Chapter 10

That evening, the caravan reached the edge of the Taiba cliffs. At their feet, the land plunged down thousands of feet in a sheer rock face into misty darkness. The next leg of their journey was over God’s Eyebrow, a steep and narrow stone bridge that spanned the canyon to where the land climbed again. The bridge had no railing. It was simply a long, slender arch of stone. It simply could not be undertaken at night. That’s why everyone was looking forward to a rare night of rest.

Akane, after caring for her horse, had helped to untie the camels from the caravan and rope them to pickets. The last camel she led away, a phlegmy-yellow beast with evil eyes, stuck its long hairy muzzle in her face, its long, brown, blunt teeth showing in a wide yawn.

“Ugh!” Akane waved a hand in front of her face. “Camel breath!”

She left the camel chewing grain contentedly and went to help pitch the tents. However, the drivers had it well in hand. Looking around, she decided to stretch her legs. It had been a long while since she had ridden a horse for longer than a day, and never before for days at a time.

I really do miss that palanquin, she thought to herself.

She meandered to the edge of the cliff, which boasted a few stubby bushes and trees that clung tenaciously to the rocky soil. She stopped and held her breath. Beyond Taiba, the mountains approached with startling suddenness. The setting sun was a fiery crimson ball, like the malevolent red eye of some great being. Saffron light bathed an ancient flood of lava that poured down the mountain range. The hardened river ran towards Taiba and disappeared into the canyon.

To her left, Akane could see God’s Eyebrow, the thin, slender arch of the stone bridge they would cross tomorrow. When they got to the far side, they would have to descend to the valley floor. By then, they would be less than a week away from Dara.

As Akane walked even further left, she saw that even more northward, beyond the edge of the mountain range, a great flat table of limestone swept towards her to meet the dark, volcanic ridges.

The sunset bathed the folds dark purple, creating shadows and crevices and revealing craters. Sand collected in little inlets, creating a leopard-spotted land that stretched to a misty horizon ahead.

“Wow,” came a voice behind Akane. She turned to see Ranma standing behind her, his gaze sweeping the panoramic view. “This is something else.”

Akane didn’t know what to say. She didn’t even know what to make of Ranma. Sometimes, he seemed like no other young man of her acquaintance, though admittedly those weren’t too many in number. He was nothing like Ryouga, for instance. Ryouga was always polite to her. Well, they’d grown up together. She should make allowance for that. She had always imagined that when she and Ranma met, as two people destined for one other and promised to each other, that they would look into each other’s eyes and form an instant connection.

Akane blew out a breath. This was nothing like she had imagined. Every word and action of Ranma’s simply emphasized a fundamental difference in their attitudes. She hadn’t even taken his curse into account yet.

“What are you thinking, Akane?” Ranma was eyeing her curiously. He’d apparently gotten tired of waiting for her to say something while she stood there pondering the mysteries of Ranma.

“I was just thinking that it’s a lovely evening,” Akane replied. She smiled to herself. There might be hope yet if Ranma could appreciate a sunset.

“Oh.” Ranma shifted from one foot to the other, his thumbs hooked in his sash. He watched Akane’s eyes, trying to read her expression in the dying orange light. What was she really thinking? Why did he care?

He remembered when he’d lifted her out of that palanquin outside the palace, how something had leapt between them for an instant. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her.

“Ranma...”

“Hm?”

“Are we engaged?” Akane looked away, fiddling with the ends of her own sash.

“What?” Ranma turned to face her fully. “What makes you ask that?”

She regarded the fronds of her sash with deep interest. “It’s just that...the ceremony was interrupted. I know we’ve been engaged all our lives, in a manner of speaking, but...”

Ranma considered. Like Akane, he had been brought up from birth to believe that Akane would be his someday. He found it surprisingly hard to let go of the idea. In fact, he found it impossible. Akane had always belonged to him. Deep inside him, he had never questioned that fact. As he grew up however, the rational part of him had begun to realize that refusing the engagement was the one way he could thwart Genma. And the curse had seemed the perfect excuse.

That didn’t mean that Akane wasn’t his. He simply had not fused the two ideas into a single, workable solution. As a result, Ranma simply didn’t know what to tell her.

Akane took his silence for a negative reply.

“I see,” she said stiffly. “Well then.” She started to march off to the camp, but had to stop when Ranma barred her progress with his arm. He was watching her intensely.

“Akane...”

She just waited, her arms crossed, a slim eyebrow arched enquiringly.

Ranma looked like he was thinking furiously. Akane wanted to clock him. The fingers of her left hand fisted as her anger grew.

“Well, like you said, the engagement ceremony was cut short. We’ll have to wait to find out until we get back to Jiya.” Ranma smirked, happy with the sly way he’d eluded her question. Because there was no way in hell he was returning to Jiya.

When I decide if I wanna keep her, I’ll let her know, he thought smugly. His foot erupted in pain.

“Owwwwwwwwwww! Watch where you’re walking, you clumsy footed...!” He started, then watched as her fist kissed his chin in slow motion. He felt himself floating, no, he was flying...Then stars swam into his vision, the world spun crazily and all turned black.

Akane stared at Ranma in disgust. “Son of a flea-bitten camel,” she said, and stalked off.

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Ukyou, seated cross-legged at one of the campfires, watched Akane march into camp and disappear into one of the tents. She’d seen Ranma slip out to the cliff edge earlier and had mentally congratulated him on trying to get a moment alone with Akane. But the boy had blown it. She shook her head in sympathy with Akane.

Ranma. Hm. She’d been so occupied by everything that had happened so far that she really hadn’t spent much time considering her traveling companions. As far as she could tell, from the few conversations they’d had, Ranma really hated his foster-father. That was good. She hated Genma, too. She couldn’t do much about that now. Right now she had to concentrate on finding Tarou. One enemy at a time, her father used to say.

Once she got to Dara, she’d find Tarou, that jackal, and put an end to his useless existence. She’d avenge her honor. That’s when she would offer her help to Ranma so that they could finish Genma together. Things were looking up.

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Caught in quicksand a few days away from Dara, struggling to pull his horse out of the muck, Tarou began to sneeze.

“Damn! Achoo! I’m just sinking....achoo!....deeper!..achoo! Who’s thinking of me....achoo!.... so intensely?!” he yelled.



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The next morning, the guards and drivers assembled the caravan carefully. The stone bridge they were about the cross was close to five feet wide at its narrowest points. Without railings, battling high winds, the trip would be precarious even in daylight.

Cassim carefully urged his mule onto the stone lip of the bridge. The placid creature, having made this journey before, did not hesitate but began to walk confidently up the slight incline, its hooves clopping on the stone. The camels followed, their drivers leading them carefully by foot. Guards were interspersed in between, also leading their horses.

Akane, leading her own horse, glanced down only once through the whole thing, then clamped her lower lip hard, her face white with tension.

Ranma whistled as he walked, Cologne perched cheerily on his horse. He hoped he was irritating Akane. Subconsciously, he knew he could have easily avoided her fist the day before, yet somehow he couldn’t bring himself to do so. He’d just have to find another way to get back at her. He whistled louder.

Ukyou simply shook her head at such antics and tried to remember what she knew about Dara. It wasn’t much. It was a legend of the desert. Long ago, the city had been much like any other desert city, made of stucco and limestone, ruled by a line of kings who weren’t too bad, so far as kings went.

Then one day, the whole city had somehow turned to black marble. The citizens of the city never spoke of it; at least, Ukyou had never heard an explanation for it.

The sun had risen a notch higher in the sky when the entire caravan reached the other side of the bridge. Sighs of relief and thanks to God were heard. Now, they need only travel on down towards the valley, and in a few days they would be past the mountains.

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Nabiki expected to be hailed any second. Her back was stiff with tension as she, Nodoka and Kasumi wended their way through the throngs in the broad market street of Dara. By now, Kasumi had learned to ride her horse, and the three of them did not look out of place as their mounts made their way through the crowds of people.

The three of them gawked silently at the sheer black walls of minarets and mosques that soared high above them. Every longstanding building was made of black marble and gave off the appearance of immense age. Only the small stalls set up by vendors were made of wood and showed brown in comparison..

Nabiki couldn’t shake the feeling that here, in a city, someone would recognize her, pull her down from her horse and then she would be packed off to Jiya again. She knew her mother and Kasumi were feeling the same way.

She wanted to get down and lead the horses, but this was the easiest way to find an inn to stay at. She could search for signs. Besides, the three of them were dressed as men, in long tunics and trousers, head cloths covering the majority of their faces. No one had thrown them a second look, as far as she could tell.

“This place is very strange, Nabiki,” said Kasumi, her horse coming up beside Nabiki’s. “There’s an odd air about it. Can’t we simply leave?”

“We must stop and find a way to get some provisions, Kasumi dear,” Nodoka said. Her gentle voice sounded odd coming from the concealing head cloth of a man.“I know this city is said to be enchanted, but it is the only city we know so far north.”

Though they did not know it, Tarou passed within a few feet of them, going in the opposite direction. He had arrived there the day before and had found himself lodgings, though the odd color of the city made his skin crawl, as it always had. He was in search of Happousai. He also expected the guards holding the Jiyan queen and her daughters to appear in Dara within a couple of days.

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The caravan was now only a day or two away from Dara. They had made fair progress down the side of the cliff and into the valley, crossing the frozen lava river. Now they had stopped at a tiny oasis, hardly bigger than a watering hole for the animals.

Akane was still ignoring Ranma determinedly, while the prince seemed bent on teasing her with boyish shenanigans. He’d dropped a sand lizard down her tunic once and watched in amusement as she screamed and clawed at her breasts, trying to remove the agile little creature. He still carried the bruises of Akane’s gratitude.

Ukyou watched the couple, frowning at Ranma’s antics. He was behaving like a five year old boy with a crush. She studied Ranma especially, trying to gauge his character and how she could use him in her revenge. What caused her some disquiet was that she sometimes found Ranma studying her the same way.

The animals drank at the watering hole and the humans filled their water skins. There should have been a light-hearted spirit in the air, as they were reaching the end of their journey, but Cassim and the drivers only looked more and more worried.

“Tell me about the ruler of Dara, Cassim,” Ukyou had asked the caravan leader once. The short man, usually friendly, had turned pale and stammered that he didn’t know much about the city. Ukyou had left it at that.

Two days later, when dawn was approaching softly from the east, turning the flat clouds overhead a rosy hue, the caravan topped a rise and the companions saw Dara for the first time. The diffused rays of an awakening sun moved across the sand dunes that clustered here as far as the eye could see. Dara sat perched below them like a black, glittering crown discarded by some long ago being.

We haven’t found anybody so far. They must be here, Akane thought.

Granddaughter, I’ll find you now, Cologne thought.

Tarou, I’m going to gut you like a fish, Ukyou vowed.

Boy, they look scary, Ranma thought, staring at the grim faces of his companions.

As the day wore on, they crossed the dunes, tired and dusty. Before midmorning, they were at the gates of Dara.

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Notes: Next chapter, the debut of Shampoo! Kinda late in the story, I know, but hey, better than never, right? ^_^

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