Simon Hawke - The Seeker

“Do you think he is still alive?” Ryana asked.

“Perhaps not. The journal first appeared many years ago; no one seems to be sure exactly when or how. It is painstakingly copied and secretly distributed by the Veiled Alliance. The Wanderer was clearly a preserver, perhaps a high-ranking member of the Alliance.”

“I wonder if we shall ever know,” Ryana said, feeding more wood into the fire. The pagafa wood burned slowly and gave a welcome warmth against the night chill. In the distance, some creature howled. The sound sent a shiver down Ryana’s spine.

“You look tired,” Sorak said. “You should eat something. You will need your strength tomorrow. We still have a long way to go.”

She opened her rucksack and took out her pouch of rations: pine nuts from the forests of the Ringing Mountains, kory seeds, the chewy and succulent leaves from the lotus mint, and sweet, dried fruit from the jumbala tree. She offered him the pouch, but he shook his head.

“You eat,” he said. “I am not hungry now.”

She knew that meant he would eat later, when the Ranger went out to make a kill, and so she did not press him.

“I will sleep for a short while now,” Sorak said, “and then keep watch so you may rest.” He lowered his head and closed his eyes, and an instant later, the Ranger opened them and stood, sniffing the air. Wordlessly, he turned and walked out into the moonlit night, moving without making the slightest sound. Moments later, he had disappeared from sight.

Ryana was left alone, sitting by the fire. With Sorak gone, she suddenly felt more vulnerable and exposed. Ral and Guthay cast a ghostly light down on the desert out beyond the firelight, and the shadows seemed to move. A cool breeze blew. The silence was only occasionally punctuated by the distant cry of some wild beast. She had no idea how close the creatures that she heard might be. Sound in the desert carried a long way.

She sighed and munched on her provisions. She ate very sparingly, though she felt quite hungry. The food would have to last her a long while, for there was no way to know what they might find on their trek or at the oasis to supplement their supplies. Perhaps, she thought, it might become necessary for her to eat meat. The corners of her mouth turned down at the thought. It was a possibility she had to seriously consider, however. She was not a priestess anymore. Or was she? Strictly speaking, she had violated her vows by leaving the convent, but that did not make her cease being villichi. And nothing she believed had really changed.

Was she no longer part of the sisterhood? She had never heard of a villichi being expelled. What would Varanna say?

How would her sisters react? What had they thought when they learned that she had run away? Did they think less of her, or would they try to understand? She missed them all. She missed the companionship and the comforting routine of life back at the convent. It had been a good life. Could she ever go back to it? Would she want to go back to it?

She had no thought of leaving Sorak, but with the Ranger out hunting somewhere in the night, she felt suddenly very much alone and lost, even though she knew that he would soon return. But what if he did not return? What if something happened to him? There were many things that could happen to a traveler alone out in the desert, especially at night, and none of them were pleasant to contemplate. Sorak was an elfling, and even though he had grown up in the forests of the Ringing Mountains, he was naturally suited to this savage country. Still, he was not invulnerable.

She pushed the thought from her mind. The dangers of the desert were not the only perils they would face upon their journey. If their experience in Tyr was anything to judge by, they would face far greater dangers in the cities—in Nibenay and wherever the road would lead them from there. It was pointless to dwell upon such things. She tried to still herself into a calm, meditative state, quiet and yet still alert to everything around her, just as she had been trained. She felt very tired and was looking forward to when the Ranger would return from his hunt, so she could get some sleep.

Try not think about sleep, she told herself. Relax and find the center of your being. Be still and open your senses to everything around you. Become a part of the cool stillness of the desert night. There were many ways to rest, she thought, and sleep was merely one of them. No, do not think about sleep.

She opened her eyes suddenly, startled into wakefulness. It seemed as if no more than a moment had passed, but the fire had burned down low and was almost out. She had fallen asleep, after all. But for how long? And what had awakened her? She remained quiet and motionless, resisting the impulse to throw some more wood onto the fire. She had heard something. But what was it? Everything seemed quiet now, but there was a tingling at the back of her neck, an apprehensive feeling that something was not right. She looked around, scanning for any sign of movement, alert for the slightest sound. Out in the moonlit night beyond the dwindling fire, she could see nothing but shadows. And then one of those shadows moved.

Sorak slumbered as the Ranger moved out into the still night, which was disturbed only by the occasional far-off sounds of nocturnal creatures. To the Ranger, however, even these faint calls were clearly recognizable: the distant cry of the desert razorwing, a smaller species than those found in the mountains, as it swooped down on prey; the howling of a rasclinn as it called out to others in its pack; the squeaking cries of small furry jankx as they came out of their burrows when night fell and began to search for food. The communication of the desert’s many inhabitants, whether in low moans or ultrasonic squeaks and barks, would have been indecipherable to human ears, but the Ranger heard them clearly and understood. He possessed a preternatural sensitivity to his surroundings, an awareness Sorak in his waking moments did not fully share.

Unlike Sorak, however, the Ranger did not spend any significant time in contemplating the inner tribe’s condition or place in life. On the rare occasions when he gave any thought to it at all, he simply accepted it in his stoic manner and reasoned it went beyond any ready explanation. There was nothing he could do to change or better understand the tribe’s origin or destiny, so he accepted that he was the Ranger, that he shared a body with a number of other entities, and that this was simply their reality. Instead of worrying about it or trying to understand it, he would concentrate on more immediate problems. Problems he could solve.

In this case, the immediate problem was food. Red meat, not the seeds and fruit and vegetables Sorak ate. That diet satisfied Sorak, but it did not satisfy the others, nor did it satisfy the Ranger, whose appetites were lore carnivorous. Perhaps they could all survive simply on the food Sorak ate, as did the villichi sisters, but the Ranger did not believe that such a diet was beneficial to the body they all shared. He had no desire to convert Sorak to his way of thinking, but neither did he have any desire to fight evolution. He had not clawed his way to the top of the food chain to eat seeds. What he needed now, and what the others hungered for, was the taste of fresh-killed meat, the sensation of warm blood running down his throat.

Although the others hungered, they kept still within the body they all shared. They did not disturb the Ranger or intrude on his thoughts. He was aware of them, dimly, but they kept their peace and distance. He was the hunter among them, skilled at identifying the slightest sights and sounds and smells of nature, adept at tracking and stalking, expert at killing quickly and effectively. They all wanted to share in the taste of fresh-killed meat—all save Sorak, who would sleep through the hunt and the interlude of feeding and awaken with no memory of it. The others all waited with tense anticipation.