Yet the Destroyer had gone to the Red Land.
A movement caught my eye and I turned to see that Dameon was stirring something in a small, blackened pot. There was no sign of Ahmedri, whom I guessed had gone to relieve himself. Sensing my attention, Dameon turned his head towards me and smiled, explaining in a low voice that the tribesman had given him the somewhat tedious task of kneading a ball of herbs and spiceweed. The trouble was that it needed stirring hour after hour to produce the consistency that would allow us to chew it.
‘I thought he said we were better not to eat?’ I said.
‘It is something that he says will dull our thirst and stop our mouths drying out as well as allowing us to walk longer.’
‘Why don’t you let me stir while I keep watch,’ I offered.
‘I cannot let you do one of the few things a blind man can do,’ he said, with an unexpected tinge of bitterness.
‘I think there are many things you do well, not the least of which is walking in this wretched sand,’ I said. ‘And was it not you who led us in the graag?’
That made him smile and he said less grimly that he might as well stir until he was sleepy. We talked for a time about Dragon and Atthis and then I told him of the part Maruman and Gahltha had played in my quest. He confessed that he was not much surprised, for they had always seemed devoted to me. Ahmedri returned to say he had been speaking with Falada, and he had a mind to range ahead now that the moon was on the verge of rising.
‘The she-wolf is still too weak to move yet and I can travel faster on Falada if we are alone,’ he said. ‘I will look for the sort of growth that tells of ground water and for this path of stone trees. I might even find the other wolves.’
‘You will be alone if something attacks,’ I said.
In answer the tribesman gave me a wolfish grin and said, ‘Then it will find I have teeth. Two great iron fangs.’ He patted the sheaths at his hips where he kept his two short swords. Then he sobered and added that he had asked Darga to accompany him. ‘His nose will do better than mine in detecting anything but sand.’
‘Which way will you go?’ Dameon asked, sensing my acceptance almost before I was aware of it.
‘East for an hour then north for an hour before turning back, unless Darga scents something,’ he answered. ‘Even then, we will travel no more than another hour before turning back. That means the longest I will be away is four hours.’
The tribesman took two full gourd bottles of water, a handful of the lichen for Falada, a biscuit for Darga and a blanket, and then the threesome set off, the tribesman riding and Darga following. I went with them to the top of the dune beside our camp to bid them farewell and told the tribesman that I would come up again to farseek him after an hour, to see if he had found anything.
‘Wait for me no more than six hours, if you hear nothing,’ he said before he departed. ‘After that, you must go on.’
I stood watching him and the beasts’ departing backs until Rasial beastspoke me to come, for the she-wolf was waking. I scrambled down the dune to find Gavyn standing over Descantra. Without a word or glance at me, Gavyn turned and climbed the dune to vanish out of sight in the direction that the tribesman had taken.
‘Rasial, go after him,’ I sent, uneasy with the thought of the boy wandering off.
I dropped to my knees beside the old she-wolf. Her eyes were open and when they fixed on me, they blazed with loathing. ‘Dinrai,’ she snarled, her mindvoice scything painfully into my mind.
‘Descantra,’ I said. ‘Tell me what happened to you. Why did Rheagor leave you?’
She seemed not to hear me. ‘Tha did send tha najulkit to this one’s spirit, dinrai. This one will tear out tha throat, for by its touch this one do now be najulk.’
Rasial and Gavyn must have done something to bring the old she-wolf to wakefulness, I realised. ‘I did not send them to help you,’ I said, and some impulse made me put stone into my voice. ‘Why did Rheagor leave you? Was it because you betrayed him again?’
The old wolf bared her teeth feebly, but she was too weak to do more. ‘This one knows not why the pack leader did leave, dinrai. A beast did rise up from the sand in the midst of the pack and slay a wolf. The pack did catch it and tear it to pieces but two more wolves be injured. Rheagor did send them to run in the nightlands but this one he did leave to die.’ There was such anguish in her voice that I had fight to keep pity from my mindvoice.
‘Maybe he did not realise you were alive,’ I said.
‘The pack leader did know it,’ she sent bitterly. ‘He did say, “Live and learn, tha sisterblood.” Then the pack did leave.’
‘It is hard to believe this,’ I sent, genuinely baffled by her short brutal tale, for Rheagor had shown that he was capable of savagery, but he had not been brutal or meaninglessly cruel.
‘If tha would atone for the harm tha dinrai brother did to this one and Gobor One Ear and Sharna, then do take tha metal tooth and send this one to the nightlands,’ Descantra sent. Her voice was icy with contempt and bitterness but there was desperation, too.
‘There is something I need to know, Descantra,’ I sent, keeping my tone cool. ‘You spoke the name Sharna just now and your brother Gobor spoke it too, in the mountains. I too knew a Sharna.’ I summoned a mental picture of Sharna romping with me in one of the orchards on the farms at Obernewtyn, and then lying sprawled in the sun panting.
Descantra sneered. ‘That be a stinking dog.’
‘Yes,’ I said and now the coldness in my mindvoice was not feigned. ‘That stinking dog was the son of the she-dog that freed you and Gobor One Ear when the dinrai caged you, and which you and your precious brother left for dead. I do not know why she named her son after the brother of her betrayers, for my Sharna was loyal and steadfast unto death.’
I sensed the she-wolf’s shock. ‘She that freed us did die.’
‘She did not. The dinrai let her live, not knowing that she had freed you. When she recovered, she ran away from Obernewtyn and never returned, though her son did. I do not know why. Look again at Sharna and you will see in his face she whom you left for dead.’ Again I showed her Sharna.
There was a long, long silence, then Descantra said heavily, ‘This one does see more than tha does know. Maybe it be that the pack leader did see this moment seliga, for he did say live and learn.’
I did not understand what she meant, but before I could ask her to explain, she went on to say gravely, ‘Tha did say tha Sharna did be steadfast unto his death. How did that one die?’
‘That is the hardest thing of all to bear,’ I said, and my own grief made me cruel. ‘He died to protect me from the very dinrai that captured and tortured you and Gobor One Ear because he was my friend and because he saw the importance of my quest, even as your own pack leader did. Though maybe Rheagor is as faithless as you and your brother, for he said that he would return at dusk two days past, and he did not come.’
Instead of speaking, Descantra sent me a picture of a young male wolf with a pelt of smoke-grey streaks against a mist-grey background, darker grey about the eyes and paws. He was frolicking with some younger cubs and there followed a series of images showing Ariel luring the grey wolf closer and then netting the cubs before he clubbed and caged them. The young male he slew when it tried to attack, and suddenly I remembered what Descantra had said of Sharna back in the mountains.
‘He was the reason you were taken!’ I said, aghast. ‘Your Sharna was the one the dinrai lured first and the others followed him into the trap.’
‘That one did be older than us but he be cursed with curiosity beyond any other wolf before or since,’ Descantra sent softly, and all at once I regretted my harshness. ‘He did go seliga and see things about tha brethren that did fascinate him. It be hunger to know more that made that one go to the dinrai.’
‘You must have mentioned his name to the she-dog and later she gave it to her pup,’ I sent, trying to make sense of the differing threads of the tale.
Desca
ntra was silent for a long time, then she sent, ‘The she-dog did have great courage and she did free us. These ones did not abandon that one. That she did live and name her son Sharna … that do be hard to hear.’
It was hard, and it explained so much. I quashed pity and sought for words that would rouse her will to live. ‘Perhaps you should reconsider your decision to die,’ I sent quietly. ‘For it seems that it is you, and not I, who must atone for the past.’
‘Elspeth!’
It was Swallow’s voice and only when I turned to see him wrestling with a flapping blanket end that had come untied did I become aware that the wind had grown strong enough to threaten to dislodge our makeshift tents. I had been so caught up in the old wolf’s tale that I had not even noticed how dark it had become. I leapt to my feet and ran to help him and together we managed to secure the end again. There was so much sand in the wind that it was hard to see or breathe.
‘We need to flatten the blankets further so that they will offer less resistance to the wind,’ Swallow shouted. It was only after we had retied all of the blanket ends and tucked them under the heavy packs to prevent the wind getting its fingers in that I remembered Ahmedri had gone off with Darga and Falada. Shouting to make myself heard over the wind, which seemed to be growing stronger by the second, I bade Swallow and Analivia get the horses in under the blankets, then I floundered up the dune to farsend to Ahmedri.
At the top, the full force of the wind almost threw me back down again, but I leaned hard into it, squinting, and then gaped to see that the whole sky to the south and west was black as night.
Glad it was not raining, I flung a probe out to locate Ahmedri.
The tribesman responded with ardent relief. ‘I feared you would not see the storm coming until it was too late. You must secure the blankets and get everyone under them. Use your bodies to hold them if you must, and stay under cover until the storm passes.’
‘Aren’t you coming back?’
‘We are not so far away but we would not make it back before the storm hits,’ he said. ‘Even now I am making my own preparations. We will return when it is over. Go now and prepare. It is almost upon you.’
‘What about you?’
‘I can take care of myself. Now go!’
I turned to obey and then realised with despair that Gavyn and Rasial were missing. I remembered that the boy had climbed up the dune right after Descantra woke, and I had sent Rasial after him. I sent out a probe attuned to the white dog, but it would not locate. Indeed they might very well have retreated to the base of a dune to get out of the wind, in which case it would be as impossible to reach them through sand as through solid earth. I farsought Ahmedri to tell him that the boy and the dog had come after him, but he said he had not seen them and that there was nothing either of us could do to help them now. He would keep an eye out for them, he promised, then he bade me go and take shelter before it was too late.
By now, the wind was lifting great sheets of sand from the crest of every dune and I was glad to retreat down the dune and under the blankets. The others were struggling to tie them down, and since it was now impossible to talk over the screaming of the wind, I farsought them to tell them Ahmedri’s instructions. Gahltha immediately suggested that the blankets be tied to him and to the other horses to anchor them. I passed this on to the others and though it was hard to manage in the dark, shutting our mouths and eyes against the scouring wind, finally we had the last blanket secured. All of the blankets were flapping wildly, and the air was full of dust but we were protected from the worst of the sand.
The horses were arranged around the rest of us in a horseshoe shape, with Dragon, Maruman and Descantra at the protected end, Dameon in the middle and Analivia, Swallow and me huddled at the open end, which was weighted down with all of the packs. It was very hot and hard to breathe, but all I could think of were the others, who had no blankets to block out the choking sand.
Then the storm hit us with a hissing hum as if a million sand grains brushed against one another. In an eyeblink, it went from dark to pitch black and then the cloth began to be weighed down by sand. After a time the air grew foul, but there was nothing to be done about it, for if we opened a gap, the wind would use it to tear our thin refuge away. We were all terribly thirsty, but it was impossible to find the water bottles without dislodging the packs. Dameon managed to press us little sap-like balls of the dark stuff that Ahmedri had him stirring for hours, shouting to us not to swallow them else we would be sick. The bitterness of them took my breath away, but then my mouth grew numb and the thirst that had been tormenting me became bearable.
I willed the storm to end, but it did not end. Finally we had to open our makeshift tent to let in fresh air. Immediately, choking sand swept in, but Swallow, Analivia and I kept a grim hold on the blanket and were able to wrestle it down to the ground and lie along it to close the gap, and once the dust had settled, the air was sweeter.
Truly it was not like a storm but like some sort of mad shrieking wind monster that tried for hours to tear the covers from us. It went on and on and I began to imagine I heard voices calling to me, begging me, cursing me. Incredibly, I slept for a time. I dreamed the H’rayka was the storm, harrying and attacking, but Gahltha and Maruman were flanking me in spirit-form and they fought the mindless beast, driving it back.
I woke to silence or maybe it was the silence that woke me. I felt a moment of panic at the weight on my chest but it was only cloth lying over me in folds weighed down with sand. The silence meant the storm was ended, and when I fought my way free of the blanket I was shocked to see the night sky arcing above, filled with stars. Was it possible that a whole day had been devoured by the storm? Or was it that we had all fallen into such a stunned sleep that we had not noticed when the storm ended?
That there was no moon meant that it was early in the night, I thought, as I stood up. I felt dizzy. My tongue was a wad of dried cloth in my mouth and I could feel sand between my teeth, in the corners of my eyes and clogging my nostrils and ears. Belatedly I realised with a sinking feeling that the bitter little ball Dameon had given me was no longer lodged in my cheek. I fervently hoped that I had not swallowed it.
‘Elspeth?’ It was Dameon and I helped him out of his sandy chrysalis.
‘I am … sorry,’ he rasped, after trying and failing to stand.
‘Just rest for a bit and then we will wake the others. I just want to go up to the top of the dune and see if I can reach Ahmedri or Rasial.’
‘Be careful,’ he said.
I laughed despite everything. ‘Dear Dameon, I doubt anything could be more dreadful than the great storm beast that tried to devour us!’
I floundered up the side of the dune. Once again the desert stretched pale and tranquilly undulant on all sides, showing no evidence of the fury unleashed upon it the day before.
I tried to locate Ahmedri first, and then Rasial, but to no avail in either case. On impulse, I tried the wolves, too, though I knew I would not be able to reach Rheagor’s mind unless he was seeking mine. Of course I failed, but it might only mean that all of them were lying at the bottom of dunes where my probe would not reach.
I was about to go back down to the camp when I noticed something protruding from the side of the next dune. It was a dark shape rising up to about thigh height from the sand. I hurried over to find that it was the top of one of the Beforetime stone poles that stood here and there about the Land, and whose purpose no one had ever clearly been able to fathom. Like some of the tallest in the land, this one had cross posts jutting from the sides and it occurred to me that most of it was probably buried inside the dune. Then it struck me that this, if exposed to its base, might be the very thing that Rheagor’s ancestor had taken for a stone tree. If I were right, and I was suddenly certain I was, we had only to find another pole to be able to work out in which direction the city lay.
I squinted and ran my eyes over the dunes beyond the one I was on, and then my heart leapt, for sure enough,
the sandstorm had uncovered the top of another post, two dunes away. I made my way across to it, noting that the two together pointed more directly north than north-east, which meant Ahmedri had gone the wrong way.
I turned to go back and tell the others what I had found, only to be confronted by a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing a silver safesuit and some sort of large silver helmet that hid his face.
An efari, I thought, seconds before there was a flash of light from his head and then something thudded into my body.
I fell into unconsciousness like an arrowed bird.
Epilogue
My mind drifted aimless as a shipboat without master or tiller.
I dreamed of Ahmedri walking over moonlit dunes with Darga, but there was no sign of Rasial or Gavyn. The dream slipped silkily away and I seemed to float down and down.
I dreamed of a wolf padding along a black road through a Beforetime city. Rising up on either side of the road were the same high square towers as in drowned Newrome under Tor, but instead of the walls being broken and crumbled away to expose the rusted metal frame underneath, many sections of the towers stood sharply intact, and where the wall had crumbled, the metal bones gleamed silver, reflecting the light of a fingernail moon.
The city was abandoned. It was not only that streets and buildings were deserted but the black roads were covered here and there in white sand that had run up against the sides of walls in bleached mounds, and there were tumbleweeds rolling unchecked along paths where a sparse fringe of dun-coloured saltweed grew up through a multitude of small cracks.
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