Voronica Whitney-Robinson - Sands of the Soul

As she struggled angrily with one of the straps on the packs, she told Steorf over her shoulder, "I'll have Fannah ride behind me, and you can carry the other provisions. Hopefully, that won't put too much strain on the horses."

Steorf helped her with the gear and said, "You couldn't have known. None of us did."

"But I've got to know," she snapped. "I can't afford to make any more mistakes out here."

"We won't," he promised her.

Tazi turned away and walked over to where Fannah was waiting for her, looking extremely vulnerable with the massive Calim Desert around her.

"I just can't fail," she muttered.

"How is your mount holding up?" Steorf asked Tazi, breaking the hot silence.

"He's all right," she replied.

She was certain her horse was as exhausted as they were but they had no choice other than to continue forward and drive the animals on with them. The loss of the third horse was wearing the other two animals down very quickly.

The salt flats had given way to rolling sand dunes as far as Tazi could see, and their progress had slowed considerably. Traction was much more difficult and the two horses were overburdened, which didn't make it an easier. Tazi recognized that she was becoming inured by the constant sameness of the desert and was mentally wearing down.

"Blue and gold everywhere," she whispered.

"What was that?" Fannah asked and leaned closer in the saddle to Tazi.

"I'm sorry," she apologized. "I didn't realize that I had spoken aloud."

"It's fine," Fannah told her through chapped lips. "What is it?"

"Everywhere I look, it's always the same thing: empty blue sky over unchanging golden-white ground."

"There is something to be said for constancy," Fannah quipped, but the joke sounded weak to Tazi.

"I could use some change," she said quietly.

The three trudged along. Tazi knew they were getting weaker the farther into the desert they went. Tazi refused to allow Steorf to expend any sorcerous strength on anything other than decoding Ciredor's book. Water was now rationed between them and the mounts since they no longer trusted any of the sporadic water holes they came across to slake their horses' thirst. They had no way of knowing if the sources were infested by leeches or some other waterborne parasite.

One of the insidious facts about desert travel was that they were all losing moisture through perspiration but the desert wind wicked it away almost immediately. They had no way of accurately gauging how dehydrated they were becoming. Imperceptibly, the wind picked up and shifted.

"Calim's Breath," Fannah said.

"What?" Steorf asked.

"Whenever the wind changes direction out here they say it is the djinn, Calim, making his presence known," she explained.

"I hope he's trying to bring us some good news," Steorf commented.

"Look to the east," Tazi told him excitedly.

"What is it?" Fannah asked.

"I see what can only be a pool of water, not too far away," she anxiously described to Fannah.

"I don't think that can be possible," Fannah replied doubtfully.

"I think Tazi's right," Steorf agreed. "It must be a natural pool. I can't detect anything magical about it."

"The only pool of water of any noteworthy size that exists out here is what's known as the 'Walking Oasis.' It's a traveling pool of water and shady trees that appears in a different section of the Calim every year in the spring. By this time of the season, it would be mostly gone, its trees withered and brown."

"But you don't know for certain," Tazi argued. "I think it's worth investigating."

"I do as well," Steorf said. "We could use some more water, as could the horses."

"It isn't far," she said over her shoulder to Fannah. "We'll ride over to it and check it out, and if I'm wrong we won't have lost too much time."

However, no matter how long Tazi and her friends tried to reach the shimmering blue, they never got any closer to the pool. Finally, Tazi had to admit her mistake.

"We might as well stop," she told Steorf, rubbing the sweat from her eyes. "That has to be some kind of illusion created by the heat. We would have been there by now if it was real."

Tazi hunched up her shoulders, fully expecting Fannah to tell her she should have trusted her friend's knowledge of the desert. Once again, Fannah surprised her.

"It was worth the effort," she told Tazi.

"But I was wrong," she admitted.

"When you try for the right reasons, there is no wrong."

Before Tazi could reply to that, both hers and Steorf's mounts suddenly reared up. Tazi struggled to keep her seat, as did Steorf, but Fannah was caught unaware. She tumbled backward and landed hard on the sand.

As soon as Tazi got her horse under control, she dismounted and went to Fannah.

"Are you all right?" she asked her blind friend.

"As you can see," Fannah rose and swatted the dust from her robes, "I wasn't lying when I told you it had been some time since I had been on a horse."

Tazi smiled in spite of everything.

"How can you stay so cheerful?" she marveled.

"Why should I be anything else? At this moment, I am together with my friends," Fannah stated simply.

Steorf walked over with both horses' reins in hand.

"I don't know what's got into these beasts," he said, the strain he was feeling apparent in his voice.

"I don't know, either, but I'm going to take it as a sign that maybe we should walk a little," Tazi decided. "They could use the break of not carrying us for a while, and we can stretch our legs at the same time."

Tazi and Fannah flanked their mount, and Steorf brought up the rear. When Tazi looked back to ask him a question, she could see he was deep in thought. She decided not to interrupt him, as she was certain that he was mentally reviewing Ciredor's writings and mulling over the words he had managed to translate.

He's determined, she thought.

Tazi faced forward and found it hard to see that they were making any kind of progress with no landmarks to provide a frame of reference.

"The way the wind blows and shifts the sands, those dunes look like they're walking," she remarked to Fannah.

"What wind?" Fannah asked gravely.

Tazi realized that there was no wind around them, and she couldn't hear any sound nearby, either. The air was still, but the sands continued to alter their direction.

"I don't understa-" she began then the dunes erupted around them.

The horses reared and whinnied in fear, wrenching themselves free from the grip of their masters. Tazi grabbed Fannah's arm and hung on to her. She could see that Steorf was also turning about wildly. Everything began to slide into the sand.

"It's like water," Tazi screamed to Steorf. "We're sinking at every turn."

"Don't struggle," Fannah told her. "It only makes it worse"

Tazi was close to panicking. She had sunk into the sand almost to her shins, but she realized that she was wrong. The ground wasn't like water. Instead of a constant sinking, the sands shifted and she would found herself immobilized completely as though it had solidified. Then the sands shifted again in opposing directions, and she could feel her feet pulled away from each other.

The horses were screaming, and Tazi turned in time to see that her mount had sunk into the sand so deeply that only its head was still visible. The stallion's eyes rolled madly in its head when suddenly it fell silent.

Horrified, Tazi could only watch as a fount of blood spewed out of its mouth, staining the sands black. As its head was pulled under the dune, one of its forelegs popped up a few feet's distance away, like a log tossed about on the open seas.

"The dune ripped him apart," she yelled to Steorf, who had also been mesmerized by the animal's demise. "These things are alive somehow!"