The Secrets of the Moonstone Heir: Book One of The Scale Seekers

by A. R. Cook

  Desert Rain covered her moonstone with a hand. “Not anymore than your horns would.”

  “Oh, do you like them?” He grasped the horns on his head and popped them off like corks. “I’ll trade you what’s on my head for what’s on yours.”

  Desert Rain gawked at him.

  “Not interested, eh?” Gothart snapped his horns back into place. “I suppose I’ve had enough with tampering with others’ heads today. In fact, the last dupe I dealt with is still

  probably chasing me after what I did to his head.”

  “What did you do?”

  Gothart ruffled Desert Rain’s hair. “My, aren’t we curious. I’m not in a position to tell, and you certainly would be wasting your time to ask him, since he won’t remember what it is that happened to him.”

  “Who is ‘him’?”

  In punctual response to her question, there was a sudden thundering from above. Something was roaring right above her burrow, and it shook everything off the shelves of her kitchen.

  Gothart grinned. “That would be ‘him’ now.”

  Desert Rain dropped the robe. What she had heard sounded reminiscent of the roars from a pride of orange-spotted mountain cats in the Land Ablaze, yet there was a piercing screech like a hawk intermingled with it. Desert Rain could also hear its plodding feet pounding the ground above her front hallway.

  “He is a bit noisy, isn’t he?” Gothart twisted one of his fingers in his ear. “He’s tracked me all the way out here, and I bet he doesn’t even remember what he’s mad about anymore.”

  “What has followed you here?” Desert Rain did not wait for Gothart to reply, since she guessed she would get another indirect answer. Instead she dashed over to the wall and crawled her way up through one of the sunholes to take a peek outside. The sunhole was big enough for her to squeeze up through, and she poked up her head to be about eye level with the sand. She instantly caught sight of a very large animal swatting at the broken pillars of the temple ruins. Its giant black claws dug here and there, its snout sniffed around, its toothy mouth snarled and its two tails flicked back and forth in anticipation. The massive indigo backside with its dark blue scaly ridges made Desert Rain turn pale white. She immediately slid back down into the burrow.

  “That’s a Wretched!” she wheezed.

  “And not a very handsome one.” Gothart sat back down and folded his hands behind his head.

  Desert Rain did not even want to know what Gothart had done to the demon to anger it. She rushed to the front entrance, to push the heavy circular slab of stone over the doorway to close them inside. This slab had been part of the temple as well, and was a brutally burdensome thing that gave Desert Rain great difficulty in pushing. Normally Desert Rain did not use this door since there was usually no fear of intruders, plus it trapped too much heat inside during the day. After a few full-bodied shoves, she managed to roll the slab into a deep groove in the ground to cement it in place, sealing the entrance.

  Gothart came over and gave the stone door a look over. “That’s going to be a bother to move back, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not concerned with moving it back right now.” Desert Rain let out a long sigh, rubbing her aching arms. “The ceiling is strong. I don’t think even a beast that big will be able

  to dig through.”

  She suddenly heard a loud snort right outside the door. Desert Rain held her breath, not daring to move. Gothart didn’t look intimidated so much as he did bored.. When nothing happened for a minute, he smirked and let out a quick bleat.

  The thing outside smashed into the door with such force, it knocked Desert Rain to the floor. It pounded against the door with unbridled ferocity, and small cracks became visible and small chips of rock popped off and rained onto the floor. Desert Rain got up and flattened her back against the stone, gritting her teeth as the beast outside rammed into it again and again.

  “Unless you have some sort of supernatural strength, I doubt you’ll be able to hold that up,” Gothart observed.

  “For Guerda-Shalyr’s sake, do something!” Desert Rain screamed.

  “And what would you propose I do?”

  “I don’t know…you’re a Trickster! Trick him or something!” Desert Rain could feel the door breaking apart.

  Gothart laughed. “It’s true that I perform my tricks flawlessly, but I can hardly do anything through a door of limestone that’s a foot thick.”

  “You do realize that if that Wretched gets in here, it’ll kill both of us!”

  “He would? That seems rather unsporting of him.” Gothart, in no hurry, began to feel around in his breast pocket and up his sleeves. “I’d come over here if I were you.”

  “But—“

  “If that fellow can break through that door, I doubt you’ll be a much better blockade. Now stop being a silly ninny and come over here.”

  Desert Rain could feel the middle of the door caving into her backside. She dashed behind Gothart, praying he really did have something useful up his sleeve. The goat finally produced

  what seemed like a garnet sea urchin, a palm-sized gem with the finest needles emerging from all sides. Gothart balanced it on the tip of his finger, and smiled as the demon burst through the door, sending giant fragments of rock flying all over the hallway. A particularly large piece of rock missed Desert Rain’s head by about six inches.

  Getting the full front view of the Wretched paralyzed Desert Rain. She clung to Gothart, digging her nails into his waistcoat. He briskly swatted her hands to save his clothing from getting torn. The demon advanced slowly and methodically, its snout coming within an inch of Gothart’s nose. Desert Rain could feel the flesh-burning heat pouring from the demon’s nostrils. It opened its massive jaws, tar dripping from them. The vilest and most horrible set of teeth were in that gaping mouth, and all Desert Rain could do was squeeze her tearing eyes shut as the beast prepared to ingest them.

  Gothart blew a light breath over the thorny garnet. The needles scattered, darting into the demon’s face, digging deep into its skin. The monster howled, staggered back and tried to

  claw the needles out of his eyelids. Gothart produced an additional two garnet urchins, sending more needles all over the Wretched’s body. In a few moments, the howling, thrashing demon wore down, and collapsed with a thunderous thud on the floor.

  Upon opening her eyes and seeing the monster passed out, prostrated at their feet, Desert Rain’s fear was fully blotted out by relief and a great deal of confusion. “What did you do?”

  she asked.

  “A trick,” was all the Trickster replied. He bounded graceful onto the demon’s back. “The bigger they are— well, you know the saying. My, he does sleep soundly. Well, thank you for the drink, but I must be going.”

  “Wait a minute! You can’t leave this Wretched in my house!”

  “It is your house, deary, so it’s your problem now.” Gothart bounded over the rocky rumble and out onto the entrance steps. “I wouldn’t fret too much. The poor brute won’t remember a thing when he wakes up, seeing how I emptied his head.”

  “You what?”

  “His head…” Gothart tapped one of his horns with his finger. “Empty as a discarded nutshell. But I don’t guarantee that he won’t be in a sour mood. Ta ta.” With that, the goat bounded away. When Desert Rain scrambled up the front steps after him, Gothart was nowhere to be seen.

  Desert Rain cautiously went back down into the burrow. The demon was out cold. Desert Rain stared at the beast for the longest time, and when she felt sure that it would not arise, she approached it carefully. She took the risk of plucking out one of the garnet needles, and by touching it she could feel a venomous heat that made her fingertips ache. She observed the shard closely, making out a thin shaft containing liquid inside. Blackened blood and puss oozed from the beast’s puncture wound.

  “By the Divine Beasts,” she gasped, “These things are full of poison!” She had seen this kind of poison effect before, when an Ulomin man had been bitten b
y a guivre rattler. “That horrible goat! First he empties your head and then he poisons you. As far as I see it, you haven’t done anything wrong…well, maybe you have, but you didn’t do anything to him to deserve this. Nobody deserves pain like this.”

  She began pulling out needles one by one. It was a long task, and by the end Desert Rain’s fingers were sore, but she was able to remove all the shards and then wrapped several cloth sheets around the creature to soak up the blood. In the back of her mind, she knew that trying to help the Wretched might be a mistake, for it might try to hurt her again when it woke up. But something about the sad look on its face, even in slumber, made her think not.

  She prepared a bowl of soup, mixing in the best herbs she had received as a gift from the healer Mage Skyhan. Desert Rain set the soup by the monster’s nose. She fetched a pot with crushed unicorn horn and mixed it with cactus milk, then dabbed it gently onto the wounds with a cloth. It was well known that unicorn horn powders were miraculous for curing all kinds of poisons, as Mage Skyhan had once taught her. At one point Desert Rain began to believe the beast was dead, but a quick check for his pulse proved he was still alive, although the pulse was very weak.

  After attending to those tasks, Desert Rain went outside into the sun, setting up a make-shift tent of sheets strewn on the broken pillars. She was not quite sure she wanted to be around when the giant woke up, and this way if she heard it crashing around inside she would have a good head start to run away. She sat patiently for a long time, Jubis sitting beside her nervously. The sun began to set, and the night wind hissed through the tent. After hearing nothing going on inside for ages, Desert Rain stood up with a huff.

  “How ridiculous is this,” she said to Jubis. “Here we are, sitting outside with night coming on, as I let that thing take over my burrow. I haven’t heard a single thing moving around in there. I’m going in and finding out what in Luuva is going on!”

  Although terror was ringing in her ears, Desert Rain tiptoed back down the steps into her burrow. The monster was gone.

  Desert Rain began to panic, wondering where in her burrow the Wretched had gotten to. It could not have left, for she had been outside watching the exit to her home all day. Then she saw it—the beast was in a dark corner of the hall, sitting still, its head low to the floor. Desert Rain froze, but was not afraid. Not really.

  He looked at her with those pupil-less yellow eyes. She gave him a gentle smile. Then something in his eyes changed, something that indicated he had a better understanding of what he saw, as if Desert Rain had suddenly taken on a shape he could comprehend. He shifted, but then wobbled and almost fell over. His eyelids squinted. He was still weak.

  “Don’t try to move yet,” Desert Rain said soothingly. “I don’t know what kind of poison you’ve got in you exactly, but hopefully it’ll start working its way out of your system. I made you some soup, but it must be cold by now. Would you like me to warm it up for you?”

  Desert Rain said all this with the full knowledge that the monster probably did not understand her language. From the way he continued to stare at her, he obviously did not. She really didn’t know much about Wretched languages – she had not met a Wretched in person before this one, and she only knew what she had heard about the Courts of the Wretched through Knights and rumors. She didn’t even know if this was typical Wretched behavior, to act so…beast-like. But she knew how to handle all the animals of the desert – she could handle this.

  She went about heating another bowl of soup over the kitchen fire pit, and set it down in front of the monster. After a few sniffs of the soup, he forced his long dark tongue to lap at the bowl. He sent more soup onto the floor than into his mouth.

  Desert Rain sat a few feet away from him, puzzling over her guest. She had never heard of a Wretched having a dragon-like face. He might be part lizard—but even lizard folk did not have such faces, such tusks and horns. Maybe the beast had been some sort of experiment, a creation that some evil demon wizard had not been entirely pleased with. Abandoned and alone. Like she was.

  “Tell you what,” Desert Rain remarked, “You stay with me until you’re better, okay? I mean, I have plenty of space, and it stays cool down here, and I know you probably don’t want to

  trudge around in the desert sun in the state you’re in.”

  The monster regarded her coolly. It made a soft deep sound, something like a growl but without any threat in it. He then attempted to lift his head, but the best he could do was raise it a few inches. Desert Rain took the risk of gently placing a hand on his head. His skin was very hot, but not rough as she had expected. He jerked his head away.

  “I suppose I should call you something. I can’t call you ‘Demon’ or ‘Thing.’ Let’s see… I’ll call you Ayu. It means ‘brother’ in Ahshi.” She made a small smile. “I’ll be like a sister to you from now on.”

  ***

  In the beginning of his stay with Desert Rain, Ayu kept to dark corners in a few certain rooms and would sit still for hours at a time. He was not much more than a shadow, and soon even the iguanas and Jubis were comfortable in passing by him. Over the weeks, Ayu slowly began to wander around the burrows, and would even sit nearby to watch Desert Rain go about cooking food, playing music, or painting. He did not say much except in grunts, but would regard Desert Rain if she spoke to him. It appeared as if he was beginning to understand her language. Soon he allowed her to make more physical contact with him, a pat on the nose, or a scratch under the chin. He was never aggressive, and although he and Desert Rain started getting into tickle wars, he treated her as gently as if she were made of rose petals. The appearance of the creature eventually was not so strange to Desert Rain, and the trust built up to the point that she could even ride on his shoulders when they walked about in the desert. She was slowly learning his language of growls, moans, and guttural noises. He had come to call her by a sound that was similar to the moan of a wounded tiger.

  But even a tiger who loves its trainer is still a tiger, and it is not always the teeth or claws one must fear the most.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Wish for a Memory

  It was not long after Swordmaster Skyhan’s visit that Ayu asked Desert Rain a particularly strange question in his moaning language.

  “Something else?” Desert Rain said in response to the whimpering bleats. “What difference would it make if you looked like something else?”

  Ayu hung his huge head, and sat back on his haunches. He made a long, low groan.

  “You look fine,” Desert Rain insisted. “Besides, there’s not anything you can do about it. Unless you were a Hij-Urawran, or someone who could use the same magic from the Great Manifestation. But you should never want to be anything else. You’re unique.”

  Ayu ambled away, down to the lower burrows where his room was. Desert Rain worried about him. He was still sick, prone to bouts of severe muscle spasms or a sudden lack of energy. His question had been a surprise, though, for he had never been one to ask about how he looked. She got the impression it must be due to Skyhan. He had been the first person Ayu had seen other than Desert Rain since he lost his memories. Ayu must have seen his own reflection before, out at the pool by the oasis. She had not thought that he would make a physical comparison between himself and the Knight.

  She pulled out her Mi’raj flute from the straw basket in her room, and began to play a lively melody. Normally, Ayu was attracted to her music, but this time he did not come to listen. Desert Rain put the flute down and walked down to the lower burrows, to where Ayu was sitting in his room, lit by one candle. She put a slender arm around the demon’s muscular shoulders. “I take it that you don’t like Swordmaster Skyhan too much.”

  The demon grimaced, which was disturbing given his tusks and sharp teeth.

  “Well, he probably won’t visit again. His coming here was an accident, after all. He’s too busy being a Knight of Luuva to drop by for no reason. So it’s just you and me. Feel better?”

  Ayu ma
de a heavy nod, but his expression hinted he was not heartened. He rose sluggishly to his feet, but took one step before faltering.

  “Is it that muscle again?” Desert Rain asked, gesturing to a spot on his left calf. He shook his leg out, and he chuffed, meaning he was fine. Desert Rain started to leave the room when Ayu moaned something.

  “Huh? What did I say about what?”

  He made a few grunts.

  “Oh, I said if you were a Sage, then you could change how you look. That’s all. They were able to shapeshift.”

  He picked up the candle off his bedside table and trudged out into the hall. In the meager light, he illuminated one of Desert Rain’s murals, which portrayed a long blue dragon winding in the sea. He pointed to it with one of his raptor claws.

  “Why, yes, that is a Sage. That’s the Water Weaver, my version of it, at least. Real artists have drawn it quite differently. You’d have to ask Merros for a more accurate description.”

  Ayu grunted.

  “Hmm…I suppose its face does look a tad like yours. The long nose and all.” She patted his nose. “Your face is much more fascinating. But it’s getting late now. The dune screechers have been howling for a while already. Good night, Ayu.” She exited to the upper burrows, extinguished the hall torches, and went to her room. She played one more song on the flute before going to bed.

  The next morning she got up, made a breakfast of cooked sand toad eggs, and called to Ayu to join her. When he did not come, she went down to his room, where he was still staring at the mural. Or it seemed like he was staring at it. When Desert Rain walked up to him, his eyes were shut, as if he were in deep concentration or half-sleep. He must have been like that all night.

  “Ayu, what are you doing?”

  He opened his eyes, and moaned.

  “You were trying to…? Ayu, just because you kind of look like a Sage, and I mean just a little bit, that doesn’t mean you can change shape like one. And you certainly can’t close your eyes and think that, ‘poof,’ you’ll change. But it’s so silly, to want to look like something you’re not. Let’s not think about it anymore. Come, take a walk with me.”