Wren Pallak's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Wren Pallak knelt in the sand and spread her map flat. Somewhere under this stretch of Ovendust lay a relic old enough to make her rich, if the buyers she dealt with paid what they promised. Her problem sat plain in the ink. The map marked a circle three miles wide. Digging that whole circle would take weeks, and she had water for four days. She pushed her goggles up and glared at the shifting dunes. Every ridge looked like the last. Without a precise spot, she would trench empty sand until her canteens ran dry. She needed someone who knew this ground by heart. One herder had walked these dunes longer than anyone alive. She found Rashid al-Sahir at dusk, checking the ropes on his kneeling camels. He was small and broad, his black beard streaked with dust, his hands never still. He looked at her map and laughed once, short and dry. "You dig for the old thing," he said. "Many have. Their bones flavor the sand now." "I dig where you tell me," Wren said. She set a coin on his knee. "You know the landmarks. I don't." Rashid did not touch the coin. He studied her cracked jacket, her boots, the rolled map she'd shoved back in one. Something in his face softened. "The landmarks are gone," he said. "Wind ate them. But once, priests carved them into stone. There is a monastery beyond the far ridge. They kept records of every pillar and well that marked this waste." Wren's chest tightened. "You'll take me?" "For the coin, and a share." He spat in his palm and held it out. She shook it. They rode through the cold night. By dawn the monastery rose from the sand, sunbaked stone under a cracked dome, its arches worn smooth. Inside, the air stayed cool. Rashid led her past silent courtyards to a room of shelves. The records were brittle scrolls and one thing Wren did not expect. In a corner sat a machine, a wide dish of patched metal on rusted brackets. A salvaged radar unit, hauled here and left. Rashid touched it like an old friend. "The last diggers dragged it in and died," he said. "It reads what lies below the sand." Wren matched the scrolls against her map. The priests had marked two stone pillars. She found their lines, drew them, and watched them cross. One point. She dragged the radar to the doorway and cranked it toward the ridge where the pillars once stood. The dish hummed. The screen flickered green. Deep under the crossing point, a hard shape glowed, buried far down. "There," Wren breathed. "That's it." Rashid leaned close, and his smile faded. He pointed at the screen. Around the relic, faint shapes ringed it in a wide circle, evenly spaced, too regular for stone. "Those are not rocks," he said quietly. "Someone buried guards with it. And your digging will wake them."