Ryan Hughes - The Darkness Before the Dawn

That was as good as he could do. He walked around to the other side, trailing the robe and spreading it out to make the biggest possible shadow. Stretched out like that it was nearly square, and now he noticed that the hems were extra thick to allow the thorns to hold it fast without tearing. He was willing to bet the elves had designed the garments that way for just this purpose.

Ha. He was learning. He just hoped he could learn fast enough to keep himself and Kayan alive.

He helped her move over to the patch of shade, then sat down beside her to wait out the hottest part of the day. But when he leaned back against his knapsack, she said, "We should sleep in alternate shifts."

"Good point," he said, sitting up again. "You go ahead, and I'll take the first watch." He didn't know what he would be able to do if anything approached, since the elves hadn't given them any weapons, but he refrained from mentioning that to Kayan. Let her sleep without worry if she could; she needed the rest..

She curled up on the ground, her robe still protecting her light skin from the bright reflections off the sand, and within minutes her breathing slowed and her muscles relaxed. Jedra yawned, then forced himself to look away and concentrate on something else.

The desert was quiet, but not silent. When he listened hard, he could hear the faint clicks of rocks expanding in the heat, the cluttering of tiny bugs, and the occasional rustle of a not-so-tiny bug or lizard scurrying from one piece of shade to another. Breezes flapped the loose ends of his robe, and every few minutes a fly would circle around until he chased it off.

The smells were more subtle, masked as they were beneath the ever-present aroma of sun-baked sand and his own sweat, but when he concentrated Jedra could pick out the faint spiciness of the cactus providing their shade, and even the dry, strawlike scent wafting off the few patches of wispy grass that grew on the dunes.

He let her sleep through the hottest part of the day, waking her only when the sun had moved far enough that she was no longer in the shade. They moved over a few feet and traded places; he slept while she kept watch. She woke him when the sun was still an hour from the horizon. "We should probably get moving," she said. "This is about when the elves started their evening march."

Jedra sat up and rubbed his eyes. He still felt tired, but even a couple hours of sleep had helped tremendously. He could probably put another five or six miles behind him before he tired again. He took a swig from his water-skin and passed it to Kayan, and they shared the first of the honeycakes Galar had packed for them. He'd given them a dozen; they could each eat two a day.

When they'd eaten the last crumbs and washed them down with a sip of water, Jedra said "Let me take down my robe and we can go," but that proved more difficult than he'd expected. The cactus thorns had tiny barbs pointing toward their bases, and the breeze had flapped the fabric enough that it was stuck to hundreds of them. Jedra and Kayan both tried to work his robe free, but the thorns wouldn't let go without a great deal of wiggling and spreading of the weave. Most of them were out of reach anyway, so Jedra finally wound up simply tugging the robe down. It came free with a loud rip, leaving dozens of tatters of cloth behind in the cactus.

Jedra held up the robe to inspect the damage and was annoyed to find that the worst tears were in the back, where they would let tomorrow's sun through to his already-tender skin.

"So much for that wonderful idea," he said. He picked up his pack and slung it over his shoulders, noticing how its rough fabric chafed his back.

Kayan put on her pack as well. "We needed the shade," she said. "You did what you had to do. Tomorrow we'll figure out something different."

"I hope so." He turned toward the sinking sun and began to walk.

He set a pace much slower than the elves had, but one that he hoped would ultimately be just as productive. If he and Kayan could keep from exhausting themselves, they would make better time than if they had to stop and rest all the time.

His strategy paid off for the first couple of hours. Luck was with them, too; when the sun sank below the horizon in front of them, Guthay, one of Athas's two moons, rose behind them and continued to provide light. After the day's brilliance, its golden glow was a welcome change. It was a little more difficult to see where they were going under its softer illumination, but there didn't seem to be much to worry about. The plant life was thinning out the farther west they went, and they saw little else but an occasional pile of bones where some poor animal had evidently starved and scavengers had picked the carcass clean.

They walked side by side and kept their eyes on the sky almost as much as the ground, trying to navigate by the stars. That turned out to be a bad idea; Jedra had become mesmerized by the brilliant stars when he suddenly felt a sting in the arch of his left foot.

"Ow!" he yelled and jumped backward, but he nearly fell over when his foot refused to lift.

"What the-?" He tugged on his foot, but each tug sent a lance of pain up his leg.

"What is it?" Kayan asked.

"Something's got me!" he shouted, pulling harder.

It felt as if something were trying to pull his bones out through the sole of his foot. It wasn't pulling on his sandal; whatever it was had penetrated the leather sole and stuck deep in his foot. He managed to lift it a few inches off the ground, but it simply wouldn't come any farther, and now he could see a thin cord or a root or something leading into the sand.

In full-scale panic now, he yanked backward with all his might and finally pulled free of whatever had snared him. It looked like a cactus spine with a thumbnail-sized hunk of his leather sandal and some of his skin still attached. He staggered backward, his left foot on fire- and stepped on another spine with his right foot.

"Ye-ow!" he screeched, and he wrenched free of it with one mighty jerk.

"Jedra!" Kayan took a step toward him.

"Don't move!" He bent down and brushed the hem of his robe cautiously over the sand, and sure enough, it hung up on another thorn sticking up between them. He swung the cloth around in as wide an arc as it would reach and encountered three more of the strange spines a foot or so apart.

"It grows underground," Kayan said, her voice full of wonder. Jedra could hardly stand on his feet. Pain and anger made him snap at her, "Of course it grows underground. Everything is hostile in this damned desert, even the land itself, and the sooner we realize that the longer we'll live."

"We should have suspected it," he said, twisting around without moving his feet. "I wonder how far back it goes? As far apart as the thorns are, we could have been walking right through them for the last ten paces or so."

"True," she said. She bent down and swept the hem of her robe over her tracks. When she didn't encounter a thorn, she took a step back the way they had come and swept the robe out again, and this time it snagged on a spine just an inch or two from a footprint. She gingerly stepped over it and moved on.

Wincing at the pain in his feet, Jedra did the same until they stopped encountering thorns. The patch of them was only six or eight feet across, it turned out, but there was nothing visible to indicate that it was there, save for the thin needles that were the same color as the sand.

Jedra immediately sat down and slipped off his sandals. Both feet had big red patches surrounding the puncture wounds, which bled steadily even when he squeezed. Under the moonlight his blood made dark rivulets across his skin, and where it dripped on the sand it made black circles.

"Here, let me see that," Kayan said. She bent close and took his right foot, turning it so the moonlight shone on the sole. "Does it still hurt, or is it just bleeding?" she asked, pressing on either side of the puncture.