by Ben Galley
For some reason, Farden felt like he was being watched.
Every time he looked up, he could imagine eyes staring back at him from the stone. There was an uncertain air about the cliff and the mage didn’t like it one bit. He kept a hand on his sword, sneaking more than a few looks over his shoulder as he wandered. Imagination and dehydration hid behind rocks, or in hollows, and taunted him with little noises and shadows in the corners of his eyes. Farden grew tense and wary, and after a couple of hours he was once again ready to give up and go home. He took a swift rest against a craggy outcrop of sandstone and caught up with his breathing. Sweat bathed his brow.
Just as he was about to reach for his Weight, the mage noticed his boot had come undone in all the excitement. As he bent down to deal with it, he suddenly noticed a set of strange footprints in the sand, tracks that he could have sworn had not been there before. Farden could feel eyes suddenly creeping over his back, prickling him like spider’s claws.
Standing up very slowly, Farden drew his knife and calmly looked around. There was nothing there. The desert was as quiet as a barrow. His eyes flicked to the sand. The footprints disappeared around a small outcrop of rock to his left, and without hesitation Farden began to follow them. Magick started to wash around in his veins as his anticipation grew. The tracks led him a winding path past the outcrop and further along the face of the cliff, until his keen eyes picked out an opening a stone’s throw away. Farden looked around him, wary of a trap, and then carefully walked on.
The tracks stopped just before the opening and so did the mage. After a sharp intake of breath and with no further ado, Farden boldly stepped forward, sword held out in front of him like a torch in the dark.
He did not need it.
The opening was a large rift torn from the rock face. There had been a landslide sometime ago. The dislodged boulders and evicted stones had not fallen far, and instead had formed a strange sort of staircase that climbed up into the narrow fissure. A single shaft of bright sunlight shone from a gap above. Here and there a sprig or two of green poked out from between the rubble, signifying trickles of water hiding somewhere beneath the tumbled stone.
But the mage was not interested in the stones, nor the leaves, nor even the chance of water, instead he stared at a familiar figure sitting calmly and cross-legged on a lump of rock, not ten paces from him. The bright sunlight from above made the crystals of sand trapped in his clothes sparkle, like his eyes. His hair twitched in the hot breeze. He stared at the mage as though he were an amusing puzzle. Farden glared back, took a few tentative steps forward and waited for the faun to speak. Strangely, it didn’t say a thing. The goat-man simply let a strange smirk shuffle across his hairy lips. The silence was a little awkward. Farden quickly grew bored of it.
‘Why are you following me?’ asked the mage. The faun picked at his long nails and made a strange sucking noise with his teeth.
‘I could ask you the very same question,’ he replied, with a mysterious air.
Farden waved the sword at him. ‘I’m not in the mood for riddles. What do you want?’
‘Again, perhaps I should be asking you.’
Farden took another step forward. ‘I’ll ask you one more time…’ he began, but before he could finish the faun got to his feet and jumped down from his lump of rock. With a sandy thud he landed in front of the mage, a hairsbreadth from the tip of Farden’s sword. Farden didn’t flinch. The faun raised an eyebrow as the metal tickled his hairy chest. Farden didn’t move, and instead took in every inch of the strange animal in front of him.
The goat creature was tall, very tall indeed, and seemed to be mostly human from the waist up. His legs, as Farden had noticed before, were incredibly and unmistakably goatish, bending so the knees faced backwards. They were covered in dark bristly hair, and ended in black cloven hooves. The mage noticed how the hooves didn’t sink into the sand like his boots did. Desert magick, grimly surmised the mage. The faun’s shoulders were square, and his arms long and muscled. His clothing was simple and cheap: a long, pale brown jacket that reached past his knees, a ripped pair of moss-green trousers, and a red strip of cloth around his neck, like Farden’s scarf.
The faun’s leathery face was mostly obscured by a bushy black beard. It hung onto his cheeks and his chin like a storm cloud, dark and heavy. His eyebrows were black and equally bushy. His black hair was cut short and fell forward over his forehead. The rest of his face was punctuated with a long bulbous snout and his hairy lips framed a row of big, square teeth. Sprouting from the corners of his tanned and rugged forehead and curling around his pointy ears, was a pair of short gnarled horns like a goat’s.
There was something about his eyes, however, that captivated the mage, something that Farden couldn’t quite put his sandy fingers on. They sparkled like dusty sapphires hiding between black hedgerows of eyebrow and beard. The two stared at each other for what felt like a long while, each gauging the other’s intentions, assessing where to go from there.
Eventually Farden withdrew his sword, sheathed it, and crossed his arms. The magick in his veins died away, and he shrugged. ‘Well then, what now?’ he asked. The faun looked up at the sky and snorted loudly.
‘Breakfast,’ replied the faun in a deep, gruff voice. ‘We need to talk.’ He turned on his hoof and walked back to the rocks. Farden watched him as he bounded up the stair-like jumble of boulders with ease. The faun never used his hands, simply relying on his spring-like goat legs to leap from rock to rock.
Once the faun reached the top, he looked down at the mage with a shrug. ‘Are you hungry or not?’ he called. His voice echoed around the rift.
Farden nodded, even though “famished” would have been more appropriate. With a lack of choices yet again staring him in the face he set about following the goat-man up the rocks.
The climb didn’t prove as easy as the faun made it look, and it took the tired mage considerably longer to get to the top. Once there, he found the faun had disappeared, and while he slowed his laboured breathing Farden looked around. He was surprised to see how high up he was; from his vantage point he could gaze out over the shimmering dunes. Farden could still see the dark scar where the star had fallen, far in the hazy distance.
There was a trickling noise coming from somewhere, faint but unmistakable. The sound made Farden notice how dry his mouth was. Where had that blasted faun got to now? he wondered.
Turning his back to the desert, Farden moved to examine the apparently seamless rock face. Using his fingers, he quickly found a narrow lip of rock that curled in on itself, so that anybody looking at the cliff would be completely oblivious to its existence, even from a few feet away. Sucking in his chest, Farden squeezed his way inside and followed a narrow tunnel into the rock. He savoured the coolness of the rock, and banged his head more than once on the knobbly ceiling. Ahead of him in the gloom, someone was whistling.
Farden emerged into a low room that had been hollowed out of the sandstone, and was instantly confused by the warren of adjoining rooms and tunnels that surrounded him. He decided to follow the whistling, and followed it into another room that was wider and taller than the first and illuminated by two long windows facing what Farden assumed to be east. Vines and climbing plants formed the curtains. Their waxy leaves gave the sunlight a greenish tinge. A handful of orange blossoms bloomed between the leaves. A pale blue desert moth fluttered around one of them. It was odd seeing such vibrant life after days of desolate dune. It seemed alien, almost.
The remainder of the room was infested with clutter and strange piles of junk. Farden looked around at the odd things: the strange collection of gnarled tree branches in one corner, a tall stack of bright green paper, the pair of disproportionate dolls made from stone and clay that sat crookedly on a copper dish, the bookshelf made of old bones, and a box so covered in melted and congealed candle wax that it looked like one giant candle itself, the table made of wind-warped wood, a bundle of quillhog spines. And then there were the drawings.
Pages and scraps of parchment covered one entire half of the room. Most had been stuck to the stone wall, others were piled in precarious towers, some were strewn freely on the floor, but every single page was covered in ink-smudged drawings and sketches and notes and maps and essays. Brightly-coloured string held in place with little pins criss-crossed the pages on the wall like the threads of a spider’s web. Farden moved to have closer look. As he examined the plethora of diagrams and schematics and scrawled annotations that made utterly no sense to him, he heard hooves on the sandstone behind him. Farden turned to find the faun standing in the doorway bearing a plate of food in each hand. He smiled wryly. ‘Enjoying my drawings, mage?’ the faun enquired. The creature was obviously not whistling, but still the eerie noise continued. Farden wondered if it was the wind.
Farden nodded. The mage peered at a drawing of a man in armour, squinting at the notes and arrows that surrounded it. He plucked a length of string and watched it wobble. ‘I would be if I knew what they were,’ mumbled Farden. The faun said nothing in return. He simply stood there holding plates and watching the string wobble. A moment passed, a slightly uneasy one, before he moved to the wooden table. The copper plates hit the tabletop with a clank and the faun sat down, his back to the mage. Farden cast around for something to sit on. He didn’t fancy sitting on the candle-box, so he found an old barrel instead, and brought it to the table.
The “breakfast” as it were, was not like any breakfast Farden had ever come across. There was bread, though it was almost orange in colour, a medley of roots and leaves, and slivers of a grey meat which oddly enough smelled like fish. The mage was a little perturbed by the concept of how one got hold of fish so deep in the desert. Maybe it was poisoned, he thought ominously. But Farden’s stomach growled like a bear, and the faun was tucking in eagerly, so Farden ignored the strange colours and smells, picked up his fork, and followed suit. Thankfully, it didn’t taste as bad as it looked.
They ate in silence for a minute or so. The mage kept looking around. Something was still whistling. It was too tuneful to be the wind. ‘Do you live alone?’ he asked.
The faun didn’t look up but instead murmured around his mouthful of meat. ‘Sometimes,’ came the ambiguous answer.
‘Then what’s that sound?’ asked Farden, looking around for the source of the whistling noise.
‘Kettle,’ shrugged the faun.
The mage left the matter alone and got on with his weird breakfast. After a while, the faun pointed at him with his rusty fork. ‘How’s your sandworm?’
Farden stopped chewing. ‘My what?’
The faun nodded to the grey slices of meat on his plate. ‘Sandworm. They’re pretty hard to catch,’ he said, as if commenting on the weather. Farden’s stomach felt as though it was squirming, and he quickly pushed the grey meat to one side. There was no more talking until they had both finished, when Farden decided he wanted a few answers.
‘So why are you following me?’ the mage asked again.
‘I told you before, I’m not the one doing the following,’ replied the odd faun. He leant back in his chair and stretched. ‘You’re in my home, after all.’
Farden was not in the mood for riddles. ‘But you were at my campfire several nights ago,’ he countered.
‘I was passing through,’ said the faun. He drummed his long nails on the wooden tabletop while Farden tried to restrain his growing impatience. ‘Then what do I call you, besides faun?’ he asked. Trying to get answers from this faun was like manhandling a fat cow.
The faun shrugged once more. ‘It’s been a long time since I have been called anything,’ he said, a little wistfully, and then he pointed at the mage. ‘You meanwhile, I have watched you for weeks, walking here, exploring there. What are you looking for?’
‘A man.’
‘There are many different types of man, mage,’ said the faun sagely.
‘This one is elusive,’ replied Farden, narrowing his eyes at him.
‘So are ghosts. Are you so sure he exists at all?’
‘I know better than that.’
‘Like I said, if you can’t find something, then maybe it doesn’t want to be found.’
‘And like I said, I know better.’
The faun gazed out of the window and smirked, and launched into a story. ‘Many years ago there was a merchant from Galadaë, who for some reason developed the belief that there was a secret oasis beyond the dune sea. One day he told his friends, and they began to laugh, thinking he was joking. They laughed and they sniggered and in the end they told him he was a fool. But this merchant was a stubborn man and he refused to listen. He had a dream you see, and an honest one at that. His dream was to find this oasis and drive a road to it, to carve a new and prosperous city from the sands.
‘And so he packed his bags and left Galadaë for the dune sea. On his travels, not far from here, he met a faun, a faun who offered him a similar breakfast to the one you’re currently enjoying. I listened to his dream and afterwards I told him he was mistaken, of course, and that there was no such paradise beyond the dunes. After all, I should know. But still he shook his head, and no matter what I said he wouldn’t be dissuaded and remained convinced of its existence. So like a fool he wandered on into the dunes, despite my best efforts to convince him otherwise,’ said the faun.
‘And what happened?’ asked Farden, and in reply his host slowly raised a finger and pointed to the bleached bone of the bookshelf behind him. ‘A year later I found him, dryer than the sand itself,’ he said in an ominous tone. ‘Somethings don’t want to be found.’
Farden nodded, humming sombrely, and put his elbows on the table. ‘That’s a sad story, but I’m afraid its moral escapes me.’
‘Yes it is, and the moral is that you should listen to the people who know better. You can’t find what doesn’t want to be found, mage, and your magick can only keep you alive out here for so long.’
The mage shook his head. ‘But there’s one problem with that.’
The faun cocked his head to one side. ‘And what is that?’
‘When the people who think they know better actually know nothing at all,’ replied Farden, with a stubborn smile. ‘I know I’m right. This man is out there, and I think you know where he is.’
The faun sniffed and scratched the side of his beard. ‘Do you, now?’
Farden stared into the sapphire gems that were the faun’s eyes. Something flashed behind them. ‘I’m sure of it,’ said the mage.
‘Why, because you saw it in your dreams? Or because you followed a falling star?’
Farden sat back and crossed his arms once more. ‘It was a nut, actually.’
‘Whatever,’ he waved his hairy arms dismissively.
Farden got to his feet and brushed the dust from his clothing. ‘Well if you won’t help me, I must be heading off, I have an uncle to find,’ sighed Farden. He smiled politely, pushed aside his plate, and then turned to leave, but before he had barely taken a step the faun spoke up, suddenly rattled. ‘Your uncle is dead, Farden,’ he said.
The mage whirled around and fixed him with a venomous look. ‘And how would you know that?’ he demanded. The faun stood up and put his hands on the table.
‘There are many things I know, mage, many things that you don’t know, but should. Sit down, and listen to me. We need to talk.’
‘Why, so you can pass on whatever lies my pathetic uncle told you? Like Lafik?’ asked Farden, eyes dangerous. The faun opened his mouth to speak, a little shocked, found the words missing, and closed it again.
The mage sighed. ‘As I thought. The people who think they know better, actually know nothing at all. And here I was hoping you were different. Enjoy your sandworm, faun,’ he said, disappearing into the next room.
‘Listen to me!’ the faun shouted after him. ‘You will die if you keep searching!’
‘Then tell that to my uncle!’ came the echoing reply. And with that Farden left, leaving the faun alone in his strange w
arren to bite his lip, and wonder what to do next.
Farden wriggled his way out of the narrow rock opening and began to climb down the boulders. After the cool of the cave the desert air felt dry and hot on his face. He had come too far to believe that his uncle was dead. As he hopped from rock to rock he began to curse the lying faun and his riddles. The mage felt as frustrated as ever, and angry to boot.
Hours later he was trudging bitterly across the sands in a northerly direction, his cloak dragging behind him in the sand, gold Weight trapped in his fist, waiting for an excuse to be used. The sun was merciless and the dunes depressingly undulating. In the midday heat, walking was a constant battle, even for the mage. Up, up, and over, then down, only to fill his boots with sand. He muttered and looked behind him. Curving eastwards, the plateau of cliffs were a shimmering memory. He threw them a dirty look and carried on.
After another punishing hour, which infuriatingly felt more like three, Farden came across a sandy hollow between two steep dunes. Panting, the mage covered his eyes and looked down into the hollow, and to his relief he noticed a patch of shade at the bottom, where a pile of misshapen brown boulders lay half-in half-out of the sand, as if a giant had tossed them there one afternoon in a fit of boredom. and left them for the sands. Farden squinted at them, imagining legs and feet, arms and a head, poking out of the dune, waving at him. The mage shook his head; he needed shade. His brain was beginning to pickle.
Dragging his cloak behind him, he slid down into the narrow hollow. He picked his way through the deformed rocks and found a shady spot hiding in the slender shadow of the taller dune. The coolness was intoxicating. Farden slumped to the ground with a sigh, and kicked off his boots so his toes could breathe. A sharp pain suddenly flitted across his heel, and he sat up to investigate the cause, cursing. A blister had burst at the back of his foot and was now an angry red sore. A single spot of blood dripped from his heel to the sand and vanished between the tiny grains. ‘Bastard,’ swore the mage. Farden pulled a face and tore a strip from his cloak to bind the wound, but just as he did so the ground trembled. Farden flinched, confused, and looked up, half-expecting to see another star falling from the azure sky. But the skies were clear, and as empty as they had always been. The ground shook again, rumbling and yawning, and very quickly the dune began to crumble.