by Andre Norton
“Man—and such other of you as walk on two feet, ride upon four—measure your own distances. To the end of your strengths your road will stretch. I have seen in your memories what this wizard would have you do. To his small mind the logic is correct. But he has his boundaries in all those scraps of the old learning he clutches to him and seeks to store in his limited memory. This I believe: what you seek now lies at the core of the Sea of Dust. It is alien, and even I cannot fathom what it hides, though the blood-kin of my species have, in their time, passed from world to world in dreams or waking—when they were foolishly young, nearly still damp from the egg and filled with the impetuosity of unlearned spawn.
“You will dare the Sea—and what haunts it. In it are the younger brothers such as Rockna, who in the past went a-hunting there.”
“The Brass Dragon!” Naile broke out, and Afreeta hissed, thrusting her head into hiding beneath the collar of his cloak.
Something close to amusement—of a distant and alien kind—could be sensed in Lichis’s answer.
“So that one is still making trouble? It has been many span of years since he played games with men and answered, when he so willed, the calling of the Lords of Chaos. I think none now live who would dare so to call now. But once he made the Sea of Dust his own. Now”—Lichis settled down farther in his strange bed, burrowing his limbs into the loose gold—“I weary of you, men, elf, and all the rest. There is nothing new in your species to amuse me. Since I have answered your questions I bid you go.”
Milo found himself turning, without willing that action, saw that the others were also doing so. Already the red mist fell in thick rolls, to curtain off their reluctant host. As the swordsman drew away he looked back over his shoulder. Not only had the mist now completely veiled Lichis but it was fading into shadows; as they came out on the ledge above the crater valley, there was nothing left behind them but impenetrable dark.
They descended, burdening themselves with the packs and gear they had stripped from the horses, to where their animals grazed about the lake. The tall walls of the crater cut off those mountain winds that had lashed them and it was actually warmer than it had been at any time since they had set forth from Greyhawk. They did not need the fire this night for ease of temperature, yet they crowded to it as a symbol of a world they understood, an anchorage against danger, though Lichis’s domain held no threat of Chaos. The dangers of the Outer Dark could not venture so close to one who had been ever triumphant over the magic of evil.
“The Sea of Dust.” Naile had eaten his portion of their journey-food and now sat, his back against a boulder, his heavy legs outspread. Afreeta perched upon one of his knees so that now and then he drew a caressing finger down her spiked backbone. “I have heard many tales of it—but all third and fourth hand or even still further removed. Do any of you know more?”
Ingrge threw a twist of tough grass to feed the fire. Sparks flew upward.
“I have seen it,” he stated flatly.
Their attention centered upon the elf. When he did not continue, Naile prompted impatiently:
“You have seen it. Well, then what manner of country is it?”
“It is,” the elf replied somberly, “exactly what men call it. As the seas better known to us are filled with water which is never quiet, pulled hither and yon by tides, driven by storm winds, breaking in ceaseless waves to eat away at the land, so exists the Sea of Dust. It may not have its tides, but it has its winds to encase a traveler in clouds of grit, until he is totally lost. He sinks into it, to be swallowed up as water may swallow a man who cannot swim. How deep its layers are no one knows.
“There was once a race who made it their own. They built strange ships—not like those that go upon the oceans, but flat of bottom, with runners extending some distance fore and aft, wide and webbed to hold them on the surface. They raised sails to the ever-blowing winds and coasted thus. Now after a heavy storm it is said that sometimes a wreck of one of their ancient ships may be seen jutting out of the wind-driven dust. What became of them, no man of our age knows. But to venture out into those quicksands afoot is to sink—”
Naile hunched forward a little, his hands made into fists resting upon his knees.
“You speak of webbed runners to support a ship,” he mused. “And you warn of men sinking straightway into this treacherous stuff. But what if men who would try such a journey could also use foot webs, spreading as it were the weight of their bodies over a wider expanse? In the frozen lands men walk so upon the surface of soft snow in winter, where without such support they would flounder into drifts.”
“Snowshoes!” Milo’s other memory quirked into life for an instant. He looked at the elf. “Could such work, do you think?”
Ingrge shrugged. “We can but try.” He sounded none too sure. “I have not heard of such before. But I see no way we can venture, without some aid, into that shifting, unsolid country. We cannot take the beasts with us. Only what we ourselves can carry will provide our sustenance there.”
Milo thought of the map Lichis had created. How far away was the center? The Golden Dragon had refused even to guess the distance. As he rolled himself into his cloak it was with a dampened spirit. What a man could do he was ready and willing to try—but there comes a time when even strength and will can be challenged, wrung to the uttermost, with failure the final sum of all.
12
The Sea of Dust
THEY CHOSE TO CAMP SHELTERED BY SCRUB TREES. THERE THEY slumped wearily for a space to nurse aching feet, shoulders galled by packs. However, at this end of the day’s laborious march they did at last look out upon that feared trap, the sea of restless dust. It was no more level than the wind-disturbed ocean. Where ocean waves roll, here dunes mounded and gave off a haze of grit from their rounded crests at the slightest breath of breeze. Farther out, whirling pillars of dust devils danced, rose and fell, skittered across a rippling surface, demons of the waste.
Looking out into and over that desolation, Milo longed to turn his back upon it. A man could fight against upraised weapons. He might even summon up reserves of courage to front demonic threat or alien, monstrous enemies produced from a sorcerous nightmare. But this land itself was against human kind.
Yet there was no easing of the geas compulsion that had drawn them hither. Whether or no, they were committed to the penetration of what lay ahead, with no sure knowledge of any trail (for how could one mark a trail when there was a constant shifting of dunes, the haze of driven dust?) or how long they must fight for survival before they reached their goal.
With the next day’s dawning they began to fashion their only hope for going farther. Ingrge chose the material, and he did it as though he loathed the task. As with all the elven kind, any destruction, even of these crooked and spindling scrub trees that grew on the lip of the sea, was a thing against his innermost nature. They selected with care the most pliable of lengths he gave them, soaking them in a pool of water that was murky with dust puffed from the south, giving the turgid water a yellow velvet surface.
Once they were thoroughly soaked, Naile used his strength to bend the chosen pieces and hold them while they were lashed together. The berserker also sacrificed a goodly portion of his leather cloak to be slit into narrow thongs to lace across the resulting egg-shaped “sand shoes.” Then, into that netting, the rest interwove roots, twisting in this material until the whole took on a solid appearance.
Edging his boots carefully into thongs, Milo was the first to try the clumsy looking footgear, venturing out into the drear yellow-brown waste of dust. The surface gave under his weight, and some of the particles oozed over the edges of his footgear. But, though he had to proceed with a spraddle-legged walk, he sank no farther. In the end, they decided they had found the answer to one of the perils of the sea.
They discarded all the gear that they dared, taking only their weapons, a measure of their journey supplies, and a water-skin for each. Once they had filled those from the pool, filtering the conten
ts through a cloth Yevele provided, Gulth waded into the water, which washed no higher than his waist, and squatted down in the liquid until only his snout could be seen. He had taken his cloak with him, letting it sop up in its tough fabric as much of the liquid as possible. Alone of the company he refused to be fitted with the sand shoes. His own webbed feet, he insisted, would accommodate him on the treacherous surface as they did in the ooze of his home swamps.
Last night they had completed those shoes and now it was morning once more. For the first time, and when they wished it the least, the clouds that had hung over them for much of their journey cleared. Sun arose, to glare down upon the shifting surface of the gray-brown sea. Like Gulth, they went cloaked, even with hoods pulled over their helmets to shield them from dust powder and grit. Their progress was very slow as they waddled awkwardly on, fighting to balance on the clumsy web shoes.
Gulth quickly became a stumbling pillar of dust as it clung to his wet cloak. But he had been right in that his own webbed feet proved better able to walk here than on the hard stone of the mountain’s bones.
Milo took the lead. He held his thumb stretched out so that he could see the ring that Lichis had told them was a guide. Though the lines and dots upon it meant no more to him than they had ever done, he saw, for the first time, that there was a glow at the base of the stones. As they advanced that glow crept slowly up the green surface.
It had begun near the end of one of the lines and Milo, wanting to test the efficiency of this strange and, to him, improbable guide, angled a little away from a straightforward line. The glow dimmed.
He was right! As he swung back again, the glow deepened, fastened upon the line directly. The swordsman remembered tales of the voyagers who had dared this waste with wind-driven, dust-skimming ships. Could the lines mark the paths their ships had taken? Since he could do no better, he kept to what he read in the ring, seeking, each time the glow wavered, to move right or left back to the line.
At the fifth such change in the line of march, Naile demanded angrily what he was trying to do—wear out their strength moving hither and thither like some mindless earth beetle? But on Milo’s pointing out the direction of the ring lines, the berserker subsided with a grunt. Ingrge and Deav Dyne gave assent with nods. The elf added that the line Milo had chosen, mainly by chance, did indeed run toward that portion of the sea where Lichis’s map had produced in miniature the seat of the evil they sought.
Their pace continued necessarily slow. The effort required to raise a foot from the sucking embrace of the dust and to place it ahead tried muscles that ordinary walking did not use. While the sun’s glare centered heat on them, Milo called halts closer and closer together and was glad to see that none of them, even Gulth, took more than a sip or two from their supply of water.
The question that lay at the back of all their minds was how long a trail might stretch before them. Added to that was the uncertainty of their finding more water even at the end, though if their enemy had his—or its—headquarters there, Milo reasoned, there must exist some source of food and water.
He called a longer halt at midday for he noticed that Gulth, though as usual the lizardman offered no protest, was wavering. The heat had long since sucked all moisture from his dust-burdened cloak. Now it must be drying his skin in turn. Yet if they gave him freely from their own containers of water it might mean death for them all. Two high-heaped dunes quite close together provided a measure of protection from the air that was filled with powder and dust. It found a way into their mouths, clogged their nostrils, irritated their eyes. Creeping between the hillocks, Milo and Wymarc shed their cloaks and battened them down with handsful of grit to form a roof under which the party lay close together, striving to shut out the misery of the day, their shoes under them to support their bodies. To have attempted this journey by day, Milo decided, was folly. They should have started at night when at least the sun would have been eliminated from their list of torments.
Deav Dyne roused him some time later. The cleric’s face was a smear of dust making a grotesque mask. But the trouble in his eyes was plain to read.
“Gulth—he will die,” he stated bluntly, pointing to where the lizardman lay a little apart from the others, as he always did. Yevele now knelt beside him, only partly visible in the dusk, for it was close to night. The thick cloak had been pulled aside from the scaled body while the battlemaid wiped the arch of the alien’s chest with a cloth. When she uptipped one of the water bags and wet the cloth, Milo would have protested, but his words were never uttered. Instead he crept over to her side.
Gulth’s eyes were shut, his snouted mouth hung open a fraction, dark tongue tip exposed. Yevele dribbled a little of the water into his mouth, then set aside the bag, to once more rub the lizardman’s chest with her dampened cloth. She glanced up at Milo.
“This does little good.” Her voice sounded harsh as if the dust had gotten into her throat to coat her words. “He is dying—”
“So he dies.” Naile sat up. He did not even turn his head to view the girl’s efforts at rousing the lizardman. “The world will be the sweeter with one less snake-skin in it!”
“One expects nothing from the boar but blind rage and little thought.” She spat, as if to clear her mouth of both the words and the dust. “But think of this, boar warrior.” Yevele lifted Gulth’s limp wrist exposing the bracelet. “Seven of us bear this. Do you not speculate that if we are so tied, the fate of one is in the end entwined with the fate of the rest? I know not what magic has bound us on this wheel of companioned adventure, but I should not care to take the chance of losing any one of you. Not because we are truly sworn companions or shield mates, but because together we may be mightier than we are separately. Look about you, berserker. Is this not seemingly an ill-assorted company?
“We have an elf, and the elven-kin are mighty fighters, to be sure. No one within this world will gainsay that they have proven that many times over. But they have other gifts that the rest of us do not possess. Behind you is a bard—a skald—and his weapon is not first that sword he wears, rather the power he draws from that harp of his. Can any other of us touch its strings to such purpose?
“Deav Dyne—no warrior, but a healer, a worker of spells, one who can draw upon potent powers which or who would not answer to any other’s voice. And you, yourself, Naile Fangtooth—all know the gifts of the were-kind, both their powers and what trouble may follow the use of them. I am what I am. I have the spell that I used and perhaps one or two others I can summon. However, I am no true daughter of such learning, rather one schooled to war. Yet again, I may have what each of the others of you lack. While you,” she looked last to Milo, “are a swordsman, a rank that marks you as a seasoned fighting man. Still, it is what you wear upon your thumb that guides us through this desert.
“So, each of us having our own talent to offer, can we say that Gulth does not also have his?”
“Being what?” demanded Naile. “So far we have had to coddle him as if he were a babe. Would you now dowse him with all our water so he may stumble on, say, another day—or night’s—journey? What then? Having used up our supplies—he is no better and we are the worse. I tell you, girl, battlemaid or no, such an action is a foolishness that only the greenest of country lads who has never borne the weight of a shield might decide upon—”
“However, she is right!” Milo slewed around to front the berserker, knowing well that perhaps he might also face a disastrous flare-up of the big man’s murderous temper. What Yevele had just said was logical good sense. Their very mixed party differed from any questing company he could remember—so diversified that there must be some reason for its assembly. Certainly Gulth had contributed nothing so far but the weight of a burden. But he did wear the bracelet, so it followed he had his place in the venture.
For a moment, the swordsman thought that Naile would vent his anger. Milo was sure that he could never stand up to a berserker’s attack. Then—
There came a ripple
of notes. Milo, his own blood pounding heavily in his ears, was confused. A bird—here in this death wilderness?
He saw the flush subside in Naile’s face, felt his own hand fall away from his sword hilt. Then he realized that Wymarc was smiling. His fingers on the harp strings made them sing once more.
Naile looked at the bard. “You play with magic, songsmith, and sometime you may find those fingers of yours burned.” But there was no real threat behind his warning. It was as if the music had drawn the poison of anger out of him as speedily as a sword could let the life out of any man.
“My magic, berserker,” returned Wymarc. “We may not be blood comrades, but the battlemaid has the right of it. Deserve it or not, we are bound fast together in this ploy. Therefore, I have one small suggestion to offer. This Afreeta of yours, if she is like all her kind, she can smell out both food and drink. Suppose you loose her, berserker. In the meantime, if our scaled fellow here needs water to keep life within that long body of his, I say give him of my share. I have often tramped roads where wells lay far apart.”
Deav Dyne looked up from his beads. “Give of mine also, daughter.” He pushed the skin he had borne closer to her.
The elf said nothing, only brought his skin, while Milo tugged at the stopper on his. For a long moment Naile hesitated.
“A snake-skin,” he growled, “struck my shield mate’s head from his shoulders. On that day I took oath, as I laid Karl under his stones of honor, that I would have vengeance for his blood price. That was three seasons ago and in a far part of the world. But if you all agree to this folly, I shall not be lessened by you. As for Afreeta—” He raised his hand to his throat and the pseudo-dragon crawled out, to sit upon it. “I think she will find us nothing beyond what we see here and now. But I cannot answer for her. She shall do that for herself.” He loosed his small flyer into the night.