Simon Hawke: The Nomad

The marauders of Nibenay had their base camp somewhere near the mountains, and Sorak knew they had no cause to love him. He had foiled their plot to ambush a merchant caravan from Tyr, and had brought down one of their leaders. If they encountered the marauders, things would not go well for them.

In order to reach their destination, the village of Salt View, they had to cross the mountains-in itself no easy task. And once they reached the village, they would have other thorny problems to resolve. The Sage had sent them there to find a druid named the Silent One, who was to guide them to the city of Bodach, where they were to seek an ancient artifact known as the Breastplate of Argentum. However, they did not even know what this mysterious druid looked like. For that matter, they did not know what the Breastplate of Argentum looked like, either, and Bodach was the worst place in the world to search for anything.

Legend had it there was a great treasure to be found in Bodach, but few adventurers who went in search of it ever managed to return. Located at the tip of a peninsula extending into one of the great inland silt basins, Bodach was a city of the undead. Formerly a mighty domain of the ancients, its once-magnificent towers could be seen from a great distance, and it covered many square miles of the peninsula. Finding one relic in a large city that had fallen into ruin would be, in itself, a daunting task, but once the sun went down, thousands of undead crept from their lairs and prowled the ancient city streets. As a result, very few were tempted to seek out Bodach’s riches. The greatest treasure in the world was of no use to one who never lived to spend it.

Sorak cared nothing for treasure. What he sought, no amount of riches could buy, and that was the truth. Ever since he was a child, he had wanted to know who his parents were and what had become of them. Were they still alive? How did it come about that a halfling had mated with an elf? Had they met and somehow, against all odds, fallen in love? Or was it that his mother had been raped by an invader, making him a hated offspring, cast out because she had not wanted him? Perhaps it had not been her choice to cast him out. Had she loved him and tried to protect him, only to have his true nature discovered by the other members of her tribe, who had refused to accept him in their midst? That seemed to be the most likely possibility, since he had been about five or six years old when he was left out on the desert. In that case, what had become of his mother? Had she remained with her tribe, or was she, too, cast out? Or worse. He knew that he would never find true peace within himself until he had the answers to those questions, which had plagued him all his life.

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.