“Then I suppose we shall be the first,” said Sorak. He stood. “We had best be on our way.”
The weary women mounted up, and they moved off once again as the sun slowly disappeared beyond the horizon. For a while, the desert was plunged into total darkness, and then the first of the twin moons rose, followed a short while later by the second, and the Stony Barrens were illuminated in a ghostly, bluish light.
“I know now why you brought me with you,” said Korahna as they slowly rode along behind Sorak, who picked his way among the rocks ahead of them. “I thought that you had merely taken pity on a fellow preserver, but you needed me to make contact with the Veiled Alliance in Nibenay.”
“That was Sorak’s idea,” said Ryana. “If you must know, I was against bringing you along. I knew the hardships you would face upon this journey, and I did not think you would survive it.”
“I see,” Korahna said, softly. “And do you still believe so?”
Ryana gave a small snort. “I am not yet convinced that any of us shall survive it. But you have shown more mettle than I gave you credit for. Who knows? We shall see.”
“You do not sound very confident.”
“Your spirit is strong, Korahna, but your body is weak,” Ryana replied. “I do not say that to condemn you, it merely happens to be the way things are. A strong spirit can often compensate for a body’s weakness, but we have been only one day on this journey, and already you are at the limits of your endurance. Do not mistake my meaning. I give you credit for your courage, but I do not know if it shall be enough to see you through this.”
“Better to die out here in the barrens, attempting to control my fate, than live with Torian and be controlled,” Korahna said. “Thus far, my life has been of little worth, and the strength of my beliefs has not been truly tested. If I must die, then at least I shall die as a preserver and not some rich man’s trophy. Hand me your sword.”
“Better you should save your strength,” Ryana said.
“No, better I should build it,” said Korahna. “And holding it will give me something upon which to focus my mind.”
“As you wish,” Ryana said, handing her the sword.
“It does not feel quite so heavy now,” the princess said, holding it out away from her body.
Ryana smiled. “Do not exhaust yourself,” she said. “There is more to learning how to use a sword than merely strengthening your arms. And even that does not come quickly.”
“But at least this is a beginning,” said Korahna.
“Yes, it is a beginning. But only a beginning. It takes many years of training to become proficient with a blade.”
“I have the rest of my life to learn,” Korahna said.
Indeed, Ryana thought to herself. Let us hope that the rest of your life lasts longer than the next few days.
6
Five days, thought Torian with both fury and astonishment. Five miserable days they had traveled through this scorching, stony wasteland without a single night’s rest, and still they had not caught up with them. How the elfling and the priestess could keep up this relentless pace, encumbered as they were with the princess, was utterly beyond him. He had pushed his men as hard as it was possible to push them. The first day out, they had ridden hard and kept right on going through the night. He had been certain then that he would catch up with them the very next day, but the next day passed and still their quarry was not in sight Since then, they had paused only for short rest periods during the day and he allowed his men to sleep no more than three or four hours each night. He did not see how they could have failed to catch them by now. It simply defied belief.
The elfling and the priestess had but one kank with them. His soldier kanks were faster, but then, most of their advantage in speed had been canceled out by the difficult terrain. Still, the elfling could not have been carrying much in the way of supplies. Surely, they must have run out by now. Torian knew that elves and halflings were both well adapted to travel in the desert. The elfling would doubtless have inherited those traits. The villichi priestess had her training to see her through, but
Korahna? How could she possibly survive such an ordeal? He had half expected to come across her corpse by now.
He would not have thought that she could have survived more than a few hours in the barrens, much less five days of traveling at a forced pace. It just did not seem possible.
The sun’s rays, beating down relentlessly upon the rocks, heated them until it seemed as if the party were riding through a blacksmith’s furnace. From time to time as they rode, they would hear sharp, cracking reports, a sound that had mystified him and alarmed the mercenaries until they realized it was the sound of stones shattering from the intense heat. It seemed beyond belief that anyone could last so long in this sun-baked inferno.
His throat was parched and his lungs burned from breathing in the heated air. His lips were dry and cracked even though he moistened them constantly, and his skin seemed to feel as if it would crackle when he touched it, like the flesh of a well-roasted fowl. His men, seasoned mercenaries all, were barely able to remain astride their mounts. They were down to six, not counting himself.
The second night out, they had lost one man to a fire drake. The creature had hidden itself among the rocks, its pebbly-grained hide camouflaging it from view, and as the unfortunate man passed, the drake leapt, bringing him down from his mount and fastening its powerful fangs in his shoulder. The other kanks shied away from the creature, and crossbow bolts loosed by the other mercenaries merely glanced off the drake’s thick hide. The kanks bolted, and by the time they were able to bring the beasts back under control, the drake had disappeared, dragging its hapless victim away with it His frenzied screams faded into the distance until they were cut off abruptly.
The next day, they lost another man to an agony beetle. The creature had flown up and landed gently on his back so that he had not felt it. It crawled lightly down his cloak and underneath it to the base of his spine, where it sent out the long, fine, tendril stinger from its snout to penetrate his skin and worm its way deep into his spinal column. The deadly stinger was coated with a substance that numbed the skin so that the victim could not feel the beetle’s bite until it was too late. Once the tendril stinger was firmly embedded and wrapped around the nerve endings in the spine, the agony beetle began to live up to its name.
Its victim suddenly started to scream at the top of his lungs and claw at his back as waves of incandescent pain shot up his spine and into his brain. The creature fed on the psionic energy produced by pain, and once its stinger was inserted, removing it without killing the victim was almost impossible. The mercenary fell from his mount to land, writhing and screaming like a banshee, on the rocky ground.
The others simply stared, frightened and astonished, unable to see the source of their comrade’s torment. I was Torian who surmised what the cause must be, and he leapt down from his mount and ran over to the fallen man, drawing his knife. With one sweep of his blade, he cut away the thrashing mercenary’s cloak and saw the insect, its chitinous black shell gleaming in the sun as it clung to its victim’s spine, torturing him unimaginably. Torian and several of the others tried to hold the man down, but the pain-maddened mercenary flung them off and leapt to his feet.
The pain had driven out all rationality. He threw himself repeatedly against the boulders in a futile effort to dislodge the insect, all the while screaming horribly, and then in a desperate effort to drive out the pain, he began smashing his head against a rock. The others could only watch in horror as the rock turned red with his blood. Several of them covered their ears in an effort to shut out the man’s screams and the dull, wet, smacking sounds made as he pounded his head against the rock.