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eBook Category: Fantasy
eBook Description: Oas. A city in the middle of a great desert, yet blessed with an abundance of water. This water is coaxed out of the skies by the Gatherers, an ancient guild of pilots who use barely understood technology to seed the clouds. The rain they bring is collected in Oas' grand system of fountains and distributed throughout the city. When Oas' Caliph dies suddenly, a new Caliph is augured--a young and not very responsible Gatherer named Haran. Only a teenager, Haran finds himself thrust into a new world of court intrigue, politics, servants and betrayal. His Vizier thinks himself Caliph, and is willing to kill for the title. In the Caliph's almost forgotten harem, Haran meets and falls in love with Qeemah. Her love forces him to question his path in life, whether to continue on as a puppet of the Vizier or to return to the honorable life as a Gatherer? But when Oas' neighboring city, Entana, loses its only source of water, its Sultan demands that Oas surrender the Gatherers and their technology to him for Entana's use. War looms, and Haran is faced with the awesome responsibility of being Caliph not only in name, but in deed. Confronting the Sultan's army--and the skein of betrayal that brings it to Oas, Haran must decide if he is Gatherer or Caliph-­or both.

eBook Publisher: e-reads, Published: e-reads, 2002
Fictionwise Release Date: September 2002

This eBook is part of the following series:

• John Taff's Oas Cycle

14 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [1.1 MB], eReader (PDB) [331 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [321 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [290 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [286 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [323 KB], hiebook (KML) [812 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [399 KB], iSilo (PDB) [263 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [330 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [377 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [443 KB]
Words: 96077
Reading time: 274-384 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"Haran! You sand dog!" came the howling cry from the speaker perched near his head. "For the last time, pay attention or you will wind up a long smear on the streets of the Bazaar!"

The voice snapped him out of his daydream.

He had been flying low over the Caliph's palace, watching the sway of the trees and flowers in the downdraft caused by his herder. For 20 minutes now--or maybe longer--he had been making low, lazy loops around the elaborate garden in the center of the palace compound, all the while his eyes, his mind, his heart focused on one subject.

A girl he didn't know, had never met.

Could never meet.

Would never know.

He didn't know her name, for she was a member of the Caliphs' harim--the ultimate word in unattainable women.

Yet, even knowing this, he'd been watching her for the last several months as he studied to fly a herder, dreaming. She never seemed to notice him or his herder flying low above the palace, but he devoted much attention to her.

She came out every day at the same time in the afternoon and passed an hour or two lying by one of the pools at the base of one of the many fountains, soaking in the rays of the sun.

Her hair was dark and very long, her skin was the color of tea and milk. She seemed slim and rather short, and she always wore brightly colored silk clothing, favoring teals and light pinks.

Her midriff and feet were always bare, and once he watched unbelievingly as she took all her clothing off, bared her skin to the sun, swam for a while in the pool. Afterward, she sunned herself for half an hour before dressing and returning inside the palace

That time, he had nearly lost control of his craft altogether.

This time seemed little different.

He saw her so clearly that he could imagine the feel of her lips upon his, her skin upon his, even though he'd kissed, touched only one girl at this point in his life.

Snapped out of his daydream by the voice of Adar, his master, Haran focused his attention on the simple controls of the herder before him, the controls he'd studied for the last year: a slim brass wand to control altitude, another to control the yaw of the small craft, a single button to dispense the glittering metallic chaff that gathered the rain clouds, brought water to his desert city.

The altitude rod was pointed straight up, and the other was pointed away from him. Outside the transparent seal of his canopy, the sky spun by, then the land, then the sky; blue and green and blue and green until he became quickly dizzy.

He was in a spin, he realized.

How could he have let himself...!

Just then the top of a slender minaret whizzed by, flashing gold into his eyes, momentarily dazzling him.

"Haran!" came Adar's voice again, this time letting slip a tone of real concern. "This is no time nor place to joke! Pull up!"

Careful not to complicate the situation, Haran pulled down on the altitude control as he had been taught, delicately eased the yaw wand until the craft had righted itself.

The sun--the overwhelming sun of the desert--canted across his vision, settled, pounded again through his canopy. He felt the heat of it on the top of his head, soaking into his curly hair.

He was already so low...

His herder grazed the tops of the towers that jutted up on the outskirts of Bergara Palace, home of the Caliph of Oas, luckily avoiding the tallest ones clustered in the Garden of 1,000 Minarets.

His craft skimmed so low he was sure he saw the fig and pomegranate trees in the garden flutter in his wake, the surprise in the eyes of the tower guards and the few muezzins who were saying their afternoon prayers there.

But there were problems ahead of him, as well; potentially more dangerous.

"Haran!" came the angry voice again. "We can no longer see you! If you are not yet dead, be assured that I personally will rectify this when you return."

Haran snapped the switch that turned the radio off. He had more important concerns to occupy his attention than the ravings of his master.

The vast expanse of the Bazaar that loomed before him, for example.

Seen from this short distance from the ground--or even indeed high in the air, where he should have been now--the tents of the Bazaar covered a wide area, stretching out in all directions, engulfing the southern and western sides of the palace.

Over time, as more and more tents had been added to accommodate the additional patrons and vendors, the Bazaar had become a hodgepodge, an amalgamation of various tents connected one to the other, looking like nothing so much as a beggar's coat, sewn together from scraps of hundreds of pieces of old cloth.

No matter how much of his weight he exerted onto the control, the craft insisted on continuing at a low angle, heading straight for a patch of ochre-colored material forming the roof of some hapless vendor's stall.

His studies thus far had not prepared him for this. So, not knowing what else to do, Haran said a small prayer that there was no one beneath that patch at this moment.

His herder penetrated the material with a terrible rending of fabric, and suddenly all was dark again.

Something--somethings--thudded on the outside of the ship, bounced off behind him, and he felt the yaw wand jump crazily. But he fought to hold the little craft steady.

Then, a single astounded face loomed into view, a bearded, bespectacled older man in a brown robe, weighing dates on a giant scale. For a moment, they both regarded each other comically through the glass of Haran's ship, before Haran yanked the control hard to the left, veering sharply away from him.

As he turned to look behind, the man had fallen over, sending a spray of dates into the air. Almost without pause, a pack of children appeared out of nowhere to gather up the fallen fruit as the man ran about, shaking his hands in the air, surely cursing Haran.

He had punched through the Bazaar's tent in the Way of Food, the street on which farmers sold their produce. Bouncing through a stand of finely woven blankets, then a carefully constructed display of polished brassware, Haran's ship emerged into the Way of Gold, the Bazaar's central thoroughfare, scattering debris and astonished patrons in its wake.

What he saw made his heart sink.

This avenue was jammed with people who were, even now, turning to see what the commotion was.

But they were in his way, and he had little control of his herder.

Please, Allah! he prayed. I don't want to hurt anyone.

There was only one thing to do, one way out of this predicament.

Increasing speed would enable him to gain enough altitude to escape the Bazaar.

It would also increase his chances of hurting people in the crowd.

The crowd, still stunned by the appearance of a herder within the confines of the Bazaar, had begun to part somewhat in front if him. This narrow space allowed him enough room to gun the engine, force the altitude control down so fiercely he felt it bend beneath his hands.

Even as the craft slid across the tops of the heads of most of the people--still managing to clip a few, adding to the air of chaos beneath him--Haran thought he would not make it.

Then, there was that terrible ripping sound again, and bright sunlight erupted over him, blinding him. Without seeing where he was headed, Haran continued to exert pressure on the control until his hand hurt and the warning alarm came on to tell him that the craft was climbing too steeply, too fast, too high.

Even then, he was loath to release the control, choosing instead to let the herder level off as he regained his bearings.

He was quite high now, his craft having shot out over the eastern edge of the city and into the Stormground desert. Rolling to his left, he could see the familiar shape of the City of Oas, his home, receding into the distance.

Taking a deep breath, Haran thanked Allah, then turned the radio back on.

"...monkey dung!" came the nearly hysterical voice. "I swear to you by all the gold in Ali's tomb that I will wring the head from your neck if you do not answer! Haran!"

"Adar, what do you want, you nervous old woman?" he asked, affecting a tone that was a lot more relaxed that he felt.

"Haran, you pup! You whelp of a scorpion! Where did you go?" Adar shouted. "You disappeared from our instruments, and we feared ... we feared you had lost the best machine we have in our employ."

Despite himself, Haran found himself touched by the unexpected hitch in the old man's voice.

He really did think I had died.

"Just an instrument malfunction. Everything's OK now. I'm coming back," he answered.

"Bah!" the radio roared back at him. "You were daydreaming again! I know you. We will discuss this when you land ... and after I have beaten you soundly."

There was a loud clack of static, and the radio went dead.

Haran laughed as he rolled the herder over again, saw the growing patch of clouds that layered the sky over Oas.

Good, he smiled to himself. There would be rain today to pay for all of his mishaps.

Perhaps Allah truly was smiling upon him after all.

Turning the craft lazily, he sped toward the billowing, grey mass, centered on the Caliph's Palace. As he rounded it, he saw fierce lightning bloom in its secret heart.

With his herder now descending, he turned back once, smiled as he saw the growing cloudbank, flat at the bottom and roiling up from that as it should, shed its rain over the city.