I cheered, but my jubilation was short-lived. I had forgotten that the ceiling near which I had taken refuge was a thoroughfare for the Dorsal Warriors. Hands reached through the water and dragged me up into it.
After having been in a desert for weeks, getting dunked in cold water for the second time in a few days was a shock. I gasped, but kept my nose and mouth shut. The warriors zipped around me, prodding me with their spears. They were trying to force me down the face of the sphere. I didn't want to leave Aahz, and I didn't know how long I could hold my breath.
I made a big bubble around myself. The trouble was, I didn't have any fresh air to put in it. While I was concentrating on filling it with breathable air, the Dorsals discovered that they could kick the bubble around like a ball. I found myself tumbling head over heels. The fish-men wore expressions of glee. In a minute I would be too dizzy to know which way was up. Then they decided to change the game. They curled up with their arms around their knees, and prodded my bubble back and forth with their spines.
The air started leaking out in streams of little bubbles. I added magik to the shell to try and keep it intact, while urging it back toward Diksen's office. A group of warriors swarmed around me and kept prodding the bubble downward. I had just enough time to see Aahz in the hands of a dozen Dorsals. He wasn't going without a fight, either. As I passed, he tried to leap toward me. The warriors tackled him and sat on him.
A solid kick from one of the warriors sent my bubble flying over the top of the sphere of water and down
the far side. I tried to stop my headlong descent, but I didn't have anything to use for brakes. I stuck out my legs.
"Yeow!"
The Dorsals rolled over and stabbed me with their spines. I was starting to get seasick. Enough! I let the bubble pop. The warriors uncurled and grabbed me by the arms. I didn't have very much magik left. I charged up my fingers until they had the stinging power of an Eelectric, a fantastic beast Aahz had introduced me to once. Then I touched my escorts.
They couldn't make any noise in the water, but they lit up and their bodies went rigid. I kicked loose and crawled through the water. I was at the bottom of the sphere now. If I didn't save myself, I was going to fall right out. I saw the ring-shaped floor of the reception room and grabbed for it. I swung myself up and gasped in a deep breath of air.
The secretary was back at her station. She recoiled in surprise.
"Behind you!" she cried.
I glanced back over my shoulder. Aahz, too, was surfacing, followed by the entire chorus line of a bad water ballet. The Dorsal Warriors grabbed us both and dragged us back in. I reached for the nearest force line and tried to fill my internal supply.
The next thing I knew, Aahz and I were tumbling downward, driven by Diksen's minions. I refused to let Aahz fall out of the sky again as he had the last time we tried to get in to see the reclusive magician. I made a cup of magik underneath him. Just before he dropped out of the ball of water, it caught him. He floated down toward Balu, who was waiting for us in the sand. I formed another palm-shaped pad of magik for myself.
"Come on, kid!" Aahz shouted. He reached the Camel and clambered up between its humps. He held out a hand to me.
I dropped toward my makeshift lifeboat. A phalanx of Dorsal Warriors surrounded me. One of them struck out with the butt of his spear. It hit me in the side of the head. I saw stars. Kicking out blindly against the swimming guards, I felt for the edge of my magikal conveyance and swam over it. I realized, as the air hit me and rushed upward, that I had missed.
"Skeeve!"
Aahz's voice floated up toward me through a haze of spinning lights. I saw three or four Aahzes and six or seven Balus. Eight or nine green hands reached out for me. I stretched out for the one that was closest.
I smacked down on a soft surface. My body stung as if slapped, but nothing felt as if I had broken it.
"Reach out for me, partner," Aahz ordered. I looked up at the green and black blob moving toward me.
I put up an arm, but the effort caused the rest of me to push harder on the surface of the sand. I felt myself sinking.
"The slowsands have him, sir!" Balu cried.
"Fly, kid!" Aahz shouted. "Come on, you can do it!"
I reached for the power, but my magikal batteries were nearly exhausted. The slowsands started to creep over my legs, up my side and around my chest. I reached for a force line for a refill. The nearest was the twisting, writhing black line. The rush of magik was overpowering. I felt confused. The magik covered my face. No, that was sand! I picked my head up and spat. I didn't want to suffocate.
The sand was inexorable. It flowed up around my back and squeezed my chest so tightly I couldn't inhale.
I threw a skyhook upward to haul myself out. I hung onto the magical line. Balu had nearly reached me, when he disappeared from my view, smothered by the mass of golden brown. My vision went black. I heard Aahz yelling until my ears were filled with sand. The last thing I remember was struggling to move my arms or legs. I felt as if I was encased in concrete. I couldn't draw in a breath. I passed out.
Chapter 20
"Sometimes you just have to dig a little deeper."
My vision cleared, but still all I could see was golden-brown sand. I gasped in air. There was plenty of it, sweet and moist. I was no longer suffocating. What a relief!
I realized that the layer of sand was a ceiling many feet over my head. I must be in a bubble or something like it. Still, I couldn't move. My arms and legs were bound together as thoroughly as they had been by the slowsands. I looked down.
I lay on a wooden table. Gilded animal heads on finials marking the corners of the table looked back at me. My entire body was wrapped in linen bandages about three inches wide, lapped in a complicated pattern from my feet to my neck. My arms were crossed on my chest. I had seen the pattern somewhere before. A memory tickled at the back of my mind. That was right! When I was a young boy, my schoolmaster had brought in a speaker, a man who had traveled to exotic lands. He had stories to amaze us, and showed us plenty of strange artifacts he had picked up along the way. One of his exhibits was a dead body in a long box. The corpse had been wrapped from head to toe in bandages just like these. Its face was dried out instead of rotten. It wore an expression of terror and woe, as if it had been buried alive. Was I about to undergo the same torture?
No. No one was going to stick me in a box! I had to get free, get back to Aahz.
I had plenty of magical power available, thanks to the force line, but I couldn't figure out how to unwind myself. Instead, I envisioned a pair of giant scissors. I ordered them to start cutting at my neck and work downward.
At the sound of the first snip, a shadowy figure that I had not noticed before, turned away from the quivering golden light of a table lamp. It advanced upon me, its eyes shining orbs of black onyx, huge in a shrunken, desiccated face. Its mouth was open in an O.
"No!" it wailed at me. "Don't!"
I recoiled, but I couldn't get away from the creature until my arms and legs were free. I ordered the scissors to snip faster. The coils of linen flew away from me in a whirlwind. As soon as I could move my knees, I leaped up and off the table on which I had been lying. The skinny figure made for me. I put the table between me and it, dodging this way and that.
Then the cold hit me. I started shivering uncontrollably, so much that the figure had no trouble coming
around and laying its bony hands on me.
"I told you not to," it said, in a gentle, throaty whisper. "Be calm, Overworlder. You have been almost drowned and battered by the sands. You are safe now. We wrapped you to keep you warm. You are not used to our climate. Sit down on the bier."