Sand geysered in a cloud as the living patch rebelled. Wings curled at two corners as the creature fought to rise, but Johan pinned it to the ground with a spell. Helpless, the desert beast flailed and flopped but went nowhere, kicking off its sand covering. Cousins to manta rays of southern seas, desert rays not only skimmed the sands but could instantly burrow underneath, either to rest or to await prey. Big as a collapsed tent, the ray was a mottled tan that, even as Johan watched, changed hue to a dark rust-red. Perhaps the color startled predators.
No matter. Johan was master. He crept to the ray's head. Like a toad, its eyes could retract into the head or else bulge to see a complete circle. Some of Johan's cavalrymen and nomads had tamed and harnessed big rays, but the mage had never examined one. Given time, he would dissect one and wrench out its desert-dwelling secrets.
Wary of the mouth with tiny sharp teeth, Johan dug a long-nailed thumb into the ray's eye socket and hopped off. Goaded by pain, the ray flapped and flopped while towed across the burning sands. Johan hoped the tiger-man hadn't been plucked clean by vultures.
In a short while Johan had settled Jedit Ojanen facedown atop the captured ray. Johan sat astride the tiger's back to balance their weight and, borrowing Jedit's bronze dagger, pricked the ray's flesh. Instantly the creature hopped into the air. Another jab made it bank right, north-northwest. The ride was jerky, as much up and down as forward, but they soon attained a steady gait like a horse's canter. They'd cover miles in no time, Johan was sure.
Always curious, the mage wondered why the rays weren't consumed by sand wurms. He could only conclude they were too tough and unappetizing. He must experiment. Desert-ray blood smeared on chariot wheels might keep sand wurms at bay. Horse hooves might be wrapped in green ray hide.
A croak sounded above the creak of leather wings.
"You… saved my… life," Jedit gasped with eyes shut.
"Yes," said Johan. "It becomes a habit, our rescuing one another. We share a bond. Now, rest. We've much to do when we reach my homeland."
"Home…" whispered Jedit and sank into oblivion.
Jedit Ojanen splashed into water that closed over his head and threatened to drown him.
Floundering, clawing for air, the weakened tiger felt his head grabbed and tugged into the air. Snorting, the cat man caught a stone lip with his claws, then leaned back and soaked in delicious blissful coolness.
"Don't drown." Johan walked off to talk to some dun-robed herdsmen.
Recalled to life, Jedit slurped gallons and let his parched body soak. His watering trough had been laboriously carved from a single piece of dark gray stone. The well was the centerpiece of a low valley between shale outcroppings. The ground was littered with shale flakes like autumn leaves. Jittery sheep huddled under the protection of a boy shepherd. No doubt the flock was terrified by the scent of a giant cat and bleeding desert ray. Johan turned as nomads pointed northwest. The natives wore double folds of robes, for in early autumn the nights froze solid.
"We… we crossed the desert!" Amazed to have survived, Jedit clambered from the trough. His clumped fur streamed water.
Johan grunted. "Palmyra is another eight days' walk. There are wells along the way, say the erg dwellers."
"Fine." Jedit tossed his head and whiskers, whipping water on Johan's robe. "I can walk to the moons if I have water, but can we buy a sheep? It's been six or seven days since I ate."
Rolling dark eyes, Johan dug in his pockets for a worn coin. After some ritual haggling, the nomads dragged out a balky ram with horns so curled they obscured its eyes. Jedit thanked the shepherds, raised a paw big as an axe, and slashed. One swipe severed the ram's head. Jedit lifted the carcass by its back legs to drink blood spurting from the gory neck. Nomads skittered away like a flock of starlings. Johan started walking. Northwest.
For days the odd couple trekked from well to well. They slept under the stars, awaking under frost thick as blankets. Jedit subsisted on jerboas, a big-eared fox, a dead vulture, a hyena, a covey of hedgehogs, dead sheep, snakes, and any other creature that crossed his path. Johan ate nothing but cactus pulp and water.
Once, topping a rise, Jedit saw long furrows of dark sand. Something had stirred the ground from below. Curious as ever about this new world, he asked, "Is there danger of sand wurms?"
"There may be." Johan walked steady and unhurried. "The wurms never ventured this far east before, for they can't burrow easily through the pebble desert. But in past months a titanic sandstorm smothered the region and gave the wurms new inlets. The wind blows, as always, so sand sifts back east and south, but some stretches linger. As must some wurms."
Once before dusk, as their shadows stretched like skinny giants, Johan mounted a pebbly hill with a short stone tower, obviously a lookout post, now deserted. At the summit, setting sun glared in their eyes. Johan nodded at distant cubes on a knoll. Silver winked and flashed as the sun dropped.
"Palmyra." Johan ground his teeth.
"Palmyra?" asked Jedit. "Ah, the village waystation! Didn't they oppose the army of your lord, Lance Truthseeker? And my father?"
"That's correct," lied Johan. "A city of degenerates, thieves, and traitors. But we must swim amid the sewage, for I need supplies."
"Supplies?" Jedit glanced at the bony mage who for weeks had subsisted in the desert with no more equipment than a tortoise.
"And other things," hedged Johan. "Come."
Jedit Ojanen tripped along, eager as a cub after weeks of boring desert. Even in an enemy city, he might learn about his father.
So dusk claimed the desert, and stars came to life while the odd couple marched on, over the cooling sands.
"Stand still. I must disguise you."
"Why?" asked Jedit.
The towering tiger and the bony mage stood in darkness behind rambling stone corrals on the outskirts of Palmyra. Midnight was past.
"How would townspeople react if a tiger strode into their midst?" Johan worked as he talked, pacing around the cat man and sketching in the air.
"Oh, yes. I forgot my father would have been a celebrity, always in the forefront of the battle against Palmyra. None of those goatherds feared me. Will you adopt a disguise?"
"My face is unremarkable." Johan didn't explain he already wore a guise and had for months. "Now hush."
Shapeshifting and transmutation were out of the question, for such drastic spells would warp the tiger's body cruelly and cause immense pain. Picturing what he wished to project, Johan laid bony hands on the tiger's tufted mane. Running his hands out and down, over rounded ears, then whiskers, then the thick neck and down the soft pelt, Johan chanted softly under his breath, "Dru-in-bolik, dru-in-va-te. Dru-in-bolik…"
Taking care to stroke every inch, Johan finished between the tiger's furry toes, making the cat dance from tickling. Carefully, as if poising an egg on end, Johan drew away his fingers.
He almost smiled.
Standing before him was not a tiger but a hulking barbarian from Jamuraa's far north. Ugly as a broken rock was the creature, but Johan was pleased. The clever disguise mimicked the tiger's natural height and weight, those hardest features to mask, leaving only skin to be cloaked. Barbarians even bore broad noses and short tusks that matched the tiger's snub muzzle and fangs. Standing under starlight, Jedit loomed like a suntanned giant of a man with red-blonde haystack hair and long dangling arms roped with muscle. Johan had even tricked the skimpy goathide loincloth to mimic a leather vest and kilt, though they were stretched tight over the massive frame.
"Twill do."
Bemused, Jedit held up his hands, staring with the dull eyes of a barbarian at human skin and fingernails. "It's foul ugly. How long must I wear this sham?"