Honor and Blood

by James Galloway

  He raised a paw, extended one finger, and showed her one of his long, wicked claws. "Would you like some?"

  "Uh, no."

  "Then go away," he said dismissively, but the command was unmistakable in his voice.

  Denai said nothing more. She turned her back to him and walked away, rejoining Sarraya near a small fire she had made to cook whatever crawly thing she had managed to spit on her dagger. There were certainly enough crawly things out here. The land was relatively flat, with clumps of strange brush or tough weeds here and there, scattered across the dusty ground. The dirt had a strange reddish tint to it, and it was loose and compliant to the touch. It was actually quite soft. There were very few stones out here, and the ones that were here were very small. He had the sneaking suspicion that they were only here because sandstorms had picked them up and placed them out here. The vegetation could support life, but nothing on the scale of an inu, sukk, or kajat. Most things out here were small and scuttling. Lizards, bugs, spiders, a few mice, from the smell of things. He did smell some residual scent from a bird of some kind, and there was a faint trace of what smelled like some kind of canine, though. The grayish color of the ground to the west hinted that things were a little different over there, but that could also be the heat-haze rising up from the baking ground to distort the far landscape.

  "Here," Denai said. Tarrin looked in that direction, and saw Denai and Sarraya hunching over something on the ground. "This is a zubu. That means slow walker. It's one of the common spiders in this region."

  "Is it venomous?"

  "Sarraya, everything in the desert is venomous," Denai said with a little chuckle. "My people have all but become immune to poison, with as many poisonous things out here that bite or sting us." She pointed down. "Zubu aren't really dangerous unless you annoy them. They're very gentle. Some of my people even keep them as pets."

  "Are they deadly if they do bite?"

  "Very," she replied. "Their poison is almost as potent as an umuni."

  "Isn't it a bit strange to keep a spider for a pet that can kill you if it gets annoyed?"

  "What better pet to have?" she countered. "I'll guarantee that you'll never take a zubu for granted. It's a responsibility that you'll never dismiss."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Zubu get short-tempered when they're hungry," she answered. "The best way to keep a zubu happy is to keep it well fed."

  "Oh. I get it," she mused, then she laughed. "What do they eat?"

  "Anything that they can bite," she replied in a light tone. "They seem to prefer jumping mice and digger-beetles, though."

  "It's pretty big for a spider."

  "Yes, it's one of the larger breeds of spiders in the desert," Denai agreed. "It's not very fast, so it relies on camoflage to protect itself. And since it is so venomous, few predators will try to kill one unless they're very hungry."

  "If they're not so fast, how do they catch mice?"

  "Zubu are great hunters," Denai answered. "They track down the mice and attack them in their burrows, where the close quarters keeps them from getting away. Some also hunt by staying very still in a place that's well-travelled. They move slowly, but they can move very fast in a short jump. They use that to spring on unwary prey from ambush. If something can evade that spring, they'll get away from it, because it can't move quickly."

  "Some of the spiders I know do the same thing," Sarraya told her. "We call them jumping spiders."

  "That is what zubu do," she affirmed.

  Tarrin rose to his feet, swishing his tail a few times, then turned his back to the pair of curious women and looked towards the west. He drank from the skin that Denai gave to him, finding the water to be somewhat stale and hot, but that was normal for water in the desert. The noontime heat hid the far distant from his eyes, hiding it behind the shimmering haze caused by the hot ground, but he could still make out a single rock spire not too far away from them. He was primarily looking for sandstorms, but he'd come to discover that it was rare for a storm to kick up during the midday heat. The winds that fueled them died down during the hottest part of the day. Only the big storms that came off the Sandshield rumbled across the desert in the midday hours.

  "You done?" Sarraya asked, coming up from behind and hovering just beside his head.

  "Guess so," he replied. "No luck, though."

  "I sorta expected it," she told him. "As soon as we eat, we can move on. Are you hungry?"

  "Not really," he told her.

  Denai came up on the other side of him, rather close. It concerned him a little that she would get so close to him, but she didn't seem to notice. "That's the Lone Spire," she said, pointing to the singular rock spire in view. "It's a landmark. We're only about a day from the Great Canyon. Do you want to see it?"

  "What do you mean?" Sarraya asked.

  "It's a little out of the way, but it's very beautiful," she replied. "If you're curious, we can turn west and see it, then just follow the edge to where we can cross."

  "We're not here to sightsee," Tarrin told her gruffly. "I have to cross the desert as fast as I can. That's the only reason I'm bringing you along, girl. If I'll lose time, then I'm not going that way."

  "It was just a suggestion, Tarrin," she said mildly. "If you don't want to go, that's fine."

  "How soon will we reach it if we go the other way?" Sarraya asked.

  "About two days, but what you'll see there is nothing compared to what's that way," she said, pointing west. "It's still a formidable canyon where we're going to cross, but there are paths to get down the canyon walls. Over that way, it's just a cliff."

  "How long is this canyon?" Tarrin asked curiously.

  "If you're down at the base, it takes three days to run from one end to the other," she told him. "But that's if it was an easy run. The canyon floor is a maze of fallen rocks and rough terrain. It takes alot longer than that."

  "What made it?"

  "Nobody really knows," Denai answered. "There are smaller canyons in the desert made by old rivers that dried up, but the Great Canyon doesn't look the same as them."

  No river made it. It sounded curiously like the Scar, the rift in northern Sulasia, only this one was considerably larger. Considerably.

  "Your people go down there alot, Denai?"

  "Oh, no," she replied. "It's a hunting ground for inu and kajat, the same as the Maze of Passages. The faster we start up the other side, the safer we'll be."

  "There's enough food down there for them to survive?"

  "Water pools in the deeper areas of the canyon," Denai told her. "The water supports plants, and those support enough prey for them."

  "How wide is it where we're crossing?"

  "About a morning's run," she replied.

  "A morning run?" Sarraya asked in shock. "It has to be longspans across!"

  "I don't know exactly, but it's pretty wide," she replied. "Wider there than most other places. My father thinks that the width of the canyon there has to do with the fact that its walls aren't so steep."

  Now he was getting curious. But it was a curiosity that would be satisfied in two days, when they got there.

  "Come on, I'm hungry," Sarraya said. "Those cakes are getting cold."

  "What a strange thing to say," Denai chuckled as they left Tarrin.

  After the meal, they started out again. Tarrin again instructed Sarraya in the Sha'Kar language, and Denai paced him step for step. They moved from the sparsely vegetated area into a thickly grown region, the plants half-buried in deep sand and dust. A sandstorm had passed through in recent days, leaving the area nearly submerged in sand.

  "How do the plants survive?" Sarraya asked as the other two ran.

  "They're used to being buried," Denai replied from behind her. "They go dormant until the winds blow away the sand."

  "Makes sense," Sarraya shrugged.

  The afternoon wind kicked up as the sun began to set, and it was particularly fierce. Tarrin and Denai had to turn their backs to it as it assaulted
them in the face, but Sarraya used her Druidic magic to repel the blowing sand and dust.

  "This is almost as bad as a sandstorm!" Tarrin said in annoyance.

  "It's just the evening wind," Denai told him. "It'll die down after sunset."

  "Then let's find some shelter. I don't think a tent will stand up in this," Sarraya called.

  They found something that was almost a cave in a broken spire, a hollowed-out niche protected from the winds by the fallen top half of the rock column, forming an isolated courtyard of sorts covered by soft sand. Sarraya conjured up wood for a fire as Tarrin hung up a leather sheet at the narrow side of the enclosure to break up the wind funneling through it. Denai had left them to find something to eat, but returned moments after Tarrin got the fire going with an umuni dangling from her hand. It had a small puncture wound in the top of its head, probably from Denai's dagger. He'd seen that she was deadly accurate when she threw it.

  "I didn't think those things were edible," Tarrin said to her. "They don't smell like they are."

  "Smell? They're edible, so long as you don't eat the head," she told him. "Why wouldn't they smell edible?"

  "Remember what I told you, Denai?" Sarraya reminded her.

  "Oh, yes. Well, they're edible. Not very tasty, but the sandstorm that buried the plants made all the animals I'd rather eat move on until the sand blows off. I could use a chisa right now. Even a sukk or a goat."

  "You can keep it," Sarraya said as she used her Druidic magic. Several large apples, a pile of berries, and a few tomatos appeared on the sand in front of her. "I conjured up extra for you two. It'll stretch out that lizard meat in a meal."

  "What are these?" Denai asked, picking up a tomato. "And where did they come from?"

  That Denai wasn't too surprised to see them wasn't itself a surprise. She had seen Sarraya--and even Tarrin--Conjure more than once since she joined them, and he had the feeling that Sarraya explained that to her while he was sleeping. Denai knew that they were both shaman.

  "They're called tomatos," Sarraya answered. "And they're from wherever they were when my magic picked them up. Try it, you might like it."

  Denai bit into the tomato, and was a bit startled when its juices dribbled down her chin. Then she laughed. "It has its own water!" she said in delight. "It's good. Tangy. My people like food with tang." She took another bite. "You can make anything you want appear?"

  "Within reason," Sarraya answered. "I couldn't move a mountain, but I can conjure up just about anything I want to eat."

  "Even water?"

  "Even water," she affirmed. "But it doesn't just appear. It's borrowed from where it used to be, and appears here. These fruits were all probably sitting on some tree or vine somewhere. When I conjure water, I take it from somewhere else. But don't worry, I'm careful to conjure a special type of water that doesn't exist in the desert," she said quickly. "That way I'm not depleting the wells of your people."

  "There's lots of water here, Sarraya," Denai said dismissively. "You just have to know where to look for it, that's all." She motioned out towards the massive fallen rock pillar. "All those plants out there don't live on air, you know."

  "I've been wondering about that," Tarrin said gruffly from where he was finishing tying down the leather, at the top of the fallen rock. "I've seen way too many plants and not nearly enough water."

  "He does pay attention," Sarraya teased, then she laughed. "I've sensed several underground rivers here, but they're very deep. There's alot of water in the desert, but it's all deep underground. I'll bet those plants have roots that are a hundred spans long, to reach down into that groundwater."

  "Those roots probably keep them from getting blown away in storms," Tarrin added.

  "Root fiber is what we use to make ropes," Denai told them. "And some clothes. It's very tough."

  "It would have to be," Tarrin said, dropping back down to the sand. "So, if we dug a well, we'd eventually hit water."

  "Eventually," Sarraya agreed. "It would have to be a really deep well."

  "Our clan-holdings have wells," Denai told them. "Some of them go down so far that you can't climb out. The ropes for the buckets could loop around buildings a couple of times."

  "So, the Selani do know about the water," Tarrin mused. "Makes me wonder why they don't just dig deep wells and make permanent houses."

  "Because our herds would eat all the plants," Denai told him. "We go where the foraging is best. There are oases out there, and our shaman can create water when the need is very great. But they won't do that unless there's no other choice. The Holy Mother forbids it, except in emergencies."

  "That sounds a little mean," Sarraya said disapprovingly.

  "Not at all," Denai said. "Our Holy Mother wants us to be strong, and be able to survive without her. She won't let us depend on her, but she will be there when we need her help. If we depended on the Holy Mother for water, we'd forget how to find it for ourselves."

  "Well, I guess so," Sarraya said. "But I still think it's mean."

  "Well, let's cook this," Denai said, pulling her dagger. "Umuni is horrible unless you cook it."

  Tarrin looked into the fire as Denai spitted the large lizard and set it hanging over the flames, lost in thought. Time seemed to be crawling by, but in reality a great deal of it had passed. It had been three months since he left Dala Yar Arak. The summer was gone, autumn nearly so, and winter was probably taking hold in Aldreth right now. All the leaves were gone, and they'd probably had the season's first snow. The desert was the desert, uniformly hot, except in the northern reaches. It was hard to keep track of the seasons with as much travelling as they'd done, and most of it taking place in hot lattitudes. So much time gone by, time more or less wasted in travelling. They spent all that time to travelling to Dala Yar Arak, and they were there only for a few days. Now he was spending all this time travelling to Suld, and who knew how long he was going to stay there before moving on?

  It seemed nearly surreal. He had no idea how long it was going to take him to get through the desert, so he had no idea what kind of climate would be waiting for him when he managed to cross the Sandshield. He had to cross in the north, where winter would be in full force if he came out at the wrong time. They'd been in the desert about a month so far, a little more than that, and had barely managed to get very far at all. The sandstorms kept slowing them down, kept forcing them to hide from them until they passed. Those days waiting were a blur of monotony, and it made him feel like they'd been in the desert much less time than they actually had.

  He watched the fire dance a moment longer, his eyes lost in the wavering flames, then he blinked and looked up at the sky. The White Moon, Domammon, was just beginning to rise. The Red Moon, Vala, was hidden in its new phase, and would be so for the next few days, and the Twin Moons had yet to rise. The Skybands cut the starry sky with an uncharacteristic brilliance that night, their stripes of bright color battling with one another to hold his eyes. They had been steadily widening by barely perceptible degrees when they turned northerly, allowing them to see more and more of them as they moved away from the equator. They had been a razor's edge at Dala Yar Arak, but at home in Aldreth, they took up about an eighth of the sky on a cloudless night. His mother told him that they dominated the entire southern sky in Ungardt. The Skybands in the south, and the Gods' Curtain in the north made nights in Ungardt very bright.

  From beyond the rocky pillar came a strange hollow sound, almost like a moan. Tarrin turned his ears in that direction as it sounded again, an eerie sound that made the fur on his arms stand up. It was a sound without feeling, without anything, like an anti-sound that sought to deaden his ears in a curious manner. A sound without feeling, almost as if the voice was meant to take all feeling from those that could hear it and leave them numb. The Cat in him seemed to respond to that sound instinctively, wanting to get away from it. But Tarrin's human mind realized that it was an animal's reaction to an unnatural entity, much as it had been when he'd been confronted by
a Wraith. That reinforced Denai's description of them as ghosts.

  "What is that sound?" Sarraya asked, shivering her wings.

  "That's a Sandman," Denai replied to her, standing up with a sober expression. "It's very close. It's time for you to make more fuel for the fire, Sarraya, and we'll need to keep it bright all night. Sandmen don't make noise unless they know living beings are close to them."

  "They won't come near us?" Sarraya asked.

  "As long as we keep the fire up," she replied. "Sandmen don't like the light."

  There was another moan, and another, and they began to sound...eager.

  "Holy Mother," Denai said urgently. "That's not right. They must be chasing someone!" she said.

  "How do you know that?"

  "That's the sound they make when they try to kill," Denai told her. "The eagerness in the voice gives it away."

  "Who would they be chasing out here?" Sarraya demanded. "We haven't seen anyone since we left your tribe."

  "Maybe a Scout that didn't get back to a tribe in time," Denai told her.

  It wasn't a scout. The object of the Sandmen's attentions came up and over the fallen rock spire a scant moment after Denai stood up, moving with tremendous urgency and haste. So much haste that the figure slipped trying to come down, and ended up flopped unceremoniously on its back just inside the perimeter of the campfire's light. The scent of the figure reached Tarrin's nose as he moved to rise, and much to his shock, he recognized it.

  It was Var!

  "Var!" Tarrin said sharply, coming up onto his feet as the Selani male sat up and looked up to the rock over his head.

  "Tarrin!" Var said in surprise, then he laughed. "The Holy Mother must be guiding my steps to bring me so close to you at such a convenient time!"

  "What are you doing here?" Tarrin demanded hotly in Selani, glaring at the man.

  "Going to Gathering," he shrugged. "My tribe means to take this route, and I'm scouting it. I lost my fire-pack to an over-eager inu. It's good luck that you happened to be nearby."

  "You know this one?" Denai asked curiously.

  Tarrin nodded. "He came about this close to getting killed," Tarrin said, holding his finger and thumb barely apart.