Star of Cursrah Page 6

  Sun filled the sky at their left, so the travelers tugged down folds of their kaffiyeh to blind that side. A mile or more from the road, the sand hardened and curled into frozen waves. Amber stopped at a lip, careful lest it crumble, and shaded her eyes. Still descending in sandy cataracts, dunes fanned away in jagged humps toward wind-scoured stone, until the horizon dipped into a huge valley or ancient sinkhole.

  “No caves,” said Reiver.

  “No nothing,” said Hakiim.

  “Still, it’s lovely in a desolate way,” offered Amber. “See how the land changes colors, as if someone’s lowered a lantern? We’d better return to the road, though—what?”

  A tremor rippled under their feet, as if a heavy cart was passing by. Reiver suddenly froze, sweating. “I just remembered another danger of the desert.”

  “What?” barked Hakiim.

  The earth trembled, a shiver that buzzed to their knees.

  “There’s something behind us,” Amber squealed. She jumped and spun in place but saw nothing. Only a breeze caressed them. “What is it?”

  “Those rocks—”

  Reiver never got to finish. Sand rippled as if whipped by the wind. The desert floor bulged upward like a volcano bubbling. The bulges elongated and burst.

  Amber, Hakiim, and Reiver spat and blinked as sand sprayed in their faces. They only glimpsed the source: sand-colored bodies stippled with black and brown spots, longer than horses, mouths like barrels rimmed with teeth like jagged glass, each tooth wiggling like a finger, gaping mouths that could swallow them whole.

  As one, the three companions turned and jumped down the steep slope. Amber plowed sand with her heels, hopped up to run, almost pitched head over heels, and squatted on her rear. She skittered, bumped, rolled, and slid downward faster than she liked, but she didn’t dare slow down.

  A sandborer burst out of the slope beside her like an arrow through a bale of hay. Thunderherders were something Amber had heard of around the slave corrals, and those were only rumors, not actual sightings. She could imagine that all of the people who’d actually encountered one failed to survive the experience. The creatures were thought to be perpetually hungry, mindless beasts able to burrow through sand faster than a human could run. How they earned the name “thunderherder” no one knew.

  Perhaps only thunder and lightning could kill one, Amber thought wildly, as a living tube ringed with fangs arched toward her, teeth wiggling like a beggar’s hands. Flailing her arms while skidding, Amber smacked her capture noose square across the monster’s maw. The ebony shaft clacked on teeth, and the impact knocked Amber rolling at an angle. The thunderherder slithered sideways after her. Stabbing her free hand against the slope, Amber whapped again, missed, smacked, and struck in pure panic. Wood thumped on hide like scuffed leather. Either she was stronger than she knew, or she hit something sensitive, because Amber saw the creature suddenly veer, bite the slope, wriggle, drill, and disappear.

  Watching everywhere, Amber dug in both feet and tried to stop. The slope lessened near the bottom, and she skittered to a halt perhaps thirty feet from the trough. Temporarily safe, she immediately thought of her friends.

  They were in trouble. Higher up the slope, howling, Hakiim rolled out of control. His clumsy pack and leather shield spanked the sand at every revolution. Amber hollered for him to scoop sand to stop himself, but it was the shield that saved him. A thunderherder rocketed out of the slope above Hakiim, dived, and bounced off the shield. The shock flattened Hakiim facedown, and the monster flipped over his head. The sandborer writhed and snapped its pointed tail to gain a grip and slither back up the slope.

  Amber screamed as another thunderherder erupted from the earth above Hakiim. The rug merchant’s son didn’t see it. Scrabbling for handholds and footholds, Amber floundered upward.

  “Hak!” she called. “Above you!”

  Highest of all, the nimble Reiver regained his feet. Now he charged down the slope to aid Hakiim, sand flying in plumes from his bare feet. One misstep and he’d tumble headfirst, but Reiver ran headlong while yanking his long dagger from its neck sheath, then launched himself forward.

  Facedown, Hakiim crabbed a half circle. The beast below slid and tumbled away end over end. A noise made him turn, and Hakiim hollered as another thunderherder sailed at his head with mouth gaping. Before he could scream, a ragged scarecrow flew through the air at the monster.

  Reiver’s shoulder rammed into the borer’s middle. As the sandborer curled and snapped, the thief stabbed the leathery hide. The keen double-edged blade punched deep, and since Reiver was already falling, he threw his weight behind the blow. The knife carved a half circle around the monster’s middle. White paste whipped to froth around the wound. Half severed, the mindless monster twisted away from the pain but only tore more of its own flesh and hide away. Flipping and flapping, the creature rolled over Hakiim, the stinger tail just missing his face, then tumbled down the slope after its brother. Reiver went with it, helpless to halt his headlong charge.

  Up high and alone, Hakiim scooted to slide down the slope after his friend. Unfortunately, he slid across a yawning hole. A thin lip of sand collapsed, and Hakiim plunged into a hole as big and as deep as a well. Cascading sand smothered his cry for help.

  “Hold on, Hak!”

  Amber watched Reiver’s wild and weird tussle go by, but she was too far away to help him, and Hakiim needed her more. Scurrying up the slope, Amber reached the spot where Hakiim had disappeared. Only a deep dimple of disturbed sand showed. Ramming her hand into the center, she flailed about and felt nothing. Gasping, she shoved her hand deeper down until her cheek pressed the sand. She still felt nothing.

  “Ilmater,” she called to the martyred god of slaves. “Hak is a good man. Please deliver him!”

  There. Something moved. Praying it wasn’t a monster, Amber wriggled her fingers like thunderherder teeth, snagged something soft and pulled, slowly and steadily lest her hand slip. Shifting onto her knees, bracing against her staff pressed flat on the earth, she hauled. Sand bubbled and churned, a thousand shades of tan, before Amber saw the black skin of Hakiim’s hand.

  A sputtering Hakiim burst free, spitting sand and sobbing for air. Amber dug past his head, grabbed his sash, and dragged him into the sunlight.

  “J-Jewels of Jergal,” Hakiim gagged, “I thought—”

  “Never mind!” Certain that he was free, Amber let go and whirled to dash down the slope. “Reiver rolled down … all tangled up with more of those monstrosities,” she said.

  Jogging, taking long, dangerous skips and praying to avoid holes that might snap an ankle or knee, Amber raced downhill. Setting sun glared in her eyes. Her shadow flew alongside her like an eagle, disorienting and dizzying. Her capture noose whipped and snapped and threatened to unbalance her, yet she saw the wiry thief hop in circles like a kangaroo rat at the bottom of the slope. Why?

  Then Amber saw that Reiver hopped because the floor of the trough collapsed wherever he landed. No sooner did his foot touch down than sand puckered and disappeared to reveal a gaping hole ringed with grasping teeth. Five or six holes dotted the trough, and even as Amber watched, Reiver jumped to avoid having his feet nipped off. He hunched like a rat, one hand wide to slow a fall into a hole, the other driving the dagger like a spitting cobra. Reiver’s blade and wrist were white with frothy paste, Amber saw, so he must have at least pinked the monsters, but he couldn’t hop forever.

  Neither could she, Amber realized suddenly, and she’d reach the bottom in a few more long leaps. “Reiver,” she called. “I’ll snag—whoa!—with my noose!”

  “Stay up high!” The thief didn’t look up but watched and felt the ground as he said, “They strike at vibrations—”

  Too late, Amber flopped backward and skittered to a stop, panting. Twirling her capture staff, she loosed the line and enlarged the noose. Like a pike bursting from a pool, a thunderherder exploded from the sandy bottom and lunged for Amber’s foot. Quicker than thought, the slave
handler whipped the staff, flipped the noose over the monster’s round head, and yanked the rope’s end with her left hand. The noose snapped shut around the tubular body, bit into the leathery hide, and sank out of sight.

  Amber had snagged a thunderherder, but it felt like a whale bucking a fishing line. She chirped aloud, “Now what?”

  “Hold—it!” A snuffling, flopping figure stampeded to a stop beside Amber. Hakiim was sandy from head to toe, his clothes and rucksack skewed awry and spilling sand. He’d lost his shield but drawn his scimitar. Hoisting the blade in two hands, the rug merchant’s son gasped as he struck with all his might. The curved blade, wider and heavier at the nose, chopped through the writhing body as if slicing a sausage.

  “Watch the tail,” Reiver yelled. “The stinger’s poisonous!”

  “Good work, Hak!” Half a dying sandborer writhed in Amber’s capture noose, and its thrashing weight threatened to rip the staff away. She slacked off to loose the beast.

  “We should get to solid rock as fast as we can,” Hakiim said, shaking his frothy scimitar at the horizon. “It’s just ahead of us!”

  “It’s a mile or more,” Amber said as she gauged how to reach Reiver, who was still dancing around holes in the trough. “We’d never make it.”

  “We’ve run halfway there already,” Hakiim returned. An exaggeration, but Amber remembered seeing rocks to the south, stark gray against the gray-yellow sand.

  “We surely can’t stay here,” Amber agreed, then took a chance and vaulted a hole and jumped again to land near Reiver. The thief flounced around the hole, his clothes and pack bobbing and shedding sand like a dog shaking off water.

  The earth roiled under their joint vibrations.

  “Run!” yelled Amber, and they charged the next dune.

  “The sand is too soft,” Reiver countered, “and the herders like soft sand.”

  Kicking and climbing, Amber yelped, “The rocks are ahead. They must run under the sand.”

  Ahead, Hakiim reached the crest of the dune and hollered, “More rocks! Little ones!”

  A good sign, but Amber saved her breath for running. The sand behind her already dimpled. Reiver shouted as a bulge chased him. He veered away from his friends and the bulge surged after.

  Amber shouted, “Reive! Stay together!”

  The bulge suddenly subsided. Perhaps the monster had hit rock or hard sand. Reiver switched back for the dune’s crest, arms and legs pumping, rags, pouches, and bundle flapping.

  Cresting the tall dune, Amber dashed down the slope, skimmed across another sandy trough as if it might shatter like glass, plowed up another dune, and trotted on. Hakiim’s head bobbed across the dunes, and Amber and Reiver soon caught up, sobbing for air.

  Onward the three pounded. Amber’s lungs burned as if steeped in hot sand, and a stitch cut her ribs. Treacherous sand sucked at her feet. She imagined borers everywhere, a thousand tunnels honeycombing the desert, burrowing miles after her pounding feet, hungry to bite her legs off and eat the rest of her slowly.

  “Do these fiends ever tire?” she gasped. Reiver didn’t spare breath to answer. More rocks dappled the sand, which grew harder underfoot.

  Running, running, running, up and down dunes, their feet floundered while twilight grew dimmer in Amber’s vision. If she blacked out and fell, she’d be herder fodder. She prayed, “Selûne, get us safe and I’ll fill a basket with coins at your alta—aah!”

  Stampeding down a wide shingle slope, they saw rocks and pebbles plink into the air and two, no, four sandborers burst upward like columns in a mosque. Amber dodged wildly, clattering and skittering on shingle, and fell. Up ahead, Hakiim circled back and ran toward Reiver, his scimitar pumping. The thief was hemmed by the four creatures like a sheep run afoul of wolves.

  Reiver scooted and aimed his dagger at the closest borer. Stabbing quick and true, he impaled the creature below its wriggling teeth. It proved too weighty to hold, and Reiver’s arms sagged, but he cranked the dagger blade up. The great body tore itself free. Steel carved a furrow in the thing’s body then ripped through the jaw. Slime splashed in Reiver’s eyes. A tooth flipped down his ragged shirt—and mindlessly tried to burrow into his belly. The thief yelped and slapped it away.

  Meanwhile, two thunderherders wriggled from their holes and undulated across the scree toward the thief. Amber saw their wicked stingers flick against stones like obsidian daggers. Reiver had said the stingers were poisonous and even as she ran, Amber shuddered to think of being stung and dying slowly as her organs rotted within her body.

  Hakiim dodged two holes that looked like abandoned wells and barely escaped as a borer popped out of an existing hole and nipped at his heels. The rug merchant’s son angled toward one creature and hacked with his scimitar. The deep cut made the beast curl into a loop and quit moving. Reiver used the opportunity to jump over it, and all three ran on.

  “How many have we killed?” Amber panted.

  “I don’t know,” Reiver said. He looked behind them and saw two thunderherders turn to pursue them. “Don’t talk … run!”

  “That way,” Hakiim hollered.

  Together, they pelted down the scree and up another dune. Despite panting, sweating, and struggling for air, they outran the two wriggling horrors. Thunderherders must travel faster underground than above, Amber thought. She plunged on, fearing her lungs would split. Gasping, stumbling, she reached another dune crest and tripped over Hakiim, who lay collapsed.

  Scuffing her hands and knees on rock, Amber rolled and cried with pain.

  “Hak! You clumsy fool …”

  “L-look—h-here!” panted Hakiim.

  She looked, then laughed for sheer delight. All around lay solid gray-yellow rock, an oasis of stone, a sanctuary. Grateful, Amber breathed steadily and felt her heart slow its pounding. She chuckled giddily. It felt wonderful just to lie still and watch the sky spin above her.

  “Unbelievable!” called a voice.

  Amber snapped her head up, frightened of another attack when she felt so weak. Rolling to one elbow, she saw Reiver already on his feet. His survival had always depended on outrunning his enemies, after all. From a bowshot away, where bedrock stopped, he called, “The thunderherders churn sand all around us. They’re still trying to get us!”

  “Let ’em churn,” Amber grunted and lay back.

  Hakiim nodded and wheezed, “I hope they chew their teeth to nubs.”

  They didn’t lay there long, though, for once their breathing steadied, thirst wracked them. They were parched enough to drink a lake dry and sucked their water bottles dangerously low, licking their sandy lips again and again.

  “Hoy!” Reiver called from afar. “I found another hole … a square one.”

  “Square?”

  Amber and Hakiim glanced at one another. Tired but intrigued, the two trudged after the distant scarecrow figure that was the skinny thief, taking care to tread only on rooted stone, like children playing a game of Dare Base. This was a serious game, though, for furrows showed close at hand where thunderherders circled like sharks.

  Reaching Reiver, the friends looked where he pointed. A hundred feet distant lay another shelf of bedrock. Notched into its lip was indeed a square hole. Judging from twin furrows passing by, the thunderherders’ burrowing had collapsed the sand covering it.

  “Looks like a cellar hole,” said Hakiim.

  “A house? Out here?”

  Slowly, Amber turned a circle then grunted in surprise. That last downward slope actually curved around three-quarters of the horizon, dipping at the south.

  “This is a valley,” she said, “miles across.”

  “There’s nothing but sand and stone,” objected Hakiim.

  “Nothing that shows,” countered Reiver.

  Unbidden, all three looked at the square-cut hole. It had obviously been hand-cut, sometime in the past.

  “Are the borers gone?” whispered Amber, then suddenly shrieked, “Reiver!”

  Impetuous as ever, t
he young thief dashed across a hundred feet of sand for the next rock. His bare feet flew over sand crisscrossed with creases, but nothing nipped at his heels. On rock again, near the hole, Reiver spread his arms and crowed in triumph.

  “He’ll get us killed,” Hakiim said.

  “Now that he’s alerted the herders, yes,” Amber agreed, “but we need to get over there too.”

  Gritting her teeth, clutching her capture staff with white knuckles, Amber scampered over the sand with Hakiim bumbling behind. Panting and raspy, but giddy to have survived, the three friends crept toward the square hole notched into the rock shelf. From above, they saw a rectangular ditch in the sand pointed to the notch, which slowly descended into the shelf under their feet. The gap was nine feet wide.

  “A tunnel?” asked Reiver.

  “Leading where?” rasped Hakiim.

  The thief spit sand off his lips, then grinned and said, “Let’s find out.”

  4

  The 383rd Anniversary of the Great Arrival

  “Ho, Tafir, shoo—oh, too late!”

  “I bagged one,” Gheqet called as his brown mare pushed through shoulder high grass, the yellow-green stalks hissing along its flanks. “Now if I can just find it …”

  Amenstar still held a long bird arrow nocked to a riding bow. She’d been too slow to loose when the covey of grouse flushed and beat the air in all directions. She yawned, for they’d ridden much of the cool night and the sun now climbed toward its zenith. Tucking bow and arrow into the case behind the saddle, Star grabbed a bota and took a long drink, but her stomach rumbled and she frowned. “Stupid of the stable hands to give us only water,” she complained.

  “What would you expect?” Tafir said, circling, searching for a spent arrow amidst the tall grass. His black gelding danced and fidgeted, so he tugged the reins close. “They don’t keep rations in a stable. You should have raided the kitchen.”