Now it was nine years later and again the veteran general had rejoined the living. He was no longer simply a hard-bitten soldier. He was something else now, but just what that something was Kelis could not say. Leeka did not look a day older than when Kelis had last seen him. Yes, at first his features had seemed to shift and reshape themselves, but that had stopped after a few hours. His face took on a normal solidity, his jaw square, mouth wide, cheekbones high.
His eyes, Kelis remembered, had been penetrating, those of a commander of soldiers who dealt with the world with a hawklike sharpness. Now his eyes seemed to absorb the world, as if he were hungry for everything he saw.
"Walk with me," Leeka had said, "and your questions will be answered." That was all he had bidden them do. Benabe balked and Naamen questioned and Kelis felt the weight of that simple request like a stone in his gut. He felt he had no control over their fate, no leadership to offer except the authority to place them in the hands of forces he did not understand. Forces he had reason to fear.
Shen, though, smiled and asked, "Is it far?" Leeka assured her that it wasn't, although they should travel slowly and, with patience.
And that was what they did. They trudged farther south, through a featureless landscape, no motion upon it save the rippling dance of heat, no living creatures save their group of five. With Leeka's nod of assent, they sat out the hottest hours of the day huddled beneath small geometries of shade cast by sheets draped over thin stakes they drove into the ground. Leeka himself stood at a slight distance, hooded and so still that Kelis sometimes felt the old general had slipped out of this world and left a scarecrow in his place.
The four sipped their water sparingly, all of them aware of how little they had and how devoid of moisture the landscape was. They could not even find the tubers or cacti that years of training had taught them existed in even the deepest desert. Kelis felt himself going dry from the inside out. His flesh became a strange leather that shrank to wrap his muscles and tendons and thinning blood vessels. He sometimes pretended to drink from the waterskin, to spare the precious liquid for Shen. Though they never said anything about it, he suspected Benabe and Naamen were doing the same.
Leeka never drank. He did not sleep. He never showed fatigue or seemed to feel the heat.
As the sun slanted westward each evening, they rose and, with a few terse words of encouragement from Leeka, began their trek again. Shen walked beside the hooded man often. She was the only one who seemed at ease with him and also unaffected by fatigue or thirst. By the way he inclined his head toward her, and the way she tugged on his arm and looked up at him, one would have thought they were conversing-an uncle out with a favorite niece, perhaps.
But, as far as Kelis could ascertain, very few words passed between them. On several occasions when they seemed in animated discourse he crept up behind them, close enough to make out the intricate pattern of braids tight against Shen's skull, close enough to hear the clicking of the beads fastened to the ends of them. But that and the scuffing of their feet and their slow breathing of the always hot air and Leeka swallowing were the only sounds he ever heard.
"He is insane," Benabe said one evening, "and he is teaching my daughter the trick of it. I do not like that man." She had made this clear from the first sighting of the hooded man standing alone in a desert expanse. During the passing days, she had not tired of reminding Kelis of her opinion. Several times she proposed that they break from Leeka and turn north or toward the coast to the east. They could return later, she said, with the help of others. Her lips were cracked, her skin dusty, her features gaunt. She had to speak slowly, between careful breaths, but she was no less the fiery, protective mother.
"You think a man who stands in the desert by himself is sane?" she asked. "You think he should lead us anywhere? He's lost, and we're following him. What's that make us? I'll tell you-bigger fools."
"Shen says that-"
"Shen is a child! She may be something more as well, but she is a young girl first. She dreams. She trembles and hears voices."
"Before, you said that-"
"I know what I said. But what did I know? Sitting in a mansion in Bocoum…" She shook the thought of it away. She was silent a moment, and then said, "I want to say that I will die if he harms her. But when people say that, they don't really mean it. But I am simply stating the truth: I will die." She jabbed him with an elbow. "You will too. I'll see to it before I go."
Though not as constant as Benabe, it was obvious Naamen, too, had his doubts. He approached Kelis after she drifted away. He walked silently beside him for some time, and then said, "After today we will have no water."
"I know," Kelis said.
"So you also know that we are walking dead. Benabe is right: we should not have come."
"Do not let a coward wear your skin," Kelis answered, all the more harshly because he was wrestling with the same thoughts. "When you are called to a quest, you go. You trust. We must trust Leeka."
In an answer of sorts, Naamen had exhaled and took in the desolation around them. What more need he say when the entire curve of the world was nothing but sand cracked by the sun, so parched that the ground looked to have never known a drop of water?
Naamen said, "He may be a gatherer of the dead. He is taking us to-"
"Have faith! In Shen, if not in Leeka. She is the only one among us who matters. Aliver's daughter, remember? He leads us through her."
"I never knew the prince."
"Know his daughter, then, and feel privileged."
Kelis did not waste any more breath trying to convince him. Naamen and Benabe could base their thoughts only on the world they knew and the things they had seen. Neither had seen the Santoth. Kelis had. Neither had ever seen Leeka before. Kelis had, and because of it, he was sure that they had no choice but to follow him. Kelis did not truly feel the certainty he tried to project, yet what choice had he but to face with dignity whatever came?
They did not walk as late into the night as usual. They made camp on a plain dotted with oblong boulders, like slim eggs balanced upright, each taller than a man. Kelis had not seen the boulders until they were among them-strange, for his eyes had been searching for anything to break the monotony. But there they were. The group stood within a cluster of them, the others showing unease behind their fatigue.
Leeka kept moving. He scooped out a bowl shape in the sand and sparked a strange blue fire into it. He had not poured any substance into the bowl. Nor had he struck flint and tinder. Nevertheless, a flame roiled around the depression like a liquid, brightening to a greenish glow, then settling to a turquoise illumination that touched all the watching faces and made the world behind them fade.
With the fire burning but nothing being consumed, Leeka looked at the group. He bade them sit. Once they had, he said, "Touch the fire. It will not burn you."
"Touch it?" Naamen asked.
"Yes." Leeka demonstrated, drawing back a sleeve and pushing his outstretched hand into the substance. It rippled at his touch, licked up his forearm. He showed no discomfort, and when he withdrew his hand it was unharmed.
"Why?" Naamen asked. "Why should we touch it?"
"You should do as your friend suggests. Trust."
Naamen glanced at Kelis, at Shen and Benabe. For a moment he looked like a child caught out by an elder, but then he pressed his lips together and looked at the liquid flame. He shot his fingers into it quickly, straight and close together, then drew them back, stared at them, and then eased them in again. Astonishment loosened his features. "It's not hot," he said. "It's… like cool water."