The Nomad (4 page)

Beyond that, he now had another purpose. Even if he did succeed in discovering the truth about himself, he would still forever remain an outsider. He was not human, nor had he ever met, among the other races of Athas, anyone even remotely like himself. Perhaps he was the only elfling. Where was there a place for him? If he wished, he could return to the villichi convent in the Ringing Mountains, where he had been raised. They would always accept him there, yet he was not truly one of them and never could be. And somehow, he believed his destiny lay elsewhere. He had sworn to follow the Path of the Preserver and the Way of the Druid. Could there be any higher calling for him than to enter into the service of the one man who stood alone against the power of the sorcerer-kings?

The Sage was testing him. Perhaps the wizard who had once been called the Wanderer required these items they were collecting to aid him in his metamorphosis into an avangion. On the other hand, perhaps it was merely a test of their metric and resolve to see if they were truly worthy and capable of serving him. Sorak did not know, but there was only one way to find out, and that was to see the quest through to its end. He had to find the Sage. He had resolved that nothing would deter him from it.

For a long time, they walked in silence, conserving their energy for the long trek across the salt plain.

Finally, the golden light of dawn began to show on the horizon. Soon, the Great Ivory Plain would burn with incandescent heat as the rays of the dark sun beat down upon it mercilessly. They stopped, their footsteps crunching on the salt, and lay down close to one another, wrapping themselves in their cloaks, tenting them to provide some shade against the searing sunlight. Almost immediately, Ryana fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

Sorak, too, was tired, but he had no need of sleep—at least, not in the same way that most people understood what sleep was. He could duck under and allow one of his other personalities to come forth, and while he “slept,” the Ranger or perhaps the Watcher could take over, standing guard. He sensed the restlessness of all the others in his tribe, the Tribe of One of which he was but a part. He knew that they were hungry. He tried not to think about that.

Sorak was, himself, a vegetarian, as were all villichi. That was the way he had been raised back at the convent. However, elves and halflings were both flesh-eating races, and halflings frequently ate human flesh. He had no need to worry that there was any danger to Ryana from any of his other personalities. They had long ago learned how to coexist.

Often while Sorak “slept,” the Ranger would emerge and go out hunting. He would make his kill, and the others would enjoy the flesh they craved, while Sorak would awaken with no memory of the experience. He knew about it, of course, but it was something they did not discuss between them, one of the compromises they had made so they could coexist within one body. And the others understood, though they did not share in the emotion, that Sorak loved Ryana. It was a love, however, that never could be consummated, for at least three of Sorak’s personalities were female and could not bear such contact.

Well, possibly Kivara could, he thought, simply out of curiosity. Kivara was a willful creature of the senses, and any sort of stimulation fascinated her. She was a child in many ways, and utterly amoral. However, the Guardian and the Watcher could not countenance such a relationship, and so Sorak was left with loving Ryana the only way he could—spiritually and chastely.

He knew that she returned that love, for she had broken her vows for him and left the convent, following his trail because she could not bear to be separated from him. She knew the love she had for him was something she could never physically express, and she knew why. She had accepted it, though Sorak realized she nursed the hope that somehow, someday, it would come to pass. He longed for it himself, but had resigned himself to the inevitable inequities of his fate.

He wondered what the future held in store for them. Perhaps the Sage knew, but if so, then he had given them no clues. Life on Athas could be harsh, and there were many who were far less fortunate than he. There were those condemned to live out their lives in slavery, laboring for others or fighting for the entertainment of aristocrats and merchants in the bloody arenas of the city-states. And then there were those who lived in abject poverty and squalor in the warrens of the cities, many of them beggars with no roofs over their heads and no idea where their next meal would be coming from. They lived in terror of starvation or eviction, or of having their throats cut over a few measly ceramics or a crust of bread. Some were crippled, many were diseased, and even more never survived their childhood. Sorak knew his lot in life was much more fortunate than theirs.

Perhaps he never could be normal. He had no idea what that really meant, save in the abstract sense. He could not remember ever being any other way. He was not only born abnormal, an elfling who was possibly the only being of his kind, but his childhood ordeal in the desert had left him with at least a dozen different personalities all trapped within one body. Yet, despite that, he was
free.
Free to make of his life what he chose. Free to breathe the night air of the desert, free to go wherever the wind at his back took him, free to undertake a quest that would determine the meaning of his life. Whatever challenges he would encounter on the way, he would meet on his own terms, and either prevail or die in the attempt, but at least he would die free. His lambent gaze swept the desolate, silvery, salt plain, where he and Ryana were the only living beings, and he thought, indeed, I
am
fortunate.

And with that thought, he ducked under and allowed the Watcher to the fore. Alert and silent as ever, she sat very still, her gaze sweeping the desolate waste around them, keeping watch as the first, faint light of dawn slowly crept over the shadow of the distant mountains.

As she sat, scanning the horizon and the silvery salt plain, the Watcher never for a moment wavered in her concentration on her surroundings. Her mind did not wander, and she was not plagued with the sort of distracting thoughts that came to ordinary people when they found themselves alone, in the still hours of the night. She was not given to contemplating what had happened in the past, or what might happen in the future. She did not entertain any hopes or fears, or suffer from any emotional concerns. The Watcher remained always completely and perfectly in the present and, as a result, nothing escaped her notice.

While Sorak could dwell upon self-doubts or the uncertainty of the task ahead, the Watcher observed every detail: the tiniest insect crawling on the ground, the smallest bird winging its way overhead, the wind blowing minute particles of salt across the plain, creating a barely perceptible blur immediately above the ground, the faint shifting of light as dawn began to break. No detail of her surroundings escaped her notice. Her senses sharp, alert, and tuned to the slightest sound or motion, she would become one with the world around her and detect the faintest disturbance in its fabric.

She was, therefore, astonished when she turned and saw the woman standing there, not more than fifteen or twenty feet away.

Taken aback, the Watcher did not respond at once, the way she usually did, by awakening the Guardian. She stared, unaccustomedly enraptured at the incongruous sight of a beautiful young woman who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. The plain was level and open in all directions. In the moonlight cast by Ral and Guthay, anyone approaching would have been visible for miles, and yet this woman was suddenly, inexplicably just
there.

“Help me, please…” she said in a soft and plaintive voice.

Belatedly, the Watcher woke the Guardian. She had no explanation for the sudden appearance of this woman. She
should
have seen her coming, yet she had not. That anyone could have come up on her so quietly alarmed her. That it could happen in a place where the visibility was clear for miles around was simply beyond belief.

As the Guardian awoke and came to the fore of Sorak’s consciousness, she gazed out through his eyes and scrutinized the stranger. She looked young, no more than twenty years old, and her hair was long and black and lustrous. Her skin was pale and flawless, her legs lean and exquisitely shaped, her waist narrow and encircled by a thin girdle of beads. Her arms were slender and her breasts were full and upturned, supported by a thin leather halter. The young woman had sandals on her well-shaped, graceful feet, and she wore barely enough for modesty—a brief, diagonally cut wraparound that scarcely came down to her upper thighs, with nothing but a cloak to protect her from the desert chill. She had the aspect of a slave girl, but it didn’t look as if she had ever performed any sort of demanding physical labor.

“Please…” she said. “Please, I beg you, can you help me?”

“Who are you?” asked the Guardian. “Where did you come from?”

“I am Teela,” said the girl. “I was taken from a slave caravan by the marauders, but I escaped them and have been wandering this forsaken plain for days. I am so tired, and I thirst. Can’t you please help me?” She stood in a seductive pose, calculated to display her lush body to its best advantage, completely oblivious of the fact that it was a female she was addressing. What she saw was Sorak, not the Guardian, and it was clear she was appealing to his male instincts.

The Guardian immediately became suspicious. The effect such a beautiful and apparently vulnerable young woman would have had on a male was indisputable, but the Guardian was immune to her obvious charms, and her protective instincts were aroused, instincts that were protective not of the vulnerable-seeming girl, but of the Tribe.

“You do not look as if you have been traveling on foot for days,” she said with Sorak’s voice.

“Perhaps only a day or two, I do not know. I have lost all track of time. I am at my wit’s end. I have been lost, and I could not find any trail. It is a miracle I have encountered you. Surely you will not turn away a young girl in distress? I would do anything to show my gratitude.” She paused, significantly. “Anything,” she said again, in a low voice. She started to come closer.

“Stay where you are,” the Guardian said. The young girl kept coming forward, placing one foot directly in front of the other, so that her hips would sway provocatively. “I have been alone so long,” she said, “and I had lost all hope. I was sure that I would die out here in this terrible place. And now, providence has sent a handsome, strong protector…”

“Stop!” the Guardian said. “Do not come any closer.”

Ryana stirred slightly.

The young woman kept on coming. She was only about ten feet away now. She held out her arms, spreading her cloak wide in the process and revealing her lovely figure. “I know you will not turn me away,” she said in a breathy voice that was full of promise. “Your companion is sound asleep, and if we are quiet, we need not disturb her…”

“Ranger!”
said the Guardian, speaking internally and slipping back, allowing the Ranger to the fore. Immediately, Sorak’s posture changed. He stood up straighter, shoulders back, and his body tensed, though outwardly he looked relaxed. As the young woman kept on coming, the Ranger’s hand swept down to the knife sheathed at his belt. He quickly drew the blade and, in one smooth motion, hurled it at the advancing woman.

It passed right through her.

With an angry hiss, the young woman lunged at him suddenly, and as she did so, her form blurred and became indistinct. The Ranger adroitly sidestepped as she leapt, and she fell onto the ground.

When she got back up, she was no longer a beautiful young woman. The illusion of the scanty clothing that she wore had disappeared, and the warm, pale tone of her flesh had gone a milky white with shimmering highlights. She no longer had long thick black hair, but a shifting mane of salt crystals, and her facial features had disappeared. Two indentations marked where her eyes had been, a slight ridge where there should have been a nose, and a gaping, lipless travesty of a mouth that opened wide, with a sifting dribble of salt crystals, like sands running through an hourglass.

Sorak awoke and beheld the sand bride, a creature he had only read about before. Like the blasted landscape of the planet, the creature was a result of unchecked defiler magic. A powerful defiler spell that drained the life energy from everything in its vicinity could, at times, open a rift to the negative material plane, and a creature like the sand bride could slip through. No one knew exactly what they were, but trapped on a plane of existence alien to them, they assumed their shape from the soil around them, usually sand, but in this case, the creature had assembled its corporeal self from the salt crystals of the Great Ivory Plain. Its illusion shattered, it was now on the attack.

Ryana awoke at the half howling, half hissing inhuman sounds it made, and she rolled quickly to her feet, drawing her sword.

“Stay back!” shouted Sorak. He knew that ordinary weapons would not harm the creature. They would pass right through the shifting salt crystals, like knives stabbing into sand. Galdra, however, was no ordinary weapon. As the creature lunged at him once more, Sorak leapt to one side, rolled, and drew Galdra from its scabbard as he came back up.

Ryana kept her distance, crouching warily. The creature stood between them, trying to decide on its next attack. It was not in the least intimidated by their blades. Suddenly, it melted into the salt surface of the plain in a cascade of crystals.

“What happened?” asked Ryana.

“Stand by me, quickly!” Sorak said.

As Ryana moved to comply, the creature suddenly rose up out of the ground behind her.

“Behind you!” Sorak cried.

Ryana spun around, slashing out with her blade. It passed right through the creature’s neck, but the stroke that would have decapitated any other being had absolutely no effect. The blade simply passed through the shifting salt crystals, which reformed right behind it. As the creature stretched its arms out toward Ryana, seeking to seize her and drain her life energy, Sorak leapt forward, bringing Galdra down in a sweeping arc. The enchanted blade of elven steel whistled through the air and sliced off one of the creature’s arms.