“Even if bad things happen, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “We have to go into those caves, Dunkie.”
For once her brother didn’t make a wisecrack about being called Dunkie. “You’re right,” he said. “We need to find out if Dad’s in there.”
“Zagora, you should ride the dromedary,” said Razziq. “Then you’ll see the desert from a different angle.”
Zagora put a foot in the stirrup and swung one leg over Sophie, the boys pushing her up on top of the camel. They were heading into dangerous territory, she knew, with no one to rescue them if things went wrong. But what other choice did they have? Stay calm, she told herself, be brave. That’s what Freya Stark would do.
As Sophie plodded ahead, Zagora studied the cliff, with its looming rock caves and black weathered walls, images of hyenas, snakes and bats tumbling through her head. Was there such a thing as desert bats? Her father would know. He knew everything about the desert.
Suddenly she realized how terribly she missed him, and her heart began to ache.
The attack came out of nowhere, fierce and unexpected, as the three children approached the entrance to the caves. Clinging to Sophie, Zagora gaped in surprise as a group of skeletal figures suddenly leapt from inside the caves, lunging at them from all sides: mummy-like creatures with savage black eyes, rags hanging from gaunt bodies, waving long curved swords.
With guttural shouts the attackers surrounded the two boys, taking them by their arms and dragging them into the caves. Before Zagora could escape on her camel, spidery hands pulled her down off Sophie’s back. “Duncan!” she screamed as her cheche flew off. “Razziq!” Swinging and kicking, she tumbled backward into the sand.
She heard the boys’ voices echoing from inside the caves, followed by Sophie’s frenzied whinny as the camel reared up, magnificent and brave, like a warrior. Next came the crack of a whip, and Zagora, flat on her back, watched a large hoof come down, striking her above the eye.
An intense pain shot through her head. Her vision blurred. Sinewy arms took hold of her, lifting her out of the sand, and she felt herself being carried to where it was cool and dark.
A wave of nausea passed over her as they set her down on the sandy floor and covered her with a blanket. Bone weary, she fell into a dreamless sleep.
Some time later, she awoke with a jolt, confused, with no idea where she was and only a vague memory of how she’d gotten there. Her left eye throbbed painfully and her stomach was churning. She desperately needed a drink of water. Remembering the Oryx Stone, she checked to see if it was still in place, relieved to feel its smooth shape beneath her shirt.
Rubbing her swollen eye, she looked around the chamber, trying to sort out what had happened. She seemed to be inside some sort of cave. But where were Duncan and Razziq?
Above her sputtered an ancient lamp, smelling of smoke and dripping oil, throwing shadows across the walls. The cold air filled her chest with moisture. She had a dim memory of Razziq saying there were dark spirits here. Her pulse began to race as she imagined hideous creatures with lopsided heads and spiked wings creeping out of the walls and crowding around her, pressing on her windpipe until she couldn’t breathe.
There had to be a way out. Zagora lurched to her feet. The room tilted crazily when she took a step, and she realized she was too dizzy to walk. Sitting back down, she noticed a strange-looking drawing on the wall in front of her.
The images had faded over time, but she could just make out a spiral pattern of hands, each hand holding a small blue stone—with an oryx at its center. Fascinated, Zagora stared at the ancient drawing until her head began to ache. What did all those Oryx Stones mean? She could see that none of the hands were alike, yet it was impossible to decipher the meaning of the artwork. Her dad would know, of course—but she had to find him first.
Then from a dark corner came a low rustling. In the dim light Zagora saw a dog with matted fur and a stony expression slinking toward her, its hackles raised. She could hear the sound of her blood beating against her temples. The animal looked feral, alien—and somewhat crazed. Slowly Zagora stood up, her eyes flicking back and forth, looking for a weapon.
“Do not be afraid, Zagora,” whispered a voice that might have been the wind or the soft crumbling of rocks. “You are safe here. You are in the Azimuth Caves.”
A minty fragrance wafted through the air. Out of the shadows floated a tall, thin figure. Red hair framed the copper-colored face like a halo of fire.
“Mina!” she cried.
“Did I not say we would meet in the desert?” Mina held out a small clay bowl filled with an acrid-smelling mixture that looked like pancake batter with grainy bits.
“What’s in there?” asked Zagora, eyeing the bowl suspiciously.
“Mustard poultice, for your eye. Is it hurting?”
“Course it hurts,” Zagora snapped. She frowned at the scrawny mongrel, now curled around Mina’s feet. “Is that dog rabid?”
“It is not a dog, it is a jackal. But it will not attack unless I order it.”
A jackal! Oh right, she had a stamp with a jackal on it at home. But this one looked aggressive—and she wasn’t convinced it would follow Mina’s instructions, since it seemed to have a mind of its own.
“Grandmother says I must follow the stone of the oryx,” said Mina, sounding a bit annoyed about the whole thing. “And so I am here.” She dipped one finger into the poultice and dabbed the ointment around Zagora’s eye. Despite its weird smell, Zagora found it soothing.
“You mean you have to follow me around everywhere?” asked Zagora. No wonder Mina didn’t look too happy. “But … how did you know I was going to be here?”
Mina looked at her as if she’d asked a silly question. “Did I not tell you Grandmother is a desert seer?” She sighed. “You still have the stone, yes?”
“Yes,” whispered Zagora. Pointing to the drawing on the wall, she asked, “What does this picture mean? Why are all those hands holding the Oryx Stone?”
“This drawing is ancient, many centuries old. These are the hands through which the stone of the oryx will pass. That is why we call this chamber the Cave of Hands.” She gave a cryptic smile. “You know, I think perhaps the stone is too much of a burden for you. Is this true? Perhaps I should take the stone to Zahir.”
Zagora clasped the stone to her chest with a fierce protectiveness.
“I’m not giving the stone to you,” she said through clenched teeth. “I’m not giving it to anyone.”
Mina said nothing, her fingers moving deftly between the bowl and Zagora’s eye. Then she set down the bowl, took a strip of dried meat from her pocket and handed it to Zagora. The meat was tough and sinewy, but Zagora wolfed it down anyway. The taste was disgusting; she hoped it wasn’t anything too exotic, like lizard or hyena (or—she threw a furtive glance at the dog—jackal).
Mina gave her a cup of water and she drank it down, washing away the bitter taste. The water seemed to clear her mind. “Oh yeah, I remember now! Sophie was trying to fight those mummy guys off, ’cause she’s a warrior camel, and she accidentally kicked me. Do you know if Duncan and Razziq are okay?”
Mina nodded and Zagora felt relief wash over her. “Where are they?” she asked, anxious to be with the others again. “I want to see them!”
“You must rest first,” murmured the girl, frowning.
Unconvinced, Zagora leapt up, searching for her backpack. “You know, I really think I should be with them.” She swayed dizzily, her mind in a muddle, then looked at the jackal. It was growling quietly.
“Very well,” said Mina, her voice sharp. “I will take you.”
Mina steered Zagora out of the chamber and pulled her through a cavernous space filled with strange echoes and flaming torches. The jackal followed. One cavern led to another and Zagora realized she was in a whole series of caverns.
“This is the Azimuth’s secret place?” she said to Mina. “Here in these caves?” It seemed awfully sad to her, to live where it wa
s damp and dark, surrounded by moldy stone walls.
“Yes. We are the forgotten. We are shadows of what we once were.” Mina’s eyes glittered darkly as she slowed to a stop, the jackal pressed against her. “You must say nothing about these things to anyone. You must tell no one that the Azimuth are here.”
“No one,” whispered Zagora. Probably not a good idea to mention that she’d already told her father, Duncan and Abdul.
She had more questions, but Mina took off in a swirl of tattered robes. They plunged into heavy darkness, twisting and turning, ducking beneath crude archways, bumping into walls, the jackal a quick black shadow at Mina’s side. At last they entered a vast cave strung with lanterns, its walls etched with squiggly shapes that Zagora knew to be glyphs. The domed ceiling was painted with stars, moons and whirling planets. Around the edges of the ceiling were tight little heaps of what looked like bats.
“This is the Chamber of the Cenozoic Moon,” announced Mina, bowing her head. “Here we honor the ancients, ancestors who were stargazers and watchers of planets.”
From the far end of the chamber came low murmurs and whispers—the ominous sounds Zagora had heard earlier in the caves—and she took deep breaths to calm herself. Through the flickering light she could see jackals like the one at Mina’s side slinking along the walls, and the outlines of cadaverous figures, tall and forbidding.
The tall figures emerged from the shadows and she gasped, seeing their desiccated bodies, their rawboned limbs and gaunt faces. These were the mummy people who’d attacked her! Yet here in this cave they looked nothing like warriors. Their bodies seemed cobbled together from skin and bones, and around their eyes were delicate tattoos, which she guessed were scorpions. It seemed as if they were all talking at once, waving their arms in dramatic gestures, their voices sounding alternately angry, demanding, aggressive and cruel.
“Always they are arguing,” said Mina. She gave a loud sniff. “Never can they agree.”
“That’s them!” whispered Zagora. “The mummy people!”
Mina glared at her with a stormy frown. Beside her the jackal growled deep inside its throat. “Not mummies.” The girl pushed her face close to Zagora’s. “They are Azimuth elders.”
“They had swords.” Zagora recalled their ferocious expressions. “I thought they were going to kill us!”
“The Azimuth attacked you because they felt threatened. You are strangers, and they were frightened. And fear,” Mina added with a melancholy smile, “is what some of us have to live with.”
Zagora saw the elders exchanging swift, panicked looks and retreating into the shadows, followed by the jackals. Mina’s jackal darted away after them.
“Quick!” said Mina, pulling her through a doorway carved with moons, into a smoky torch-lit tunnel. They sprinted through a honeycomb of caverns until at last Mina pushed her through an entryway thick with cobwebs, into a dark cave.
“Zagora?” came a familiar voice. “Is that you?”
“Dunkie!” she shouted, seeing her brother’s chunky frame emerge from the shadows. They threw their arms around each other and she found herself choking up. She didn’t know what she’d do if she lost him, too.
“Oh man,” said Duncan. “I thought they’d chopped you into tiny little—”
“Sophie kicked me and I got a black eye,” she said, cutting him off. “I’m okay. Mina put some kind of mustard on it.” She showed him her swollen eye and he grimaced.
“Zagora!” Razziq appeared beside Duncan and flashed his warm smile. “You are not harmed? No broken bones?”
“I’m good,” Zagora said, hugging him. “My eye’s hurt a bit, that’s all.”
“Your camel is down below, with the other dromedaries.”
His words made her feel as if a great weight had been lifted. Sophie was okay!
“Those skull faces dragged us in here, but they didn’t hurt us or anything,” said Duncan. “They gave us meat jerky to eat, gahh!”
Seeing the others brought everything into focus, and Zagora felt a sudden longing for her father. A tear rolled down her cheek, and soon she was sobbing quietly to herself. The boys put their arms around her, trying their best to comfort her, and she gave them each a sorrowful smile. She sensed a fluttering above her head and saw Mina’s small hand brushing away her tears with the frayed hem of her robe. Mina’s my friend, too, she thought, sort of.
At last she stopped crying, and Mina motioned them forward with her hand. They all followed, ducking through small caves until they reached a crudely built door. With a theatrical gesture Mina flung it open, and blue light spilled over them.
“Nar Azrak!” cried Duncan.
Zagora rushed with the others to a balcony and, gripping the stone edge, gazed out over a line of dunes. Nar Azrak hung low in the sky, an immense globe wrapped in misty vapors, frighteningly close, turning the desert landscape blue. She could see the planet was noticeably larger than the night before, and far brighter.
“Every night Nar Azrak grows in size,” said Mina in a tremulous voice. “It threatens a darkness foretold long ago by Azimuth seers.”
“The Time of the Scorpions,” said Zagora, recalling Abdul’s somber words. “We know all about that.”
Mina gave a grim nod. The others stood quietly, eyes fixed on Nar Azrak.
Then Zagora heard the sound of hooves thudding across the sand. Leaning over the balcony, she suddenly saw the Azimuth, in blue robes and turbans, faces covered, galloping across the dunes on white camels, waving scimitars and flaming torches.
“Azimuth warriors,” said Mina proudly. “They wear desert cheche, like the Tuareg.”
Zagora saw something huge and dark come out from behind a dune, running fast on numerous legs. Then there were tens of them, enormous shapes that slid from hill to hill. They were sharp angles against the sky, glinting in the blue light of Nar Azrak. Spare and menacing, with long spiny tails arched over their backs, the creatures moved on tall, stalklike legs, their unearthly shrieks echoing back and forth across the dunes.
They were scorpions, huge scorpions—giant scorpions!
She stared in dread and fascination while the Azimuth charged on their camels, shouting rallying cries as they approached the enemy. Two camels stumbled, tossing their riders into the sand. Moments later the scorpions surrounded them, their barbed tails raised to strike.
More Azimuth warriors surged forward, urging their camels on. Zagora flinched as one warrior sliced off a scorpion’s claw. Another flung his torch, setting two scorpions on fire, and with shrill screams the creatures went up in flames.
“Always the scorpions come at night, under the light of Nar Azrak,” said Mina.
“These scorpions,” said Razziq in a horrified whisper, “they are … unnatural.”
Terror, twisting and wormlike, wound its way through Zagora. How many of those things were out there, hiding behind the dunes, watching with black eyes? She thought back to the scorpion she’d dropped into Olivia’s tea and the scorpions that had attacked Uncle Ali in his shop. Then a new fear took hold of her.
“Duncan, Dad doesn’t know about the giant scorpions!” she cried. “He’s lost in the desert and he doesn’t know they’re out there!”
They stared helplessly at one another while triumphant shouts drifted up to the balcony from below. Through tears and the smoke of burning torches, Zagora watched as the scorpions, shrieking furiously, scuttled over the dune and then vanished.
After a rough night of tossing on a hard bed of sand and dreaming about scorpions, Zagora sat eating saffron cakes with Duncan, Razziq and Mina, talking about the monstrous creatures they’d seen the night before. Torches sputtered from the walls of a chamber that smelled of earth and fungus.
“Don’t worry, Zagora,” Duncan kept saying. “Dad can manage out there. He’s desert-savvy.”
That was true, but still she worried. Edgar Yegen had been desert-savvy, too.
“I was wondering, Mina,” said Duncan, popping the last cake into h
is mouth, “did your ancestors worship Nar Azrak? I mean, was the planet some kind of a god?”
Mina threw him an icy look. “Not a god, no. Stones fell to the desert from Nar Azrak and the Azimuth used them to build a small pyramid. The Azimuth took from the stones a kind of magic—the power of Nar Azrak—and this magic protected Zahir.”
“Hmm, that’s sort of what I thought,” said Duncan. “So the pyramid was aligned with Nar Azrak and all this planetary energy created a force field around Zahir. But when the Oryx Stone—also from Nar Azrak, right?—was stolen, the planet jumped out of orbit and the protective field around Zahir crumbled. In short, everything went haywire.”
“Now Nar Azrak moves closer to Earth,” murmured Razziq. “That is very haywire.”
“Yes, that is what happened,” said Mina. “Now it is time for you to go. Follow me.”
Zagora stepped out of the caves into blinding sunlight, pleased to see Sophie, freshly brushed and fed, waiting for her. Blankets were thrown over her hump, along with water containers and woven bags.
“The journey to the tower is not long,” Mina told them. “I have packed for you dried meat, figs, nuts, gourds of fresh water and … mustard poultice.”
Zagora smiled. Her eye still hurt, but it was healing quickly.
“Follow the arc of the sun,” instructed Mina, pointing down the canyon, “and keep following to where the sun goes down. Sometimes the path to Zahir is difficult, and you can easily become lost. Remember to take shelter before dark, because once darkness falls, the scorpions will be out—and they will be hunting, as they do every night.”
Zagora swallowed hard. She knew they’d never stand a chance against giant scorpions.
“You go in search of your father,” said Mina, fixing her black eyes on Zagora, “but do not forget the stone of the oryx. When you reach Zahir, you will know soon enough the power of the stone.”
The Scorpions of Zahir Page 12