Carnivores of Light and Darkness (23 page)
Ehomba did his best to imagine the effort of which Loswee was speaking, the heartbreak of picking up and moving everything, down to the last miniature shovel and hearth. Of hurrying off through the desert between inhospitable dunes that were hills to him and his friends but gigantic sand mountains to people the size of the Swick. Of starting again from scratch, with the first choir singing out the first hole in the base of a fresh, untouched dune.
Of doing it forty-five times and now having to face the unholy prospect of doing it for a forty-sixth.
He took in the wondrous construction surrounding them, all of it fashioned from nothing more than laboriously worked sand. Contemplated the humming, thriving community, alive with craftwork and farming and art. Considered, and tried to envision abandoning it all to inevitable ruination and starting over again from nothing.
His gaze returned at last to the waiting Loswee. “I am sorry, but we cannot help you.”
Simna looked momentarily startled, then relieved. Clearly, he had been expecting a different sort of response from his friend. Behind them, Ahlitah rolled over and snored.
Loswee accepted the response gravely. “Outside, you agreed that if not help, you might be able to give us some advice.”
Ehomba shrugged diffidently. “I said ‘might.’ Loswee, I do not know what to say. You told us that magic was needed to fight this Dunawake, and I replied that we had no magic. I am sorry to say that we have no advice, either. We do not even know what a Dunawake is. Believe me, I feel terrible about this. Men I know how to fight, and animals, and even certain circumstances of nature, but not a Dunawake. I have never heard of one, seen one, or had it described to me.”
“Perhaps if you saw it you would know how to respond.” Backed by his silently watching Elders, Loswee was unwilling to drop the matter.
“I do not see why. And if it is as dangerous as you say, and we confronted it without knowing how to respond or react, I imagine we would probably die. I do not want to die. I have an obligation of my own to fulfill that does not, regrettably, include the Swick, and also a family that I am missing more than I can say.”
“Also friends,” Simna added quickly.
“Yes, even that.” Ehomba took a long, deep breath. “I am sorry, Loswee. For you and for your people. But it is not like you are unused to moving.”
“It never gets easier,” the Swick soldier told him. “But if there is nothing you can do, there is nothing you can do. These Elders and I will convey your response to the rest of the Council.” Behind him, the senior Swick genuflected once again. They had spoken, and having had their say, now added not a word. “Finish your meal,” Loswee advised as he turned away.
This the visitors proceeded to do: Ahlitah quietly, Simna without a thought, and Ehomba with perhaps one or two—but they were fleeting. He could not change the world, and in actual fact had no desire to try.
If their hosts in general or Loswee in particular held any resentment against the travelers for their refusal to help in the endless ongoing battle against their nemesis, they did not show it. The rest of the day was spent touring other parts of the remarkable underground complex and in learning more of Swick culture. It was ancient but not widely known, in large part because of the perpetrators’ secretive style of living.
“There are other dunes in other desert parts of the world where our distant relations thrive,” Loswee informed them, “and the human beings who live in close proximity to those dunes are completely unaware of our presence nearby. They see tracks in the sand, but the tracks are those of the birds and other animals we make use of.”
“You are a very resourceful people,” Ehomba admitted respectfully.
“Yes,” declared Loswee with pride. “Our lands have always been safe from all trespass except that of the Dunawake, though I fear that someday this may change.”
“Why’s that?” inquired Simna, only half interested.
Loswee turned quite serious. “Humans have a great love for lamps, and our land floats on the liquid they use to fill them. I am afraid that one day they may come to take it, smashing down the dunes and trampling the plants in the ravines and wadis.”
Ehomba looked up at the sand ceiling overhead. “Not these dunes,” he commented reassuringly. “They are too big, and this land is too remote.”
“I hope you are right, my friend.” Loswee sighed, the diminutive exhalation comical in the enclosed space, like the wheezing of a mouse. “I am more sorry than I can say that you are not the magician we had hoped for.”
“So am I.” It cost Ehomba nothing to agree. Sympathy was cheap.
“I know that you must be on your way.” The tiny fighter summoned up a smile. Given the width of his mouth, it nearly split his broad, flat face in half. “At least you have had the chance to experience Swick hospitality. That is a treat few human beings have enjoyed.”
“We are grateful.” As a courtesy, Ehomba dipped his head slightly. “We will take away good memories with us.”
“And I, if not the Elders, will remember you fondly.” It seemed impossible that Loswee’s smile could grow any wider, but it did, defying the boundaries of his face. “Tomorrow morning I myself will conduct you back outside, and show you the easiest way to the north. Follow my directions, and you will not find yourselves pinched by the dunes and having to slog your way through sand. There is a particularly wide and flat gulch that runs all the way through this country. Keep your feet on it always and you will soon find yourselves once more in a land of green trees and running water.”
“How far from there to the nearest river or seaport?” Ehomba asked him.
Loswee spread his small hands apologetically. “That I can’t tell you. We Swick keep to the sand country, where we can live in peace and solitude among our dunes. Not all people are as understanding or kindly toward others as yourselves. Believe it or not, there are some who like to hurt anything and anyone who is smaller than themselves simply because they can.”
“The world is full of bullies,” Ehomba agreed. “I understand your desire to maintain your privacy. When people are squabbling over nothing, as often seems to be the case, I myself prefer the company of cattle.”
“Tomorrow, then.” Loswee backed away. “Sleep well, my friends, and dream of Swick choirs singing back the stars.”
XXIII
T
HE TRAVELERS AWOKE REFRESHED AND RELAXED
,
READY TO
resume their interrupted trek northward. After a final, sumptuous breakfast, Loswee himself escorted them away from the inner castle, through the rest of the town, and into the main tunnel that led to the world outside.
HE TRAVELERS AWOKE REFRESHED AND RELAXED
,
READY TO
resume their interrupted trek northward. After a final, sumptuous breakfast, Loswee himself escorted them away from the inner castle, through the rest of the town, and into the main tunnel that led to the world outside.
After the time they had spent underground, the unfiltered directness of the desert sun stung their eyes. They had to retreat back into the tunnel and reemerge gradually. It took almost half an hour before their eyes could once more handle the harsh clarity of the blue sky and the sun reflecting off the surrounding dune faces.
There was no shaking of hands as was the custom in Simna’s homeland, nor clasping of forearms in the fashion of the Naumkib and related peoples, nor even licking of faces as was common among Ahlitah’s feline tribe. Loswee simply raised a hand in farewell, then turned on his bird and rode back toward the tunnel that led to the wondrous subterranean world of the Swick.
But not before leading them around the base of the great dune whose unsuspected secret was the flourishing inner community it concealed. There, radiating out from a small salt pan, three waterless meanderings wandered off in search of the far distant sea. Pointing to the one in the middle, Loswee informed them that if they followed it, not only would it broaden into a wide, easily hiked desert highway, but eventually it would lead them into greener and more populated country. From there they would doubtless have better luck finding the oceanic transportation they sought.
Towing their diminished but still significant water supply behind them, they thanked the diminutive Swick warrior before starting off in the indicated direction. True to his word, the narrow wadi soon expanded into a sun-blasted, relatively gravel-free promenade that promised easy access to wherever it led.
By late afternoon, enough clouds had gathered to provide some surcease from the intolerant sun. This was not enough to assuage the mood of the valiant swordsman, who without anything specific to complain about was feeling decidedly peckish.
“If we were back among the Swick it’d be lunchtime about now.” Adjusting his pack so that it rode a little higher on his shoulders, he squinted at the cloud-masked sky.
From his position in the lead, Ehomba looked back at his companion. “Would you have ever left? I was afraid that we had overstayed our welcome as it was.”
“Of course I would’ve left, bruther. The food was good, for sure, but the appearance of the local ladies was not only a tad gruesome for my taste, they were also most proportionately incommodious.”
The herdsman was left shaking his head. “What a wastrel you are, Simna ibn Sind. You have built nothing with your life.”
“As opposed to you, with your nagging cattle and daggy sheep? If that’s a legacy for a man to be proud of, I’ll take cinnamon.”
“Excess!” Ehomba actually raised his voice slightly. “Your life is all about excess, Simna. Useless, wasting, scattergood excess.”
“And yours is about nothingness, Etjole. Empty, barren, sterile nothingness!”
“Barren and sterile, is it? I have a most beautiful wife, and two handsome, strong children to care for me in my old age.”
Simna would no more back down from a verbal challenge than from a physical one. “And when I claim my share of treasure I’ll buy a harem to care for me, and guards, and the best physicians. That I’ll enjoy while you toss and rot as old women chant lamentations over your withered, dying body.”
“You may be right about that,” Ehomba conceded, “but therein lies a difference between us.”
“And what’s that?” riposted the swordsman belligerently.
Ehomba held his head high. “Having already acquired my treasure, I have neither the need nor the desire to claim another.”
“What treasure?” Simna made a face. “Your ‘beautiful wife’? I’ve had, and will have, dozens, hundreds more of the most beautiful. Gold, you know, herdsman, is the most potent aphrodisiac of all.”
“It will not bring you love,” Ehomba shot back.
“Hoy! Love!” The swordsman laughed aloud. “Highly overpriced as well as overrated. Keep your love, bruther, and I’ll have my harem.”
“That is where you are wrong, Simna. If you are not careful,
it
will have
you
.” Angry, he lengthened his stride, forcing the stubbier swordsman to have to hurry to keep up with him.
it
will have
you
.” Angry, he lengthened his stride, forcing the stubbier swordsman to have to hurry to keep up with him.
“Is that so?” Simna really had no idea what his companion meant by the comment but was unwilling to leave him the last word. “I can tell you from experience that—”
“Scat on your experience! Be
quiet
!” Having viewed the entire argument with jaundiced detachment, Ahlitah had lifted his great maned head high into the clear, overheated air and was listening intently. Ehomba and Simna immediately put their discussion on hold as they tried to detect whatever it was that had alarmed the big cat.
quiet
!” Having viewed the entire argument with jaundiced detachment, Ahlitah had lifted his great maned head high into the clear, overheated air and was listening intently. Ehomba and Simna immediately put their discussion on hold as they tried to detect whatever it was that had alarmed the big cat.
For alarmed he was, or at the very least, suddenly wary. It was manifest in his posture: every muscle tense, every sense alert. Both men looked around uneasily but could see nothing out of the ordinary. A lizard with unusually broad, flat feet scampered up the face of a dune to get away from them. White-breasted dragonets circled on silent wings high overhead, hoping and waiting for one or more of the party to drop. Isolated insects buzzed about the fragmentary plants that clung to the dry ravine or fought the fringes of encroaching dunes. There was no noise, not a sound, as if the very constituents of the air itself had stopped moving. The stillness was as profound as stone.
Then a slight breeze picked up, ruffling the paralysis. The world, after momentarily holding its breath, seemed set in motion again. For an instant, Simna would not have been surprised to see one of the violent corkscrew storms they had battled on the veldt emerge from hiding behind one of the towering dunes. But all that showed itself was a pair of iridescent blue butterflies with white wing spots, flitting and fluttering about a common axis of anticipated procreation. That, and the slightly darker-hued sand that was blowing around the far corner of the dune on their left.
Except—far more sand was sifting from west to east than the barely perceptible breeze should have been capable of moving.
It was the color of powdered rust, stained with a hint of decay. Yellow blotches appeared here and there as the sand drift continued to increase. Now a small ridge a foot or two high where it was emerging from behind the motionless bulk of the other dune, it continued to pile up across the wadi. The first scouting grains had already crossed completely to the other side, leaving behind a rising, widening seam of dark reddish sand.
Ahlitah continued to sample the air, but it was Ehomba who called a halt. “That is odd.”
A frustrated Simna was searching their immediate surroundings for a nonexistent danger. “What is?”
“That rising ridge of sand.” The herdsman pointed. Simna glanced distractedly at the unthreatening maroon granules that were drifting across their path. “I see a line of blowing sand. Nothing odd about that.”
“Not in and of itself, no.” The herdsman gripped his spear a little tighter. “But by its actions it heralds an approaching darkness. Not an eromakadi, an eater of light that can only be slain by an eromakasi, but some kind of more physical, less subtle relation.”
“Hoy, what are you jabbering about, long bruther?” What he could not see made Simna more nervous than any visible opponent, no matter how menacing.
Adding to the swordsman’s discomfort, Ehomba took a step backward, acting for all the world as if he were actually retreating from something. “The reddish sand advances—but the sand in front of it and across from it does not move.” He glanced meaningfully at his friend. “Since when does the air select its wind-borne freight with such care?”
Simna’s expression contorted as he mulled over his companion’s words—and suddenly he saw the blowing, drifting red sand in a new light. It was true, only the sand the color of rust rushed and rambled across the width of the wadi. Before it and behind it, not a grain was stirring. That was peculiar, all right.
It was also more than a little frightening.
“Maybe we’d better go back.” He had already started backing up. “Loswee’s directions aside, there must be another way north. One that doesn’t involve confronting animate sands.”
Retreating, he bumped into the litah’s behind. But the great cat did not growl at him. He was holding his ground, facing back the way they had come.
“I’m afraid it’s too late for that, man.” A rising breezed stirred his jet black mane.
A second stream of reddish sand was whisking across the ravine behind them, cutting off their only retreat. Simna gaped at the steady flow and the rising dike it was creating.
“For Grentoria’s sake, it’s only sand! A man could still clear it in a single bound!”
“Maybe,” Ehomba conceded, “if all it did was continue to blow from west to east.” Turning, he gestured sharply with the toothed tip of his spear. “That way, quickly! Up the side of the dune!” Obeying his own words, he started up the slick, difficult slope. Glancing methodically from left to right, Ahlitah followed, his broad footpads having an easier time with the difficult terrain than the sandaled human.
Simna trailed behind, cursing with every step the sand that slid away beneath his feet and made upward progress a strenuous ordeal. Seeing that the mysterious wall of red sand was now ten feet high at either end of the gulch and still rising helped to spur him on.
They were halfway up the side of the accommodating dune when the sky began to darken and a voice boomed behind them. It was the lament of something that was less than a beast and more than a natural phenomenon, the unnaturally drawn-out moan of a fiend most monstrous and uncommon. With their feet planted ankle deep in the sand the fleeing travelers turned, and saw at last what had so subtly tried to ambush them by trapping them within the ravine.
It looked for all the world (or any other) like just another dune.
Except it was taller, and darker. Angry-red darker. And it advanced not in the manner of a living creature, but in the fashion of dunes, by shifting that which composed its near side forward, so that it in turn pulled the center. The center drew the rear portion forward, rolling on over the middle, and so continuing the cycle. Back become middle become front, like a slow wheel spinning about a central axis; endless, eternal, indomitable.
It had no arms and then a hundred, no feet but one that was as wide as the base of the advancing dune itself, like the great lumbering foot of some muscular mollusk. Everywhere and all of it was sand, dark red like all the rust that had ever afflicted all the metals of the world rolled and bunched and squeezed up together into a single swiftly shifting pyramid of revenge. Loswee had spoken of roaring dunes, and indeed there were some such in Ehomba’s own country. But never before had he heard of, or encountered, a dune that howled and moaned and bellowed like some sky-scraping banshee unwillingly fastened to the Earth.
And in the midst of all that displaced geologic fury, two-thirds of the way up the face of the oncoming mountain, were two eyes. An abyssal, lambent red, they pulsed like fires from deep within the sand, inclined forty-five degrees in opposite directions, and focused fixedly on the three fleeing travelers. Why they, foreigners in a foreign land, should inspire such rage and determination on the part of the Dunawake, none of the three could say. Perhaps the monster raved and raged from a deep-seated need to exterminate whatever life it encountered within the dunes, no matter its origin.
Already, several small mammals and reptiles had been caught and smothered beneath the advancing skirt of sand, too slow or too blinded by blowing particles to flee in time. The same fate now threatened those trying to scramble clear of its reach. Blasts of maroon sand stung their backs while granular tendrils clawed at their legs. High on the face of an indifferent, inanimate dune, they were temporarily safe as long as they stayed above and ahead of the abomination’s advance.
But the Dunawake was bigger than the dune they were climbing. If it continued to flow forward it would eventually engulf the sandy prominence, overwhelming both it and them. Ehomba knew the far side would provide no refuge. Not when their abrasive pursuer could send arms of sand racing around the base of the dune whose summit they were about to reach. They were trapped. They could only continue to climb until they reached the top, there to wait until the steady advance of the Dunawake overwhelmed them on their final perch.
Struggling upward as his sandaled feet sank inches deep and more into the unstable slope, Simna drew his sword and slashed repeatedly at the thin red tendrils that were clutching at his legs. As he cut and hacked away, handfuls of sand went flying in all directions. What held them together, what made of tiny individual particles a coherent and persistent entity, he could not imagine. Who would have thought that unadulterated rant would make so effective a glue?
For every clutching sandy offshoot he scattered, another crept upward to take its place. Noting the dispersing effect of his methodical, skillful sword strokes, he felt he could eventually cut the Dunawake down to size. Why, at the rate his sword was strewing sand to left and right, the monster would run out of granules with which to form grasping tendrils in not less than a couple of million years! Unfortunately, his arm was already growing tired.
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