Stooping down, Wolstan snatched one of the smaller fish and tossed it, still wriggling and flapping, onto the ground behind him. Then he leaned forward, ready for another.
"Oh," I said. "Like that."
Wolstan turned out to be a natural. Which was a good thing. Thea was too squeamish about holding onto the slippery, squirming fish once she lifted them out of the water; and Robin and I had terrible timing. Wolstan landed more than the three of us combined.
Once we had a pile of them, Cornelius told us to gather some of the grass so he could make a cookfire.
"You'll never be able to get a flame going in this damp," Wolstan said, picking up one of the fish.
My empty stomach heaved as he bit into it, raw and uncleaned.
Cornelius saved us from that fate.
"Sushi only for those who want it," he said. "I can magically light a fire for anybody willing to wait for a cooked meal."
Fish is not one of my favorite things, but this fish smelled wonderful as we waited there in the cold drizzle, each trying to sit as close to the fire as possible.
Robin pulled his cards from his pocket. "Pick a card," he told me. "Any card."
For want of anything to take my mind off my stomach, I picked a card.
Five hands later, I'd lost five coins and one snake bracelet.
"Count me out," I said, and he turned to Wolstan. "Pick a card," he said.
"Careful, he cheats," I warned.
But by then the fish were half cooked, and that was as long as anyone was willing to wait.
As soon as we finished eating, we crossed the river. Luckily it never got much deeper than chest-level, because Wolstan carried Mom piggy-back. On the other side, he switched and put her across one shoulder, the easiest position for him, but the one she hated the most: with her head down and her rear end up in the air. For myself, I was just thankful that between the rain and the river, most of the orc blood and grime washed off.
Eventually we left the drizzle behind, and the ground became hard-packed dirt with great cracks. Our wet clothes gave off steam in the dry heat, and we all smelled like wet dogs. Finally, after what seemed like three or four weeks, but was only hours, we could see something ahead, something besides endless clumps of grass in endless sun-baked earth.
"The desert," Wolstan said. "The Un-named Desert."
"Wonderful," I said.
"We have to cross the desert to get to Sannatia."
I knew that. But I didn't have to be enthusiastic about it.
As we got closer, much closer, we saw something else, but at first we couldn't tell what it was.
"It looks like signs," Thea said eventually. "A series of signs just beyond where the desert starts."
"Sure," Robin said. "They say KEEP OFF THE GRASS."
We were all too exhausted to laugh. Not that it was that funny.
We couldn't make out the wording until we reached the actual edge of the desert, which was a distinct boundary, a strip no more than ten yards wide, where the ground got sandier and the grass got sparser. Beyond that, the sand was as thick and white as in a brand-new sandbox.
What each of the signs said was BEWARE OF SAND HANDS.
"Sand hands?" Robin said. "Sand hands? What in the world are sand hands?"
Wolstan shrugged.
We all looked at each other. We all shrugged.
"I never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life," Robin said. He took a step into the sandy area before the desert. And another. Glancing back, he grinned at us. He crossed the not-quite-desert strip. Still nothing happened. Again he glanced back to grin. He took another step, which brought him abreast of one of the signs, and he drummed his fingers against it to show his contempt. He took another step and his foot sank deeper in the sand than he had anticipated, causing him to stumble. He pulled himself upright, then pitched forward again. "Hey!" he yelled, surprised. Then, "Hey!" he cried again. And that was fear in his voice.
From where we stood, we saw ... Well, it sure looked like a hand to me. A human hand. It had hold of Robin's right ankle, and it tugged. Robin's entire foot disappeared under the sand.
Robin pulled out his sword and jabbed into the sand by his foot. No reaction that we could see. He suddenly jerked forward. The sand came up to his right knee.
Suddenly another hand popped out of the sand and grabbed his left ankle.
"Help!" Robin screamed. "Harek! Cornelius!"
It was like his calling us by name stung us into action. I started running across the strip that divided us.
Robin was tilted over, his right side sinking faster than his left. He continued to plunge his sword into the sand all around him, but still without effect.
The sand was up to his hips by the time I reached the sign. I reached forward with my left hand.
He dropped the sword, which was no use anyway, and a hand surfaced to grab it.
I slashed at the hand with my sword, but it was too quick. Forget that, I told myself. The important thing was Robin. Grabbing his hand with my left hand, I tugged. He was waist deep, and I wasn't helping at all.
Cornelius had come up behind me and seized hold of my belt. "Use both hands," he commanded me.
I dropped my sword on our side of the sign and reached for Robin. He was buried up to his chest.
"Do something!" he screamed.
More hands broke the surface of the sand, reaching for Robin's shoulders, pulling him down. Thea had run up beside us and struck at the hands where they came out of the sand, but there were too many of them. Any one of the hands could dodge down out of her way, and there were all those others, pulling Robin down, down, till his chin was resting on the sand, till his chin was disappearing under the sand, till more hands pressed down on the top of his head. And then I remembered the boots. "Say the magic word, Robin! Say 'That!' "
The hands gave a final tug and Robin's head popped under the surface.
22. CHANGE IN PLANS
I sat down heavily on the hard, sandy ground. After all the fighting and snarling and sarcasm and one-upmanship and cheating at cards, there was a hollow spot in the pit of my stomach that had nothing to do with lack of food.
Wolstan came up behind me, having put Mom down at the boundary where the sand began. Stubborn as always, Mom wasn't going to be left behind and was walking toward us, slowly, seeing that it was too late for rushing to be any use.
"Gone, eh?" Wolstan said. "Terrible waste." He sighed. "Too bad you didn't bring a cleric. Clerics can raise the dead."
I rested my head in my hands. I was beginning to get a headache myself.
"That?" Cornelius said in a dangerous tone of voice. He stooped down to put his face on a level with mine. " 'Say the magic word, that'? Did Robin have my boots?"
"I—"
Cornelius grabbed the front of my shirt and dragged me to my feet. I was too surprised to resist. "Did you help Robin steal my boots?" he screamed at me.
I shoved him away. "Don't you touch me, you incompetent sleazeball. Why didn't you use your Levitation spell?"
"Oh yeah?" he said. Obviously things had happened too swiftly for him to think of it. I hadn't thought of it till a moment ago. "Oh yeah?" he repeated. He started to raise his hands for a spell, and I went for my sword an instant before I remembered I had thrown it down to help Robin.
Thea kicked the back of Cornelius's knee, and he staggered. He had to use his hands to keep himself from falling, and that ruined his spell.
"Stop it," Thea commanded. "Both of you." She gave me a hard shove. "You're acting like boys."
Cornelius rubbed the back of his leg and said with a pained expression, "We are boys."
"Well, you're acting like stupid boys. Robin was a thief. We knew that all along. So knock it off."
I rubbed my chest where she had stiff-armed me. "Yes, ma'am," I said.
"Now," she said, "if Robin used the magic word in time, he's back at the troll statue. But we certainly can't go back for him. Maybe—if our timing has gotten lucky—whe
n the others come back from the town, they'll pass by there and pick him up."
"Since when has anything about this—" I remembered Wolstan in time and bit off the word game. "Since when have we been lucky about anything?"
Thea ignored me. "In any case, there's nothing we can do. We have to press on. Agreed?"
"Agreed," Wolstan and I said.
Cornelius grunted.
"Agreed," my mom started to say. But then she swayed, and before anybody could move, she dropped to the ground.
"I'm all right," I could hear her weak voice protest as we crouched around her. "I'm sorry. I just felt so tired ... And ... dizzy..." She closed her eyes, and I could see her chest heaving as though she'd been running around the block. "I'm sorry," she mumbled, "I'm sorry I'm ... such a burden."
"Take it easy," Cornelius said, patting her hand.
"We need to find someplace for her to rest," Thea said. "We need to find someplace for all of us to rest."
I shaded my eyes from the sun, which was low enough to be turning the edge of the sky pink and orange. The row of warning signs extended as far as I could see. I turned to Wolstan. "This Miller's Grove, will we reach there before nightfall?"
"I thought Miller's Grove was out of the way," Cornelius interrupted.
"Yeah, but obviously we can't cross the desert here. Does the land get any more hospitable between here and there?"
"Miller's Grove is long and stretched out." Wolstan gestured, indicating parallel to the desert. "We'll be in the surrounding woods long before we get to the mill, beyond the cliffs. There's always something to eat in the woods. And we won't be in the open."
The longer we waited to eat, the less fussy any of us was going to be. "Well, if you could carry ... Felice again."
I wasn't sure how much Mom was aware of. Wolstan picked her up, the head-down, rear-end-up technique she loathed, and she looked awfully limp.
As we started walking, an idea occurred to me. "Mom," I said. "Mom."
Mom opened her eyes and raised her head.
"Do you still have that necklace, the one from the troll statue? If Robin said the magic word in time, the crystal will be gone."
"Of course," Thea interrupted, "if Robin said the magic word in time, the sword would be gone too. Of course"—she raised her voice for Cornelius's benefit—"there's no telling where the sword is, since a certain member of our party made me throw that away."
Never turning back, Cornelius grunted like a pig.
Mom groped around her neck and the opening of her dress. "It is gone," she said.
Wolstan, ever the optimist, said, "A hundred opportunities for you to have lost it in the Shadow Caves."
Mom let her head drop back down without a word.
I hoped for all I was worth that Robin had made it—even though the chances were that, even if he had survived, he'd never catch up and we'd never see him again.
23. BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOON
Our shadows got longer and longer until they disappeared entirely. To our right the BEWARE OF SAND HANDS signs, posted one every several hundred feet till the land met the distant horizon, melted into the evening darkness. To our left we were vaguely aware of the looming Sand Cliffs, despite the fact that they were miles away.
Eventually we reached the forest, where we were too exhausted to care anymore.
We debated whether to light a fire, weighing the attention it would draw against the warmth and security it would provide. But even Thea, who was the only one raising any objections, seemed to be hoping for a fire. She just wanted us to be aware that she had lodged a complaint; that way, in case anything went wrong, she could remind us that she had told us so.
Of course Cornelius had already lit a fire magically that day, so we had to use flints.
"I'm going to see if I can find any game," Wolstan announced as Thea and I struggled to set spark to dried birch bark.
He disappeared into the blackness of the night. Not that I could see he'd have much luck: the orcs had made off with our bows, and I couldn't imagine anybody—even Wolstan—sneaking up close enough to a forest creature to be able to stab it with a sword.
There was a full moon, though it was playing peekaboo with the clouds. When it was out, I could see Mom sleeping on her makeshift mattress of leaves. Waiting for the fire, Cornelius had fallen asleep still sitting up.
I helped Thea arrange the fish. We still had six of them: one for each of us, plus one that would have been for Robin. Too bad, I thought for the tenth or twelfth time that day, there had been no way to carry some of the river water with us.
We sat warming our hands at the fire, saying nothing to each other. I wondered how long we should wait for Wolstan before we ate without him, and tried to decide who would have first watch. And I didn't want to ask Thea what she thought, because she was obviously more patient than I was, and she'd probably take it as weakness on my part if I did.
From alarmingly close a wolf howled.
Close enough that Cornelius sat upright, instantly awake.
Close enough that the hairs on my arms sat upright, too.
I slipped my sword out of its sheath. Next to me, Thea mirrored my action. Cornelius stood, his back to the tree, his fingers flexing. Mom groaned in her sleep, as though the wolf's call had pierced through to her dreams, and she rolled onto her side.
Then the cry—of loneliness or challenge or declaration of territory—faded till it seemed to sink beyond my threshold of hearing rather than to cease. My heart thudded in my chest. The wolf repeated its howl. And again a third time. Never changing, never coming closer. Telling other wolves about us? Telling them dinner was near?
I waited for yet another cry. And waited. Locusts grated noisily. Branches settled in the cooling night air. The campfire crackled, no longer as cheery as before. But whatever the message had been, it was over.
And suddenly I had an awful thought. What if the wolf had already found its dinner?
"Wolstan?" I called.
Behind me, from the opposite direction Wolstan had taken, the opposite direction from which the wolf had howled, there was a whisper of leaves and underbrush that was more than just branches settling. I motioned for Thea to stay where she was, in case it was wolves, in case they were circling us in.
Cornelius moved to my left. Should I wake Mom? She wouldn't be able to help. She might in fact get in the way. Still, if we had to make a sudden escape, being awake would give her a head start.
Before I had a chance to decide, a figure stepped out from behind a tree at the rim of our firelight. It was a lot closer than I had estimated from the noise, and the fact that the shape was human didn't make me any less anxious. But then it said, "Cornelius, Harek," and stepped closer.
Anxiety evaporated into relief. "Nocona!" I sheathed my sword.
Nocona motioned for the others behind him to hurry up—Marian and Feordin. That was why I had been confused by their distance: it was the two of them I had heard; Nocona, Indian-stealthy, could have come up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder before I'd have been aware of him.
We all hugged and said how happy we were to see each other and asked, "Did you hear that wolf?" and everybody said, "Sure did," and we speculated how close it might be and wondered how safe these woods were at night. Then they asked, "How's Felice?" and we said, "No better," and they were shocked and dismayed and said they had been unable to find the town—that they'd kept riding and riding, and no matter which direction they went, they always found themselves back where they'd started—and they had been sure we had been on the right track and that she must be cured by now. We told them about Wolstan, and that orcs had eaten our horses, and they said they still had theirs, but they had tied them back in the woods when they had come to investigate our fire. Then Marian asked, "Where's Robin?"
"Ahmmm," Thea said, "I better tend the fire."
"Ahmmm," Cornelius said, "I better keep an eye out for Wolstan."
"Ahmmm," I said, but my mind went blank.
; Marian put her hands on her hips and tapped her foot. "Where's Robin?" she repeated ominously.
I could have said I had to check on Mom, but it was too late for that now. One step and Marian would grab me by the shirt, I just knew it. "We ... ah ... sort of ... lost him ... Sort of."
"You lost him?"
"Sort of."
Marian grabbed me by the shirt after all. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU LOST HIM?" she screamed at me.
Nocona and Feordin stepped closer. I got the impression they might pull her off me if she started beating me up too bad—after all, we were short on players and getting shorter all the time—but they too seemed to take Robin's loss as a personal and intentional provocation.
I explained about the sand hands, stressing how Robin had chosen to ignore the signs and walk ahead of us. Thea and Cornelius nodded vigorously. Then I told the other things that had happened. About halfway through, Marian let go of my shirt. She sat down on the ground, resting her head in her hands.
"So you see," I finished, "it may just be that Robin is fine. We may be worrying needlessly."
Marian sighed. "Idiot," she muttered.
I didn't ask who.
"What about you?" Thea asked. "What happened to you after you realized you couldn't get back to the town?"
Marian just sat there, sulking. Nocona was poking at our fire with a stick, listening to all we said, but quiet himself. It was Feordin who spoke. "Well, we wasted about half the day at it. We kept thinking maybe if we circled around, or if we tried walking backward, or I can't remember what-all we tried. But finally we gave it up as another bug in the computer and took off after you four. Late afternoon we came to this old guy's cottage."
"Yeah?" I said. "Tell me about it." I had only explained that we'd gotten the boots, sword, and crystal from a sun-petrified troll. I hadn't brought up about how the old coot had stiffed us for six silver pieces, nor about how he'd conned us into fixing his stupid door.
Feordin shrugged. "Nothing much to say. Sweet old guy."
"Sweet old guy?" I croaked.
Feordin glanced at Marian for confirmation. "How would you describe Fred?"
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