The Outworlder (2 page)

She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath.
Tried to get a feel for the place. Clarity, where was clarity?

Her eyes snapped open.

There had been a whisper, or something like a
whisper, and the vaguest sense of someone she had never seen before
in the depth of her mind. She was shaking all over again and she
didn’t dare close her eyes for fear it would return. And yet, she
had learned something from that whisper.

A direction.

East.

She started walking, still hugging herself. A
sudden chill washed over her, and her head began to pound. She
tried to lick her parched lips, but she had barely enough saliva to
swallow. As soon as she had moistened her mouth the harsh desert
sun desiccated it again.

Whose voice was that?
she wondered as
she stumbled through the hot sand.
I must have really hit my
head when the ship crashed! Or maybe….
She frowned and shook
her aching head.
No. No! I must have just hit my head
.

She smiled a little, repeating those
comforting words
. I must have just hit my head. That’s all. I
hit my head. It will pass. It will pass.

Like a knife stroke, a shard of her vision
flashed into her mind. Two eyes, glimmering silver, and something
between a warning and a promise in their depths.

She stumbled and fell.

That wasn’t head trauma.

“Then I’m going crazy,” she muttered, picking
herself up. “Maybe it was those cursed deep-flight drugs. Maybe
waking up too soon messes with your mind.”

She glanced back over her shoulder at the
hulking pieces of the prison ship, black against the glaring
silver-blue of the sky. The shadows from the wreckage groped toward
her across the sands as the sun sank lower.

The realization made her hesitate. Would it
be better to go back to the ship and spend the night in its
shelter, rather than continue venturing into the unknown emptiness
in front of her?

She entertained the thought for about five
seconds, and then she remembered the carcasses strewn all over the
inside of the cabin. She shuddered and gulped against a sudden wave
of nausea.

“Can’t do that,” she rasped. “Can’t go back.
Must go on.”

She kept walking, and walking, and walking,
but still there was nothing but sand. Sand, and more sand. And the
sun. Finally she passed out of sight of the smoking wreckage of the
prison ship, but now she had no way to gauge her progress.

She staggered forward a few more steps and
twisted her ankle. A croaking cry tore from her parched throat as
she sprawled into the dazzling golden sands. The tiny grains were
like so many stones, each one tearing at the skin of her face,
hands, and arms, skin already raw from the crash and the burning
sun.

She pushed herself into a sitting position
and pulled her leg in front of her to examine it. Gingerly she
probed the joint and winced. Not broken, but most likely sprained.
She flexed it and tried to stand. If she was careful not to put too
much weight on it, she could make a go of it.

She limped along again, still bearing east.
The sun and the sand were cruelly hot. Her thin gray shirt clung to
her back, wet through with sweat. After a few more paces she
staggered to a stop. She had reached the top of what seemed to be a
ridge of dunes that undulated in a sinewy curve to the north and
south. Her path lay straight down the slope, due east.

“Though why I should listen to some stupid
voice in my head, I don’t know,” she croaked.

Her voice sounded loud and strange in this
empty country, and her lips hurt when she moved them. She forced
her tongue over them, but the more she licked them the worse they
felt. They were so badly chapped from the sun and the desert wind
that they felt three times their normal size.

She started cautiously down the slope,
putting as much weight as she could on her left foot. On the level,
limping had worked, but here on the slope it was impossible. She
didn’t get more than two feet before the sands shifted beneath her
and she fell, tumbling all the way to the bottom.

Her eyes burned with pain and frustration and
she pounded the sand. She couldn’t even force a few tears to soothe
the dryness of her eyes. What was the good of escaping that cursed
ship if she was just going to die in the desert anyway? She shoved
herself upright and tried to collect her nerves. Falling to pieces
now wasn’t an option.

A small sliver of shade from the dune behind
her cut across the blinding ocean of sand, and she scooted into it
to rest for a while. The cool absence of the sun was like a long
drink of water, and she leaned against the slope at her back. The
sudden change of temperature made her shiver a little.

She scooped up handfuls of sand and let them
trickle through her fingers, too exhausted to think. Her flimsy
shoes were in shreds, so she pulled them off, wincing as she
tweaked her injured ankle. The soles of her feet were burning from
the heat of the sand, so she dug her toes into the sand, trying to
comfort her skin in the gritty coolness.

How long she sat there she couldn’t tell, but
gradually she became aware that the patch of shade in front of her
was larger than it had been. She stopped pouring sand, stared up at
the sky for a moment, and then gingerly got to her feet. The sun
was setting.

“Time to go,” she mumbled.

Her muscles were stiff now, not just sore,
and her body felt so heavy. She didn’t make it ten paces before she
fell again. Her legs would no longer hold her upright, so she
crawled, dragging herself along for what felt like ages.

It was nearing dusk now, and there was still
nothing ahead of her but sand. Her muscles trembled, weak with
dehydration and heat exhaustion. She could go no further.

She stretched out on her stomach, her right
cheek on the sand. Strange clouds of sand began to swirl around her
and she watched them blankly. They were mesmerizing, those little
whirlwinds, dancing between the sky and the ground and red with the
glow of the setting sun. As she watched, they began swirling more
and more violently, and soon it was not a dance, but a frenzy.

So this will be my end. Buried alive in
the sand
. Sahara’s eyes burned. So many things flashed through
her mind, things regretted and things hoped for, and all seemed
shadows.

She turned her head to the left and squawked
in surprise. Planted not six inches from her face were heavy
leather boots, almost the color of the sand that swirled around
them. She pushed herself over onto her side and looked up.

A man stood over her.

She blinked slowly at him, capturing details.
A strangely mottled, sand-colored jacket and pants. A sword with an
ornate ivory hilt in a shoulder scabbard. Some kind of goggles
dangling from bronzed fingers. A silver cloth bound around his nose
and mouth to keep out the sand. Dark hair framing eyes of
shimmering silver.

Sahara stared at those eyes, cold seeping
into the pit of her stomach. She knew those eyes.

He pulled the cloth down so that he could
speak to her. His jaw was strong and covered with the dark stubble
of a beard.

“What keeps you here,
xenali
?” When
she made no answer, he gestured at the swirling sands around them.
“The harbingers warn you to seek shelter.”

“And where do you suggest I go?” she barked
hoarsely. She tried to lick her cracked lips. “You got any
ideas?”

He made no answer, but crouched next to her
and helped her to sit up. He pulled a small flask from his deep
thigh pocket and held it to her lips. A thin trickle of liquid ran
into her mouth. She took it eagerly enough, but discovered
immediately that it was not water but something that burned
horribly. It set her coughing violently, and she shoved his hand
away and grabbed at her throat. His mouth twisted into a smile and
he stood, pulling her to her feet with him.

It was another minute before she could
finally straighten up and face him. In spite of the nastiness of
whatever he had given her, it had restored some of her strength and
refreshed her a little.

As he saw that she had recovered, another
grin swept across his bronzed face. “I will bring you to shelter,
xenali
.” He hesitated for a moment, and then added, “They
said I would find you here.”

With her returning strength came a sudden
irrational rush of fury. “
They
? Who’re
they
? And why
should they care? Or you, for that matter? Why should you care what
happens to me?”

Much to her irritation, the venom in her
voice did not seem to surprise him, and she couldn’t push away the
nagging sensation that she knew this man somehow. It enraged
her.

The sand swirled more thickly around them,
and he handed her a silver cloth like his own, folded over into a
triangle.

“Put this over your mouth and nose. And put
these on.”

He handed her a pair of glasses. She put them
on and the bands automatically clasped her head snugly, making a
tight seal around her eyes. He nodded briefly, then gestured to her
feet.

“I can’t do anything about that right now,
I’m afraid.”

She looked down and saw how badly the sand
had blistered them. Even the sight of them made her want to wince,
and she didn’t dare touch them for fear that she would show
pain.

“We have herbs that will soothe them in
Albadir. You’ll have to wait till we get there.” He glanced up at
the horizon and the dunes around them, then beckoned to her. “Come
on. The sand will be unforgiving soon. We’ve got to get to
shelter.”

“Tell me your name first,” she demanded as
she tied the cloth over her face and breathed deeply.

He replaced the cloth over his own mouth and
nose, and, just before he put on his own glasses, his eyes glinted
at her in a sudden, hidden smile.

“My name is Jared. Jared Alareth.”

Jared trekked swiftly northeastward, holding
her firmly by the hand so that she wouldn’t lose him in the rising
sandstorm. His pace was so quick that she had no breath to ask him
where they were going and why they didn’t just lie down and let the
sand take them to whatever afterlife awaited them.

Only once did he look back at her, when she
lost her footing in the shifting sand and nearly fell. He said
nothing, but she felt somehow that he was asking her if she was all
right. She nodded, and he turned around again.

Night had fallen. Sahara could see no stars
through the whirling sands, and the world was utterly dark. She
wondered how Jared even knew where they were going. She felt
utterly blind, and her helplessness made her rage inside.

At last, Jared stopped. Sahara stumbled into
him and then stubbed her toe, not against a wall of sand, but
against bare rock. She snapped her teeth shut to stem the tide of
curses that welled up within her.

“Careful,” Jared said, his voice husky from
the sand and the long walk. “This is stone now, not sand. We’re in
the foot-hills just west of the city.”

“Thanks for telling me that now,” she
grouched.

She curled her hurt toe and tried not to show
how much it pained her. Even if she couldn’t see in this darkness,
maybe he could.

Jared seemed not to hear her. He was feeling
for something on the face of the rock.

“What are you doing?” Sahara snapped. She
wanted to sit down, but he still had firm hold of her hand.

“Stone by stone,” he murmured. “Patience,
xenali
. You must have patience.”

“Sorry, I ran out of that a long time
ago.”

She heard stone grind on stone and then cool,
slightly musty air gushed over her from an opening in the wall in
front of them.

“Patience doesn’t run out,” Jared told her.
“It’s like a river. The only way the course runs dry is if you
choose to—”

“Look. I’m tired, and I just want to rest.
Let me in already.”

She thought she heard him sigh, but he
stepped inside the cave and drew her in after him.

“Stand there,” he said, letting go of her
hand.

She heard a noise of stone striking flint,
and a moment later light flooded the cave from a torch on the wall
beside the door.

It wasn’t just bare stone, this little hole
in the foothills. Lush rugs were spread over the floor, in hues of
red and gold that reminded her of the rich wines that had made her
own city famous. Gorgeously carved wooden chests squatted against
the back wall, and huddled along the wall on her left were five or
six tall stone jars. Next to these lay baskets full of some kind of
flat bread and dried fruits. On her right she glimpsed a sort of
low couch, made from large embroidered cushions laid flat on the
floor and upright against the wall and scattered with smaller
pillows of all shapes and sizes.

Sahara blinked and glanced at Jared, who was
calmly lighting the torch on the other side of the door.

“My people keep this place as an oasis in the
desert,” he said, without looking at her. “If anyone has the need
to travel this way, they’ll find this place provisioned and
watered. It’s also useful as an outpost.”

“An outpost for what?”

“You needn’t trouble yourself about that
tonight.” He pulled the silver cloth from his face and took off his
glasses. “Come and rest. We’ll finish our journey to Albadir in the
morning.”

He moved another stone, and the door slid
shut, blocking out the darkness and the howling sands.

Sahara staggered forward, pulling off the
goggles and face cloth. She dropped them beside her as she
collapsed on one of the rugs. It was softer than she had expected
and smelled faintly of some kind of spice.

“This won’t smell so nice after I’ve slept on
it,” she muttered.

Jared laughed and she jumped, feeling a
warmth flood her face.