Father Espinoza left the mission with two mules, both heavily burdened with tin pots, casks of bright beads, and other gifts for the Azothi, as well as a good supply of water gourds and dried foods to sustain him on the journey. A single Quechan youth had agreed to guide him through the dunes, though I do not know what Father Espinoza used to bribe this fellow. Most of the Quechan would barely acknowledge the Azothi, let alone go to seek them where dusty death waited among the hot sands. Taking with them the blessings and faith of the mission, Espinoza and his guide departed at sunrise.
Two months later Father Espinoza was still missing. Yet his guide had returned two days ago on the back of a scrawny mule. Both boy and animal were half-dead from thirst, and had nearly starved to death among the dunes. The boy lay in a deep fever, raving in his native language about something that had terrified him. I tended to him myself, cooling his brow with a damp cloth and praying over his sickly body. I hoped he would not expire before telling us the fate of Father Espinoza. Missionary work was ever dangerous, and the valiant priest might be dead. I had had sent him into that forbidden waste. The responsibility of it lay upon my soul, a yoke of guilt that weighed me down.
The Quechan boy, whose name was Quick Eye, revived a bit on the third evening of his convalescence. I fed him broth with a wooden spoon. He shivered in the close air, and responded to my questions with minimal answers.
“Where is Father Espinoza?” I asked him.
“He is … with them…” said Quick Eye. He would not say the name of the Azothi.
“Is he alive? Healthy or wounded? Does he suffer?”
“Alive…” said Quick Eye. His face twitched in uncomfortable spasms. “He lives…”
“Why did he not return with you?”
“He is one of them now,” whispered Quick Eye.
I was confused. “What do you mean?”
“A piper at the gates of … the night that lasts forever…”
“Do you mean he chose to remain among the Azothi?” I asked.
Quick Eye knocked the bowl of soup off its table and clutched the collar of my robe. His eyes were filled with panic, his nose and mouth dribbling across his chin.
“It lies at the Center!” he panted. “The Center of All! It eats the stars and vomits up devils to serve its madness. They will open the Gate… Not even the Jesus can save us, Father! Not even the Jesus!”
I could get no further sense from Quick Eye that night, so I left him to his sickbed.
“I must go into the Land of the Azothi and find Father Espinoza,” I told my brother-priests. “It is my responsibility alone.”
They prayed for me, but they did not argue.
In the morning Quick Eye had regained his senses enough to draw me a crude map, yet he refused to accompany me on the journey. I could not fault him for this. The Azothi had abused him to the point of near-insanity, and the dunes had nearly killed him. Even now the heathens might be doing worse to poor Espinoza. I knelt before the great crucifix and prayed before setting out with my own pair of mules. Unlike Espinoza, I rode on the back of a sturdy pony, my two beasts of burden tied behind it.
Crossing the river valley, I entered the brown and cracked floor of the desert. My broad-brimmed hat protected me from the sun but not from the oppressive heat. I passed through scattered villages, meeting fewer and fewer friendly faces as I drove westward. At length I reached the badlands where only the lizard, wolf, and rattlesnake keep their homes. The gnawed bones of men and horses lay in the shadows of leaning boulders. I crossed a dry riverbed filled with flat, black stones. Spiny saguaros here stood taller than Spanish trees, gnarled and twisted into grotesque forms that reminded me of the three misshapen Azothi.
After several days I reached the border of the Azothi territory: A sea of rolling dunes where the wind swept eternally among swirling clouds of sand. I abandoned the pony, for the sand was too deep for its hooves. The mules fared better, though it was slow going. The blue sky mocked me with its crystalline purity, while I sweated and marched and rubbed sand from my eyes, nose, and mouth. At night the cold descended and I wrapped myself in blankets, warmed by brushfires until the wind and sand smothered them.
I lost track of days among the dunes, for each one flowed into the next, an unbroken stream of scorching torment. My faith gave me strength (for it was still mighty in those days). I navigated that sea of sand by rock formations rising like the ruins of primeval towers. These crude obelisks and Quick Eye’s map led me to a great, sandy basin. There the huts of the Azothi sat like clusters of white mushrooms about a broad, black pit.
It must be a deep well, I thought. The only source of water in this forsaken domain. That is how they can live in such a place of death.
I stumbled from the dunes into the shallow valley at their heart. The ever-present howling of the wind was soon replaced by a strange music. Coming closer to the village I saw smoke rising from a great bonfire, burning fiercely in the middle of the day. The famished mules trailed behind as I walked into the village, as if they sensed something unnatural there.
My exhaustion was smothered by curiosity as I moved between the concentric rows of huts. I saw none of the deformed folk, but the music was clearer now, the sound of blaring wooden flutes and wild drums. It swirled and cascaded about the rising plume of black smoke. There was no discernible pattern to the sounds, only a twisting melody that rose and fell and rose again without pause or refrain.
No one had come forth to greet or accost me, and I saw now it was because the entire population of the village was gathered at the ceremony of the bonfire. At the edge of the open well the tall fire burned, and a hundred Azothi danced about the blaze in a circle of sweat and crazed activity. Many villagers held pipes to their lips, blowing discordant melodies that careened and blended into a screeching mass of noise. The drummers sat outside the circle, banging with hands and sticks against their rawhide instruments.
I saw now the true nature of the Azothi. Like the trio who had visited the mission, they were all horribly deformed. Yet the three who had shown themselves to the outside world were the least monstrous of them all.
An aged native capered madly, tendrils of veiny skin hanging like serpents from every part of his body, flapping and pulsing to the rush of his hot blood. Another man bore six arms instead of two, each one twisted and atrophied into little more than crooked claws. Naked backs and chests were ripe with pustulating sores. Several enraptured faces had been stripped of flesh in part or whole in ritual mutilations, noses hacked away leaving two jagged holes. Obscene cheekbones sprouted from red muscle, yellow teeth clacking wildly. Eyeballs bulged and rolled in the maimed faces of these living skulls, both males and females.
A legless and armless girl writhed like a snake upon the shoulders of a hunched and faceless youth. An impossible tongue fell like a red tentacle from her mouth, licking at the faceless one’s head, which was little more than a fleshy ovoid with a central cavity that could not be called a mouth. Canine teeth gnashed inside this orifice, and a blind tongue shot out to entwine itself with that of his limbless bride.
On stunted legs they ambled and danced about the flames, some with swollen lips wrapped about the ends of curling flutes, impervious to the waves of heat rolling from the blaze. The ugliness and diversity of their mangled bodies cannot be overstated. If I had any food left in my belly, I would have expelled it immediately, but I could only wretch and heave pointlessly as the ceremony continued. I fell to my knees, clutching at my seizing stomach. Yet I could not tear my eyes away from the grotesque tribe and their hideous rites.