Miri was still skeptical. “I have traveled across the wastes many times, and I have been to many wadis. How can we tell if any of those places that we venture into is the actual Valley of Stone?”
“Ah, now here is a big inkling that our lad has found out about,” Devos said as he looked at the boy once more. “Tell, them, Rion.”
“The written passages on the telling stone described the wadi in great detail,” Rion said. “The story told of rock walls with the color of bone.”
Miri furrowed her brow. She had never heard of a valley composed of white stone. “So if we come across a wadi with walls of rock that are the color of bone, then this will be the sign that we are in that very place?”
“Yes,” Devos said. “And there is also another mark that shall determine such a place. The glyphs on the telling stone told of Kaelr finding a number of black menhirs with carved inscriptions on them, telling him the direction to take in order to reach Lethe.”
“Well, that is a start,” Miri said. “Did the telling stones mention as to how tall these menhirs would be?”
Rion shook his head. “The glyphs only tell of the events, the descriptions do not seem to be exact in any way.”
Miri frowned as she looked out into the night. With only vague descriptions from a bunch of old writings to guide them, they could easily get lost out in the wastes. Death would be slow and painful if there was but a slight error in the direction they were taking. All she could see out to the east was nothing but vast dunes of sand. But to turn back now would mean a death sentence for the boy, and she did not want that either. There was no choice but to move onwards. She turned to look back at the others. “Devos, you must discard any of the telling stones that have already been translated. As of this moment, we shall all only carry food, water and weapons. The cooking pot and our cups will be left here. That means we will no longer have any tea or hot food. I shall carry one sack of dried fuel for fire but leave the rest behind.”
Nyx took out a small leather sack from her pack. “We still have plenty of fermented algae for tea. Do we leave all this behind too?”
“We will have to,” Miri said. “We may as well drink all the tea now. Brew as many pots as you like, for we will not be having anymore of it for the foreseeable future.”
Devos pulled out several waterskins from the mound of leather packs lying near the boulder. Jinn got up and poured the remaining tea from the pot into everyone’s cups and refilled it with more water. It was going to be a long night of drinking.
Chapter 13
Devos sighed as he sat down along the trough of the dune that was just enough to give a little shade. The straps of his backpack had dug into his shoulders and he painfully tugged them loose before placing the pack down beside him. It was their tenth day out in the endless sea of sand and he was feeling lightheaded. Glancing to his right, he saw that Rion was wrapped in his cloak, fast asleep. Devos had wanted to smile, but his lips were parched and he was no longer sweating. They had ran out of water a few days back, and nobody wanted to state the obvious. He knew the boy still had perhaps a few thimblefuls of the precious liquid in his waterskin, but he would never take the child’s water ration away from him. Rion was simply too valuable, and he was the main reason they were out here.
He closed his eyes and tried to push away the headache that kept pounding his skull, but he could only rest for a bit before he had to climb up to the crest of the dune and keep a lookout. Miri and Nyx had gone ahead, braving the sweltering heat of the afternoon in order to use their Vis to try and detect any form of life out there. They had all gotten hopelessly lost, and Jinn was worried they would never find their way back, while the others knew there would be no returning at all. The night before, Miri had told them of her plan to use a hunting formation out in the daytime so they could cover more ground and try to locate some landmarks. Once again they were deployed in a V-shaped formation, with Devos and the boy at the base and the two Strigas along the wings. Jinn would act as a relay for either of them in case something useful was found.
It was not a good thing to travel during the heat of the day, but they no longer had any choice. Miri and Jinn had taken turns carrying Rion on their back when they moved at night. The lack of food and water for many days had made him weak and drowsy. Even though he couldn’t read minds like the Striga, Devos could tell that Miri was already in a desperate mood when she outlined her plan last eventide. Death was lurking nearby, and one more mistake would doom them all.
Devos snapped awake when he suddenly heard a sound behind the dune. He turned and scrambled up the sandy slope. The angle of the sun was such that it was now late afternoon. He must have dozed off for a few hours at least. When he got to the crest of the sandbank, he looked back down at the trough to make sure the boy was okay. Rion was still lying where he was. Devos turned his gaze back to the drifts in front of him as he pulled his hood up to shade his eyes from the intense light.
He could see Jinn standing on top of another ridge a few hundred yards away. Devos stood up and waved. The younger man quickly noticed where he was and headed in his direction. After a long wait, Devos scrambled down the other side of the hill and met him halfway along another trough. Just as he was about to clasp the young man’s hand, he stumbled forward, his weak knees finally giving way.
Jinn crouched down and made eye contact with him. The young man’s eyes were glassy from exhaustion and his lips were flaky. “Are you alright, Devos?”
Devos took a few deep breaths before answering. “Yes, I can still move. Has there been any word from the others?”
Jinn sighed to catch his breath. Like the old man, he was exhausted as well, but his younger self gave him more energy. “I came to fetch you and the boy. Miri found something. She is on her way to meet up with my sister.”
Devos slowly stood up. Every effort was agony. “Can we not rest? The boy is fast asleep and I can hardly keep my own eyes open.”
Jinn shook his head slowly. “No, we cannot. Miri says we must move quickly to them. I will carry the boy. Can you bring the packs?”
“I-I do not think so,” Devos said softly. “I am too …weak now.”
“Stay here then,” Jinn said as he turned and started walking away. “Let me get the boy, we can fetch the packs later.”
Devos could no longer talk as his throat suddenly clamped shut. He just nodded. Jinn moved out towards the drift where Rion had been resting in. Devos sat down on the warm sand and decided to rest for a bit while waiting for them to come back his way. He closed his eyes and quickly fainted.
Miri grimaced as she gently placed Rion down beside her. Night had come once more, and the desert sands were beginning to cool. Jinn, Nyx and Devos were all lying on the ground nearby, asleep. It had been a long day and she figured a couple hours of rest would be alright for them. She was particularly impressed by Jinn, the young man not only carried Rion over to her forward position, but he also went back for Devos, and then a third time for the backpacks. Of all the people who deserved this brief respite, it was definitely him.
Like the others, her own mouth was dry and she could barely concentrate. She had heard tales of the ancient peoples who were so pampered with luxury, they could not survive a single day without water. By contrast, old tales of the tribes had painted them as a hardy breed of men, accustomed to days out in the wastes without taking a drop of water, for their bodies had been forged into tougher forms over the eons. Nevertheless, she envied the type of unimaginable wealth her distant ancestors might have possessed.
Miri stood up and scanned the twilit horizon. Up ahead of them was a canyon of some sort. During the heat of the afternoon, Miri was using her mindsense to feel around for any sort of life. Her instincts had told her that if she could just comprehend the thoughts of even the smallest creature within range, it would lead her to water. It was one of the first things taught to her when she was a young Striga. An old hunter of the tribe had told her that wherever there was life, then there would be w
ater nearby, for both could only exist with each other. She took that advice literally to heart now.
Channeling her remaining reserves of Vis, Miri walked forward for a few hundred yards until she stood along a cliff. Ten feet down below her were what looked like bone white canyons of stone that must have been carved out of the rocks for untold cycles. The walls along the area looked strange. Unlike typical smooth stones, the sides of the canyon were pockmarked with rough, tiny holes. It was as if the gods had taken countless needles and punctured every single inch of the rock. Along the canyon floor were strange stones that resembled bones of some sort, but they seemed to have grown outwards, like a fungi bloom. She had used her spear to poke at the strange protrusions, but it was clear they were but lifeless stones. Whatever existed in this whole place must have died out long ago, their forms having petrified over time.
Miri sighed. Their ordeal wasn’t over yet. While traveling on the canyon floor below would offer them much needed shade from the sun, they still needed to find a source of water very quickly. She believed that they could move around slowly for a few more days before their parched bodies would finally give out. It might take them forever to wander out here if they searched using their eyes, but Miri had other plans. All she had to do was to sense out any sort of animal, and that would lead them to that nourishing element.
As she crouched down at the top of the canyon wall, Miri closed her eyes and began to spread out her mental feelers. It was a known fact that animals of the waste were nocturnal, one either had to find them sleeping during the day or roving about at eventide, looking for food. With her mindsense in a weakened state due to her severe dehydration, Miri had to use all of her concentration just to cover a few feet in front of her. Sure enough, she began to sense the wind howling along the hollows of the crevasse as every grain of dust would float along its currents. Miri focused not on the noise of the wind, but rather on the breathing or movement of any sort of animal.
After what seemed like hours, she heard the distant clicking sounds of limbs crawling along the canyon floor. It was nothing more than a remote whisper at first, but as she refocused what was left of her mental reserves on it, the far noise of movement soon began to echo loudly in her skull. It was the sound of tiny claws scraping along the hard, stony floor. With the echo now reverberating in her mind, Miri began to use her mindsense to locate the animal. Her mental feelers soon tested the air around it, triangulating the vibrations of movement with the ambient flows of the wind. Little by little, a mental map of the twists and turns of the gulley had etched itself into her mind and then she knew where it was.
Miri opened her eyes and stood up. She walked slowly along the edges of the ravine until she found a spot where she could climb down. All she wore now were her boots, loincloth, bodice, and bracers. Having left her cloak with the others, she felt a slight pang of regret since the night was getting colder. But she needed to hunt now before she lost track of the beast. Miri held the spear in her right hand as she started moving along the canyon floor, her boots making crunching noises on the strange, stony ground underneath. Her mindsense was telling her that the creature was just up ahead.
When she rounded a curving passageway, she soon came face to face with it. The animal was but a little sand bug, its black, lozenge-shaped body was slowly moving along the floor of the canyon towards what looked like a crack along the side of the wall.
Miri felt a twinge of disappointment. The sand beetle looked to be the largest she had ever seen, for it was the size of her fist. Nevertheless, it was not a good beast to hunt for meat. Sand bugs had very little fluids, its body was mostly carapace. She would need to harvest at least two dozen of them in order to make a difference. Even if she found a whole hive of beetles, she did not relish the thought of having to pry and squeeze the fluids out of their bodies, for that would take hours. Since she hadn’t seen any other animal nearby, Miri decided to follow it anyway, since sand bugs were the usual prey for bigger animals. If it led her to a larger beast or to its hive, then she figured it would be worth it.
The bug kept crawling along, using its front feelers to search for algae that it could feed on. When it got closer to the large crack, it paused for a bit. The bug reared its tiny head into the air, as if trying to sense any trouble. Miri followed until she was right behind it and crouched down. The bug was facing straight into the fissure and it didn’t seem to notice her.
Without warning, something long and black whipped out from the shadows of the crack and its point landed on top of the sand bug, crushing it into a mass of pus and carapace. Miri had stopped using her Vis and was taken completely by surprise as she fell backwards, her buttocks landing onto the rough canyon floor, scraping some of its skin off. Miri looked up in horror as the long black tail whipped up into the air again, ready to strike her this time.
Just as the stinger drove down towards her, Miri quickly scrambled backwards and it missed her foot by only a few inches. As she got up, Miri held her spear forward, its shaft parrying the black tail to the side. Then she crouched down into a fighting stance, feeling a surge of adrenaline seeping through her body. The creature, sensing that its prey was just out of reach, crawled out from the narrow crack and out into the open.
It was a poison norpion, the largest she had ever seen. Miri figured it must have been at least six feet long. The beast had a flattened body that allowed it to pass through narrow cracks like the place it had just come from. The norpion had six segmented legs and was covered in a black, plated carapace, its long tail ending with a barbed stinger at its tip. The beast began to crawl towards her, its tail high up in the air, readying itself for another strike.
Miri concentrated as she began to use her mindsense to calm the beast down. The best way to defeat these creatures was with minimal physical effort. It was better to use a Striga’s Vis to make the animal docile enough to approach it and strike a killing blow. Poison norpions also had large fluid sacs underneath its armored body, these were ideal for replenishment among those that had a desperate need for water. The one problem was that if the animal’s stinger was damaged or cut off, then its poison sacs would burst, and the mingling of the body fluids with the toxin would make everything undrinkable. Her one chance to kill it intact was to drive the spear point into its tiny brain without damaging its tail. The one problem with that strategy was that it left her open to attack if the norpion would lash out for one final time the moment it died. Many a hunter had been killed in a foolish attempt to slay these creatures with a well-placed blow, only to be stung in return the moment the norpion was in its death throes. The poison would cause a paralysis that forced the afflicted one’s heart to stop beating and their lungs to shut down, resulting in a slow, smothering death. Some of the better healers like Zedne knew how to treat poisons such as the one that was being brandished by the animal in front of her, but Miri knew she could never get back to the settlement in time even if she had wanted to.
The giant norpion paused for a brief second while Miri invaded its mind, making its tiny brain confused as to whether to attack or to run away. But just before the creature was about to enter into a state of hibernation, Miri’s thoughts were suddenly jumbled as she momentarily lost her concentration. Her dehydration finally got the better of her, and Miri suddenly felt weak and all she herself could think of was to close her own eyes and rest. With the Striga’s mental feelers having withdrawn, the norpion instantly sensed that an attack against it was imminent. The creature crawled forward, and lashed out with its stinger, just as Miri was still trying to shake away the fatigue inside her head.
Everything seemed like a blur as she saw the tail whipping towards her leg. Miri cried out and tried to parry the attack with the shaft of her spear, hoping to deflect the stinger before it could land on her vulnerable flesh. The norpion’s tail was partly diverted as the spear shaft managed to connect with it. Miri could have easily grabbed the norpion by the tail and pin its thorax with her foot, but she was too slow as the creatur
e withdrew its tail back behind it. Having no choice, Miri instinctively moved in reverse and her back suddenly collided with the side of the canyon wall, causing a few more scrapes on her bare shoulders. The norpion sensed that its prey had been cornered and it advanced once more, its spindly legs making scratching noises on the rough hewn floor.
Miri realized that she had no room to maneuver. Her own weakened state had caused her to misjudge the length of the canyon walls that surrounded them. Her Vis was spent, and she would be unable to use her mindsense without some water and a proper rest. She was nothing more than a glorified hunter now. She had to rely on her spear and physical abilities if she were to prevail in this. The norpion was now within range as it lashed out with its tail once more, this time it whipped upwards, right towards her head for a decisive attack.
Just as she saw the barbed stinger coming straight at her right eye, Miri’s head suddenly shifted to the left. The sharp, needle-like organ struck the rough hewn rock and had quickly become embedded into it. The norpion tried to rear its tail back, but it wouldn’t budge. Miri immediately held the creature’s thorax down with her foot while she positioned the spear to strike it just behind one of its armored plates in order to land a clean killing blow. The norpion started thrashing about, trying desperately to pull out its embedded tail. Miri located the right spot and drove the spear downwards, its point passing in between the layers of carapace, through the chitin, until it penetrated the norpion’s tiny, pulsing brain.
Lands of Dust (The Dying World Book 1) Page 16
