Book Three of the Travelers (3 page)

“I cannot be your friend,” she said. “I cannot be your wife. I cannot be one of your people.”

The king waved his hand as though none of this was very important. “We have a saying, ‘There is much time in the desert.'”

“Which means what?”

“Things happen. Circumstances change. What seems right today may seem wrong tomorrow.” He looked at the sun, which was starting to sink toward the horizon. “Are you hungry, Loor?”

“I suppose so.”

“Let us go eat,” he said.

They began walking silently toward the crimson pennant over his distant tent.

“Where does all the water go?” she asked as they approached the cluster of brightly colored tents.

“From the lake, you mean?” he said.

She pointed around the margins of the lake. “I see all this water coming in. But there's no river going out.”

“They say that once there was a river,” King Allon said. “But then one day it just stopped flowing. Like that.” He snapped his fingers, then shrugged. “The world is full of mysteries.”

They walked silently.

When they had finally reached their tent, the young king stopped and turned to her. “We are free people,” he said. “I will not keep you here against your will.”

“Then I will leave right now,” she said.

“I will not send anyone to escort you home, either,”
he said. He pointed toward the mountains, their peaks a fiery red as they reflected the blaze of the setting sun. “Those peaks rise twenty thousand feet into the air. To the north and south lies a plateau where there is not a tree or leaf or blade of grass. To the east, between here and Xhaxhu, is only desert sand. There are no maps but the ones in our heads.” He tapped his temple. “If you leave this place, you will die.” He stroked the side of her face. “And I will be very sad for you.”

The king's retainers spotted them and began walking briskly toward them. “Your Highness!” one of them said, pointing at the king's midsection.

The king looked down at the large red stain that was spreading slowly down the front of his robe.

“It is nothing,” King Allon said. “Send word to my cook to bring out the food. Loor and I will eat by the lake.”

I
t wasn't nothing though. By the time that Loor had finished eating, the red stain had grown to cover much of King Allon's lap. The young king's face was pale and drawn. It was obvious that his men were alarmed at all the blood. But none of them said a word about it. So she had been correct, her aim had been true. But this man, this kind man, was strong of both body and will.

In fact, King Allon continued to talk with her as though nothing at all had happened. His conversation was lively and interesting—tough, realistic, yet generous and wise. She had an odd realization: Batu boys bored her. They seemed so obvious, so loud, so tedious. Batu boys were always telling you how great they were, how strong, how fearless. But Allon, he hadn't talked about himself even for a second.

“Look,” she said finally, waving at all the blood, “you have to do something about that. You will die if you keep bleeding.”

“Is that not what you want?” he said.

Loor said nothing.

King Allon smiled his mysterious smile. “Well then, if you have eaten your fill, I think I might take a little rest.”

 

That night Loor was left all alone in the tent. A simple woolen mat lay in the center for her to sleep on. Next to it was a woolen robe, as white and pure as the king's.

After the sun went down, Loor lay down on the mat and stared up at the tent roof. She could feel the robe lying there. The air had grown cold. She had nothing to wear but her Batu combat gear.

What if I just went ahead and put it on?
she thought.

She couldn't sleep. All she could think about was the king, sitting there talking with her as his blood slowly drained onto the floor.

“Never make the first move.” Wasn't that what the one-eyed man's son had said? She had made a move before she'd thought everything through. And now she was sorry.

Loor felt her eyes sting as she stared up into the air. She'd failed in her mission, failed in her attempt to kill her captor, failed in everything. Why hadn't they picked someone else to come out here?
I am too young,
she thought.
They should have chosen someone else.

And then, suddenly, she knew what she needed to do. It was time to stop feeling sorry for herself. She stood, pulled the robe over body, let it slip down over her bare skin. It was an odd sensation. She wasn't used to wearing things like this.

Then she gathered what she would need and walked out of the tent, continuing past the other silent tents.
A dog barked, then went quiet. She walked toward the lake. A thin wedge of moon illuminated it. The surface was still and black. Today it had looked beautiful. Now it looked terrifying, like some dark force that might suck her down and destroy her.

Hesitantly she approached the lake. Loor knelt and looked down. She could see her face reflected in the dark water. Only her eyes were visible.

Finally she leaned over and drank, drank until her belly was full. Then she stood and waded into the water.

It was so frigid that she gasped. She had never been in water before, nothing deeper than a two-inch-deep bath. She had heard the Rokador actually had pools that they swam in. But water was too precious in Xhaxhu for such frivolous use.

A band of fear closed around her chest. But she forced herself to walk out farther into the water. She could feel the pebbles shifting under her feet. Deeper and deeper she went, her heart pounding as the cold black water surrounded her. With each step she grew more frightened. She had not been frightened at all when she had been fighting for her life the other day. But this—this was terrifying.

She was up to her neck in the water. A few more strides and she would sink beneath the water and drown.

She took a deep breath. And waited.

“There is much time in the desert,” she said, speaking the words out loud. “There is much time in the desert. There is much time in the desert.”

And then she felt something strange around her, something moving inside her robe.

She smiled. Yes! It was working!

Every Zafir robe was constructed with tiny bladders of a substance that absorbed water. Any water that came in contact with it would be filtered and sucked into the bladders, where it would remain until you opened them to drink.

It was these ingeniously constructed robes that allowed the Zafir to move through the desert for days on end without dying of thirst.

Loor walked slowly out of the water. The robe was amazingly heavy now that it was full of water.
No wonder the Zafir walk so slowly,
she thought.
This is heavy as lead!

 

An hour later she was walking into the dark, silent dunes.

L
oor was not the sort of person to doubt herself. But now that she was out in the desert, she realized how foolish she had been. Xhaxhu was to the east of the Elzehe'er Mountains. But simply plodding toward the rising sun was no way to get through hundreds of miles of shifting sand. There were no landmarks, no roads, no signs—nothing to indicate precisely where to go. Compared to the massive desert, the mighty city of Xhaxhu was just a speck on the map. She could easily miss it and wander right on into the deserts to the west of the city.

Plus, the robe with its pockets full of water was heavy and hot. Even though she knew that it helped her conserve water and guarded her skin from the sun, it still felt constricting and awkward. She knew that her progress was much slower than it would have been without the robe.

By noon on the first day, she was feeling light-headed from the heat. With the heavy robe around her, her body built up heat unmercifully.

Loor was a strong girl. Years of grueling training
had toughened her mind and body. But one of the things you learned through years of hard physical labor was that every body, no matter how hard it had been trained, had limits. When you crossed those limits, the machine broke down. The toll of three days in the desert had robbed her body of fluids and minerals that one evening of eating and drinking had not quite replenished.

It wasn't her body that seemed to be taking it the hardest, though. She knew she could push her body further. She had water and a little food that she'd brought with her. But her mind just didn't feel sharp.

She found herself fixating on things in the distance, imagining things on the horizon, staggering toward them without thinking. One time she realized she had gone for hours without thinking anything at all. And as she did so, her path had started curving off in the wrong direction. North. She looked back and saw her tracks in the sand. She'd been walking north instead of east for what might have been several miles. And she hadn't even known it!

Concentrate!
Loor told herself. But still, her mind felt fuzzy and weak.

She started seeing things that weren't there. People on the horizon. Trees. An oasis. They were all mirages—just figments of her imagination. With nothing to see but sand and empty sky, her mind was putting things out there that didn't exist.

And this was only the first day! What would it be like by the third or fourth day, when she started running low on water?

But there was nothing she could do now. She could only plod on and hope for the best.

Eventually the sun got so high in the sky that she couldn't tell what was east and what was west based on the sun. She decided to stop, rest, and eat.

She pulled the rubber tube out of the neck of the robe and sucked on it. To her surprise the tube simply gurgled. No water came out. She knew the robe was capable of holding several days' worth of water, so it was obviously a problem with the tube. She checked it for leaks. Nothing. She sat on the hot sand and squeezed the robe. This forced water up into the tube. She drank deeply. It was hot, but pure. She sighed with contentment and nibbled on the dried lamb she'd brought with her.

A wave of exhaustion poured over her as she sat. She knew that conserving her strength was as important as conserving her water. Deciding that a nap might be a good idea, Loor bunched up her hood to form a pillow, lay down in a ball, and fell asleep.

 

When she woke up, Loor felt much better. She was a little surprised at how long she'd slept, though. The sun was heading down toward the horizon.

She stretched and sighed. She felt a
lot
better! Stronger, lighter, cooler. She stood. Maybe it was her imagination, but the robe itself seemed lighter.

Suddenly she had the oddest sensation—as though she were not alone. She whipped around, assuming a fighting stance, ready for anything. Then she laughed.

The hindor.

The big black bird was perched at the top of the
dune on which she was standing, looking down at her with its large yellow eyes.

“Hello, bird!” she called. “Are you going to bring me luck?”

The bird, of course, just stared at her.

Loor didn't think of herself as the sort of person to talk to birds. But out here? It no longer seemed to matter. “Are you going to lead me home?” she called.

The bird stared at her for another moment or two, then disappeared over the dune. She was sorry to see it go. But then it glided smoothly back around in a slow arc, passing over her head and winging to the east.

She decided to follow.

Hindors led you to water—was that not what King Allon said? If the desert tribesmen believed it to be true, it probably was. Since the only water to the east was in Xhaxhu…well, that had to be where the hindor was heading.

As the hindor soared east, she began walking. Her legs felt stronger, she was cooler, and she felt as if she were twenty pounds lighter. Her mood brightened.

Even though she might not actually have the ax in her possession, she knew where it was. It would be easy enough to lead an expedition out and claim it, once she found her way back to Xhaxhu.

She kept her eyes pinned on the slow-flying hindor as she swiftly walked on. After a few minutes she pulled the rubber hose out of the robe and took another sip. Again it gurgled. She bunched the robe up again to push more water to the hose. But still it gurgled.

As she was standing there, she felt something on
her leg. A tickling sensation, like an ant crawling on her skin.

But she knew there were no ants out here. She looked down curiously. It wasn't an ant, but a bead of water running slowly down her leg. Sweat? Maybe.

Then she noticed something in the sand. A small round stain near her foot. A water drop. She snapped her head around and looked behind her. Parallel to her footprints in the sand were a series of little round stains.

The robe's water-storage system had a leak in it. She had been dumping water, drip by drip by drip, for twelve solid hours. No wonder the robe felt so light! As she slept, she'd been draining all her water into the sand!

Had King Allon intentionally given her a leaky robe? Or had she punctured it somehow as she slept. There was no way to know.

But it didn't matter. The fact was, she was almost out of water.

She looked back toward the mountains. She estimated that the sun would be setting in about an hour. Once the sun went down, water wouldn't be a problem. She could easily keep walking all night without replenishing. But then once the sun rose, the heat would begin pulling the water out of her. She'd have a few hours, and then the well-tuned machine that was her body would fail.

And that would be that.

She had a decision to make. If she turned around right now and headed straight back toward the mountains, she
might
be able to find the valley where King Allon was. And she'd survive. She'd survive as the slave of a barbarian king.

Or she could press on. And probably die.

There was no time to waste. She had to decide.

She took a deep breath. Last year she had run in the Pizon, the great fifty-mile footrace that was run every three years in Xhaxhu, where all the best warriors competed to show off their endurance. She'd come in fourth, a great showing for a girl her age. Fifty miles in less than eight hours. Would fifty miles get her to Xhaxhu?

It might.

Of course, during the Pizon she'd had water breaks. How much water had she drunk during the race? Gallons probably.

Well. There was no choice was there? Not really. Not when you were a Ghee warrior. Death or slavery? That was easy.

She spent the next ten minutes squeezing every last drop out of the robe. She was amazed at how much was still there.

To the east the hindor was tracing a lazy circle in the air. As if it were waiting for her.

“Here I come!” she shouted.

She dropped the empty robe on the ground. And then she began to run.