by Dan Allen
Nyan-Nyan pressed a curious claw to one of the tiny cracks.
“No!” Terras reached out to stop Nyan-Nyan, but it was too late.
A tear ran out from Nyan-Nyan’s claw, splitting open the side of the balloon like a ruptured melon.
Gork leapt toward Ruby on the other side of the bubble as the crack split from top to bottom and the bottom of the bubble opened to the distant sand hundreds of feet below, like a blanket unfolding. In one sweeping motion, Gork drew a hand ax and hooked it through the wall of the bubble. With his other hand Gork drew his long ax.
Nyan-Nyan, Terras, and Ruby fell. Gork swung his long-handled ax and hooked Ruby around her narrow waist. The extra weight caused his hand ax, embedded in the gummy bubble surface, to slice downward another two feet.
On the other side of the burst bubble, Nyan-Nyan and Terras clung to split tassels of the draping pink canopy. An updraft stretched the gummy pink blanket, slowing the descent.
Gork locked eyes for one desperate moment with the princess as the sand rushed up to meet them.
A gust of wind swept the burst bubble over the desert sand, depositing Terras and Nyan-Nyan in the shallow dunes like lawn darts.
Ruby hit the sand next, tumbling end over end like a whizzing pink firecracker. Gork got a face full of sand as he collided with the ground. Stars danced in his vision as he struggled to his feet, catching a last glimpse of the remains of the bubble as it blew away into the distance.
Gork shielded his face from the hot wind that needled his skin with biting grains of sand. He struggled to get a full breath of air after the desert had knocked the last one out of him. Holstering his weapons, Gork stomped up the side of a dune, calling into the wind. “Ruby!”
The wind seemed to be attacking him. Gork looked down at his arm to see that, indeed, the sand was literally biting him. Tiny grains gnashed their little jaws, pulling on his arm hair and savaging his skin, though they seemed too small to actually bite through it. “Good gravy!” He shook his arm, but no sand shook loose.
Struggling against the wind, Gork climbed higher on the steep dune.
“Nyan-Nyan! . . . Terras!”
Coming to the lip of the dune, Gork called out the princess’s name, only to collide with someone coming up the other side of the dune. In a blur of billowing pink cloth and panic, Gork fell back onto his pack, sliding down the dune with the princess on top of him.
“My hair is an absolute mess,” she said as she pushed up off Gork’s chest. “And look at your beard.” She gave his mid-length beard an explorative shake. “Oh, well, the sand doesn’t really change the color much.”
“This is a fine time for a wrestling match,” Terras called from the top of the dune.
Gork flushed with embarrassment.
“Um, where’s Nyan-Nyan?” Ruby asked as she hastily climbed off Gork.
The Chaos Kitty came flying over the dune in one great, leaping pounce.
This time Gork was ready. He jumped to his feet, caught Nyan-Nyan in midair, and carried her momentum over his head with a throw.
She still landed on her feet.
“We’ve got to get out of this Biting Sand,” Terras said as he slid down the dune.
“Where are we anyway?” Gork asked, surveying the unfamiliar scene bereft of any landmarks.
“Somewhere near the Desert Drop Oasis,” Ruby said. “I didn’t get a chance to spot it from the air—unfortunately, that’s the only way you can find it.”
“What do you mean?” Terras said.
“Well, you have to ‘drop in’ to find it. It’s underground.”
“Perfect,” Gork said.
At the same time, Terras grumbled, “Not again.”
“I can’t sniff our way there,” Nyan-Nyan said. “We were headed downwind.”
“Which gives me an idea,” Gork said. He looked at Ruby. “A hundred pardons, princess. But I need you . . .” Gork swallowed. “. . . to, er, take off your dress.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s an idea.” Gork dropped his pack and unloaded two halves of a tent pole. He lashed them crosswise with his hand axes. Terras caught the vision and lashed the long ax vertically with some of his vines.
“Have you ever been sailing?” Terras said.
“Of course,” Ruby said, warily eyeing the hastily lashed contraption.
“Never under a pink sail?”
“Oh,” Ruby sighed. “I understand. Very well—but you had better not tell my father about any of this. A princess in her underclothes in the middle of a desert—just scandalous.” Ruby’s never-failing smile told Gork she was teasing.
He hadn’t expected that.
“I do like this dress, though. So please be careful.” She unbuttoned and pulled the flowing pink dress over her head. Her underclothes were quite modest: knee length white knickers and a laced bodice over a sleeveless blouse of silk.
Gork presumed he was on a very short list of people who might have seen the princess like this. Yet it was her blue eyes, clear as the Frostbyte sky after a storm, that held his gaze.
Magic.
“Much cooler this way.” She offered the dress to Gork while the wind tried to steal it away.
Feeling a touch of heat rise to his ears, Gork tied the arms of the dress to the body of the sand-sailing skiff. He grabbed the ax handle with one hand and stretched the dress out to one side. Terras did the same on the opposite side, spreading the dress upside down between them like a V-shaped sail.
The moment the dress caught the breeze, the improvised sand skiff slid forward.
“Get on!” Gork reached out for Ruby.
The princess leapt for the skiff and caught Gork’s hand. She swung onboard, her feet straddling the skids. Without her dress, she seemed to be more . . . legs.
Nyan-Nyan, not finding any room to get on, raced alongside as the sand skiff angled up the next dune. She bounded on all fours to the top and gave a great leap down the other side to stay ahead of the skiff.
“Goodness, she is fast,” Ruby commented.
“I don’t think she’ll have any trouble keeping up,” Terras said with a grin. “Looks like she thinks it’s a game.”
At the top of the next dune, Gork tried to sight the distant Colossus of Arcadia, but dust from the Biting Sand storm limited visibility to only a few hundred yards. “We’re flying blind before the wind. What happens if we miss the Oasis?”
Nobody said anything.
Gork looked from Terras’s stoic expression to Ruby’s furrowed eyebrows.
He gulped.
“We’re dead.”
Chapter 12: Lost
Night fell quickly. Clouds of windblown dust obscured every source of heavenly light. Clustered in the lee of a dune, Gork and Terras held the corners of the pink dress to provide some protection from the biting wind for Ruby and Nyan-Nyan. Gork had only eaten a few scraps of food since the library. His mouth was dry and cottony, his lips dried and cracked, his knuckles bleeding. Every instinct told him to go underground for safety. But that was hopeless. The sea of sand would refill any hole as quickly as it was dug.
Gork thought he heard Nyan-Nyan crying, but when he leaned around Ruby to see if she was all right, she merely snarled at him. “Will this storm ever stop? I’m going crazy!”
Gork could only imagine what Terras was thinking. He had risked his life to find the princess, and now he was powerless to even save himself, let alone her. He was possibly the most powerful and talented Deeproot Druid in an age—he had somehow summoned the Deeproot itself to bring light and water to a cursed land. But Terras was out of his element and out of tricks, it seemed.
Ruby’s voice startled Gork from his dark thoughts.
“Everyone hold hands.”
What now? Gork thought. But anger fled as he felt Ruby’s hand in his. He had doubted her before, when her arms had wrapped around him and given him the strength to topple the pillar at the Palace of Illusions.
She was not a weak princess of the court. There was something remarkable about her, beyond anything Gork had ever imagined.
Even Terras, who arguably knew all there was to know about magic, seemed quietly in awe of the princess’s unique abilities.
Gork took hold of Nyan-Nyan’s gauntlet as she turned to join hands with Terras. When his hand connected with Ruby’s to complete the circle, time seemed to stop. Dust hung in the air. Breath froze in Gork’s lungs. His soul wandered through emotions and in and out of reality. Then Ruby began to sing. The wind-driven sand trickled past slowly as clear notes rang out in waves that made the entire scene ripple like the surface of a pond. Within Gork, power stirred, something beyond mere physical strength.
“She’s calling the Goddess,” Terras whispered.
Gork didn’t recognize the princess’s words. They were unlike any prayer his mother had made. His heart filling with an unfamiliar emotion Gork could not describe, the Hearthsworn adventurer looked down, expecting to see himself floating in the air. But there was no sand beneath him, only a pool of shimmering light. Images floated through: Crystalia castle with its glorious banners whipping in the wind; the ice-bound peaks of the Frostbyte Reach, pristine and perfect in their bleakness, the knifelike cliffs cutting through light and shadow into the outer reaches; the Fae Wood, endless miles of vast green valleys and great tree houses rising amid the wooded glades.
“We are not alone, friends,” Ruby said. “We must not give up. The hope of all our people goes with us. Lend me your magic.”
“I have no magic,” Gork said.
“It is one with your strength, Gork,” Ruby repeated, her voice now commanding and imperial. “Lend it to me.”
Gork closed his eyes and tried to summon something. He had done basic sealing runes and bindings while smithing—not real magic, but certainly tapping a power beyond himself. And certainly he had tapped the magic in Nyan-Nyan’s gauntlets. Gork searched in his heart for that spark of dwarf-born essence. Suddenly, it flared within him like a fire leaping from a spark to fill a room. The power grew so hot and intense Gork almost let go. He clamped his hand tighter in Ruby’s and looked up.
The princess’s eyes glowed a fierce blue. It was both frightening and glorious—the way Gork imagined the Goddess. The power welling in Gork faded as Ruby drew in the burst of energy. There was a pulse of magic from Nyan-Nyan as well—something primal, fierce, and playful. Terras’s magic was deep, thrumming like the sound of a thousand drums on a distant peak. The music of the magic mingled as it coursed through him and into Ruby, then finally grew silent.
Ruby withdrew her hand, lifted her necklace, and unstopped the tiny vial fixed to it. She drew the open vial up to the corner of her eye. A single tear rolled out and dripped into the vial. She repeated the action with her other eye and quickly put in the stopper. The blue light that had filled her eyes now glowed brightly from within the crystal vial.
“The Goddess has heard our prayer,” she said softly. “We have all that we need here. Come on. We must find the Oasis.”
“What did she just do?” Nyan-Nyan asked. “What are the blue tears for?”
“That’s my secret,” Ruby said. She held the vial aloft and the light shone out over the desert, illuminating several dunes.
“I think the Biting Sand storm is fading,” Terras said.
“It’s gone somewhere else to rage.” Ruby wiggled the vial between her fingers. “Darkness hates light.”
Nyan-Nyan looked at Gork and gave a bemused shrug. “Biting Sand hates blue princess tears. Who knew?”
Ruby tapped Gork on the shoulder. “If the storm is over, I would like my dress back.”
“Yes, of course.” Gork offered it to Ruby and turned his back while she finished dressing.
Hiking in the night was precisely the thing to do. It was far cooler than the scorching heat of the day. As the storm dissipated, stars emerged. Terras indicated a point in the distance. “That’s the Colossus of Arcadia.”
“How can you tell?” Gork asked, squinting, but seeing nothing.
“A star is missing near the horizon. It must be blocked by the Colossus.”
Ruby came alongside and peered into the darkness. “You can navigate by starlight, Terras?”
The half-elf nodded. “Yes, my lady.”
“My father’s library has a scroll that places the location of the Desert Drop Oasis in relation to the line between the Searcher’s Star and the Colossus at the fifth meridian. “Can you navigate us to that position?”
Terras took his bearings and pointed into the darkness. “This way.”
The tiresome trudging up and down dunes continued for several hours, although the sand gradually became firmer, and the dunes flattened into dusty dirt.
A ribbon of light in the east grew larger, and the sun finally broke over the horizon, flooding the desert plain with instant warmth. Terras took his bearings relative to the rising sun and stopped. “We are close,” he said. “The Oasis should be here.”
Gork dropped his heavy backpack onto the red clay earth. The desert flats were scattered with lichens, occasional tufts of dry grass, and a kind of low bramble cactus that was so grey it was impossible to tell whether it was alive or dead. The distant horizon was broken by steep-walled mesas rising from the desert floor like giant cupcakes left out in the desert and petrified by the elements.
When Gork was hungry, pretty much everything looked like cupcakes.
Nyan-Nyan opened the pack to look for food, and a comb fell out.
“Is that a comb?” Ruby asked as she shook a pebble out of her shoe.
“Loot from the Biter Booty chest,” Gork said, “Nyan-Nyan found it.”
“You can have it, Ruby,” Nyan-Nyan offered. “My hair is too short for combing.”
“How kind of you.” Ruby smiled as she picked up the comb. “That Biting Sand storm did my hair no favors.”
“Yeah, your braids look like a pile of knots,” Nyan-Nyan said as she searched in the pack. She snagged a small piece of hard cheese and split it with Terras.
The princess shook out her braids and attempted to smooth her hair with the comb. On the third stroke, the tines of the wooden comb bent, half of them turning up and half turning down. On the fourth stroke the comb split in half, right down the middle of its length, with the up-curling tines on the bottom half and down-curling tines on the top, forming the fangs of an open mouth.
Before Gork could yell a warning about the Biter Brush, the possessed comb bit down, seizing a great chunk of Ruby’s hair.
“Ow!”
Growling sounds rumbled from the Biter Brush like a weasel in a rabbit hole.
“Why does it always happen to my combs?” Ruby ranted as she tugged in vain, trying to separate the aggressive comb from her blond hair. “Get it off me!”
The Biter Brush’s jaws sprang open, and the sudden release caused Ruby’s arm to fly back, sending the Biter Brush sailing straight into Gork’s blond beard.
Nyan-Nyan doubled over with laughter.
The tines of the demonic comb splintered into whisker-like burrs, making Gork’s attempt to yank it out impossible.
“Cut your beard off, and be done with it,” Terras said.
“Oh my,” Ruby gasped. “I’m so sorry.”
“You haven’t really got a choice,” Terras said as he chewed his cheese. “Either wear that thing forever in your beard or cut it off. It’s not coming out.”
The comb growled at Gork. It blinked a small wooden eye and wagged its back end, daring him to try to remove it.
“Can’t burn it off,” Gork grumbled. “That would catch my beard on fire as well.”
“It’s not so bad, just a big, slobbering, spiny . . . thing in your beard,” Ruby said, wincing.
“Enough.” Gork drew out one of his razor-sharp hand axes and hacked off the bottom half of his beard. The comb fell to the ground and burrowed instantly into the dirt, dragging the remains o
f Gork’s severed beard with it.
Nyan-Nyan rolled over with laughter. “It’s lopsided!”
Gork stared daggers at the Chaos Kitty.
“I can fix that,” Ruby said. She drew a pair of tiny scissors from a well-hidden pocket in her dress and began trimming Gork’s beard.
“Much appreciated,” Gork mumbled, enjoying the personal attention from the princess and glad to have someone with impeccable taste doing the job.
“Very handsome,” she said as she finished the trim.” She held his jaw gently between her thumb and forefinger and then traced her hand along his cheek, feeling the smooth texture of his beard.
Gork blushed to the tips of his ears. A sudden urge came over him to lean forward and kiss the princess. He forced down the strange, overpowering sensation as he looked into Ruby’s sparkling eyes.
“Tag. You’re it,” Nyan-Nyan said, thumping Gork hard in the back, sending him toppling against the princess.
“That’s it!” Gork sprang to his feet. He lunged for Nyan-Nyan, but the freyjan slipped just out of his reach. Embarrassment, exasperation, and anger churned inside him as he chased after the mischievous freyjan.
Suddenly, she wasn’t there.
“Oh, not another quicksand trap!” Gork cried as he slowed to a stop and carefully stepped forward.
It wasn’t a quicksand trap. It was a giant crevasse, ten yards long and five yards wide. From the darkness below, a horrendous crashing noise sounded.
“Are you all right?’ Gork called.
“Luckily, I landed on something,” Nyan-Nyan called back. She looked up with glowing, vertically-slitted eyes. “I think it was a statue.”
“Looks like she took the Desert Drop Oasis quite literally,” Terras said, suppressing a chuckle as he came alongside Gork.
“Good work, Nyan-Nyan,” Ruby said. “But what did you mean ‘it was a statue?’”
“Follow me.” Terras sent a Stranglethorn vine into the earth where it forked into a dense root system to form an anchor. Then he leaned back and rappelled down the vine into the shadowy chamber.