“Are you enjoying yourself, and learning anything?” asked Dray-Gon of the princess, after he had waited outside of her wagon, until she was ready to be helped into bed.
“Yes,” she said sleepily, curling up on her side, and snuggling her face on her folded arm, so that lying there, she was all soft curves without an angle unpleasing. “I am finding out that men are very strange creatures. Beneath all my fine, rich, young noblemen, there is a primitive animal.”
“I believe you are right,” answered Dray-Gon softly. Then he leaned and pressed his lips on hers. “Good night, my princess, and I’ll be in first thing in the morning to awaken you in the same way—for I wouldn’t want you to get hung up on the closet door again.”
“Do you dream at night of your servant girl?” she asked with her eyes closed. He swore softly. “What do you know about her?” he demanded.
Her eyelids fluttered open. “Palace gossip—didn’t I tell you they know everything?”
The look he gave her was solemn and long before he stood. “Yes, Sharita, I dream of her, and think of her often during the day. She has something very sweet that you don’t have—and you have something she doesn’t have…”
“Yes, I know what it is,” Sharita agreed. “I have behind me a throne, a kingdom, and great wealth, plus power unlimited. I suspect when you look at me, that is all you see—and that is all you want.”
Angry red color flooded his face. “Sharita! I could wring your pretty neck! Before this trip is over, I suspect you are going to goad me so much, I am going to make a certain part of your anatomy black and blue!” And with that, he suddenly reached and smacked hard that certain part of her anatomy—so hard she cried out, “How dare you do that? Don’t you ever touch me again unless I order you to!”
“My princess, you are going to be forced to order me to touch you! You won’t see me tomorrow in here. I’ll send Doctor Benlon to assist you in whatever you need—maybe he will please you more!”
The door of her wagon slammed hard behind him, before she could say anyone would please her more. The key was turned in her lock…then she looked to see he had taken her key too—so she was locked in! A prisoner! And the trapdoor under the rug was of no use…for the same door key unlocked that too!
Two days later the broken clay doll appeared mysteriously on her bed, restored as good as new. She had to look very closely to see the faint lines where it had been joined together.
5
The Journey Hardens
Keeping his promise, or threat, Dray-Gon stayed out of Sharita’s wagon. It was Doctor Benlon who came to help her to the small bath, to bring her clothes, to help her tidy the wagon, which had grown into a terrible mess, for she knew little about doing for herself. He helped with her breakfast, with her lunch, and carried her to the dinner table in the evenings. Dray-Gon only nodded coolly when he saw her.
The princess was hotter, dirtier, and more uncomfortable than she had ever been. Her muscles pained, her very bones ached from the constant jolting, for she insisted on riding a horshet, instead of being alone all day in the wagon. When she sat, she hurt. When she stood, her ankle throbbed. Yet, in some ways, she was like the men; she had never been happier, or felt more fulfilled. The Mountain was before them, no closer than before, but it was there, a goal, a promise, and a reason.
And in her small, private kitchen, she was learning to cook. She made special dishes, and sent them out to the men with her compliments. No chef anywhere ever received more praise, except from Dray-Gon. He said nothing.
On the fifth day in Bay Sol, the bright day sky darkened into brackish brown. The sands lifted in the strong winds, so the twin shining orbs in the sky faded into obscurity. Small whirlwinds twisted the sands into funnels. In haste, the drivers of the wagons turned them into the planned formation, and gathered in all the straggling animals. The wheel shields were lowered, and the pointed roof raised. Then they waited.
Flying, spiraling sand beat upon their improvised shelter. In minutes they would have been covered and buried beneath the sand, but for the foresighted vision of the planners of this expedition. Hundreds of tiny, whirring vibrators sluiced the sand from the shelter, preventing it from settling heavily. None of them had experienced a sandstorm like this in the very heart of Bay Sol. They didn’t know what to expect—or how long it would last. If it lasted too long, they could run out of oxygen.
With the noise of the machines, the vibrators, the winds driving the sands, they couldn’t hear themselves speak. They sat in silence, huddled with the horshets and the puhlets, to give the animals comfort and to comfort themselves. Sharita put her arms around a special puhlet that she had made her pet, and buried her face deep in the sweet-smelling smoke-blue fur. She thought of her great-great-grandfather, Baka and his wife, Lee-La. She thought of Far-Awn, and how he had risked his life out here just to follow where the puhlets led. She raised her head and gazed into the soft, liquid, plush-purple eyes that looked so sadly into hers. Why did all animals except mankind look sad? Could she ask the Gods that when she met them? “Cannot you smile, or ever feel happy?” she murmured to the small, delicate female puhlet she called Ramaran. She put a kiss on the nose of the puhlet.
Someone sighed behind her in the sudden silence of the storm. She looked behind her to see Dray-Gon leaning against her wagon, his thumbs hooked into his belt. Their eyes met and clung, as the others shouted out the storm was over! Hooray! “Have you ever heard such a racket?” someone asked.
“No!” replied someone else. “It was like thunder from the Gods sent to herald our coming!”
The welcome relief of silence from the noise that had battered their ears for hours sent them all into an exhilarated, happy mood. Dray-Gon ordered the protective shields lowered and tucked away, so they could continue on toward the Mountain. Now they could look beyond their wagons and see the high, sloping walls of sand that encircled and entrapped them. However, no one panicked, for this event had been anticipated, and huge fans were attached to the tops of the wagons so they could blow and scatter the sands ahead, and make a level road for the wagons and animals to travel.
While the fans blew, several men brought out musical instruments and began to play and dance with each other. Sharita sat on the step of her wagon, her feet itching to dance too, as she kept time to the music by tapping her good foot. After the dancing, Arth-Rin began to sing a love song, sad and wistful and full of dreams as he cast his eyes shyly from time to time at Sharita. She knew at home in her father’s desk was Arth-Rin’s written proposal, put aside for “due consideration.” Somewhat embarrassed by the song so obviously addressed to her Sharita turned her head to meet again Dray-Gon’s eyes. He was close enough for her to ask in a low voice, “Do you always have to stand around staring at me? Look somewhere else!”
His lips quirked. Not smiling, or frowning. “How many of these men are in love with you, Sharita?”
She didn’t like it when he looked so hard and savage, so she turned her eyes on Arth-Rin, who was now just strumming his instrument. “Every man here—with the exception of you,” she answered.
“It must make you feel very elevated to be so admired and wanted.”
“Not particularly. Not one of them wants me for myself, only for the high position I hold.”
“I think you underestimate yourself, Sharita. If you were but a scullery maid, your beauty would make any man love you.”
She turned her gaze on him again, feeling disappointed. “Beauty can be admired…it’s not necessarily lovable.”
“There may be logic in that, but I would choose a flower over a weed any day.”
Squarely she looked him in the eyes. “Then why isn’t your formal proposal of marriage in my father’s desk along with the others?”
He laughed as he came closer and fell on the step at her side, sprawling his legs before him. “If ever I should propose to you, Sharita, it won’t be through your father. I’ll ask you directly, when I find out if there’s some fire beneath all t
hat ice. Your hot temper doesn’t signify too much, since we all have a great deal of that, and your mother was from Bari-Bar. Every time I remind myself of that, my feelings for you cool off, for I don’t want to go through my life arguing with a woman who hurls and throws every object in the house she can pick up.”
The face of the princess flamed with angry color. “I suppose your servant girl told you that,” she stormed, glaring at him. “When I’m back at the palace, I’ll have her fired!”
“By the Gods—everyone told me you were pale and insipid like your hair coloring, and with me, you are in a constant state of temper! You must bleach your hair. I’m sure if I looked, I would find fiery red roots—like your mother’s!”
“Don’t talk to me about odd hair coloring—look at yours! Almost black it’s that dark—and your skin, it’s not green at all, but bronze!”
“I am just sitting here wondering,” Dray-Gon said in a musing way, ignoring her ire as if it mattered not in the least, “just what sort of children you and I would produce…something very strange, probably.”
Stunned in disbelief, Sharita’s eyes widened. He was a savage—a barbarian! The cultured people of the upper borderlands never spoke openly of such things: only behind closed bedroom doors did they speak of reproduction. Then Dray-Gon was laughing at the expression on her face, calling her “a prude.” “Don’t we have the same background and heritage? Farmers all, princess. Breeders of animals! Dirt-dobbers spreading manure! Only lately have we begun to think of ourselves as intellectuals and scientists. Once all a man and woman had to do as a marriage ceremony was declare their love for each other in front of two parents. To my way of thinking, that’s enough. Or better yet, lovers could say it only to each other—and then do what comes naturally.”
Sharita jumped to her feet and hobbled into her wagon, slamming the door. Dray-Gon was still laughing as he walked away.
When enough of the wall of sand ahead was scattered before the strong gusts from the fans, once more they traveled on, with Dray-Gon and two of his friends leading the way on horshetback.
“I really can’t understand why the planners of this fool expedition didn’t give us sky-flitters to ride in,” complained Raykin. “Here we are with wagons pulled by horshets, with a flock of puhlets—it all reeks disgustingly of old El Sod-a-Por!”
Dray-Gon laughed before he began his explanation. “I told you to quit playing around with the girls and attend the lectures, or else you would know all the answers. One windy storm alone, and the sand would clog the motor of a sky-flitter or air-cart. That is, if we could fly long enough to experience a storm, this dry air would evaporate our fuel almost immediately.”
“Ah, come on, we have a liquid to prevent evaporation. Even I know that.”
“We do, yes, but added to our fuel out here, it would freeze overnight.”
“You mean, they actually did know what they were doing when they sent us out? I thought this journey was just a political maneuver to get the king out of a tight spot.”
“I believe there are some political motivations involved too,” agreed Dray-Gon as he took off his hat and fanned his flushed face, mopping perspiration from his brow, “but primitive as this transportation is, the horshets do have endurance—whereas the sky-flitters caught in this desert air would fly apart under the stress.”
Arth-Rin was riding to the left of Dray-Gon, and he grinned wickedly, teasing. “Well, I am surprised, Dray-Gon. You did learn something all those weeks you spent in the palace with the scientists and planners. Suspicious old me, I thought you hung around there only as an excuse to be near the princess.”
He was given a scornful look. “Do I need an excuse for wanting to live? Why do you think I was appointed captain? I never missed a meeting. I wanted to learn all there was to know, and learn if we really did have a chance of surviving this trip!”
“And of course the beautiful princess had nothing to do with it?” asked Raykin, also mopping his dripping face.
Turning in his saddle, Dray-Gon looked backward toward the wagon where the princess rode, for she had succumbed to the constant heat, and Doctor Benlon had ordered her to stay in her wagon with the cooling machine turned on. “She has everything to do with it,” he answered simply. “If I hadn’t found out we have a slight chance of surviving, I would have kidnapped her, and hidden her away in a cave until her father came to his senses! Keeping her alive is more important to me than finding out what happened that night in Bari-Bar.”
“And then there would have been a civil war, for sure!” stated Raykin gravely. “Whenever I think of the madness of this trip, I think of the alternative, and I think too of how silly we all were, squabbling over trifles all these years. You’re not so bad a captain, Dray-Gon, considering you’re a Lower.”
“And you’re not so bad a lieutenant, Raykin—considering you are only an Upper, accustomed to spending your days with your nose stuck in a book.”
“You think that’s easy? To my way of thinking, this trip is easier than passing an exam! Try it sometime, Dray-Gon!”
“I have tried it,” Dray-Gon said drily. “A long time ago, I got the notion in my head I was traveling north—on my way to being the husband of the most gorgeous female that exists, and she wouldn’t be too impressed with a country bumpkin who didn’t know how to express himself.”
Now both his companions broke into laughter, recalling his first appearance at the ball, when he had stood inarticulate, and shuffling, unable to speak. Behind them, the whole line of riders started laughing, for words carried easily in the dry clear air—and all knew Dray-Gon had made a fool of himself that night.
The princess in her wagon had briefly opened a window, and heard the laughter, and wondered what was so funny. She felt light-headed and rather woozy, and went again to lie on her bed, wishing for the first time that she were back in the palace, snug in her beautiful apartment. Soon her father would enter, and smile at her in that special way he had of showing his love. If she didn’t return, he would die.
Twenty days passed, and eleven storms they survived. And then the white, sharp, and glistening sands of Bay Sol ended abruptly!
The riders of the horshets drew together, startled! It had been presumed the desert would go on until they reached the Scarlet Mountains, and look what was before them! Something totally unexpected and unplanned!
Spread before them was a jet-black, rocky, and pitted terrain, crusty, like it had been charcoaled. Strange twisted things, like trees that had died a million years ago and turned to stone, projected grotesquely from the ebony encrustation. The bleached skeletons of those stone trees pleaded with white bony fingers, as if for mercy, toward an unseeing, uncaring, indifferent sky. Mammoth craters pitted the black ground. Some of the cavern bowls seemed large enough to swallow several cities like Far-Awndra, and still have room for more. Whispers of wind spiraled up black dust in small funnels, so they appeared to be shadow figures walking…it shivered the spine to see the black ghosts of day.
“How are we going to travel over that?” asked Raykin, a queer, scared note in his voice.
Dray-Gon swung a leg over his horshet, and jumped to the ground; running forward, he tentatively put his foot on the black crusty surface. It crackled beneath his boot, and he was holding back his full weight. The ground seemed hollow beneath the top surface, yet when he dared to step fully upon it, he sank down only a few inches and stood on something solid. He sighed in relief. Yet, how could the wagons travel over such a surface? As he crunched along, sinking down sometimes to ankle depth, other times to his knees, he envisioned falling through into a bottomless pit.
“By the Gods, Dray-Gon, take care!” called his friend, Arth-Rin, and he heard other voices adding their cries.
“It’s all right,” he called back. “The ground is hollow beneath the top surface, but here and there are hard veins of stone…narrow, but we could keep to them single file, riding on the horshets.”
He turned and went back to the white san
d, shifting, but more dependable than the ebony earth ahead. “We will have to abandon the wagons and load what supplies we can on the backs of the horshets. The puhlets can support a sling of water bags.”
The men turned their eyes on the high Green Mountain beyond the treacherous black ground, half-hidden by the Scarlet Mountains…and it was only a fraction closer. Closely Dray-Gon studied their expressions. Already they were swamped with fatigue, with burning eyes from looking too long at white sands under two glaring suns, with skins lacerated and cut from winds incessantly blowing. For a brief moment a sense of hopeless frustration against what seemed insurmountable obstacles left Dray-Gon as silent as every other man. “Mount your horshets,” he commanded, “and we’ll ride back and tell the princess.”
“What about the princess?” asked Benlon, the only one with medical training. “She has just recovered from that sprained ankle, and she is running a slight fever from heat exhaustion. We can’t take her with us across that black land.”
“Of course we can’t,” Dray-Gon said in a firm voice. “We’ll leave her here. You, Benlon, can stay and take care of her, along with three other men.”
“She’s not going to like that,” said Arth-Rin, “and neither are the planners of this journey. We are all supposed to reach the Gods!”
“Now look,” said Dray-Gon, turning to stare hard into the face of each man, “if we leave four men here, two Uppers, and two Lowers, we will still be equally proportioned when we reach the Mountain. And we don’t have to tell those people in Far-Awndra that we left the princess here along with four of our men. Do you want to risk her life just to satisfy a nation that doesn’t know what we’re doing anyway?”
A vote was taken. The princess and four men would be left with the wagons until the remainder of the men, sent on ahead, returned after seeing and talking to the Gods.
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