Clayton Emery - Star of Cursrah

Amber had snagged a thunderherder, but it felt like a whale bucking a fishing line. She chirped aloud, "Now what?"

"Hold-it!" A snuffling, flopping figure stampeded to a stop beside Amber, Hakiim was sandy from head to toe, his clothes and rucksack skewed awry and spilling sand. He'd lost his shield but drawn his scimitar. Hoisting the blade in two hands, the rug merchant's son gasped as he struck with all his might. The curved blade, wider and heavier at the nose, chopped through the writhing body as if slicing a sausage.

"Watch the tail," Reiver yelled. "The stinger's poisonous!"

"Good work, Hak!" Half a dying sandborer writhed in Amber's capture noose, and its thrashing weight threatened to rip the staff away. She slacked off to loose the beast.

"We should get to solid rock as fast as we can," Hakiim said, shaking his frothy scimitar at the horizon. "It's just ahead of us!"

"It's a mile or more," Amber said as she gauged how to reach Reiver, who was still dancing around holes in the trough. "We'd never make it."

"We've run halfway there already," Hakiim returned. An exaggeration, but Amber remembered seeing rocks to the south, stark gray against the gray-yellow sand.

"We surely can't stay here," Amber agreed, then took a chance and vaulted a hole and jumped again to land near Reiver. The thief flounced around the hole, his clothes and pack bobbing and shedding sand like a dog shaking off water.

The earth roiled under their joint vibrations.

"Run!" yelled Amber, and they charged the next dune.

"The sand is too soft," Reiver countered, "and the herders like soft sand."

Kicking and climbing, Amber yelped, "The rocks are ahead. They must run under the sand."

Ahead, Hakiim reached the crest of the dune and hollered, "More rocks! Little ones!"

A good sign, but Amber saved her breath for running. The sand behind her already dimpled. Reiver shouted as a bulge chased him. He veered away from his friends and the bulge surged after.

Amber shouted, "Reive! Stay together!"

The bulge suddenly subsided. Perhaps the monster had hit rock or hard sand. Reiver switched back for the dune's crest, arms and legs pumping, rags, pouches, and bundle flapping.

Cresting the tall dune, Amber dashed down the slope, skimmed across another sandy trough as if it might shatter like glass, plowed up another dune, and trotted on. Hakiim's head bobbed across the dunes, and Amber and Reiver soon caught up, sobbing for air.

Onward the three pounded. Amber's lungs burned as if steeped in hot sand, and a stitch cut her ribs: Treacherous sand sucked at her feet. She imagined borers everywhere, a thousand tunnels honeycombing the desert, burrowing miles after her pounding feet, hungry to bite her legs off and eat the rest of her slowly.

"Do these fiends ever tire?" she gasped. Reiver didn't spare breath to answer. More rocks dappled the sand, which grew harder underfoot.

Running, running, running, up and down dunes, their feet floundered while twilight grew dimmer in Amber's vision. If she blacked out and fell, she'd be herder fodder. She prayed, "Selune, get us safe and I'll fill a basket with coins at your alta-aahl"

Stampeding down a wide shingle slope, they saw rocks and pebbles plink into the air and two, no, four sandborers burst upward like columns in a mosque. Amber dodged wildly, clattering and skittering on shingle, and fell. Up ahead, Hakiim circled back and ran toward Reiver, his scimitar pumping. The thief was hemmed by the four creatures like a sheep run afoul of wolves.

Reiver scooted and aimed his dagger at the closest borer. Stabbing quick and true, he impaled the creature below its wriggling teeth. It proved too weighty to hold, and Reiver's arms sagged, but he cranked the dagger blade up. The great body tore itself free. Steel carved a furrow in the thing's body then ripped through the jaw. Slime splashed in Reiver's eyes. A tooth flipped down his ragged shirt-and mindlessly tried to burrow into his belly. The thief yelped and slapped it away.

Meanwhile, two thunderherders wriggled from their holes and undulated across the scree toward the thief. Amber saw their wicked stingers flick against stones like obsidian daggers. Reiver had said the stingers were poisonous and even as she ran, Amber shuddered to think of being stung and dying slowly as her organs rotted within her body.

Hakiim dodged two holes that looked like abandoned wells and barely escaped as a borer popped out of an existing hole and nipped at his heels. The rug merchant's son angled toward one creature and hacked with his scimitar. The deep cut made the beast curl into a loop and quit moving. Reiver used the opportunity to jump over it, and all three ran on.

"How many have we killed?" Amber panted.

"I don't know," Reiver said. He looked behind them and saw two thunderherders turn to pursue them. "Don't talk… run!"

"That way," Hakiim hollered.

Together, they pelted down the scree and up another dune. Despite panting, sweating, and struggling for air, they outran the two wriggling horrors. Thunderherders must travel faster underground than above, Amber thought. She plunged on, fearing her lungs would split. Gasping, stumbling, she reached another dune crest and tripped over Hakiim, who lay collapsed.

Scuffing her hands and knees on rock, Amber rolled and cried with pain.

"Hak! You clumsy fool…"

"L-look-h-here!" panted Hakiim.

She looked, then laughed for sheer delight. All around lay solid gray-yellow rock, an oasis of stone, a sanctuary. Grateful, Amber breathed steadily and felt her heart slow its pounding. She chuckled giddily. It felt wonderful just to lie still and watch the sky spin above her.

"Unbelievable!" called a voice.

Amber snapped her head up, frightened of another attack when she felt so weak. Rolling to one elbow, she saw Reiver already on his feet. His survival had always depended on outrunning his enemies, after all. From a bowshot away, where bedrock stopped, he called, "The thunderherders churn sand all around us. They're still trying to get us!"

"Let 'em churn," Amber grunted and lay back.

Hakiim nodded and wheezed, "I hope they chew their teeth to nubs."

They didn't lay there long, though, for once their breathing steadied, thirst wracked them. They were parched enough to drink a lake dry and sucked their water bottles dangerously low, licking their sandy lips again and again.

"Hoy!" Reiver called from afar. "I found another hole… a square one."

"Square?"

Amber and Hakiim glanced at one another. Tired but intrigued, the two trudged after the distant scarecrow figure that was the skinny thief, taking care to tread only on rooted stone, like children playing a game of Dare Base. This was a serious game, though, for furrows showed close at hand where thunderherders circled like sharks.

Reaching Reiver, the friends looked where he pointed. A hundred feet distant lay another shelf of bedrock. Notched into its lip was indeed a square hole. Judging from twin furrows passing by, the thunderherders' burrowing had collapsed the sand covering it.

"Looks like a cellar hole," said Hakiim.

"A house? Out here?"

Slowly, Amber turned a circle then grunted in surprise. That last downward slope actually curved around three-quarters of the horizon, dipping at the south.

"This is a valley," she said, "miles across."

"There's nothing but sand and stone," objected Hakiim.

"Nothing that shows," countered Reiver.

Unbidden, all three looked at the square-cut hole. It had obviously been hand-cut, sometime in the past.

"Are the borers gone?" whispered Amber, then suddenly shrieked, "Reiver!"

Impetuous as ever, the young thief dashed across a hundred feet of sand for the next rock. His bare feet flew over sand crisscrossed with creases, but nothing nipped at his heels. On rock again, near the hole, Reiver spread his arms and crowed in triumph.