by Simon Hawke
They left the trail, following the rasclinn as it trotted off into the scrub brush. They had to run to keep after it. After a short while, in addition to the faint sounds made by the rasclinn as it trotted through the desert scrub, heading toward the foot of the lower slopes of the Mekillots, they heard other sounds, as well. Loud, rustling sounds ahead and to their left, in a small grove of pagafa trees.
“What is that strange, rustling noise?” Ryana asked.
Sorak frowned. “I do not know,” he said.
“You don’t think it’s a trap?”
“I cannot believe a pyreen would lead us into a trap,” said Sorak. “She is sworn to the preserver cause.”
The rustling sounds were growing louder as they approached.
“I do not like this, Sorak,” said Ryana apprehensively.
A moment later, Sorak said, “Antloids.”
Ryana stopped. “Antloids?” she said with some alarm.
“There is no need to fear,” he said. “The antloids are our friends, remember?”
She recalled how Screech had once summoned the antloids to help rescue her and Princess Korahna from Torian and his mercenaries, and her apprehension abated somewhat, though it did not disappear entirely. And a moment later, they reached the grove of pagafa trees, where Kara waited for them, having shapeshifted back to her natural form.
In the shelter of the grove, a dozen or more antloids were hard at work, stripping branches from the pagafa trees and bringing them to another group of antloids, who were using their mandibles to weave them together with the thick, strong, fibrous leaves of desert dagger plants, which grew to a height of ten feet or more, with long, wide, blade-shaped leaves up to five or six feet in length. Some of the antloids were gathering the leaves, picking them off the nearby plants at the foot of the slopes, and bringing them to the others, who used their mandibles and claws to tear them into long and narrow strips. These strips were then used to fasten the branches of the pagafa trees together into a sort of mat about five feet wide by eight feet long. As they approached, the antloids were finishing the task, weaving the last strips together and fastening them carefully, sealing the ends with their sticky spit, which hardened into a gumlike substance.
“This is why you did not need the kanks,” said Kara as the antloids finished their work on the mat. “And now you will see why Valsavis, however skilled a tracker he may be, will find no trail to follow.”
Ryana stared at the mat without comprehension. “I do not understand,” she said. “Surely you do not mean for us to drag that cumbersome thing behind us to obliterate our trail?”
“No,” said Kara. “I mean for you to ride upon it.”
“Drawn by the antloids, you mean?” Sorak said.
He shook his head. “That would never work. Valsavis could follow that trail as easily as he could follow the course of a well-established caravan route.”
“Through the air?” said Kara with a smile.
“Through the air?” Ryana repeated, her eyes widening.
“Why walk when you can fly?” asked Kara.
“Fly?” Ryana said. “On that? But… how?”
“Borne up by the wind,” said Sorak, suddenly understanding what Kara planned. “The wind of an air elemental.”
“You?” said Ryana, staring at Kara with astonishment. “But… forgive me—not to doubt your powers, my lady, but to hold us up for such a distance… Even a pyreen would surely find that taxing beyond her abilities.”
“If I were to do it by myself, no doubt I would,” said Kara. “But though a pyreen can shapeshift into the form of an elemental, a pyreen can also raise elementals. Observe…”
She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, spreading her arms out from her sides. They saw her lips moving soundlessly, and though her face bore an expression of calm serenity, they could tell that she was concentrating intensely. They could both feel it.
A stillness descended on the pagafa grove. There was utter silence. There was no chirping of small insects, no cries of night birds, not even the faintest breeze. It was as if the entire world had suddenly stopped to draw breath. And a moment later in the distance, in the air above the mountains looming over them, there was the rumbling sound of thunder. It was the still before a desert storm. A few more moments passed, and then they felt the coolness of a strong breeze on their faces as it swept down from the heights above them. The thunder rolled once more, and dark clouds roiled in the moonlit sky. The breeze grew stronger, whipping their hair back from their faces. In the distance, they heard a whistling sound as the winds gathered.
“Now,” said Kara, beckoning them toward the mat the antloids had constructed. “Take your places.”
Ryana glanced down at the small, crudely woven platform of pagafa branches and dagger plant leaves held together, literally, with nothing but spit, and suddenly the very last thing she wanted to do was sit down upon it.
“Quickly,” Kara urged them.
“Come on,” said Sorak, taking her hand and pulling her toward the platform.
“Sorak… I’m afraid.”
“There is nothing to fear,” he said. “I will be with you. Kara will not let us fall.”
His calmness and his complete sense of certainty eased her apprehensions. She stepped onto the mat with him and eased herself down upon it, sitting cross-legged. She swallowed hard and held tightly onto his hand, not wanting to let go. He squeezed her hand reassuringly.
“Trust the Way,” he said. “Believe in the Path of the Preserver.”
“I do,” she whispered. “I believe.” The wind grew stronger. The thunder rolled. Sheet lightning flashed in the desert sky above them, giving off a spectacular display of natural pyrotechnics. The wind shrieked as it swept down off the mountains, plucking at their hair and clothing. Ryana closed her eyes.
“Sorak,” she cried. “I am here,” he said, squeezing her hand, his voice instilling calm.
The wind was now blowing with hurricane force. Ryana held onto Sorak’s hand and clutched at the mat with her other hand. She forced herself to open her eyes, and what she saw was so incredible that she couldn’t have closed them again even if she tried.
Kara stood several feet away from them, her head tilted back, her arms outspread, her long, silver-gray hair and her white robe billowing around her in the wind. And as Ryana watched, the wind actually became visible, took on form, swirled around and around her like a whirlpool, then coalesced into three separate funnel shapes, much larger than mere dust devils, more like the funnel clouds of desert tornados, only smaller and more dense. And in those whirling, roiling funnel clouds, gathering greater and greater force as they spun around and around and around, Ryana could suddenly make out features.
She stared with disbelief, having heard stories of natural elementals before, but never having actually seen one, much less three. Within those whirling funnel clouds of gale-force wind, she could see, indistinctly, the rough approximation of eyes, and mouths that seemed to shriek like banshees.
She tightened her grip on Sorak’s hand, holding onto it with all her might, and she felt an incredible pressure in her chest. She tried to breathe, but she couldn’t seem to draw any air into her lungs. And as Ryana watched, unable to tear her eyes away, much as she wanted to, Kara began to spin around and around and around, her arms outstretched, twirling with wild abandon, like an elven dancing girl. Her shape grew indistinct. It seemed to blur as she spun around, faster and faster. Her form became even more blurred until she completely disappeared from view and became a whirling flannel cloud herself, just like the three elementals that hovered all around her. And then those four funnel clouds all came together and twisted violently, bending underneath the woven mat they sat upon and lifting it into the air.
Ryana felt the platform lurch suddenly beneath her, and then it lifted and began to turn, slowly going around and around as the force of all that wind gathered beneath it. She somehow found the strength to close her eyes once more, squeezing them s
hut tightly, and she held onto Sorak’s hand with all the force that she could muster. If he said anything to her, she could not hear it for all the shrieking of the howling wind.
The platform was raised higher and higher, until it cleared the tops of the trees in. the pagafa grove and went up higher still, turning around and around as it rose twenty feet above the ground, then thirty, then forty, and higher still, until finally, Ryana forced herself to open her eyes once more and saw the desert spreading out far below her.
She saw the village of Salt View from a height of several hundred feet above the ground, the neatly whitewashed buildings, illuminated by torchlight and braziers in the streets, looking very small and not quite real. And then the wind beneath them shifted and they began to move forward, gathering speed as they were swept out across the white, salt desert far below them.
They were flying, buoyed up by the winds, the air elementals Kara had raised and joined with. The crudely woven mat they sat upon floated like a feather i on the strong winds, tilting forward slightly as they were blown away from Salt View and across the southern part of the Great Ivory Plain, toward the inland silt basins in the distance. All around them, the night sky was lit up with sheet lightning, illuminating their way, and thunder crashed with a deafening roar as the elemental storm swept across the desert with increasing speed.
Ryana suddenly let go of Sorak’s hand and threw her arms up into the air, crying out with sheer delight. Her fear was gone, replaced by an exhilaration the like of which she had never felt before. She threw back her head and laughed with an unrestrained joy that permeated every fiber of her being. She felt marvelously free. She turned toward Sorak and threw her arms around him. And he held her close, and she knew that whatever trials lay ahead of them, she would face them at his side, unafraid and filled with a sense of determination that came of knowing, without the faintest scintilla of a doubt, that the path she had chosen was the right one, the one she had been born to follow.
Unable to restrain herself, she shouted out over the shrieking wind, “I love you!”
And she felt his arms tighten around her, and heard him say into her ear, “I know. I love you, too.”
And that was all that mattered.
* * *
Valsavis awoke in the morning, shortly after sunrise. He sat up in bed and looked down at the curvaceous young woman lying beside him, who had come to massage his muscles with her strong and skillful hands when he came back from the fight with the marauders in the Avenue of Dreams. She had stayed to cater to his other needs, as well, and had done so eagerly and expertly.
She was just twenty years old, young enough to be his daughter—no, his granddaughter, actually—and her svelte and lean young body looked beautiful and inviting as she lay there in the early morning sunlight, the covers thrown back. For a moment, Valsavis simply stared at her as she slept, one leg straight, one slightly bent, the gentle curve of her hips accentuated by her position as she lay upon her side, a slight smile on her lips. He looked at the fullness of her shapely, young breasts, the firmness of her youthful body, and the clarity and smoothness of her skin, which had responded with a trembling eagerness to his caresses as they had made love throughout the night.
Valsavis recalled how she had moaned softly, her eyes closed, her lips parted as she had gasped for breath, saying his name over arid over again. And for all her beauty, for all the fierce passion of her youth, for all the tenderness that she had lavished on him, a tenderness the intensity of which had told him that this time it was much more than merely a service she performed for money, for all the kisses she had covered him with, kisses that had all the fervor of a young woman truly awakened for the first time to the joys of physical fulfillment with a man who knew, from long experience, how to bring out the full intensity of passion in a woman—for all that, as immediate and powerful as all those sensations had been—all Valsavis had been able to think about as he coupled with her was Ryana.
It was the villichi priestess he had imagined staring down at him, her expression filled with passion and longing. It was her body he had imagined pressed against his, her voice he had heard, saying his name over and over again. The beautiful young woman was, unknowingly, merely a surrogate for what he had really wanted and, to his immense frustration, knew he could not have.
And as he looked down at the young woman now—whose name he could not even recall—as he watched her lying there peacefully, the embodiment of youth and passion, a dream most men his age would sell their souls for, Valsavis felt a disappointment and a longing he had never known before. He tried to superimpose upon her sleeping features the face of the young villichi priestess and he knew that until he had the real object of his desires, he would never truly know what it meant to feel complete satisfaction. For the first time in his life, Valsavis felt a need for a woman. And only one would do.
Anything else was just a fantasy. This young woman, lovely as she was, had been no more than a substitute that left him feeling, for all her genuine emotion, loss and hunger that demanded satisfaction. And no mere substitute, no matter how young and beautiful and passionate, no matter now genuine her feelings and responses may have been, would answer to his need.
Valsavis quietly got out of bed and quickly started getting dressed. Tonight, he thought, they would leave for Bodach. They would go to meet the Silent One, who would guide them through the city of the undead. He still did not really believe that she was what she claimed to be, but either way, it didn’t really matter. The lure was Bodach, and both the riches and the terrors it contained. For most men, this would have represented a doom that would have frozen their blood in their veins. For Valsavis, it only meant a way to feel more stimulation, a challenge to all of his abilities and skills, an adventure to make his blood boil and make him feel alive. He was looking forward to it.
He tried to imagine what it would be like, fighting the undead. No warrior could face a more dangerous or fearsome opponent. It would be the ultimate test of a man who had devoted his life to being tested. And it would mean a resolution, one way or the other. If Sorak found the talisman known as the Breastplate of Argentum, then Valsavis would have to take it from him. He would have to best a Master of the Way, an elfling with powers of endurance and strength rivaling those of the finest human warriors, an opponent with a magic sword capable of cleaving through any obstacle or weapon—and an enemy who had the one thing that Valsavis wanted most of all, the loyalty and affections of a villichi priestess who could hold her own with any man, and who was worth whatever pains it took to capture her devotion. Valsavis looked down at the beautiful young girl sleeping peacefully in his bed and decided that no substitute would ever do again. It had been pleasant, but the pleasure had been ephemeral and, ultimately, unsatisfying. There was only one woman he had ever met who was truly worthy of him, one woman who could challenge him on every level. There was only one woman worth winning, no matter what the cost. And her name was Ryana.
When the time came, Valsavis thought, he would kill the elfling. But the priestess he would claim as his own reward, as the Shadow King had promised. And if he could not have her, he decided, she would have to die. I will have you, Ryana, he thought, if it takes both my life and yours. One way or the other, he thought, you are going to be mine, either in bed or on the field of battle. Resign yourself. It is inevitable. He finished dressing and buckled on his sword belt.
It would not be long before they met the Silent One and departed on their journey across the Great Ivory Plain to the city of the undead. He decided that he would go to their room and invite them to join him for breakfast. They had much to talk about.
He was certain they suspected him, but he also knew that they could ill afford to dispense with his skills when it came to surviving what they would have to face in Bodach. Yes, indeed, he thought, regardless of whether they trusted him or not, they needed him. And so long as that was the case, he had the upper hand.
There was no answer when he knocked at their door. T
he image suddenly came to him of the two of them in bed together, and he felt his anger rise. With difficulty, he fought it down. No, he thought, not yet. Not yet. Now is not the time. But soon. He knocked once more. No answer. He placed his ear against the door. Could they have failed to hear? It seemed unlikely. Both were seasoned desert travelers, which meant they were light sleepers. In the desert, one had to come awake at once, alert and ready, if one wanted to survive.
He knocked again. “Sorak!” he called out. “Ryana! Open the door! It’s me, Valsavis!”
There was no response. He tried the door. It was unbolted. He swung it open. There was no one inside the room. He noticed that the window shutters were open. And then he noticed that their packs were gone and the beds had not been slept in. He hurried quickly to the dining room, but there was no sign of them there among the other patrons having breakfast. He ran back to the lobby.
“My two companions,” he said to the clerk, “the ones I paid you to keep a watch on… have you seen them?”
“No, sir,” the clerk replied. “Not since last night, when they came in with you.”
“They did not leave?”
“If they have, sir, they did not go by me, I assure you. But you could check with the gatekeeper.”
Valsavis did just that, but the man at the gate had not seen them, either. Valsavis recalled the open window shutters in their room and went back into the garden. He stepped off the path and moved among the plants until he came to the outside of Sorak and Ryana’s room. He checked the ground below the window, then swore softly. They had left by the window. Probably last night, while he had foolishly sported with the girl. He followed the trail to the wall. That explained why the gatekeeper had not seen them. He saw clearly where Ryana had stood to give Sorak a leg up, and then where she had scuffed her foot on the wall as he had helped her to climb over.
He immediately hurried back to his room and threw his things together, then left the inn, running down to the Avenue of Dreams. He ran past the bellaweed emporiums and through the plaza where they had fought the marauders. Nothing remained now to indicate the struggle except some dried bloodstains on the bricks. He came to the apothecary shop and threw open the door.
