Into the Desert Wilds

by Jim Galford

  Estin chose his words carefully, answering, “The same magic that can raise the dead can be used by a Turessian to make more of its kind from any corpse. If I found one, I wouldn’t want it to ever be found.”

  Atall nodded, answering, “I’d rather see everyone I care about die before having more of those monsters walking around. If you do find another place like that, don’t tell me. The fewer people who know, the better. If you think I’d convince you to tell me…destroy it first.”

  *

  By midday, the ragtag procession had just passed the gypsy camp, with Estin carrying the female and one of the male kits and Atall carrying the other. Lorne followed behind, grumbling very nearly as much as the kits about the heat and how long they had been traveling.

  “We could be at the ocean by now!” whined the female kit, mock-stomping her foot, which only served to kick Estin in the ribs.

  “Where’d you hear that there was an ocean nearby?” asked Estin, grinning at the girl.

  “There isn’t an ocean near here, silly,” she grumbled. “That’s how long we’ve been walking.”

  “Some of us are walking more than others,” groaned Lorne, pulling her hood lower as the sun began to hit her face.

  “You got longer legs,” explained the male in Atall’s arms. “Besides, you’re really old, so it’s okay that you walk places.”

  Estin tried to suppress his own laughter and avoid catching Lorne’s glare.

  “What’s this?” asked the other male, holding up Estin’s little notebook.

  “That’s my instructions for using magic,” Estin told the kit, snatching back the book. He had not even felt his pouch move. He shoved it back into the bag and refastened the clasp.

  “And this?” asked the boy again, holding up a handful of coins that had been in Estin’s other pouch.

  “Money that the city people use to get things from other people. Now stop going through my bags.”

  The female held out Estin’s notebook sheepishly.

  “Your mother taught you all to be thieves in my absence,” he muttered, putting away the notebook yet again. “Great planning there. That certainly won’t drive a father crazy.”

  As they passed the northern part of the gypsy camp, Estin watched Atall turn and head over to the grave mounds. Stopping Lorne, he waited patiently as Atall knelt at the grave, while the kit he had been holding wandered in circles nearby.

  Eventually the kit ran back over to Estin, jumping up and down until Estin picked him up and put him on his shoulders. With all three of the kits, Estin was not sure he could move any faster than a ponderous stroll.

  Standing at last, Atall raised a hand to the sky and closed his eyes. Seconds later, a brief shower of rain fell over him and the grave, the moisture sinking quickly into the sand. Atall let his hand drop and the rains stopped immediately.

  “So that’s why there are so many flowers,” Estin said as Atall came back to the group. Thankfully, the kits were excited at their brother’s return and Estin managed to set them down without them realizing he was relieved. “I wondered.”

  “Yeah,” admitted the boy, looking back. He held up a hand that steamed as the water was cooked off of his fur by the sun. “I really prefer fire magic, but it just seemed right for this place. I owe her at least a little beauty to surround her.”

  Atall looked at the ground for a minute, his thoughts distant. Even the kits quieted down in a show of respect. After a few moments lost in thought, Atall started walking again without a word, the kits bounding along behind him.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Lorne whispered, leaning close to Estin.

  “He lost his first love. What do you think?”

  “I think it’s another good reason to avoid attachments,” she replied, keeping her voice low. “You never know when someone might die…or get sold to a new owner.”

  Estin glanced over at her, then slid up the left sleeve of his shirt, exposing long gouges in his flesh where scars had never properly healed.

  “My mate and I expected to die a thousand times since the day we met,” he told her, covering back up the furless scars. “Instead of avoiding attachments, we counted the few days we’ve had together as individual blessings.”

  Lorne shook her head slowly, though her eyes remained on Estin’s sleeve.

  “I don’t know whether to be jealous or think I was lucky being a slave,” answered the female, finally looking to the path they walked. Idly, she rubbed her left arm. “I can’t wait to meet her.”

  Estin stopped abruptly.

  “What?” asked Lorne, stopping several steps past him.

  Lowering his head and putting a hand to his muzzle, Estin tried to think, but he felt dizzy and ill. His balance wavered and his stomach churned, making him drop to his knees as he tried to keep from retching. He had managed to maintain composure far longer than he had expected, but grief hit him all at once, breaking his show of calm.

  “Estin?” Lorne asked him, coming to his side. “What’s wrong?”

  “She’s gone,” he said softly, realizing that he had been trying to avoid thinking about this. Now, it was unavoidable and it made him sick to his heart. “Atall came from where her and my daughter were captured, tortured, and killed.”

  Lorne let out a sympathetic whimper and put an arm around Estin, pressing her forehead against his cheek.

  “I’m sorry,” she told him, for once sounding genuine. “What are you going to do?”

  “That depends on whether they release her body to me.”

  “If they don’t?”

  Estin turned his head, putting his forehead against Lorne’s.

  “Every last furless creature in their village will die,” he told her, though his voice wavered more than he wished it would. “I hope it doesn’t come to that, though.”

  “If you two are done,” growled Atall, standing before Lorne and Estin with the kits huddled around his legs. “I would like to get to the ruins before dark.”

  Lorne snatched her arm off of Estin’s shoulders and sat back on her haunches, sweeping her tail around herself protectively.

  Atall snorted, looking first at Estin, then to Lorne as he told them, “Don’t bother acting innocent around me. I just don’t care right now.”

  Though his muscles shook from the emotions that he was fighting, Estin stood back up and nodded at Atall. It was not worth arguing over, so he preferred to just get back to something he could keep his mind on.

  Taking the hint, Atall shooed the kits back onto the path he had made, flicking his tail in mild frustration as he turned away.

  “Come on,” Estin told Lorne, helping her to her feet. “He won’t stop for us again.”

  “He hates me,” she said absently, watching Atall as he walked quickly away.

  Estin was too mentally exhausted to lie. “Of course he does. He sees you as the female I picked to replace his mother. Just like he once hated me for replacing his birth father.”

  They began walking, but Lorne kept watching Estin from the corner of her eyes.

  “How did that happen?” she finally asked.

  “Their father…at least we think he was their father,” Estin corrected himself, laughing tiredly. “I was part of the reason he left, taking the kits—Atall and Oria—with him when he ran.”

  “And the other part?”

  “Feanne had a gift, but Insrin thought she was a monster. He was trying to protect the kits. I found them, but he was already dead. The army of the Turessians killed him while Oria watched. She kept Atall from seeing.”

  “How long did the two of you wait?”

  “Months,” he admitted, noting that Atall was nearing the ruins Estin had seen the day before. In the daylight, he could not make out the mists in the distance, which made it at least somewhat easier to convince himself they were not out there. “I pledged myself as her protector, just to be near her.”

  Lorne giggled. “Get near the girl, then slowly get closer to her heart?”

  �
��She nearly died in my arms,” Estin said firmly, seeing the humor fall from Lorne’s face. “Another member of the pack tore her stomach apart to prove she was weak. She could have killed him, but instead of fighting him, she took his strike to defend the kits.”

  Estin looked over at Lorne, but she was watching him, clearly waiting for him to continue.

  “We decided to stop lying to ourselves when she lay there half-dead in my arms,” he went on, feeling a sense of relief at talking about the pain and struggle that had given his life purpose before the news from Atall that had destroyed it all. “That was the first time I fought for someone else’s honor and benefit.

  “I’ve had to kill before, but if I’d had the chance, I doubt I could have stopped beating on that male. Every time I did hit him, all I could think about was Feanne’s blood on my hands.”

  Estin stopped talking as he reached Atall, who had come to a halt at a gaping hole that looked to be a cave entrance at first glance. Nearby, hundreds of rocks and shattered stone blocks had been scattered, as though by a tornado.

  The kits raced around, not entering the hole in the ground, but exploring the area around it.

  “Nice story, dad,” Atall said as the group came up around him. “I remember that night. You healed mother, but as close as she’d been to bleeding to death an hour before, she spent the whole time you were gone worrying about what Olis would do to you. She wanted to take your place, to keep you from being hurt the way she had been. I know she never said things like that in the open…but she loved you more than she could say.”

  The three of them were silent for some time, while the kits chased one another around the area. Estin was finally the one to break the quiet.

  “We need to get moving, Atall.”

  Smiling grimly, the boy led the way down into the dark, gesturing with one hand to create a glowing ball of light as he went. The kits skipped along happily beside him.

  “As much as I hate violence,” Lorne said, touching Estin’s arm, “I hope you get your revenge for whatever they did to her and your daughter. Her memory deserves that much.”

  Estin kept his mouth shut, heading after Atall into the dark passage. Lorne followed him slowly, picking her way down the uneven slope.

  The first ten minutes or so of travel were uneventful, taking them through what could easily have been a natural cave of dense stone. Soon, they reached a section where the stone changed abruptly, turning into the dark smooth rocks of a far different climate.

  “Where are we?” Estin asked, looking back to see the transition one more time. The stones changed in the course of two or three feet, as though he had crossed a barrier into another place.

  “I don’t think this belongs here,” Atall told him, stopping a little ways ahead. “It’s like someone brought all the stones from another part of the world. All of the underground tombs are made like this, though. This one just has different rocks in the walls.”

  Atall held up his light to the wall of the passage. Faint etchings in the wall were just barely visible, but could have been made by water or wind.

  “These aren’t easy to see yet,” he noted, looking farther down the hall. “I didn’t even notice them until I got a lot deeper in. Follow me and I’ll show you what I found.”

  Taking off at a light jog, Atall led the way far down into the dark, forcing Estin and Lorne to rush after him, or be left without light. They passed several intersections in the manmade tunnel, but Atall took turns seemingly at random, taking them on an ever-descending route.

  Throughout the run, the kits fought amongst themselves, trying to be the one closest behind Atall. To accomplish this, there was endless tripping, pushing, and the occasional tackle.

  When Atall did finally stop, it was just after the tunnels had opened up into a larger room. This new room expanded far beyond the reach of his limited light-source.

  “Here,” he announced, holding his hand aloft, raising the globe of light to brighten the room. “This is the place.”

  Estin could not see a lot, even with his night vision. Long columns of uneven stone rose up even farther than the light of the globe could illuminate, giving the room a sense of enormity that surprised him. He could see the beginning of arches in spots, but the base and peaks were outside the light.

  Throughout the room, a series of twenty foot tall pillars stood in even rows. Each of these four-sided blocks was covered with the thin symbols Estin had long ago seen on the Turessians and those who followed them. Whatever this place was, it had some kind of significance to the Turessian people.

  Atall turned slowly in place, throwing his arms out wide.

  “This was all I found,” he told Estin and Lorne. “It might mean something, but I can’t read anything on those stones. I hoped maybe you could.”

  Estin walked past his son, letting his fingers brush the surface of the nearest stone. The whorls and sharp edges of the symbols stood out as clearly as their matches did in Estin’s mind, tattooed on the faces of those who had killed people close to him.

  Deep in the back of Estin’s memories, he recalled the book Arturis had kept, with its mention of finding something in the desert. Seeing the symbols up close made Estin wonder if this just might be it.

  One pillar after another, Estin went slowly around the room. The engravings were no more readable to him than the faces of the Turessians he had fought, but still he walked, trying to make sense of the place.

  Coming up on a single much wider pillar that stood central among the others, he stopped as his fingers slid across its smooth surface. Though all of the other pillars were in even rows, this one stood entirely alone.

  “Why is this one side blank?” Estin asked, turning to face the bare stone face. Around the edges and on the other sides, the runes continued, but on that one side, it was completely flat. “Did you do something to this one?”

  Atall shooed the kits aside as he came over. Squinting at the stone, he put his palm against the surface.

  “It’s magical,” the boy noted, looking around. “I’m not sure how I overlooked that.”

  Estin searched the flat area for some indication of its purpose, but it was as completely smooth as though it had been polished. Moving his fingers closer to the edges, he looked over the elaborate carvings that created a solid trim of glyphs. It looked as though the stones had been etched only near the edges, and then the sculptor stopped.

  A quick check of the other pillars showed Estin that the symbols there were spaced apart, but on this one, they created a thin line along the edges. Once he knew what he was looking for, he could see the distinct shape of a door, if one were to trace the inner edge of the symbols.

  Closing his eyes briefly, Estin focused his mind, letting the voices come. Shifting his mind toward the magic that flowed through him, he opened his eyes again, seeing what Atall had mentioned about the magic in the pillar.

  Dim blue-white hints of magical energy glowed in his altered vision, illuminating most of the pillar, though the thin groove that ran along the edge of the symbols was dark. This line he traced with his eyes, until he found one symbol that was as dimly-lit as the doorway’s edge.

  “Think it’ll get us killed if I can open it?” Estin asked, blinking away the spell. To his eyes, the glow faded away.

  “Does it matter?” inquired Atall, smirking. “What would Feanne have told you to do?”

  “Leave it alone.”

  Atall nodded, then slapped Estin on the shoulder. “We both know what you would do anyway.”

  Estin grinned, knowing Atall was right. Acting on his son’s thoughts, he reached out and pressed the single small symbol that had appeared different. This fang-shaped sigil clicked faintly as he touched it.

  The two of them stood there, waiting for some change in the stone, but nothing happened.

  “Was it supposed to do something?” asked Lorne, trying to walk toward them, but unable to because of the three kits clinging to her skirt.

  Estin glanced over at
Atall, who shrugged back.

  A faint grinding creak behind them preceded a shriek from Lorne and squealing giggles by the kits.

  When Estin turned, he saw Lorne disappear as the floor tilted away beneath her, sliding her and the kits into a room below. A plume of dust and Lorne’s vanishing tail were the last things he saw until the dust cleared, revealing a steep ramp down into darkness.

  Atall looked from the ramp to Estin, and then shrugged.

  “I would have pressed the button too,” he noted, then walked over to the ramp.

  Stepping carefully onto the angled stones, Atall began picking his way down. The glowing ball followed him, drawing long shadows with its departure and sweeping Estin into deepening darkness.

  Estin followed Atall down, hurrying after the boy, while trying to maintain his balance. Not for the first time in his life, he wished his feet were shaped more like humans’, which would have given him more stability on the smooth descent. Instead, he had to depend on the length and weight of his tail to counterbalance himself.

  At the bottom of the long ramp, which descended more than fifty feet, Atall was helping Lorne to her feet, while the kits bounced up and down, demanding to slide down again.

  “Dad,” Atall called up to Estin as he neared the bottom, “we found something important here.”

  Even with the light drifting aimlessly near Atall, Estin had to squint to make out the details of the long room before him. At first, he thought he was looking at another chamber like the one above, but instead of the carved pillars, here there were long stone coffins, set into rows that continued far back into the room.

  Atop each coffin, flowing sigils like those on the pillars above covered much of the stone lid. Those carvings glowed faintly, giving the room an eerie depth as the rows of coffins continued far past what Estin could see.

  “A Turessian tomb?” asked Atall, as Lorne backed toward the ramp.

  “I don’t sense undead here,” Estin replied, drawing first one sword and then the other. “Still, it could be.”

  “I know the stories about Turessians,” Lorne spoke up, sounding very near panic. “They’re from the north. Not here. Why would they be here? Why are we here?”