by Chuck Black
Quinlan stared at her, dumbfounded. “Surely you jest,” he said, but Lilam’s face was serious. “That just isn’t something I can do,” he added. “Besides, you have a family here and sheep to tend. You are too young to be on a mission just yet.”
Her eyes sparked. “I’ll be twenty next month—probably not much younger than you.”
She was right, Quinlan realized. She was older than she looked, nearly his own age. He shook his head and rubbed his neck, wondering how to convince her.
“It’s impossible, Lilam,” he said as gently as possible. “Surely your father would never allow such a thing.”
Lilam continued to plead with her eyes. “Before I became a Knight of the Prince, I ached for purpose in my life. Now that I have found it and am called to fight for Him, I’m left to tend sheep. One more day here, and I think I shall—”
“Lilam!” a voice called from near the well where the skirmish occurred.
Lilam turned about and sighed. “I’m here, Father.”
A stocky gentleman with salt-and-pepper hair hurried toward them.
“What’s going on, Lilam? You’re supposed to be bringing the sheep in, and they are scattered all over the place.”
“Father, the brothers from Brouwer ranch attacked me and tried to take our well again,” Lilam said.
“What?” her father exclaimed. “Are you hurt? I knew I should’ve sent one of your brothers with you.”
Lilam placed her hands firmly on her hips. “I’m fine, but Yelton will be nursing a wound for a while.”
Her father shook his head. “I’m not surprised, daughter. But you’re lucky they didn’t do the same to you.”
“They tried, but this gentleman stepped in and sa—helped me. Father, please meet Sir—” Lilam turned to Quinlan with a look of embarrassment. “I don’t even know your name!”
“Quinlan, sir—pleased to meet you.”
The man took Quinlan’s hand. “Nelson’s my name. I’m indebted to you, sir, for helping my daughter. Will you join us for dinner this evening?”
“Yes,” Lilam said with a sly smile. “We insist on showing our gratitude. You simply must come for dinner.”
Quinlan glared briefly at Lilam. “I should really be on my—”
Nelson held up his hand. “I insist. You look like you could use a good meal anyway, son.” He turned and walked away, apparently expecting Quinlan to follow.
With a sigh, Quinlan gave in, and soon he was helping herd sheep back to a large ranch. “I should have listened to Taras,” he muttered to himself as he cleaned up for supper with Lilam and her family.
The meal was beyond superb—roast lamb, fresh greens, boiled potatoes, and baked apples—and the conversation was pleasant and noninvasive. Quinlan learned that Lilam was the third of eight children and that her two older brothers had just gotten back from selling some sheep in the city. He shared a little about his own home and thanked Lilam’s mother for a second helping.
Quinlan was surprised how comfortable he felt with the family—until one of the youngest brothers blurted, “Lilam says you’re a knight on a mission. Where are you going?”
Quinlan smiled at the lad. “North.”
Lilam looked at her father and her brothers.
“How far north?” her oldest brother asked.
Quinlan caught the subtle concern. “Far north,” he replied. “To Chesney Isle.”
At that, the family stopped eating—all except the nine-month-old. “What takes you up that far north?” Lilam’s father asked, breaking the silence.
“I’m not at liberty to say,” Quinlan replied. “Is there something I should be concerned about?”
Lilam looked him straight in the eye with grave concern on her face. “If you’re going to Chesney Isle, you’ll have to pass through the Dunes of Mynar. That’s a very treacherous land, especially near the Kang River.”
“Why’s that?” Quinlan asked.
“First, the land before the river is very dry,” she said. “Second”—Lilam hesitated and looked around the table at her family—“some say it is inhabited by sand monsters called penthomoths.”
“Penthomoths?” Quinlan didn’t care much for monsters. “Are we talking about creatures with long teeth and sharp claws? Poisonous perhaps?”
“No,” her older brother replied. “None of that.”
“How bad can they be, then?” Quinlan smiled to ease the tension. No one else smiled.
“We don’t really know what they look like,” Nelson said, “just that when they attack, tentacles come up from the sand and the victim disappears … forever.”
“And there are other critters, large and small, along the river that are just as dangerous,” Nelson said. “People just avoid that region.”
Quinlan swallowed hard. “I appreciate your warning, but I must travel there all the same. I’ll keep a sharp eye out.” He changed the subject, mostly for his own peace of mind, and before long the pleasantness of the meal was restored.
Quinlan found Lilam’s family delightful—so delightful, in fact, that he let himself be talked into spending the night. He drifted off to sleep in a soft bed and only woke up once with tentacles wrapped around his leg, but then they disappeared, and he was once more fast asleep.
THE DUNES OF MYNAR
Quinlan ended up staying three more days with Lilam’s family, enjoying a hospitable respite from his journey. Whenever possible during that time, Lilam enticed him to train her further with the sword and to talk of missions for the Prince. Quinlan thoroughly enjoyed himself but decided he’d best move on quickly before he became too comfortable there. Trying to disengage was like trying to remove a bandage from a wound, especially since he had come to know Lilam’s heart.
He left her with a promise to return some day and take her to join other Knights of the Prince in the southern half of the kingdom—if, and only if, her father gave his approval. Lilam sadly accepted his terms and allowed him to leave without too much grief.
After leaving the ranch and continuing his journey north, Quinlan gradually settled back into the mind-set of the warrior Taras had started training him to be. He frequently used the crystal coin to search for Shadow Warriors, but since leaving the Tara Hills he had seen none.
After about ten days of travel, Quinlan noticed a significant change in the landscape. The lush green plains gradually gave way to drier, more rugged terrain. Then one day he climbed to the ridge of a jagged hill and looked out over a bleak but strangely beautiful landscape. Starting at the base of the hill and stretching as far as the eye could see was a sea of sand piled up in shifting dunes, interrupted only by the occasional rock towers that jutted hundreds of feet into the air.
The towers varied in shape and diameter. Some were as large as forty to fifty feet across and solid from top to bottom, while others narrowed to just a couple of feet at the base and looked as if they might topple at any moment. In fact, Quinlan could see that a few of the towers had indeed fallen and were slowly being absorbed into the sea of sand below. On the tops and in natural alcoves in the sides of the larger towers sprouted green grass, shrubs, flowers, and even a few small trees—pleasing oases in the otherwise barren land.
Quinlan consulted his map and calculated he was only two or three days away from the coastal area opposite Chesney Isle. He wasn’t sure how he would actually reach the island but decided to trust Taras and continue following his instructions. He checked his supplies—conserving water would be an obvious priority—and slid down the hill to the Dunes of Mynar.
Quinlan soon learned that crossing a desert of shifting sand required a completely different manner of travel. At first he felt the sand would swallow him with every step, but he slowly adjusted to the way he had to walk. It was exhausting, though, and his progress was far slower than he had expected. He mentally allowed another day or two to make his destination and settled into observing the region.
A variety of animal life thrived in this strange habitat—lizards, brown snakes, crablike creatur
es, four or five different species of birds, and a myriad of fast-moving insects. One time he saw a wave of sand moving across the ground when there was no wind to move it. Whatever creature caused that seemed to be a master of subterranean motion.
The massive towers looked to be the cornerstone of life for the dune dwellers, providing both plant life for food and shade from the sun—for even this far north, the sand heated up quickly in the summer sun. Quinlan had to adapt his culinary tastes to his new environment. After learning how to capture and kill the brown snakes, those became his favorite meal.
The nights were chilly and filled with noises that sounded like calls from the throats of strange beasts. Lilam’s family’s warnings about the sand monsters lingered in his memory, so he made a point to spend each night in a sheltered alcove of one of the towers. As time passed, he was comforted to realize that large sounds often came from small creatures. One sound he couldn’t identify, however, was a trumpeted cry comprised of a steady bass pitch and successively higher treble pitches. The effect was quite eerie, especially since he heard it only after sundown.
One day when he was nearly two-thirds of the way through the desert, he traveled too late into the evening and could find no tower with alcoves within his climbing reach. When the light was nearly gone, he was forced to make camp on the sand near the base of a tower. With his dagger in hand and his sword close by, Quinlan tried to rest. The desert noises echoed around him, and sleep was slow to come, but eventually the weariness of the day pulled his eyes shut.
In the middle of the night, Quinlan had the strangest sensation that Tav was pulling on his leg, trying to wake him for the day’s work. He reached for the leg, but something held his arm down. Instantly he was jarred out of his sleep and into a nightmare of reality. Multiple snakelike tentacles had wrapped around his legs and arms and were slowly and silently pulling him down into the sand.
Quinlan tried to sit up; his heart was racing. In the dim moonlight, he could see another tentacle swishing around the air above him. He tried to avoid it, but he was pinned and sinking quickly. The tentacle felt for his torso, and he knew it would soon wrap around his neck and strangle him.
Quinlan screamed, but the steady pull on his body continued. He realized he was still clinging to his dagger, but he could not turn the blade far enough to reach the tentacle. His legs were going into the sand first and at an angle. He could no longer see his feet or knees.
He fought with all his might to free one of his arms, but the tentacles only tightened in his resistance. The floating tentacle found his neck and slowly began to curl around his throat. He felt something brush against his knife hand and realized it was yet another tentacle. He rotated his wrist, set the knife’s sharp edge against the tentacle, and sliced as deeply as he could.
All at once the tentacles jolted, and he heard a muffled cry below him. The tentacle wrapped around his neck released. So did the one around his knife hand.
Quinlan quickly rotated his body and sliced at the tentacle around his left hand. This time he had the power to cut deep into it. Instantly the pull on his legs stopped, and all of the tentacles released. Quinlan tried to climb out of the sand, but the ground shifted beneath him, and he felt as though he were falling into a funnel. Then, just a few feet away, the sand erupted like a geyser, and the air reverberated with the ear-piercing multitoned trumpet cry.
Quinlan crawled away on his back, but he could not move fast enough. In the faint moonlight Quinlan’s imagination filled in the sketchy details of a demon creature of nightmarish proportions. Though it was still partially imbedded in the sand, Quinlan could tell its body was at least as large as a horse, perhaps larger. The tentacles thrashed wildly in front of it. The creature trumpeted again as Quinlan tried desperately to free himself from the collapsing sand. He seemed to be falling closer and closer toward what he knew would be horrible jaws.
Finally Quinlan turned on his stomach and was able to crawl twice as fast. He could just see the glimmer of the moon off the edge of his sword in front of him. His fingers barely touched the hilt just as a tentacle wrapped around his leg. He fully expected a set of massive jaws to clamp down on him at any instant, but instead he was yanked into the air like a rag doll and thrown hard against the nearby rock tower.
The trumpet cry of the creature was the last thing he heard before all went black.
A FRIEND’S RESCUE
Quinlan blinked, but the sun seemed to burn holes in his eyes. His head throbbed, and his mouth was dry as cotton. Starting with his fingers, he slowly moved one appendage at a time, trying to decide if he was still a functional human being.
It took him a moment to even remember what had happened. As he recalled the events of the previous night, he became overjoyed that he was still alive, despite the pain that gripped every muscle and joint of his body.
Quinlan pushed himself to a sitting position and leaned carefully against the rock tower, vowing never again to fall asleep on the Dunes of Mynar.
Once Quinlan had recovered himself, his sword, and his dagger, he made use of the rest of the day to travel, making sure to allow enough time to find refuge in one of the tower alcoves. Now, when the night calls of the penthomoths filled the air, he shivered.
The next morning he climbed higher up the tower and spotted a river that snaked its way through the towers from the east, its banks green with vegetation. He could also see the coast and Chesney Isle in the distance.
Delighted that his journey was nearing an end, he climbed down and hurried in the direction of the river, determined to make it out of the Dunes of Mynar by nightfall. The sun seemed to travel much faster that day, however, and he was forced to spend yet another night in this bizarre land.
That evening, the howling of a strong wind added to the usual Mynar night sounds. Just as Quinlan was dozing off into sleep, a thunderous thump shook the ground and the tower where he lay. Not long afterward, he heard a penthomoth’s cry and shuddered. Then he heard another cry and another and another, all from the same direction. All through the night the creature trumpeted, keeping Quinlan from sleep.
By daybreak, the cries of the penthomoth were much less frequent, though they did not stop. This puzzled Quinlan, who had never heard that trumpet sound in the daylight. Climbing down from the tower, he set out toward the coast, eager to have his feet on solid ground once more. His northwesterly trek brought him closer to cries, which seemed to come from a point slightly ahead and to the right.
Just as he reached the place where the cry of the penthomoth was its loudest, the animal trumpeted once more, and the sound was almost like a plea. Quinlan stopped and looked toward his right, anxious to move on, but also compelled to find out what had happened. Perhaps he could safely get a better look at the terrifying monster that had nearly devoured him just three nights ago.
Quinlan veered off and carefully made his way toward the sounds of the monster. He quickly realized that he was traveling toward one of the fallen towers and that its toppling must have been what he heard during the night.
Quinlan studied the length of the prone tower ahead of him but saw nothing out of the ordinary. He ventured closer, carefully watching the sand for any movement. On its side, the width of the tower seemed much larger, still towering at least fifteen feet above him at places. The top half of the falling tower had splayed the sand out like a wave, forming a kind of valley around it. Large fragments of the stone spire had broken off and were strewn about the sand valley.
Quinlan made his way around the top end of the massive stone structure, where the soil, a couple of trees, and most of the vegetation had been uprooted and cast into the sand. Finally, on the other side of the tower, Quinlan spotted the source of the strange commotion. Down in the sand valley lay a large animal. One of its hind legs was pinned beneath a six-foot fragment of fallen stone.
The scattered sand gave evidence that the creature had tried for hours to dig its way out, but for some reason it had been unsuccessful. Now it lay on its s
ide, exhausted and perfectly still except for deep, ragged breaths.
Realizing the penthomoth could not see him from its current position, Quinlan ventured a little closer, gawking at one of the strangest creatures he had ever seen—though it wasn’t nearly the monster his imagination and the murky moonlight had made it out to be a few nights earlier.
The well-muscled body was the size of a large horse, with powerful legs angled so its body mass stayed low to the ground. The feet were wide and webbed, with large digging claws—clearly capable of moving buckets of sand in one swipe. The creature was hairless except for short, sand-colored fur covering its body and head.
The head, in fact, was what shocked Quinlan the most. What he had thought were tentacles were actually hairless trunks like that of an elephant, only more slender. Five of them waved from its face—one in the middle, bracketed by two short tusks, and two on either side. Quinlan looked into the open mouth for the rows of razor-sharp teeth he had imagined, but he saw only something resembling the teeth of a hound.
Having satisfied his curiosity about the animal, Quinlan turned to leave, but the penthomoth moaned a pathetic cry that tugged on his heart. He turned back, wishing now that he hadn’t come. He slowly descended into the sand valley and walked around the pinned animal, giving it a wide berth. When he came within its field of view, the animal lurched and tried to scramble to its feet, then cried out in pain. Blood oozed from its leg and into the sand around it.
Still six paces away, Quinlan knelt to get a better look. The animal gradually calmed and settled its head back to the sandy bed, the trunks moving only slightly. Its gold-colored eyes followed Quinlan as he crept closer, staying just beyond the reach of the trunks.
Dare I go any closer? he wondered, remembering the strength of those quirky appendages. When he could not muster the nerve to go closer, the penthomoth moaned and reached out with its center trunk. Quinlan tentatively reached out and touched it. The penthomoth moaned again, and Quinlan’s heart pounded. He fully expected the animal to grab him and eat him, but it didn’t. It lay still and allowed him to come even closer.