Sink worms posed an even greater danger. A sharp-eyed traveler might detect the shallow depressions left in the sandy soil where they had passed, but to be hunted by a sink worm was a terrifying prospect, for it could detect the footsteps of its prey upon the surface and come up underneath it. A small, young sink worm could take off a foot or an entire leg. An adult could swallow a human being whole.
Nor were those the only dangers of the desert. Back in the villichi temple, Ryana had studied about all the life-forms that dwelled on Athas, and desert predators had filled up an entire stack of scrolls. The Ringing Mountains were not without their dangers, but they paled in comparison to what the desert held in store. It was a place of quiet and ethereal beauty, but it also promised death to the unwary. In the daytime, a vigilant traveler, well versed in the hazards of the desert, could take steps to avoid them. At night, the dangers multiplied as the nocturnal predators awoke.
And night was fast approaching.
2
As the sun sank slowly in the sky, it cast a surreal light over the desert, flooding it with an amber-orange glow. The flame-colored Athasian sky took on a blood-red tint after nightfall, gradually fading to dark crimson as the twin moons, Ral and Guthay, began their pilgrimage across the heavens. Sorak and Ryana made camp beneath an ancient pagafa tree, its three gnarled, blue-green trunks spreading out from its base and branching off into twisted, leafless boughs.
As the light faded, they broke off some of the smaller branches in order to build a fire. The sparse, dry desert grass they had uprooted easily caught fire from the sparks of their fire stones, and soon a small blaze was crackling in the shallow depression they had hollowed out for the fire pit.
Ryana drank sparely from her water skin, despite her thirst. The long trek had left her feeling very dry, but the water had to last until they reached the oasis at Silver Spring, which was still at least another day’s journey to the east. Sorak took only a few drops from his own water skin, and it seemed to be enough for him. Ryana envied him his elfling ability to get by on less water. She thought wistfully of the stream near the convent, where water flowed down from the mountain peaks and cascaded over the rocks in the streambed. It was fresh and cold and good to drink, and she thought longingly of all the times she and her sisters would run down to the lagoon following weapons practice, strip down, and frolic in the bracing pool. She had taken it for granted then, and now it seemed like an incredible luxury to be able to bathe every day and drink her fill.
At such times, Sorak had always wandered away from the others, going farther downstream along the riverbank to where the water flowed over large, flat boulders in the middle of the streambed. He would take his accustomed place upon the largest rock and sit cross-legged in the water that flowed around him, his back to the others at the lagoon, a short distance upstream. The sound of the water would drown out all but the occasional playful cries made by the sisters as they played in the lagoon, and he would sit alone, staring out into the distance or down into the water on the smaller rocks below. Ryana had learned not to accompany him at such times, for he often seemed to have a need to be alone. Alone to sit and brood.
In the beginning, when they had been small children, he used to join the sisters at their play in the lagoon, but as they grew older, he took to going off by himself. Ryana used to wonder if it was because his growing awareness of his male nature made it awk-ward for him to frolic naked with the others.
As she grew and started to become more aware of her own female sexuality, she would often glance at the bodies of the other sisters and compare them to her own, which had always seemed inadequate. The others were all taller than she, and more slender, with longer and more sinewy limbs and graceful necks. They seemed so beautiful. Compared to them, her own proportions seemed squat and unattractive. Her breasts and hips were larger, her torso was shorter, her legs, though long by human standards, seemed too short compared to theirs. And their hair seemed much more beautiful than hers. Most villichi were bom with thick, red hair, either flame-colored or dark red with brighter highlights.
Her own silvery white hair seemed drab and lusterless by comparison.
She would look at the other sisters and wonder if Sorak found them as beautiful as she did. Perhaps, she thought, he had taken to absenting himself from their frolics because his male nature was making him become aware of them in the same manner as her own maturing female nature was making her become aware of him.
Of course, she had not known then that Sorak’s nature was a great deal more complex than that. She had not known that several of his personalities were female. She knew now that when he had gone off to brood by himself, he had been preoccupied with matters not of the flesh, but of the self. More and more, as he grew older, he had been plagued by questions to which he had no answers. Who was he? What was his tribe? Who were his parents? How did he come to be?
His pressing need to learn the answers to those questions was what had driven him to leave the convent and embark upon his quest to find the Sage. But who was to say how long this quest would take? Athas was a large world with many secret places, and the Sage could be almost anywhere. For years, longer than they both had been alive, the defilers had also sought the Sage with no success, and they had their powerful defiler magic to aid them in their search. Without magic, could they be more successful?
“I cannot banish from my mind the thought that there is something more to The Wanderer’s Journal than merely advice for travelers,” said Sorak as he sat cross-legged on the ground by the fire. The flames gave forth scarcely enough light to read by, but with his elfling eyes, Sorak had no difficulty making out the words. “Listen to this,” he said, as he started reading a section of the journal out loud.
“On Athas, there are several different types of clerics. Each of them pays homage to one of the four elemental forces—air, earth, fire or water. Of course, the latter are perhaps the most influential on our thirsty world, but all are powerful and worthy of respect.
“Another group of people call themselves the druids and, at least by most accounts, are considered to be clerics. Druids are special in that they do not pay tribute to any single elemental force, but rather work to uphold the dying life-force of Athas. They serve nature and the planetary equilibrium. Many people consider it a lost cause, but no druid would ever admit that.
“In some cities, the sorcerer-king is glorified as if he were some sort of immortal being. In fact, many such rulers are actually able to bestow spellcasting abilities upon the templars who serve them. Are they truly on a par with the elemental forces worshipped by the clerics? I think not.”
Ryana shook her head. “If there is some hidden meaning in those words, it is not one I can discern,” she said.
“Perhaps the meaning is not really hidden so much as it is implied,” said Sorak. “Consider what the Wanderer has said here. On the surface, it merely sounds as if he is writing about clerical magic, describing what exists. In this section of the journal, for the most part, he describes what everyone already knows. What would seem to be the necessity for that? Unless he were also saying something else, something that was not quite so readily apparent.”
“Such as what?” Ryana asked.
“He mentions the four elemental forces—air, earth, fire, and water,” Sorak said. “Well, this is something every child knows, but then he goes on to say that the latter are perhaps the most influential on our thirsty world.”