Tails of the Apocalypse Read Online Free Page B

for the rest of us to make a living.”
    The other visitors at his table had melted away and I took a seat without asking. “You’re a little young to be on your own, aren’t you?”
    Basr shrugged. “I get that a lot. My master lost his Gift shortly after I apprenticed with him. Slavers got him.”
    “Just like that?” I let the unasked question hang in the air: did you give him a push out the door?
    “Just like that.” He had the conviction of youth in his voice. “He’d lost his Gift.”
    I sipped my water and stayed silent.
    “I won’t be staying long,” he said.
    “Oh?” I’d already contracted with this clan, so by rights he should have checked with me when he’d first arrived.
    “I’m off as soon as I can resupply.”
    I nodded and rolled the last of my water around my mouth. His gaze faltered, then he leaned across the table. “I’m searching for the Great Water Hold,” he said in a low voice. “I have a map—I have the map.”
    I resisted the urge to spit out my water.
    “The map? What does that mean?”
    Basr smiled. “You’re not that old, Polluk. You remember your training. The Map of the Ancients.”
    Everyone knew of the Map of the Ancients, but no one had ever actually seen it—at least no one that I’d ever talked to. And this kid claimed to have it?
    “You must think I’ve been in the desert a very long time, my young friend. It’s a myth, like the rest of the bullshit they fed us in training.”
    He tossed off the last of his aragh, ignoring the glass of Pure-clear I’d sent him. He was drunk.
    I reached across the table, picked up his glass of water, and drank it off. Then I stood. “Show me.”
    His gait was steady but sloppy as we walked to his vehicle. He deactivated the alarm and opened the door. I wrinkled my nose when I saw the interior. A messy cabin is a cluttered mind, Ghadir always said. Organization is the key to survival in the desert.
    “Well?” I folded my arms.
    Basr propped his elbows on the table that folded down from the wall. “I bet you’ll never guess where it is.”
    “I don’t have time for this, Basr. I’ll—”
    He flipped the tabletop over and there it was. In hindsight, the key to the Map of the Ancients answer was so simple that I wondered why no one had used this technique before. We navigated by the Finding of water or we followed the direction of the sun, that was it. As long as the clan had water, we didn’t care much where we were. If we saw birds in the sky, we knew we were near a Hold City and we moved on.
    But I knew of old-timers that claimed the Ancients used the stars to guide their travels. Of course, these same tale-spinners also said that men floated their way across the Salt Ocean and flew through the air like birds, so their stories were just a wee bit suspect.
    But maybe there was more to the myth. The Map of the Ancients used the stars. The device consisted of three rings: a center ring of constellations, an outer ring showing the day of the year, and a middle ring of numbers that ranged positive and negative.
    “What is this?” I touched the middle ring.
    “Angle,” he said. Basr took a triangular-shaped device off the wall. “You measure the angle between the star and the horizon with this—it’s called a sextant. The Great Hold is here.” He tapped the center of the star chart.
    The map looked very old and was made out of some sort of laminate material that gleamed in the lamplight. I touched the outer ring; it spun easily under my fingers. “Where did you get this?” I asked.
    Basr had pulled a bottle out from the cabinet behind his head. He uncorked it with his teeth and took a long swallow. He offered the open bottle to me.
    “My master had it when he took me on. He was a thief and worse … a bad person. Mean. I was just a kid, after all.” Basr was slurring his words. “He was going to ditch me somewhere out on the sand and make a run for it. I showed him.” He grinned up at me, those beautiful