Den of Shadows. Christopher Byford

was found to be concealing an abundance of riches beneath. Seams of ores, metals, and minerals were corpulent. To collect, all one had to do was survive the land, which was a hardship in itself.

      Outposts became settlements, settlements ballooned to villages, and villages to towns. This was not always the case, of course, but those depending on accompanying trade routes seemed to swell the quickest. This in turn brought all manner of problems, mainly transportation – which is why the First Grand Surenth Railroad threaded itself as best it could between points.

      The Sand Sea itself was served by routes when possible, but its expanse and inhospitably restricted plenty. Where the locomotives couldn’t haul, sand ships – colossal steam vehicles clad with caterpillar tracks – ventured through the expanses. Trade became testament to survival, though with the exchange of money came the greed of those unwilling to earn it in the conventional sense.

      Lawlessness was rife. Those who ran the towns had little regard for the common folk or were as corrupt as they came. These were open secrets and ones nobody dared address in the open – lest they found themselves sharing the desert with the sun-bleached bones of the locals. Disillusioned, people simply carried out their work as intended, drinking away sobriety at the end of each hard shift and repeating the process until death. Even then, new hands were not hard to come by. There was always someone so blinkered by the goal of making wealth that they would take to the mines for a pittance.

      Fortune was fickle in Surenth. It gave bounty with one hand and stole it with the other, interchanging as it so pleased.

      Rustec was one of these places that fortune had seemingly shunned for good. Hardship after hardship fell upon it with no sign of stopping. The wells were infested with some sort of sickness. Then the livestock was stricken with illness. Some lawless folk decided to cause an inconvenience by relieving the local bank of its money and two tellers of their lives.

      And all of this in the space of a month.

      The latest blight to hit Rustec was being announced with a volley from the town whistle. It had blown shrill for the last three minutes and showed no sign of stopping. As it had the time before this, the time before that, and no doubt many more that would come after today. Factory workers rushed to secure their workplaces. People ran through the streets to their homes and shuttered their windows, fastening them tightly with hammers and nails. Some felt comfort in prayer. There wasn’t enough time to fully prepare, of course – there never was. All they could do was hunker down and hope for the best.

      Sandstorms that were brewed in the Sand Sea were devilish affairs. They moved quicker than any others ever known and had a curious tendency to make one feel that the world was coming to an end. When it finally passed in large drifts, it congregated in alleyways, making some nigh on impassable. Doorways collected their share, forcing emerging residents to either heave them aside or resort to leaving via windows.

      Immediately everyone fell into routine. Shovels were retrieved and the digging began, clearing roads and pathways, whilst freeing anybody who had become trapped in their houses. Horses were attached to carts and loads of sand were hauled out to the outskirts and dumped back from whence it came.

      The trappers’ market had been completely overturned with a number of animals unaccounted for whilst others lay dead in their cages. Their journeys would have to be written off as losses. The market square itself had escaped most of the damage, despite the stalls themselves being completely absent except for the tatters of some cloth overhangs.

      Routes both by foot and rail in and out of the town had been completely blocked – a considerable inconvenience being that regular shipments of food were essential to the locals’ survival. Without the trains delivering goods, Rustec, like many others in the region, would suffer greatly.

      At the final count, four lost their lives – all morning drinkers who were comatose by the time the town whistle crowed.

      Thankfully, as dust-storms go, this was one of the milder ones.

      By mid-afternoon, most of the town was cleared and the large train tracks that came from the northern territories had been made accessible again, so the supply deliveries could resume, if a little later than planned.

      Rustec’s train station got away relatively unscathed. The gothic sand-lime brick assembly and deep platform awnings were complemented by iron columns with sturdy spandrels. The combination of these ensured that a good deal of the sand was deflected from the tracks themselves, making the clean-up reasonably painless. In fact, the only damage it suffered was when the station clock that was attached to one of these awnings was blown down, inflicting a crack upon its face. The stationmaster had set himself up a rickety ladder and proceeded to rehang the timepiece when he noticed the commotion out front.

      With everyone so concerned with the damage, nobody had noticed the single addition that had been made to the front of the station house. Its attention was first gained by a passer-by who queried why a street urchin stood stock-still in the daytime instead of putting their hands to greater use. When they had noticed what the child was paying attention to, they immediately followed suit.

      A crowd grew as word trickled out of the finding and by the time the stationmaster emerged to query the fuss, there was a fair congregation. Big news travelled rapidly in such a small community.

      Hanging from the protruding iron gas lamp near the entrance, the subject of curiosity fluttered slowly.

      It spanned four by ten hands’ length of well-woven cloth and was tasselled with gold accents. The material itself was dyed in a royal blue with shimmering gold edging that harboured ornate decorative elements. For some, it was grandeur on a scale never witnessed before. None of this, however, took away from the brush-scripted proclamation. It had been completed by hand judging by the minor imperfections, but it was worded in the way one would write a dear friend an invite. Except this invitation was to the entire town.

       Congratulations citizens!

       I have the utmost pleasure in informing you that the dreary days of boredom will be a thing of the past! Let the streets ring in celebration and of joyous rapture once again!

       Forget your woes, bring your purse and, on the first of the month, await my arrival at your station no later than 6 p.m.!

       With regards and well wishes,

       Your Servant

       - F

      When word got out of its presence, scores craned their necks upward to speculate as to the exact nature of its presence and who this ‘F’ individual was. Naturally a few claimed to have the answers and promised to provide them on payment of drink, though the only thing they earned was disdain from their peers.

      The stationmaster was quite taken aback at the attention and had insisted they removed the addition on account of it being a hazard, but the outcry was so great he had no choice but to concede. There the invitation stayed and was scrutinized.

      The first of the month was only five days away and this was an unfathomable time to fill with speculation, but somehow the people managed. Gossip was rife over factory floors, where even the chattering machines failed to drown out the latest guesswork. There was not a stallholder you could talk to or a drinking hole you could indulge in without the mysterious invitation becoming the main topic of conversation.

      Even the most grizzled of labourers found themselves accommodating such talk. Rustec was abuzz with rumour. Just exactly where had that flyer come from, and who was this entertainer making such promises? More to the point, why would they visit this wind-ravaged dustbowl?

      Things reached such a fervour that the town’s own mayor had to issue a statement urging calm, but this did little. The people of Rustec had scant offerings to look forward to, so something so theatrical ensured a wildfire of excitement to blaze between households. Children had become frenzied, running around the streets in playful packs. The community was energized in a way it had never been before, brushing away years of toil with thrill.

      The dawning of the day came and with that sunrise the expectations