by Ryk E. Spoor
The white-hot disc of the sun bombarded me with light that seemed, impossibly, twice as hot as it had been on Thunder Child. Or maybe not impossibly; my sand-boat had done most of the work, and now I was doing all of the work — a lot of work to go short distances on dunes like this. The sand slid backwards, mocking the very idea of forward motion, flowing out from under my feet like an escalator going the wrong way. Sweat trickled down my neck, more of it down my face. My mouth and nose felt like they were breathing inside a saturated oven. I slipped, caught myself, kept going.
I had to keep making choices about how to deal with each obstacle. That dune lay right across my path — I pretty much had to go over it. But the next one ended not all that far off to the left, I could go around it. But that lengthened the route. If I did that, I’d be walking more like thirty miles. Of course, climbing up a dune slowed me up, and took energy, and I couldn’t charge heedlessly down the other side to try and make up the time. Better face it; you’re doing the equivalent of thirty miles or more either way you try it. Take the route that takes the least effort.
I reached the top of the next dune and stopped, breathing heavily, fighting the urge to rip the mask off. No! Do not let yourself do that! Finish catching your breath! The Nomes made these things just fine, you’re not suffocating no matter what it feels like!
I drew on years of self-control over my breathing, my heart rate, my body, and forced relaxation, acceptance, slow, slow, slower… Finally, I could tell my breathing was normal. I yanked the mask off and hung it off the pack, then took out a cloth, wiped the inside, and wiped my face. Time for a drink and a bite.
I’d chosen this spot deliberately. There were hardly any shadows left by now, so the main point wasn’t to avoid the sun, it was to avoid the slow-lethal fumes which rose from the sand. The highest point available kept me out of the worst of it — although there wasn’t any true refuge outside of the mask. And the mask itself was not an unalloyed blessing.
I had to take my time drinking and even eating. Absorbing the water was vital, and I couldn’t just gulp it all down, much as I wanted to. I took out another mask, putting the first away; this would give the first one more time to dry out. I yanked the mask on and continued walking.
Now my shins inside the boots were hurting, a raw, nasty feeling like I’d ripped them bleeding on pavement and then put rough canvas around them. Sand working its way into the boots. Feeling stuff like that all over now.
Even though I was in better shape than I’d ever been, I was starting to feel this… I was feeling it a lot. My legs were aching inside, too much climbing up and cautious sliding down.
It occurred to me that there might be a better way. This is some of the most magical real estate in all of Faerie. Got to be. So…
I stopped in one of the valleys, regained my bearings… though the sun was nearing its peak, which meant I had to also check with the wind. All right…
As I had when fighting Iris and Poly… months ago? Seemed like years… I raised both arms above my head and brought them down, channeling my anti-magic into the blow and visualizing it as a shockwave moving out from me.
A cataclysmic wavefront exploded outwards, smashing the dunes before me like sand castles before a tsunami, rolling onward; there was a squalling screech and I saw one of the gargantuan ant-lion creatures hurled skyward; it landed in a cloud of dust and I saw more sand ripple as it fled.
But as I surveyed the results, and tried a few cautious steps, I realized to my chagrin that I’d made things worse. Along the widening path of the shockwave the sand had been roiled and shaken to the point that it was of an almost unbelievably loose consistency; I’d sink to my knees, maybe just keep sinking, if I tried walking through that. Well THAT was brilliant, Hero. Now you’ve got a quarter-mile detour to make.
I made it past my ill-considered experiment, forced my way onwards. One good aspect of it was that undoubtedly the local unnatural wildlife had just been given an unmistakable lesson as to how very, very bad an idea it would be to mess with me — which meant I would hopefully not have to actually fight anything.
I realized I had been trudging along for close to half an hour mostly staring at my feet, one foot in front of another. Get your bearings. Sun on your left. You need to –
I froze, my heart hammering, as I realized what I’d almost done. The sun had crested and begun to set while I was walking, but my tired brain had tried to just keep the same set of rules. I’d almost turned around and started walking North.
Concentrate. You have to keep going. Stop every so often and drink. Eat something. I wondered, with my mind now becoming slower as I became more exhausted, how fast I’d been going. Three miles an hour? Two? If it’s two, I have to keep moving for fifteen hours… if my guess was right as to how far I was.
Fifteen hours on my feet, moving constantly. I managed a dry chuckle for a moment, the smell of my sweat momentarily overwhelming me in the mask. Before Nimbus had beaten me into shape I probably couldn’t have managed to keep moving for five hours without resting. Here, of course, I had a…unique problem. I couldn’t rest here, not real rest. I could pause for a few moments, yes, but I couldn’t even sit down, let alone lie down and camp, get a night’s sleep. I hadn’t brought camping gear, and if someone had suggested it back in the Nomes’ territory I would’ve laughed at them. There wasn’t any place in the Deadly Desert to camp, and — if I got across safe — all the gear I could want would be arriving shortly. But until I got there, I had to stay upright. I had to keep moving. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t sit. I had to stay up, or I’d die in this venomous wasteland.
I drilled myself into a monotonous routine: three dunes forward, stop, regain bearings — checking off the indicators and making sure they agreed with each other. Every ten stops, drink something.
Shadows stretched out far to the left now as the sun dropped swiftly towards the horizon. I slid numbly down the face of a dune, began the next. Part of me realized that the setting sun meant I’d been going for close to fourteen or fifteen hours already… but I hadn’t seen Oz yet, not from the top of the highest dunes.
Either I was going a lot slower than I thought, or I had been way off in my calculations. If I couldn’t spot Oz from the dune tops, it was at least eight or ten miles farther off, maybe more.
No choice. And while I wanted to argue that inner voice, I couldn’t. I didn’t have a choice. There was no other direction left for me to go, nor was there anyone else to help me.
Night fell, and sweat dried, replaced by the ache of cold that failed to dull the burning, acid pain of the sand-sores that were forming all over me. Move. Feet forward. Three dunes. Check heading… stars… wind direction… turn slightly this way…. Move.
The stars turned slowly overhead as I moved. It was strange, I thought as I kept walking. Light and wind and shadow made it look as though there were other things there.
A ghostly shimmer danced from dune to dune, and I started. Polychrome!
But she danced by and suddenly I saw it was just a tiny dust devil. Oh, crap. I’m starting to lose it. I can’t afford this!
But there wasn’t too much I could do. I was eating and drinking from my fast-shrinking supplies, but there wasn’t anything in the pack to replace sleep, and it was sleep I really needed. Chiindemon had interrupted last night’s sleep; I’d taken a little nap before starting out, but that wasn’t the same.
My knees gave way and I tumbled down the next dune, burning cold sands stinging exposed skin, a surge of poison going up around me. I gave a tired curse and somehow levered myself up, feeling my head spinning as I did so. Can’t do that. Can’t. One or two more like that and I’ll never get up.
“Never?” Zenga said to me with a pout on her face. “A hero always gets up.”
“Not…a hero.” I protested honestly, forcing myself to walk since she wasn’t stopping. I felt it was rather unfair that she was able to walk on the sand without sinking ankle deep or more. “Just…lucky, I guess.”
“Walking aimlessly in the Deadly Desert? This you call luck?”
I laughed, but it was funny how it sounded more like a cough. “I’ve gotten to do…a lot of traveling. Besides,” I pointed down, “you’re just…a delusion. No footprints, no feet.” I felt very proud of that deduction, and apparently she agreed with me because she wasn’t there the next time I looked up.
That was a shame though, because the black desert was terribly lonely. I wondered if the ant-lions got lonely out here. It must be a terribly boring existence. I stood still, wondering what I was doing on top of this sand dune. The sand looked very soft. I reached down — ouch!
“Rest is for the winners, not those who haven’t proven themselves, mortal!”
I shook my hand, trying to get the pain out of it, and glared at Nimbus. “You didn’t have to hit me that hard.”
“You hit yourself. Take your bearings, Erik Medon.”
Oh, that was what I was up here for. I blinked and focused. It seemed to take a long time to run through the sequence. In fact I got confused and had to start again. “Okay…this way.” I started sliding down the dune. It was hard. My body wanted to just fall, but I knew I couldn’t.
The next stop I was puzzled. I kept tipping the canteen up and nothing was coming out. Finally Ruggedo made me drop it. “It’s empty, boy. You have to move on.”
“I’ve got another,” I protested.
The old Nome was walking ahead of me. Oddly he looked a lot more like the Neill drawings, a round ball of a body on bandy legs, with a wide jewelled belt around his nonexistent waist. “You need to save that for the day, friend.”
I wish he hadn’t walked back into that dune. Christ, I’m having a hard time telling reality from these half-waking dreams! I made myself check bearings quickly this time; the last thing I needed was to dream I’d checked them right. But it seemed I’d drilled that habit in well enough to stick.
I could see the dunes a lot better now. Maybe I was finally getting used to the night. The silvery color of the light seemed a bit warmer, too.
Light flared across the sand and I suddenly woke up a bit more with the realization I’d kept moving through the entire night. I almost collapsed. I’ve been going more than twenty-four hours, dammit. Have I gotten turned around? Am I just going insanely slow?
The wind hissed and chuckled around me, and the acid burning scent of the sands rose up, redoubled. My eyes hurt so badly I could barely squint ahead. A light laugh floated across the dunes.
I yanked my head up. Poly was there, dancing at the top of the next dune. She glanced back, laughed again, and danced down the other side.
“Poly!” I called, before I realized it was another dream. Nothing of Faerie could be here, and certainly not anyone on my side. Trembling legs moved slowly, I staggered more than once, but I reached the top.
And for the first time in an age and a half I felt a glimmer of hope, because far ahead I could see something else, something dark and tinged with purple-green and other colors, stretching from one horizon to the other.
That’s Oz!
The realization that I could see the greatest of the lands of Faerie, that I was that close, gave me a spurt of energy that lasted for several dunes. Now I didn’t have to check direction except by an occasional glance forward.
But it was still a long way off; miles. I drank most of the last canteen in what seemed like one long pull, gnawed some salted meat, then finished the water and tossed the canteen aside.
I’m almost there. Keep moving! Keep moving! I’ll be damned if I’m going to collapse in sight of Oz!
I slipped and tumbled, shielding my eyes against the explosion of lethal sand. I’m too weak. I can’t get up!
“Yes, you can.”
I couldn’t believe it. I knew that voice. I looked up at the speaker, a man with white hair and a face whose lines were so very much like my own. “Dad?”
“Erik, get up. I know you’re tired. It’s just a little farther.”
“I’m sorry. I never did finish anything I started.”
“Don’t apologize.” I somehow got up. He was helping me, I just couldn’t quite see how. “Just finish this. You’re not going to disappoint her, are you?”
“You…never met her.”
He shook his head. “Wish I could have.”
It was then I remembered he was dead — lung cancer — and I reached out as he faded away into the next dune. I felt a tear on my face. I’m not going to disappoint her, Dad.
I drove myself on somehow. I fell, I got up, each time sure there was just no way I could manage it, but remembering Poly, remembering her promise to me. I had to make it.
Finally, after what seemed an endless time of burning heat and corrosive fumes and sickness dragging like weights, I looked up and realized that I was going to fail.
Oz loomed up before me, a low plateau rising up out of the lethal sandy sea, and — for as far as I could look in either direction — there was not a single path up. A fifty-foot cliff barred any entry.
I screamed out my denial, but my throat made it a pained whisper: “No.”
Had I reached here in Thunder Child, I’d have been able to climb that like a mountain goat. Hell, if you’d dropped my untrained overweight self here, I might still have made it up. But I could barely force one foot in front of the other, lift them enough to climb the last small dunes between me and that final barrier. I couldn’t possibly climb it.
Part of me wanted to laugh, the other to cry. It was unbearably ironic that I had managed to make it through every threat I’d encountered, on sea and under rock, walking through the Deadly Desert itself, killing self-proclaimed demons and monsters of the Usurpers and here, now, I was helpless against a tiny wall of rock. Goddamn it, I climbed up a thirty thousand foot mountain. Now fifty feet of rock beats me?
But I knew with certainty it was true. I didn’t have the strength left, not even enough to try some True Mortal stunt. I was only standing because I knew, with the same certainty, that if I fell again I really would never get up again.
I looked up, seeing a hint of grassy movement, a flutter of a few purple tinted leaves. A bird flew a few inches over the edge, turned back, never looking down; of course, there never was anything to see. I wondered if I could get its attention somehow.
And then it hit me. One last chance.
I reached inside my armor — which had been at least as cool as any clothing could have been — and grasped the Jewel of the Bridge. “One chance, Poly.”
The Jewel had to reach the land of Oz, lie on its soil.
I pulled off the mask, let it drop, let the goggles follow. I needed to be as unencumbered as possible. I looked carefully, judged the angles… and then wound up and threw the Jewel as hard as I could, the very last ounce of strength going into the throw, sending me backward, down, hitting the sand heavily.
The glittering Jewel arced up, tumbling end over end, rising up, getting closer — oh no, it’s going to hit the cliff!
But just as it seemed the multicolored gem would bounce off the dark stone, it reached the apex of its arc and — just barely — cleared the edge, brushing aside a few blades of grass and disappearing.
My hands were burning where they lay in the sand; I tried to lift them but they were too heavy. Maybe if I just rest a minute… I wanted to keep my eyes open, but they hurt so much and the sun was so bright and maybe I was wrong, maybe I had to be there to place the gem…
Voices.
“… almost dead…”
“Can’t use much magic on him…”
“… do us no good dead!”
I was in terrible pain, but it was also so distant. I felt that all I had to do was let go.
Something cool touching my lips. “Please, Erik, drink, please…”
I couldn’t even place the voice, but something about it… I had to do what that voice wanted… I opened cracked lips, swallowed, but the act of swallowing caused splintering pain.
But the
moment the first swallow passed through, the pain began to ease. I took another swallow, and another, and suddenly everything seemed to be growing clearer as my pains started to fade away. I opened my eyes.
A radiant vision of golden hair and violet-storm eyes hovered above me, perfect cheeks startlingly marred by two tears trickling down. “Poly…?”
“Erik!” Her face lit up, now so beautiful that I couldn’t have spoken even if I had to, and she grasped my hands between hers for a moment, that single contact sending a surge of strength through me that had nothing to do with the healing potion. “I… I’m so glad.”
“Believe me,” I said, wishing I had the courage to reach out and take her hands again, “not nearly as glad as I am.”
Third Vision:
The burning light still surrounded her, and at times she wanted to scream, and tried, but the bodilessness of her nonexistence prevented it. Sometimes, in the depths of the terrible radiance, she heard voices, but she did not know if they were delusion or reality. Insanity danced around her like a taunting insect and a blessed promise of relief in one, and it was so hard not to welcome it.
But Hope remained, a single point of darkness in a world of blasting white and searing green, burning red and screaming violet, incinerating blue and corrosive yellow. She followed it, tried to cup it in her hands, but she had no hands, no voice to call to it, no body to run with. Only the sight without eyes, the vision of the magic of Faerie burning, burning her away.
The blessed cooling darkness was tiny, but no longer a single point. It moved, now here, now there, but slowly approaching her through the tracklessness of the blank realm of Faerie-fire. The screaming of her mind was — sometimes — less when it seemed a bit closer.
Now, she thought within the thoughtless blankness of pain, it appeared to be moving closer still, with swift purpose. Almost, almost she could descry a shape within, a shape she desperately longed to know.
