

There are no free citizens left in Timbuktu. The kingdom is lost.”

Daka walked around to Zuba’s horse and stared gravely at Sygnosis bound in the net. He looked

back at Zuba with foreboding.

“We were successful,” Zuba said. But his voice was not the voice of gladness. In his heart

he knew, the days ahead would be grim.

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Night fell. Daka, Zuba, Cane and Raki rode west across the desert toward the secret caves.

“How did you find these caves?” Zuba asked.

“The Rhune Mystics,” Daka said. “They are masters of the deep desert. They gave us

desert robes and showed us the route.”