by Ryan Hughes
The sand was sticky and colored red with the cloud ray's blood. It smelled of metals and exotic spices. Jedra had expected it to smell awful, but the creature had been alive only minutes before; it hadn't had time to putrefy yet. Give it a day in the direct sun, though, and the stench from a carcass this size would be unbearable for miles around.
The ragged wall of flesh above him began to shift, and the elves leaped back out of the way. Jedra slipped and had a horrifying moment as he imagined it rolling over and trapping him, but one of the elves snatched at his arm and pulled him free just as the head rolled into the trench he had helped dig.
It had moved only a few feet, but that was enough to lift the other side off the injured elf and allow the diggers to pull him free. Kayan knelt beside him, running her hands along his torso and legs to assess his injuries while the elves looked on.
The chief had arrived and was scowling at the whole proceedings. Jedra tried to stay out of his way, but he knew he wasn't going unnoticed. Everyone who had gathered there kept eyeing him distrustfully and muttering to one another.
Kayan held her hands against the elf's abdomen and dosed her eyes. Jedra knew what she was doing now: pouring more of her own life energy into her patient while she tried to heal his bleeding and his spinal damage. Everyone else watched the elf for signs of recovery, but Jedra kept his eyes on Kayan. There was a limit to how much energy she could spare.
After a few minutes in the healing trance, she leaned back with a weary sigh and opened her eyes. "He'll live," she said to the chief. "He'll even walk again, but you should give him a couple of days to rest before you make him march the way we did yesterday."
The chief laughed bitterly and waved his arms to encompass the devastated camp. The elves who hadn't helped dig had erected a couple of the tents again, but most of the shelters were still in shredded heaps on the ground. "It will take at least that long before we can repair the damage," the chief said.
"Good," Kayan said. "Then let's get him out from under the hot sun and let him sleep."
Under her direction, six elves picked up the injured one and carried him carefully down into the camp, where they laid him inside one of the tents. Kayan went in to help finish his healing, and Jedra followed her. "How are you holding up?" he asked her.
Jedra knelt down beside her. "You've been putting out a lot more energy than I have; let's link back up and I'll share some of mine with you."
She considered it. He could see it in the way her eyes unfocused and her face relaxed for a second. Oh, yes, to merge their minds and become that supreme being again, to feel strength and power spread through them like fire through dry tinder....
She shook her head. "No. It always costs more than we get out of it."
True enough, Jedra supposed. But still he yearned for the experience, especially now when he was already drained from doing it once today. The memory of how it had felt overrode even the immediate here-and-now reminder of its price. He was glad Kayan had the willpower to resist it; left to himself he might not.
"All right," he said. "We'll sleep and recover our energy that way instead."
He lay down to attempt just that, but it seemed he'd hardly closed his eyes when he heard something thud to the ground just outside the tent. Then the door flap was pulled aside, and the chief stuck his head in the opening. "Come out," he said.
Jedra and Kayan exchanged a puzzled glance, then rose and stepped out of the tent. There on the ground just outside the door was the source of the noise they had heard: their knapsacks. Twenty or thirty elves stood silently in a semicircle around the tent door, and they didn't look happy.
The chief didn't waste time on a lengthy speech. "For saving Harat's life, we have decided to let you live," he said. "But only if you leave... now."
Chapter Three
They made it almost a mile before Kayan collapsed. In the hot middle of the day with the relentless sun beating down on them, Jedra was surprised she'd made it that far. He wasn't sure how much farther he could go himself, but the chief's final words had kept him walking long after he normally would have stopped.
"If we ever see you again," the chief had said, "we will bury you up to your necks in the sand and let the carrion eaters feast on your roasted brains."
That's gratitude for you, Jedra had nearly said, but he had decided to hold his tongue while he still had one. Some of the elves wanted blood.
Galar had come to their rescue one last time, insisting that the tribe give them food and water enough to keep them alive until they reached civilization. When some of the other elves protested, the chief had compromised on three days' provisions, which he said was enough to get them to an oasis. When Galar left to pack the food he even gave them directions for finding it-at the base of a long, rocky ridge just south of due west-but what they did from there was up to them. They would just have to figure that out when the time came; right now they had more immediate problems.
Jedra bent down beside Kayan, letting his shadow fall across her while he worked her pack off and helped her lean back against it. He removed his own pack and got out the waterskin, gave her a swallow of its precious contents, and put it back without drinking any himself. The oasis might be three days away for an elf, but he had the feeling they would need every drop of water they had and then some before he and Kayan managed to reach it.
To think that he had bathed in a barrel of the stuff only two days ago. The elves had been right: fortunes changed quickly in the desert.
Theirs were going to have to change back awfully fast or the two of them would be dead of heat stroke or dehydration by nightfall. Jedra didn't see much opportunity for shelter in the immediate vicinity, only gently rolling dunes and occasional rock outcrops as far as he could see in any direction, dotted here and there with stubby bushes and gnarled, spiny cacti. He didn't see any of the barrel-shaped plants like the one the elf child had cut open for water yesterday, nor anything else that looked promising. All the vegetation he could see was too thin to have a pulpy core. Too thin to provide shade, either, which was an even more pressing need at the moment.
Kayan moaned and tried to sit up.
"Stay there," Jedra told her. "We wouldn't get twenty paces in this heat before we had to stop again. I can see that far, and there's nothing better over there." He spoke aloud, even though mindspeech would have been easier. He still felt so drained from the battle with the cloud ray that he didn't want to use even that little bit of psionic energy. Either Kayan felt the same way, or she just followed his example. "We have to keep moving," she whispered.
"I suppose that does make sense," she admitted.
Jedra looked around again, trying to think like an elf. What would they do in a similar situation? Spend the hot hours in the shade, for starters, but the Jura-Dai's generosity hadn't extended to a tent.
Or had it? He looked again at the thin, spiny cactus growing only a few yards away. It branched in two about four feet off the ground, and each arm extended out and upward another four or five feet. If he were to stretch his robe across those arms, the thorns would hold it in place and the cloth-even as thin as it was-would provide shade.
There was only one problem with that idea: he'd seen how some of the desert plants protected themselves by swinging their thorny arms at passersby. He wasn't sure if this was one of that kind, but he didn't want to find out the hard way.
Hmm. How could he tell whether or not it was dangerous without getting too close? Throw rocks at it?
It was worth a try. Jedra found a small outcrop not far from the cactus and picked up a flat slab of flagstone a little bigger than his hand. He didn't see the multilegged beetle that had been hiding under it until it clicked angrily at him, startling him into dropping the rock on his toe. The beetle scurried under another slab of flagstone, and Jedra once again picked up the piece it had been under to begin with, making a mental note to check more carefully before he grabbed something like that again. Even the smallest desert creatures had some kind
of defense against predators, and most of them were poisonous.
He carried the rock to within easy throwing distance of the cactus, took aim, and tossed it at the trunk. The rock thunked into it and broke off a few spines, but the branches never moved. Hmm. Maybe it wasn't the mobile kind, but Jedra still wasn't convinced. He could try all day to see if the cactus was dangerous, but even if all his tests came up negative, he would never be certain he hadn't missed something obvious. Only if it did prove to be dangerous somehow would he know for sure.
He wished there was some way to check it out psionically. Look for an aura or something. There probably was a way, but if so he didn't know it. He sometimes got premonitions of danger, but that was another of those things that was useful only when something actually happened. He'd found himself spooking at shadows-or in trouble without warning-far too many times to count on his premonitions. Maybe a psionics master would be able to help him refine that talent, but unless the refinements included reaching back in time to warn himself, that wasn't going to help him now.
The heat was getting unbearable. He was going to have to do something, or he and Kayan would cook.
Feeling helpless and stupid, but not knowing what else to try, he stripped off his robe and waved it at the cactus. It still made no motion, even when he got right next to it. Finally he tossed one end of the robe out and let the thorns at the end of one arm catch it, then he tugged downward. The cactus flexed a little, but that was it.
That was as good as he could do. He walked around to the other side, trailing the robe and spreading it out to make the biggest possible shadow. Stretched out like that it was nearly square, and now he noticed that the hems were extra thick to allow the thorns to hold it fast without tearing. He was willing to bet the elves had designed the garments that way for just this purpose.
Ha. He was learning. He just hoped he could learn fast enough to keep himself and Kayan alive.
He helped her move over to the patch of shade, then sat down beside her to wait out the hottest part of the day. But when he leaned back against his knapsack, she said, "We should sleep in alternate shifts."
"Good point," he said, sitting up again. "You go ahead, and I'll take the first watch." He didn't know what he would be able to do if anything approached, since the elves hadn't given them any weapons, but he refrained from mentioning that to Kayan. Let her sleep without worry if she could; she needed the rest..
She curled up on the ground, her robe still protecting her light skin from the bright reflections off the sand, and within minutes her breathing slowed and her muscles relaxed. Jedra yawned, then forced himself to look away and concentrate on something else.
The desert was quiet, but not silent. When he listened hard, he could hear the faint clicks of rocks expanding in the heat, the cluttering of tiny bugs, and the occasional rustle of a not-so-tiny bug or lizard scurrying from one piece of shade to another. Breezes flapped the loose ends of his robe, and every few minutes a fly would circle around until he chased it off.
The smells were more subtle, masked as they were beneath the ever-present aroma of sun-baked sand and his own sweat, but when he concentrated Jedra could pick out the faint spiciness of the cactus providing their shade, and even the dry, strawlike scent wafting off the few patches of wispy grass that grew on the dunes.
He let her sleep through the hottest part of the day, waking her only when the sun had moved far enough that she was no longer in the shade. They moved over a few feet and traded places; he slept while she kept watch. She woke him when the sun was still an hour from the horizon. "We should probably get moving," she said. "This is about when the elves started their evening march."
Jedra sat up and rubbed his eyes. He still felt tired, but even a couple hours of sleep had helped tremendously. He could probably put another five or six miles behind him before he tired again. He took a swig from his water-skin and passed it to Kayan, and they shared the first of the honeycakes Galar had packed for them. He'd given them a dozen; they could each eat two a day.
When they'd eaten the last crumbs and washed them down with a sip of water, Jedra said "Let me take down my robe and we can go," but that proved more difficult than he'd expected. The cactus thorns had tiny barbs pointing toward their bases, and the breeze had flapped the fabric enough that it was stuck to hundreds of them. Jedra and Kayan both tried to work his robe free, but the thorns wouldn't let go without a great deal of wiggling and spreading of the weave. Most of them were out of reach anyway, so Jedra finally wound up simply tugging the robe down. It came free with a loud rip, leaving dozens of tatters of cloth behind in the cactus.
Jedra held up the robe to inspect the damage and was annoyed to find that the worst tears were in the back, where they would let tomorrow's sun through to his already-tender skin.
"So much for that wonderful idea," he said. He picked up his pack and slung it over his shoulders, noticing how its rough fabric chafed his back.
Kayan put on her pack as well. "We needed the shade," she said. "You did what you had to do. Tomorrow we'll figure out something different."
"I hope so." He turned toward the sinking sun and began to walk.
He set a pace much slower than the elves had, but one that he hoped would ultimately be just as productive. If he and Kayan could keep from exhausting themselves, they would make better time than if they had to stop and rest all the time.
His strategy paid off for the first couple of hours. Luck was with them, too; when the sun sank below the horizon in front of them, Guthay, one of Athas's two moons, rose behind them and continued to provide light. After the day's brilliance, its golden glow was a welcome change. It was a little more difficult to see where they were going under its softer illumination, but there didn't seem to be much to worry about. The plant life was thinning out the farther west they went, and they saw little else but an occasional pile of bones where some poor animal had evidently starved and scavengers had picked the carcass clean.
They walked side by side and kept their eyes on the sky almost as much as the ground, trying to navigate by the stars. That turned out to be a bad idea; Jedra had become mesmerized by the brilliant stars when he suddenly felt a sting in the arch of his left foot.
"Ow!" he yelled and jumped backward, but he nearly fell over when his foot refused to lift.
"What the-?" He tugged on his foot, but each tug sent a lance of pain up his leg.
"What is it?" Kayan asked.
"Something's got me!" he shouted, pulling harder.
It felt as if something were trying to pull his bones out through the sole of his foot. It wasn't pulling on his sandal; whatever it was had penetrated the leather sole and stuck deep in his foot. He managed to lift it a few inches off the ground, but it simply wouldn't come any farther, and now he could see a thin cord or a root or something leading into the sand.
In full-scale panic now, he yanked backward with all his might and finally pulled free of whatever had snared him. It looked like a cactus spine with a thumbnail-sized hunk of his leather sandal and some of his skin still attached. He staggered backward, his left foot on fire- and stepped on another spine with his right foot.
"Ye-ow!" he screeched, and he wrenched free of it with one mighty jerk.
"Jedra!" Kayan took a step toward him.
"Don't move!" He bent down and brushed the hem of his robe cautiously over the sand, and sure enough, it hung up on another thorn sticking up between them. He swung the cloth around in as wide an arc as it would reach and encountered three more of the strange spines a foot or so apart.
"It grows underground," Kayan said, her voice full of wonder. Jedra could hardly stand on his feet. Pain and anger made him snap at her, "Of course it grows underground. Everything is hostile in this damned desert, even the land itself, and the sooner we realize that the longer we'll live."
"We should have suspected it," he said, twisting around without moving his feet. "I wonder how far back it goes? As far apart as the thorns are, we could ha
ve been walking right through them for the last ten paces or so."
"True," she said. She bent down and swept the hem of her robe over her tracks. When she didn't encounter a thorn, she took a step back the way they had come and swept the robe out again, and this time it snagged on a spine just an inch or two from a footprint. She gingerly stepped over it and moved on.
Wincing at the pain in his feet, Jedra did the same until they stopped encountering thorns. The patch of them was only six or eight feet across, it turned out, but there was nothing visible to indicate that it was there, save for the thin needles that were the same color as the sand.
Jedra immediately sat down and slipped off his sandals. Both feet had big red patches surrounding the puncture wounds, which bled steadily even when he squeezed. Under the moonlight his blood made dark rivulets across his skin, and where it dripped on the sand it made black circles.
"Here, let me see that," Kayan said. She bent close and took his right foot, turning it so the moonlight shone on the sole. "Does it still hurt, or is it just bleeding?" she asked, pressing on either side of the puncture.
"Ow!" he yowled. "Yes, it still hurts."
"Shush. Something might hear you." She held the foot in both hands and concentrated on it, and presently the pain began to ease, but the bleeding continued unabated. "That's strange," Kayan said. "There's something interfering with your blood's ability to clot. The cactus must have injected it with something. I wonder why it would do that?"
"Spite," Jedra said.
Kayan laughed. "It's a plant."
"So?"
She shook her head and bent back to her work. She had to work at it for a couple of minutes, but eventually the bleeding stopped and the pain lessened until it was more like a bee sting than a gaping wound. Jedra watched, fascinated, as the hole the thorn had ripped on its way out closed up, healing at hundreds of times the normal rate.
"That's good," he said at last. "Stop! You'll wear yourself out again."