In the Labyrinth of Drakes (30 page)

*   *   *

We departed for the Jefi once more in the second week of Messis: myself, Suhail, Tom, Andrew, Haidar, and al-Jelidah, with the best camels Suhail could provide. In hindsight it was an absurdly small group, and sorely under-equipped for our eventual needs. But of course we did not know that at the time, and Suhail's preparations were entirely reasonable for the circumstances. For my own part, based on my previous excursion, I believed that I was prepared for this journey.

I was
entirely
wrong.

In past volumes I have claimed that I am a heat-loving creature, and it is true. But there is heat, and then there is the Jefi in summer. Perhaps the simplest way I can convey the difference is to say this: had Tom and I been kidnapped by the Banu Safr in that season, we both might have died.

The air was dry even in winter; in summer it became positively desiccating. I thought at first that I perspired surprisingly little. Then I realized the moisture was evaporating nearly as quickly as it formed, and in fact I was losing water at a shocking rate. There was no point between our departure from Qurrat and our eventual return when I was not thirsty, not even after I drank—for we could never indulge ourselves as fully as we wished. We had to conserve not only the water we carried but also what we found, for some of the springs we relied upon took hours to refill even a few liters, and the well-being of our camels necessarily took precedence over our own comfort. What water we obtained was bitter and unpleasant to drink, and it reeked of the hide skins in which we kept it.

Grit worked its way into every crevice. It was under my fingernails, in the folds of my ears. I half expected a grinding noise every time I blinked. The sun was more than punishing, it was torturous; its light beat down from above, then reflected off the sand and struck a second time from below. On Suhail's advice, we added eye veils to our headscarves, restricting our vision but also protecting our eyes against the constant glare. We painted our lips with grease to reduce chapping, but our exposed hands did not fare so well. The paste that supposedly protected against the sun helped a little, but even with its aid, we were still miserably charred.

I cannot fault Andrew for snarling at one point, “Why the
hell
did I let you talk me into this?” I even forbore to remind him that he had wanted to come along, which under the circumstances I think was quite noble of me.

And it was only Messis: not yet the height of summer. We departed so early—well before hatching might begin—because Tom and I wished to see estivating dragons, drowsing in their rock shelters. But it meant we would be out here a dreadfully long time. Two of the camels we rode were in milk, and what they provided was a welcome alternative to and supplement for water; camels can extract moisture from plants that are inedible for humans, so by allowing them to graze and then drinking their milk, we could extend our supplies somewhat. When our food supplies were sufficiently reduced, we would slaughter and eat one of the pack camels; if necessary we would do this more than once. Such measures are necessary, when undertaking a journey of this sort.

Luck smiled upon us at first. We crossed tracks in the desert that al-Jelidah identified as belonging to fellow Ghalb, because they were from donkeys instead of camels. We followed these for a day and found the Ghalb camped at a Banu Zalit well. They were a small group, a family of eight, which is common for their tribe. Our Akhian companions exchanged news with them, as is obligatory among the nomads (enemies excepted), and learned that there was a drake not far away. I believe they thought us mad when they realized we wanted to go
toward
the beast, rather than away from it, but we parted from them in amity, and wasted no time in hurrying toward our mark.

*   *   *

I have been close to dragons on many an occasion, including riding upon the back of one. There is something especially hair-raising, however, about sneaking into the lair of one while it sleeps.

“Like al-Sindi the thief,” Suhail said with a wide grin. This turned to mock outrage when he learned that none of the Scirlings in the party knew that tale; he told it that night after we ate our meager supper.

This was not as comforting as it might have been, for al-Sindi, as my more literary readers may know, is the thief who crept into the lair of an estivating drake in search of its golden treasure. But there was no gold, and the drake woke while he was there; al-Sindi was forced to flee deeper into its lair. This being a fairy tale, the lair was an improbable complex of twisting passages and bottomless pits. There are many variant episodes in the tale of al-Sindi, recounting what strange wonders he found in the byways of the drake's lair, but many of them end badly for the thief.

“Moral of the story,” Andrew said when this was done. “If the dragon wakes up, run
out
instead of
in
.”

“Or else trust the clever slave-girl you meet along the way,” Tom said. “The bits where al-Sindi listens to her are the ones where he ends up alive and rich at the end.”

We did not find golden treasure in the drake's cave, nor did we have to flee in any direction. So long as one moves quietly and does not tread upon the dragon's tail, it is possible to get quite close to an estivating drake without disturbing it—even close enough to measure its rate of breathing. This, like all of the creature's bodily functions, slows down tremendously during estivation, which is part of how they survive the summer months when food becomes more scarce.

My own breathing slowed down while I was inside, even though I knew that mere air was unlikely to wake the beast. Every sound seemed excessively loud: the scratch of my pencil, the shift of my feet on the stone, the quick beating of my heart. That latter even made me contemplate whether an ear trumpet would improve one's hearing enough to measure heart rate as well: I was not
quite
foolhardy enough to try taking a sleeping dragon's pulse directly.

Our party did not linger long, however, because we had another goal: a particular egg cache we had marked during the winter, which had been left untouched by the Aritat for this very purpose. It lay just outside the canyons and gullies of the Labyrinth of Drakes, and if the eggs hatched early enough, we might hope to find a second clutch in the area—I was personally hoping for one within the Labyrinth itself—and record that one, too.

Nature, however, was not inclined to oblige us.

*   *   *

It was a gusty day, which I found quite agreeable. The wind kicked up a good deal of grit, but it cooled me a little as well. So long as I kept my face turned away from the wind, the weather seemed a pleasant change of pace.

Our Akhian companions knew better. Al-Jelidah saw the warning signs first: a haze on the horizon, which grew with alarming speed. He spoke sharply to Suhail in the nomad dialect, and my husband's face lost all its good humour on the spot. He began twisting in his saddle, looking in all directions—for what, I did not know.

“Is there a problem?” I asked.

“Sandstorm,” he said. “We have to find shelter.”

I knew of sandstorms, of course—but I knew of them in much the same way that I had known the Jefi was hot in summer. Intellectual understanding fell
far
short of the reality. I was bemused at the rapidity with which our party moved: following a hasty consultation, which revolved around whether we had time to reach a good place to make our stand, or must settle for a closer but less adequate option, we chivvied our camels into a gallop.

As fast as our beasts ran, the storm moved faster. By the time we reached a small hillock that dropped off in a rock face on the other side, the distant haze had become a distinct cloud. When I say “small,” I mean it very strictly: the bluff was scarcely a meter and a half high, and not long enough for all six of us. Suhail directed me to crouch at the base of the rock, with Tom and Andrew on either side of me and our camels so close that, were they prone to rolling, they might have crushed us. He and the other two Akhians reversed this ordering, crouching on the leeward side of their camels, for lack of any other shelter.

“Dab this inside your noses,” Suhail said, handing us the little jar of the grease we had been using to protect our lips. Mystified, we obeyed. “Now stuff your ears with these rags. Tie your scarves over your faces, as tightly as you can. Use extra scarves on your foreheads, low over your eyes—leave only the smallest slit. Tie them
over
your eyes, if you can endure a blindfold.”

When each of us finished this task, he tilted our heads backward enough for him to pour a few drops of water over our noses and mouths, wetting the fabric. Through the slit between my two scarves, I could see al-Jelidah and Haidar doing the same to themselves. “Keep your hands tucked inside your clothing,” Suhail added. “The wind may scour you bloody, otherwise.”

No more did he have time for. By then I could hear the strange, hissing roar of the wind—like other storms I have encountered, but with the alien touch of sand particles sliding over and past one another at tremendous speed. The light was beginning to turn red as the leading edges of the cloud eclipsed the sun. Suhail covered his own face with quick, practiced hands, and took shelter in the lee of his own camel.

Over the growing clamour, I shouted, “How long will we stay here?”

“Until the storm is gone!” Suhail shouted back.

I wanted to tell him that this was a singularly unhelpful answer. Of course we would remain there until the storm was gone; what I wanted to know was how long that would be. In my naivete, I did not realize that was the only answer he could give me … for a sandstorm may last anywhere from minutes to hours.

I cannot tell you how long we endured that one. What hour it had been when al-Jelidah saw the cloud, I do not recall; all I know is that much of the day was gone by the time we emerged. In between, there was misery.

A sandstorm
assaults
you, as even the most driving downpour does not. Rain sliding down the inside of your clothes is unpleasant, but it does not threaten to trap you, weighting your body while more piles up around you, pinning your legs. I saw at one point that my camel was periodically shifting, rising slightly from her couch to step free of the sand building around her; on the assumption that she knew better how to survive this weather than I did, I mimicked her.

Would that I had a camel's ability to pinch my nostrils shut against the dust. Grit caked my scarf, and slipped through where I had not tucked the edges well enough; despite that protection, I found myself coughing out bitter masses, constantly feeling as if I could not get enough air. I learned soon enough why Suhail had directed us to grease our nostrils; without that, my skin would have cracked and bled.

I wished desperately that my husband were at my side. I knew why he was not: he was more accustomed to enduring such challenges than my Scirling companions, and so had given us what shelter the little bluff could provide. Much of the time I had my eyes closed anyway, to protect them against the scouring wind; when I opened them, I could scarcely make out Tom and Andrew through the red cloud. Suhail, on the far side of Tom, might as well have been in Vidwatha. But I would have derived comfort from seeing even his silhouette, as a reminder that such things
could
be endured.

The sound was ultimately the part I hated the most. It reminded me of the time in Bayembe when an insect had gotten inside my tent, and its buzzing threatened to drive me mad. This was worse, because it was deafening, and it went on for what seemed like an eternity. One of the scraps of rag stuffed into my ear fell out; attempting to replace it, I opened an unwise gap in the defense of my scarf, and nearly choked on dust. For the sake of my breathing, I left that ear unblocked, and the hissing roar of the wind was loud enough that I felt partially deaf on one side for some time after. Half deaf, half mad, I crouched between my camel and the stone, and prayed with unwonted fervor for this trial to end.

By the time it did, I had so lost all sense of reality that I did not trust it. Not until Suhail came and chivvied my camel to her feet did I believe we were safe, that the blue sky clearing above was not some hallucination.

When I stood, sand cascaded from every fold of my clothes, inside and out. The skin of my face stung as I unwrapped the two scarves; peeling them away, I saw that their edges were daubed with blood. The gap between them, narrow as it was, had allowed the wind to score my skin, flaying the top layers. Suhail bore similar marks. He wet a rag and offered it to me; my breath hissed between my teeth as I cleaned the area of grit.

I lifted my head from this task to find him offering me a tired, dusty grin. “We have made it through water and sand,” he said: this, and the gale that had blown us to Keonga. “Give us snow next, and we will have collected the full set of storms.”

“Do not tempt fate,” I said, but I could not help smiling in return.

*   *   *

We never would have found the cache of eggs without al-Jelidah's aid. I consider myself an observant woman, particularly where visual matters are concerned, but the desert I returned to was not the one I had left four months before. Expanses of greenery were gone, consumed by animals or simply dried up and blown away. In areas of sand dunes, the very dunes themselves had migrated. And even a short time away from the terrain had eroded my memory, so that every gully or outcropping of rock looked like every other.

But when al-Jelidah brought us to the spot, there was no question of finding the egg cache itself. Bits of it were strewn across the ground for meters in every direction.

In a voice made thin with dryness, Tom said, “God
damn
it.”

I stared at the wreckage, feeling as hollow as the remnants of the shells. We had missed it. All our haste, and we were still too late.