I believed in bedrock, that beneath the shifting dunes of history, there was stone. That physics, chemistry, geology, and the chaos that is human nature, could, with sufficient discipline and effort, be mapped, understood, and ultimately controlled. I believed that even ambition, selfishness, and greed could all be accounted for, understood, and ultimately overcome by a rational mind. I was wrong. I was wrong. The bedrock was a graveyard, and I mistook bones for stone.
My education began one day under the vast skies of the Red Sand Sea searching for the literal bedrock beneath the endless undulations of the dunes.
"Hold," I ordered with a wave. The dull thud of the mallet stopped.
Most of my dozen men were still getting up, some were eating breakfast rations, but Olen was hard at work. I walked past my personal wagon, to where Olen had been pounding the sounding rod with his mallet.
I knelt down by the rod, pressing my fingers against the steel at its base where the rod met the sand. "OK," I said, "slow now."
THUD. Olen slammed the mallet again, just a handbreadth from my head.
THUD. The sand dampened the vibrations.
THUD. Deeper. We were close. I could feel it in my teeth.
TCHINK. I could tell, not just from the sound, but from the way the vibration went up my arm we had hit bedrock, immune from the irrational chaos of the dunes. Everything had a rational foundation, you just had to be disciplined enough to find it.
"Three point seven cubits." I declared. "Mark it, Bastien." I looked over to my crew leader who was already recording the measurement in the vellum ledger.
It was shallow enough that we could start building the next cairn, it would be our twelfth, covering a third of the distance across the Red Sand Sea. Once the series was done, no trade caravan ever needed to get lost in the Red Sand Sea again. And hopefully, Heliqar's trade would be safer and more popular than ever.
I clambered up the supplies wagon. "When you're done with breakfast," I cleared my throat and gave the men a fake bossy scowl that broke into a grin, "Start unloading the stone from the sledge. We've found the spot."
We didn't have much stone on the sledge. Even our biggest Tuspak, Aukoa, couldn't haul a small fraction of what we needed for even a placeholder cairn. So I put it to a vote, the men knew the drill. "It's 4 cubits deep where Olen found the rock. Right hands show you want to dig here, left to haul from the inselberg."
You never know what you're going to find. They could dig for days and not find enough and they knew it. I had learned from Elias' books, especially those on leadership, and my parents had given me excellent examples. My mother was Queen Aliya. Her voice echoed in my head: "Give them choice, Elyan. Respect it. For without it, they will choose another—and you will not like the choosing."
The men needed more detail to make a good choice. "Bastien, consult the maps," I ordered.
"Closest inselberg is two-and-a-half miles south east," announced Bastien, rubbing a calloused thumb on my map. "And just a knob. Barely two cubits of rock out of the sand. Might be buried already."
The men let out a collective groan. The gamblers began raising their right hands. Some hesitated, glancing at the others, but no one raised their left to start making hauling trips. "Digging it is, then."
I went over to Aukoa, a female, and my favorite. "Looks like you're getting the day off, girl," I said as I ran a hand over her amor-like hide towards her beak. I caressed one of her foot-long tusks, noting the boundary between natural tooth and the silver protective cap. She bellowed softly, treating me as one of the herd, and casually tried to nuzzle me with her head. "Easy, girl," I said as she nearly knocked me off my feet. That giant low-slung dozer thought she was still a hatchling.
By dusk, the area was pockmarked with holes. Each representing hours of work hoping to strike rock. Olen's incessant mallet strikes still bounded in my ears though he was finished for the day. No one had found rock. We must have gotten a lucky hit with a buried spire. I went back and stood on the wagon looking at my men, leaning on their shovels, who looked back at me. "We found nothing today. Who is ready for the haul?"
More than half of the left hands came up. I could tell they were tired of digging.
"With our four Tuspaks, it will take 5 trips to build the placeholder." Another groan went of out from the men. They knew we would have to start tonight. We would certainly be pushing the limits of the Tuspaks by the time we got home to Heliqar. The beasts could go three weeks without water and it had been two. After two weeks it would be too dangerous to have them working out in the sun anymore. They'd need shade during the day.
We attached the sledges to the Tuspaks' harnesses and started the march to the inselberg from our makeshift camp. Heliqar's special Tuspak breed had unusually broad feet didn't sink into the sand like human feet tended to, they ran silent and didn't waste effort sinking into the sand. It was the men who were the only noise besides the eternal wind.
By sunrise we had made one of the five trips to the inselberg. A broad hole in the ground showed where the small outcrop had been before we mined it into nonexistence. We began heading back. I didn't use the sextant. The beaming stars on the inky blackness were the only map I needed to lead the men across the featureless sand dunes.
The predawn light crept up on us as we were halfway back to camp, "My Prince," Bastien said coming up to me, "I think see something on the horizon." He handed me my telescope. The lenses had belonged to my father who had found them when he was a boy. He had made them into a full telescope by mounting them in Tuspak ivory.
Through the telescope I saw the smudge on the horizon that Bastien had brought to my attention. It was a cloud. My heart beat faster and I realized that my palm was sweating. "Sandstorm's coming. In the afternoon."
Bastien gasped, "Are we going to finish the run?"
It didn't look good. The men were slumped more than slouched and even the Tuspak's heads were bowed. I looked back at the smudge, hoping it would just go away and leave us in peace. It was still there, but there was something else just below it, the thing that would change my life and destroy one of the most powerful states in the world. An odd shape in the sand. "By the Emperor," I said, "it's got six wheels. No Tuspaks. Must've run." An overturned wagon. Only the Qulombans used six wheeled wagons. And their trade caravans were a very rare sight on the Red Sand Sea. Qulomba was too far away for trade through Heliqar to make sense.
"We have to check it out, Bastien. It's Qulomban. They won't know what they're doing out here. Someone might need help."
"Raiders probably." Bastien shook his head. "Or worse. No time with the sandstorm coming. We might not make it back to the last cairn in time even if we drop the load here."
"You're right, Bastien," I said. "The men come first. Dump the load. Take the men back to camp, leave the empty sledges. Get the rest of the wagons and and head back to the last cairn. I'll find my way."
"No, My Prince." the big man put his hand on my shoulder, anchoring me where I stood. "A Prince of Heliqar cannot be allowed to go alone. Your mother will have my hide either way. Olen can lead the men."