by Simon Hawke
Ryana nodded. “Yes, those are all things that would have to be considered. Still, it was but an idle speculation. Perhaps not even the Sage would have such power.”
“We shall not know that until we find him,” said the Guardian. “And who is to say how long this quest may take? There is still one more thing to consider, so long as we are discussing possibilities. Something that you may have failed to take into account.”
“And that is?”
“Suppose we found the Sage, and he was able to unite us all into one person, with no loss to any of us. Sorak would become the tribe, all blended into one person who was, as you say, ‘normal.’ And the tribe would become Sorak. All the things that I am, all that is Kivara, and Lyric, the Watcher and the Ranger and the Shade, Screech and Eyron and the others, some of whom still lie deeply buried, all would become a part of Sorak. What, then, would become of the Sorak that you know and love? Would he not become someone very different? Would the Sorak that you know not cease to exist?”
Ryana continued walking silently for a while, mulling that over. The Guardian did not impinge upon her contemplation. Finally, Ryana said, “I had never considered the possibility that Sorak might be changed in a manner that would render him completely different. If that were the case, then I suppose my own thoughts on the matter, my own feelings, would be determined by whether or not such a change would be in his best interests. That is to say, in all of your best interests.”
“I do not mean to be harsh,” the Guardian said, “but consider also that it is Sorak as you know him now who loves you. I understand that love, and am capable of sharing it to some degree, but I could not love you that way that Sorak does. Perhaps it is because I am a female and my nature is such that I could not love another female. If Sorak were to change in the way we are discussing, perhaps that love would change, as well. But you must also consider all the others. Eyron is male, yet he thinks of you as a friend, not as a lover. The Watcher does not love you and never could. The Ranger is indifferent to you, not because of any shortcoming on your part, it is just that the Ranger is the Ranger, and he is not given to such emotions. Neither is the Shade. Kivara is fascinated by new sensations and experiences, but while she may not balk at a physical relationship with you, she would be a very fickle and uncaring lover. And there are all the others, whose feelings and modes of thought would all go into creating the new Sorak of whom we speak. It is quite possible that this new Sorak would no longer love you.”
Ryana moistened her lips. “If the change would benefit him—would benefit you all—and make him happy, then I would accept that, despite the pain that it would bring me.”
“Well, we speak of something that may never come to pass,” the Guardian replied. “When we first spoke of your love for Sorak, I called you selfish and accused you of thinking only of yourself. I spoke harshly and I now regret that. I know now that you are nothing of the sort. And what I am about to say, I say not for my sake, but for yours. To long for something that may never be is to build a foundation on a swamp. Your hopes are likely to sink into the quagmire. I know that it is far more easily said than done, but if you could try to learn how to love Sorak as a friend, a brother, then whatever happens in the future, you may save your heart from breaking.”
“You are right,” Ryana said. “It is far more easily said than done. Would it were not so.”
They traveled on throughout the day, stopping occasionally to rest, and their journey was, for the most part, uneventful. As the day wore on, the temperatures climbed steadily, until the dark Athasian sun was beating down on them like a merciless adversary. Sorak came out again and accompanied her for the rest of their journey that day, though the Guardian kept him from remembering the last part of their conversation. They found themselves conversing less and less, conserving their energies for the long trek still ahead of them.
Ryana had never traveled in the Athasian desert before, and as the tablelands stretched out before them seemingly into infinity, she marveled at the land’s savage beauty and its eerie stillness. She had always somehow thought of the desert as an empty and desolate place, but it was far from that. It was full of life, though of a sort that had, of necessity, found ways to adapt to the inhospitable climate.
Scrubby pagafa trees dotted the landscape, though in the desert they grew much smaller and more twisted than they did in the forest and around the cities, where more water was available. Here, in the tablelands, they grew no taller than ten or fifteen feet, and their bare and twisted, leafless branches afforded nothing in the way of shade. Their blue-green trunks and branches enabled them to manufacture life-sustaining energy from the sun, and their roots went deep in search of water, spreading wide with numerous feeders. During the brief rainy season, when the monsoons would sweep across the desert, depositing the precious water in brief but furious storms, the branches of the pagafa tree would leaf out in fine, needle-like growth, creating a feathery-looking crown, and additional branches would shoot forth to take advantage of the added water. Then, when the almost ever-present drought returned, the needle-like leaves would fall and the new branches would die back, allowing the tree to conserve its energy for its next cycle of growth.
The leaves fell, dried out in less than a day, and made a rust-colored blanket underneath the tree. These dried leaves made excellent nesting material for desert rodents, which dug burrows beneath the many forms of cacti that grew out in the tablelands. Some of the cacti were very small, no larger than a human fist, covered with a fine growth of silvery pincushion that once or twice a year—after a rain—exploded into brightly colored blooms that lasted no more than a day. Some were large and barrel-shaped, as tall as a full-grown man and twice as thick around.
The rodents liked to nest among the thick roots at the pagafa’s base, and eventually, their burrowing killed the plant, though only after many years. Slowly, the huge tree lost its support and fell from its own weight, and then dried out, its carcass becoming a temporary home for kips and scarab beetles, who dined upon its drying, pulpy meat. The large, thick spines of the cactus were then harvested by desert antloids, whose worker drones formed long lines across the desert as they carried back the thick spines to their warrens to help support the many tunnels that they excavated in the hard-baked desert ground.
Occasionally, antloid warrens came under attack from desert drakes, one of the large reptiles that made its home in the Athasian desert. Part lizard and part snake, the drake’s thick hide, so highly prized for armor in the cities, rendered it impervious to the mandibles of antloids. Its long, talon-like claws allowed it to dig up the warrens, and its thick, twin-pronged, muscular tongue gave it the ability to capture antloids and drag them out to where it could crush their exo-skeletons.
The antloids would come swarming out to fight it, and sometimes, if the colony was large enough, they overwhelmed the drake by the sheer weight of their numbers, piling up their huge bodies on top of it. If the drake prevailed over the antloids, the survivors scattered and abandoned the dug up warren. It then provided a home for hurrums, brightly colored beetles prized in cities for the melodious humming sounds they made, or renks, large desert slugs that dined on the wastes left behind in the antloid warren.
If the antloids managed to defeat the drake, however, they ate its carcass, sharing it with other life forms: jankx, furred and squeaking mammals that lived in town-like burrows on the tablelands; or z’tals, tall, bipedal lizards that lived in small herds out in the desert and laid eggs inside the excavated antloid warren after they had disposed of the carcass of the drake.
The loosened earth left behind after the drake destroyed the antloid warren allowed the seeds of brambleweeds to root, and they grew up around the eggs left behind by the z’tal, their spiny tentacles poking up out of the ground and protecting the eggs from predatory snakes and rodents. All life in the desert was closely interdependent, a mutated yet balanced ecology that had grown up in the devastation left behind by the defilers.
R
yana wondered what the desert had been like before, in the days when Athas was still green. She tried to imagine the barren, scrubby, rolling plain before her when it was covered with tall grasses that rippled in the wind, blooming with wildflowers, and resonating with the song of birds. It was the dream of every druid and of all villichi, of all preservers everywhere, that someday Athas would once again grow green. Chances were that Ryana would never live to see that day, but even so, she was glad that she had left the mountains to truly see the desert—not the vast and empty wasteland it appeared to be, seen from the heights of the Ringing Mountains, but the strangely beautiful and vibrant place it really was.
She knew some of that beauty could be deadly. If the ten-foot antloids attacked, which was especially likely in the season their queen produced young, their fearsome mandibles would make short work of her. The rare and gorgeous burnflowers that grew out in the desert could be as lethal as they were beautiful. Though easily avoided in the light of day because their patches could be seen for miles, they could kill during the early morning if an unwary traveler happened to be near them when the bulb-shaped flowers opened. The shiny, silvery-colored blooms, some as large as two to three feet in diameter, would open toward the sun and track its progress across the sky throughout the day, absorbing its life-giving rays and reflecting them back as deadly beams of energy. It was the plant’s protective mechanism, but the sight of those beautiful blooms opening would be the last sight anyone would ever see.
If the burnflowers killed, it was merely an accident of their adaptation to survive in such a hostile climate, but a blossomkiller did so by design. The blossomkiller was carnivorous, and its survival in the desert depended on its ability to trap its prey. It did so with a wide network of root-like surface vines that, unlike its taproot, radiated out from the body of the plant to a distance of as much as fifty feet. It took but the merest touch on one of these vines to send an impulse to the pistils of the colorful flowers, which would then shoot out a spray of sharp, needle-like quills. These quills were covered with a poison that produced paralysis. Once the hapless victim, whether animal, humanoid or human, was frozen into immobility, the tendrils of the blossomkiller would reach out and wrap themselves around their prey. A small desert rodent or mammal would be digested within a matter of hours. For a human, the process could take days. It was a horrible and agonizing death.
Nor were lethal plants and insects the only dangers in the desert. There was a wide variety of deadly reptiles, from poisonous snakes no longer than a human finger to the deadly drakes, some species of which could grow as long as thirty feet and wider than the trunk of a well-watered agafari tree. Death could come from above, in the form of floaters, creatures with light, translucent bodies composed of a jelly like protoplasm with stinging tendril tentacles that trailed down below them. The merest brush of one such tentacle could produce a large and painful welt that would take weeks to heal, while solid contact could be fatal. And death could also come from underfoot, in the form of dune trappers, sand cacti, or sink worms.
Dune trappers were lifeforms that were neither plant nor animal, but something in between. They lived almost entirely beneath the desert surface in pits they excavated as they grew. The mouth of the dune trapper gradually grew and spread out on the surface, filled with what appeared to be a pool of cool, clear water. Plants would grow up around the mouth of the strange creature, sustained by the moisture it produced, giving the deceptive appearance of a small, welcoming oasis. But to approach that pool in an attempt to drink from it was almost certain death. The mouth of the dune trapper, triggered by a footstep on the soft membrane that lay just beneath the sand, would suck the unsuspecting victim down into the pit the creature occupied, there to be digested by the fluid that had first appeared to be a pool of water.
Sand cacti were no less deadly. Like the dune trapper, the main body of the plant grew beneath the surface of the desert, especially where the soil was sandy. Only the tips of its numerous spines protruded just above the surface, over a wide area, poking up no more than an inch or two, so that they were difficult to spot. Stepping on a spine would trigger a response within the plant that would cause it to shoot that spine up into the victim’s foot, where its barbed hook would find firm purchase, and the plant would start to drain the blood out of its prey. Once “hooked,” the victim’s only chance was to tear loose from the spine, or cut it free, but this could not be accomplished without also tearing loose a lot of flesh, and if any of the spine remained embedded in the victim, it had to be cut out or else infection would set in.
Sink worms posed an even greater danger. A sharp-eyed traveler might detect the shallow depressions left in the sandy soil where they had passed, but to be hunted by a sink worm was a terrifying prospect, for it could detect the footsteps of its prey upon the surface and come up underneath it. A small, young sink worm could take off a foot or an entire leg. An adult could swallow a human being whole.
Nor were those the only dangers of the desert. Back in the villichi temple, Ryana had studied about all the life-forms that dwelled on Athas, and desert predators had filled up an entire stack of scrolls. The Ringing Mountains were not without their dangers, but they paled in comparison to what the desert held in store. It was a place of quiet and ethereal beauty, but it also promised death to the unwary. In the daytime, a vigilant traveler, well versed in the hazards of the desert, could take steps to avoid them. At night, the dangers multiplied as the nocturnal predators awoke.
And night was fast approaching.
Chapter Two
As the sun sank slowly in the sky, it cast a surreal light over the desert, flooding it with an amber-orange glow. The flame-colored Athasian sky took on a blood-red tint after nightfall, gradually fading to dark crimson as the twin moons, Ral and Guthay, began their pilgrimage across the heavens. Sorak and Ryana made camp beneath an ancient pagafa tree, its three gnarled, blue-green trunks spreading out from its base and branching off into twisted, leafless boughs. As the light faded, they broke off some of the smaller branches in order to build a fire. The sparse, dry desert grass they had uprooted easily caught fire from the sparks of their fire stones, and soon a small blaze was crackling in the shallow depression they had hollowed out for the fire pit.
Ryana drank sparely from her water skin, despite her thirst. The long trek had left her feeling very dry, but the water had to last until they reached the oasis at Silver Spring, which was still at least another day’s journey to the east. Sorak took only a few drops from his own water skin, and it seemed to be enough for him. Ryana envied him his elfling ability to get by on less water. She thought wistfully of the stream near the convent, where water flowed down from the mountain peaks and cascaded over the rocks in the streambed. It was fresh and cold and good to drink, and she thought longingly of all the times she and her sisters would run down to the lagoon following weapons practice, strip down, and frolic in the bracing pool. She had taken it for granted then, and now it seemed like an incredible luxury to be able to bathe every day and drink her fill.
At such times, Sorak had always wandered away from the others, going farther downstream along the riverbank to where the water flowed over large, flat boulders in the middle of the streambed. He would take his accustomed place upon the largest rock and sit cross-legged in the water that flowed around him, his back to the others at the lagoon, a short distance upstream. The sound of the water would drown out all but the occasional playful cries made by the sisters as they played in the lagoon, and he would sit alone, staring out into the distance or down into the water on the smaller rocks below. Ryana had learned not to accompany him at such times, for he often seemed to have a need to be alone. Alone to sit and brood.
In the beginning, when they had been small children, he used to join the sisters at their play in the lagoon, but as they grew older, he took to going off by himself. Ryana used to wonder if it was because his growing awareness of his male nature made it awkward for him to frolic naked with the others.
As she grew and started to become more aware of her own female sexuality, she would often glance at the bodies of the other sisters and compare them to her own, which had always seemed inadequate. The others were all taller than she, and more slender, with longer and more sinewy limbs and graceful necks. They seemed so beautiful. Compared to them, her own proportions seemed squat and unattractive. Her breasts and hips were larger, her torso was shorter, her legs, though long by human standards, seemed too short compared to theirs. And their hair seemed much more beautiful than hers. Most villichi were born with thick, red hair, either flame-colored or dark red with brighter highlights. Her own silvery white hair seemed drab and lusterless by comparison.
She would look at the other sisters and wonder if Sorak found them as beautiful as she did. Perhaps, she thought, he had taken to absenting himself from their frolics because his male nature was making him become aware of them in the same manner as her own maturing female nature was making her become aware of him.
Of course, she had not known then that Sorak’s nature was a great deal more complex than that. She had not known that several of his personalities were female. She knew now that when he had gone off to brood by himself, he had been preoccupied with matters not of the flesh, but of the self. More and more, as he grew older, he had been plagued by questions to which he had no answers. Who was he? What was his tribe? Who were his parents? How did he come to be?
