Down a Lost Road (31 page)

He turned his head and closed his eyes. Two
drops of blood gathered at their inner corners, slipping down his
cheeks like tears. I stared at him, horrified and speechless.

“
It will pass,” said the
sand-hued being. “Do not be terrified for him. It hurts little and
is not so severe as it looks.”

“
But it looks awful,” I
said. “Why is it doing that?”

Yatol turned away without a word, his eyes
shining strangely. I glanced at the figure, but he was staring into
the darkness too, caught up in some other world of thought.

“
What just happened?” Yatol
asked. “Stitista?”

Stitista fixed his gaze on me, and I bowed
my head under his powerful stare. But I could feel Yatol watching
me expectantly, so I pointed across the sand.

“
They aren’t dead. They
haven’t been judged.”

“
What?”

“
I saw one of them. He was
just a boy! About my age, or Tyhlaur’s.”

Yatol knitted his brow. “An Ungulion?”

“
Yes! No. I mean, he was an
Ungulion, but…they were just like us once. Human. He
said…”

“
He spoke to you?” Yatol
interrupted, baffled.

“
Y-yes. When he didn’t try
to kill me, I asked him why not, and he answered.” I shook my head
irritably. How could I explain what had happened? “He said it was
what they merited.”

Stitista watched me steadily through those
piercing eyes, but Yatol just stood frowning at the sand. I felt
incredibly small when I looked at Stitista, and very lost when I
looked at Yatol, so I did what he did, and stared at the
ground.

“
And do you understand this
thing he spoke to you?” Stitista said softly.

“
Yes…no. I don’t know. I
need to think.”

I turned abruptly and walked a few steps
away, dropping onto the sand and staring into the darkness. But I
couldn’t stand the blindness, so I turned until I could see
Stitista’s radiance breaking the murk. All I wanted was to think,
but I couldn’t. My mind felt completely empty. I couldn’t force my
thoughts to focus, though a million things tugged at them for
attention. I just sat, and stared straight ahead.

“
We still have a long way
to go,” Yatol said. “Have you seen the main force? Do you know
where they are?”

I slanted a glance at Stitista as he gave
Yatol a sad, mysterious smile. “You know, Yatol. You measured their
pace. You know from the darkness they are drawing across the
Perstaun
. And you know also how long it will take them to
cross the sands. You know how long it will take you to reach
K’hama. There is nothing you need to hear from me.”

Yatol gazed at him searchingly. “The
Ungulion will be spreading out to drive whatever lives toward
Alcalon – or slay them now. And we’re days, weeks even, from the
outer borders.”

He shook his head. I stared at him. His
expression puzzled me – it seemed forsaken. On the brink of
despair. I pushed myself to my feet and came back to them, glancing
anxiously at Stitista. But he only gazed down at me, meaningful and
encouraging. I knew he would not say anything to Yatol. He
couldn’t. I took Yatol’s arm.

“
We’ll find a way. If we
have to get past the lines, there must be some gap where we can get
through. I can find it – I’m smaller than you. They’ll never see
me.”

He looked at me like death. His face turned
ashen, stricken with more than just pain. “No, Merelin.” The raw
anguish in his voice sliced right through me. “I won’t let you do
that. I can’t. It’s not worth the gamble…”

He turned away, jaw clenched. I stared
miserably down at my feet, scuffing my toe in the sand. Some slow
realization woke in me. My gaze shifted from the strange sandals to
the pants that were just my size, to the worn embroidery on the
shirt. The blood plummeted to my feet, and if Stitista hadn’t
reached out suddenly to support me, I might have collapsed.

“
Yatol,” I whispered. “What
was her name?”

“
Eleya,” he said. I barely
heard him. “My father called her Eleya before she was born. It
means ‘one hoped for,’ because he knew she would be his only
daughter. But he never lived to see her day.”

I dropped to my knees, sitting back on my
heels and staring out at nothing. I could hardly breathe. Faintly I
heard Stitista bid us farewell, then he seemed to dissolve into the
sand, leaving only a faint curl of light hovering over the earth
where he had stood. Yatol came to my side.

“
Come.”

Yentsi
. How strange it had sounded
the first time I’d heard it. Yatol crouched beside me and wrapped
his arm around my shoulders. I bowed my head and wept.

Chapter 22 – The Blade of Heaven

He let me cry. After a moment he sat down
beside me, still clasping his arm around me. Even when I finally
dried my eyes on the sleeves of my tunic, he didn’t move to get
up.

“
Yatol,” I said at last.
“How do you know the way to go?”

“
I’ve made this journey
more than enough times, so I know the shortest distance across the
Perstaun
. That’s the way we’ll go.”

“
But how can you find it?
It’s all desert. And so dark.”

He just smiled. “We’re almost to the dunes.
The
Perstaun
is narrower here than toward the Gorhiem
Bolstoed, so if we run, we may reach the
Branhau
before
night.”

I glared at the sky. “It’s all night. I
don’t know how you can tell what time it is.”

He got to his feet and helped me to mine.
“Trust me,” he said, and broke into a run.

I sprinted after him, wondering how long we
would have to run before we reached the dunes. Suddenly I felt the
ground lurch up and I collapsed in a shower of sand. Well, there
was my answer. Yatol kept running, balancing expertly against the
shifting ground. Before I could lose sight of him I made another
attempt, mimicking his method. My legs were burning by the time I
finally made it to the top.

The dunes weren’t nearly as high as I’d seen
in pictures of Earth’s deserts, but they were bad enough. My mouth
felt like sandpaper by the time I reached the crest, and for a
moment I just knelt there coughing, trying to moisten my parched
throat. But Yatol didn’t slow down to wait. He slid down the
opposite slope, sand rasping behind him. I gave up trying to rest
and slipped down after him, squinting against the spray of sand. I
hit the bottom and ran on.

“
Wait,” I gasped,
floundering up the next rise to join him near the top. I threw
myself down beside him, breathless. “How many more dunes are
there?”

“
How many?” he echoed. “I
don’t know. The desert is always changing. There are always dunes
here, because of the winds, but the number and size always changes.
Sometimes there are many small dunes, sometimes a few high ones.
From these two I’d say we’ve got a number of small ones still
ahead.”

“
These are small?” I
groaned. “Was there no easier way?”

Before he could answer he suddenly tensed.
“Listen.”

I tried, but couldn’t hear anything besides
the sand sifting in the breeze.

“
What is it?” I
whispered.

And then I felt it. Low and almost
inaudible, the same dull throb that had heralded the Ungulion
approach earlier.

“
I thought the Ungulion
already passed us!”

“
That was just a
dispatch.”

I flattened myself on the sand and crept the
rest of the way up the dune. Yatol came quickly after me, grabbing
my arm before I went over the crest. I inched forward a little
more, and peered over the top.

And saw the army. They were still some
distance away, skirting the next dune a little up from our
position. They carried huge torches that cast pools of shuddering
light over their ranks, showering sparks and acrid smoke into the
starless dark. They marched slowly, and it seemed that the heavy
pulse was steadily winding down. Finally it stopped, and I realized
that the force had come to a halt.

“
They stopped,” I
whispered. “I think they’re setting up camp. Why do they need to
camp?”

“
I don’t know. Are you
sure?”

I went a little further, heard his breath
hiss out sharply. “They’re lighting fires. Three of them are coming
this way…”

Yatol scrambled up beside me to see for
himself, eyes gleaming. “The watchmen.”

“
How far will they
go?”

“
If they establish their
perimeter at all like we do, maybe a few hundred paces from the
camp, no further.”

“
How far is
that?”

He narrowed his eyes, squinting out toward
the camp. His gaze ran over the dunes as if mentally measuring the
distance, and finally he nodded at the slope in front of us.

“
Right there.”

I swallowed. The three Ungulion came
steadily toward us, their tall torches scattering light between the
two dunes for some distance. I thought I saw the shadows of several
others coming out of the darkness to join them, but couldn’t be
sure.

“
They’re going to see us,”
I said. “What’re we going to do?”

His gaze flitted over the dunes,
experienced, calculating, then he said, “When I tell you, run
twenty paces along this slope until you come to the shadow, then
cut across and over the rest of the dunes. Don’t stop, don’t even
slow down until you cross the last dune. Wait for me there.” He
fixed me with a somber gaze. “If I don’t join you in an hour, go on
toward the
Branhau
. Akhmar will come and carry you as far as
he can. Beyond that…”

“
What do you mean?” I
gasped. “Don’t say that! Come with me. If they wouldn’t see me,
surely they wouldn’t see us if we both went…”

“
But they’ve already sensed
a stranger’s presence.”

I reached to my belt to unhook the knife he
had given me. He had no other weapons – if he had taken any from
the camp, he had spent them all already. I knew he wouldn’t accept
the knife if I offered it, so I took it off wordlessly and laid it
beside his hand.

“
Go!” he whispered
fiercely. “Go, go! Run and don’t look back!”

I slid back a little way and scrambled to my
feet, hesitating the briefest of moments. But then he turned and
met my gaze, and nodded once, slowly.

I ran. I wasn’t sure how long a pace
actually was, but I ran until I thought I could slip between the
slopes unseen, then I breasted the dune and slid down the other
side. My guess was right – I stood just a few steps beyond the
perimeter of light. As soon as I hit level ground I was on my feet
again, racing toward the next slope. I had nearly crossed the
trough when a horrible shriek split the air. It froze me in my
tracks. I swept my gaze back toward the light, watching as Yatol
flew down toward the Ungulion. Seven of them. Silent now they
surrounded him, and then he was lost to my sight.

I realized suddenly that I had stopped. I’d
stopped and looked, just like Yatol had told me not to. Shaking
with fear and rage, I wrenched myself away, forced my legs to move.
I clambered over the dune and the next, hardly able to summit the
last. But finally I made the top and skidded down the opposite
side. I collapsed in a heap at the bottom, and waited.

The minutes crawled by.

I drew up my knees and hugged my arms to my
chest, trying to stop shaking. The air seemed colder now, the
breeze stiffer. Sand filtered down the slope and caught in my hair,
then whipped up toward the dune and stung my cheeks. I buried my
head in my arms, and waited.

An hour passed as I listened desperately for
the sound of Yatol sliding down the slope to join me. All I heard
was the wind sighing and howling over the waste, a bodiless voice
in the blind dark. I scooped up handfuls of sand, feeling it
trickle slow and sharp between my fingers. I justified waiting half
of another hour, but still I sat alone.

Finally I forced myself to my feet and
stumbled along the base of the dune, up and down. Maybe he was
searching for me. Maybe I had gone too far, and he hadn’t been able
to see me. But I couldn’t find him anywhere. After a while I
stopped and stood staring toward the
Branhau
. And then I
turned around, and climbed up the dune. He was crazy if he thought
I would leave him behind.

I stayed low, creeping cautiously back the
way I had come. I crossed another dune, then another. Here was the
high one we had hid behind when Yatol told me to run. I could see
the light of fires up at the camp, but toward the watchpost,
nothing.