ROAD TO CORDIA (18 page)

     “Off we are, then.”

     Ja'Nil grabbed up her pack and they started off.

     Even though his legs were much longer than hers, she had no trouble keeping up with him. “You’re limping,” she said.         

     He shrugged. “Ran into a man with a knife,” he said.

     “What happened?”

     “Ran him off,” he said, and smiled a small cruel smile.

     In spite of the sunny day and the magically beautiful land they were crossing, Ja'Nil shivered. Maybe traveling alone would have been safer?

* * *

     Despite his limp, Ee'Rick traveled steadily. At noon, they stopped near the sparkly rushing stream and shared their food with each other. Ee'Rick had some rose colored wine he carried in a clear glass bottle. Ja’Nil had never seen glass used for anything but windows. She hadn’t realized it could be shaped in different forms. An ordinary cork stopper kept the wine from spilling out. Ee'Rick placed the bottle in a shallow part of the stream to cool it.

     He offered her what looked like a small, sealed half pie.

     “A pie?”

     “An emeer,” he corrected.

     “What’s in it?”

     “Smoked fish, seaweed and jola sauce. It’s spicy,” he warned.

     She took a careful bite. It was delicious. Ee'Rick produced a small cup from his pack and filled it with wine before handing it to her.

     Ja'Nil didn’t really like wine but she took it just to be polite. It went perfectly with the emeer. By the time she had finished eating, she had also finished off two cups of wine.

     Wine isn’t so yucky after all, she decided. She smiled brilliantly at Ee'Rick and found herself giggling over nothing at all.

     He smiled back at her but when she held her cup out for more wine he put the stopper back in the bottle and said, “Why don’t we save the rest for later?”

     “Jadµ,” she agreed, and jumped to her feet, ready to go. Only, once on her feet, the world seemed to tilt sideways. Ee'Rick stood up quickly and grabbed her arm to steady her.

     “The wine was perhaps too strong,” he said.

     “Oh no,” she assured him. “It was perfect. I feel so relaxed.” She giggled, took a step, staggered and grabbed Ee'Rick’s arm to steady herself. “See how relaxed I am.”

     “I do,” he said.

     “I‘m soooo relaxed.”

     She leaned forward in a confidential manner, “If I wasn’t soooo relaxed I would never have reached for your arm the way I did.”

     “No?”

     She shook her head. “No,” she said very solemnly.

     “Why not?”

     “Because you’re soooo beautiful.”

     Ee'Rick looked at her in amazement, then threw his head back, and roared with laughter.

     “Well, you are!”

     Ee'Rick continued to laugh.

     “You’re also very rude,” said Ja'Nil, beginning to sober up. With greater sobriety came embarrassment. Had she really told this boy that he was beautiful?

     Ja'Nil grabbed up her pack and started down the trail. She could hear Ee'Rick still chuckling behind her.

    
May he break the circle and fall into the abyss! That’s the last time I pay any boy a compliment.

     “Ja'Nil, wait up,” called Ee'Rick limping after her.

     Instead, she sped up.

     “STOP!” he ordered. His voice was like a crack of thunder.

    
Who does he think he is?

     She turned abruptly to face him. “I’ve decided to travel on my own,” she said, in as cold a voice as she could manage.

     But he wasn’t looking at her. His gaze was fastened on the sky behind her. She turned to see what he was looking at. Her mind, still fuzzy from the unaccustomed wine, was slow to process what she saw.

     Off in the distance the clear beautiful sky was cut right down the middle by a huge, black, twisting circle that, as she watched, danced about like a demented headless man. It was accompanied by an irritating whirring noise that grew louder and louder.

     “What is it?” she asked.

     “A Funnel storm.” Ee'Rick was looking frantically about. “Off we are,” he said, striding to one side of the trail.

     Ja'Nil, mesmerized by the churning, twisting, noisy black phenomena, didn’t move.

     Ee'Rick came back for her, grabbed her arm, and pulled her roughly with him.

     “Hey! Let go of me,” she protested. She dug in her heels, confused by his rough actions, growing more and more frightened by the noisy, churning mass speeding towards them. Lord of the Circle, the noise set her teeth on edge. It penetrated her very skin like a horde of insects burrowing into her.

     Ee'Rick, recognizing the signs of stupefaction that was one of the symptoms of Funnel Storm sickness, simply put his arm around Ja’Nil’s waist and picked her up. Carrying her like a sack of wheat, he ran as fast as he could off the trail and up the side of a small hill. Dropping both his pack and Ja’Nil, he grabbed hold of a small boulder that leaned against the hill. Straining with all his might, he managed to tilt the boulder away from the hill. A narrow indentation appeared when the boulder was moved.

     “Get over here!” he yelled at Ja'Nil. The noise of the flesh-eating Funnel Storm was so loud that he couldn’t hear his own voice. The wind had whipped itself up into a rage. Small and large branches were flying through air, dense with dust, dirt and debris.

     Ja'Nil sat where he had dropped her. Her eyes were closed, both hands covering her ears as she attempted to block out that awful sound. It was the special sound the Funnel put out to daze and confuse its prey. It was coming for Ja'Nil.

     Ee'Rick grabbed her and hauled her over to the narrow indentation he had made. He shoved her in, and then positioned himself in front of her. He grabbed the displaced boulder and heaved until he thought his arms would break. Finally, he managed to move it enough to block them into their refuge. They would have the devil of a time getting out. Then the Funnel hit.

     Behind him, Ja'Nil screamed and pushed frantically at him, trying to escape; escape into the storm, its siren call luring her to be torn apart and devoured by the Funnel.

     Ee'Rick ignored her pushing, ignored the blows she rained down on his back and head. He was busy fighting his own response to that deadly summons. Luckily, it was impossible for them to get out of where they were as long as the boulder stayed in place.

     The wind whipped and clawed at them. The boulder rocked under its onslaught but stayed in place. Then suddenly the Funnel was gone, immediately followed by sheets of icy rain.

     Ja'Nil stopped screaming. She clung to his back, her head turned down away from the pouring rain. Ee'Rick held his pack above his head and waited in stoic misery for the rain to pass. It took its time.

* * *

     Ja'Nil had fallen asleep. Ee'Rick dozed on and off. It was nighttime when the rain finally stopped as suddenly as it had started. Ja'Nil had slipped sideways and was half-sitting, half-lying on her right side. The ground was soaked, allowing the boulder that had guarded them to sink deeper into the ground, more firmly fixed than ever.

     Ee'Rick gave it a shove but could discern no movement. He would have to wait until Sister Moon rose so that he could see exactly what their situation was.

     Behind him, he could hear Ja'Nil’s teeth chattering and feel her thin young body shiver. They’d probably both come down with wet lung disease, he thought, as he drifted off to sleep.

     He dreamed of a glorious hunt but suddenly, just as he moved in for the kill, he became the hunted. “No,” he mumbled in his sleep. “All wrong.” He felt something grab him by the loose skin at the back of his neck. He snarled and looked up to see the razor sharp knife descending.

     He was shaking…No, someone was shaking him. “Ee'Rick, wake up. You’re dreaming.”

     He opened his eyes. The good news was no one was about to kill him. The bad news was that  he was soaking wet, sitting in a muddy puddle of water, creamed into a space the size of a small dog house and he was sharing this space with an irritated female who kept shaking his shoulder and wouldn’t let him go back to sleep.

     “Cease,” he growled.

     “Are you awake?”

     “Aye.”

     She let go of his shoulder. “Was that thing alive?” she asked.

     “What thing?” Carefully he tried to stretch out his legs. There was barely half a rood of stretch room. How was he going to get enough leverage to move the boulder?

     “The Funnel. Was it alive?”

     “Sort of.”

     “How can something be “sort of’ alive?”      

     “It’s made up of wind, and if it stays small it’s pretty harmless, but if it grows large enough it becomes capable of directing its own movements. And searching out prey,” he added.

     “Searching out prey? What does it do when it catches something?”

     “Digests it,” he said.

     “Oh my Lord of the Circle.”

     “The leftovers are pretty disgusting,” he admitted.

     “Leftovers?” She gagged.

     “Try not to purge all over my back,” he said. That would be the perfect ending to this day, he thought tiredly.

     “I won’t,” she said in a very small voice. Then, “Do you think you could move? I’m being squashed.”

     “I’m going to have to squash you some more in order to move this boulder.”

     Ja'Nil looked over his shoulder. “You moved that all by yourself?”

     “It was either that or the Funnel,” he said.

     Ja'Nil shuddered. “Good choice.”

     Ee'Rick grinned. “Flatten yourself against the back as much as possible,” he ordered. Then he leaned back as far as he could go, which was not even a quarter of a length, bent his knees until they were touching his chest, put both feet on the boulder and pushed.

     Nothing happened. He relaxed for a moment and tried again. Still nothing. By this time, he was red-faced and panting. He pushed again.

     “I think it moved a little this time,” Ja'Nil said.        

     Ee'Rick didn’t respond. He knew well and good there had been no movement. If he couldn’t get that denizen of the Seventh Hell boulder out of the way, their refuge would become their death cell.

     “Maybe I can dig a little deeper into the hill,” said Ja'Nil. “That should give us more room.”

     Ee'Rick, legs aching, nodded. “Good idea.”

     He could hear Ja’Nil scratching at the hill in back of them while he caught his breath.

     “It’s solid rock,” said a horrified Ja'Nil.

     “Of course it is,” Ee'Rick muttered to himself, and then bent his knees up to his chest again, getting ready to put everything he had left into this push. With a grunt, he applied pressure to the boulder.

     “Move!” Ja’Nil ordered the boulder.

     “If only it were that easy,” he said.

     “I wish I could help you,” she said. Then, “It moved. You’re doing it!”

     She was right; the boulder was definitely moving. Feeling as if the tendons in his legs were at the snapping point, Ee'Rick continued to apply pressure.

     “Move you stupid rock,” he heard Ja'Nil say from behind him.

     His legs and his stomach muscles were screaming to be released but he wasn’t giving up now. It was moving! Then, after all the drama, after all the fear and straining every fiber of every muscle in his body, the boulder simply fell over. It lay on its side looking as demur and innocent as a … rock.

     With a sigh, Ee'Rick extended his legs their full length and leaned forward.

     Ja’Nil peered over his shoulder. “You must be incredibly strong.”

     Right now Ee'Rick felt as weak as a day old half-kit. Still he had moved the boulder and Ja'Nil was impressed. Nothing like having a girl admire your muscles.

     They scrambled out of the hole and stood looking around. Once again, the sky was clear, First Sun was just climbing over the eastern hills to light the new day. Pink and white clouds dotted the soft blue sky. But no birds sang, no insects chattered away. All around them lay the debris left from the terrible storm. There were exposed tree roots, flattened flowers, and ripped up bushes. Even the once sparkling bright stream was muddy and sluggish with dumped-in debris. Trees were down, limbs scattered around, much of the grass was torn up, and mud was everywhere.

     “What a mess,” muttered Ee'Rick.

     Ja'Nil looked at him. His braids were mostly undone and the beads in his hair looked as if they would fall off any minute. His face was muddy and there was a bleeding gash under his right eye. His leggings were torn at the knees, he was missing a moccasin, and his hands and arms were scratched. Also, not only was he still limping but his foot wound had opened and was dripping blood with every step he took.

     But he had moved that boulder, he had saved her life; in Ja'Nil’s eyes he was still beautiful. The he turned to look at her and broke into a huge grin. “You’re a mess,” he said cheerfully.

     Ja'Nil looked down at herself. Her hands and arms were filthy. Her clothes were torn and mud encrusted. When she raised her head, drops of mud fell onto her face from her hair. One almost hit her in the eye.

     “A couple of mud people, that's what we are,” said Ee'Rick. “Off we are then. Got to get cleaned up.”

     “How?” she asked. “Where?” She gestured to their surroundings. “Everything's even more of a mess than we are.”

     “An odd league or two will clean out the stream,” said Ee'Rick.                             

     “Your foot is bleeding,” she pointed out.

     “It'll stop,” he said absently, as he searched the ground. “Ah, there it is.” He pounced triumphantly on what looked like just another clod of messy mud. He shook it vigorously until it revealed itself as his missing moccasin. “The hot pool's probably Jada.”

     “Hot pool?”

     “Grab up your pack, off we are.”

     She gingerly picked up her own soggy pack and followed him down the mostly invisible path, trying hard not to trip over the junk scattered about.

* * *

     The hot pool wasn't far. It was located half out in the open and half under an overhanging cliff. As soon as they reached it, Ee'Rick shed his leggings and moccasins.