Voronica Whitney-Robinson - Sands of the Soul

Her screams snapped him from his stupor, and he somehow managed to wade his way over to Tazi and Fannah.

"We've got to get off these things," he shouted to her. He pointed about thirty feet to the north and said, "It turns back into salt flats over there. I think we might be safe if we can reach it."

"How can we do that?" Tazi asked.

"Don't fight the sands," Fannah told them. "It's in the timing. You've got to move between the shifts."

Steorf's mount gave a plaintive shriek, and Tazi turned to see it thrashing about in the dune. It dawned on her that Ciredor's writings were still in the sack strapped to the surviving horse. They couldn't afford to lose the only potential weapon they had against the necromancer.

Rolling about as though in an earthquake, Tazi literally placed Fannah in Steorf's hands.

"Get her out of here," she said.

"What?" Steorf screamed with an uncomprehending look on his face.

Tazi didn't waste any time in explanation. Judging by the animal's plaintive gurgle, Steorf's horse didn't have much time. She trusted Steorf to get Fannah to the relative safety of the flats. Trying Fannah's suggested technique, Tazi slipped between the shifting grains and reached the horse just in time to see it sink.

"No," she cried in frustration and madly searched with her hands, trying to locate the sack.

She lowered herself deeper into the sand but kept her chin above the surface. Swinging her arms back and forth, she thought one of her fingers hooked onto the sack, but it pulled just out of her reach. She had no choice. Tazi took a deep breath and dived into the dune.

She kept her eyes and mouth squeezed shut, but she could feel the sand fill her nostrils and her ears. She tried hard not to think about that and kept reaching forward with her hands, diving deeper into the dune. She didn't even contemplate what would happen if she didn't find it-her left hand slapped the leather strap of the sack, and she closed her fingers around it.

All that was left was for her to figure out how to get out.

She turned around as best she could, but realized she was only guessing at which way was up. Her lungs were burning, and the weight of the shifting sand was crushing her. Like a swimmer, Tazi tried to kick her legs and stroke her arms in large, sweeping motions but she had no way of knowing if she was even making progress. Instead of panicking, as the horses did, she tried not to resist the dune, but flow with it. She wanted badly to take in a breath of air, but she knew that if she tried, her mouth, throat, and lungs would clog instantly with sand.

Without warning, Tazi felt something grip the back of her aba. She felt herself pulled forcefully in the opposite direction from which she'd been traveling, and she fought against the pull as best she could, forgetting her strategy of a moment before. Vague images of some monster dwelling in the sand came to mind, but she was too weak to resist, and she felt herself pulled even harder. Tazi gave in.

She no longer felt the abrasive scratch of sand on her face and risked opening an eye. She was partly free of the dune, and she took in a deep breath that ended in a coughing fit.

"What were you thinking?" Steorf shouted at her, maintaining a firm grip on her shredded robe.

Not expecting an answer, he scooped her up and maneuvered them out of the deadly dune onto the salt flats where Fannah was waiting. Tazi took in deep drafts of air, Steorf's traveling sack still clutched in her fingers.

"How did you find me?" Tazi finally asked as she tried to empty her ears of the caked sand.

"Luck," Steorf told her. "I reached in after you disappeared from sight and managed to grab a corner of your robe."

"How did you get out there so quickly?" Tazi demanded.

"I tried to levitate across, but without a constant surface, I couldn't maintain the spell very well," he explained with a touch of bitterness. "But it did enable me to sort of walk to you."

The three of them fell silent as they watched the hypnotic movement of the dune. Sated from the meal of horseflesh and perhaps realizing that was the only meal it was going to eat there, the dune slowly deflated. Eventually, it rippled away from the flats back southward in gentle waves.

Tazi stood up, shrugged off the tattered remains of her robe, and took inventory of what remained. Her head cloth was long gone, and while her small dagger was still stashed safely in her boot, one of her guardblades was missing.

Steorf still had all of his weapons though his outerwear hung in shreds as well. Fannah was somewhat shaken but uninjured. Moreover, all that was left of their provisions was the sack that Tazi risked her life to retrieve. Ciredor's manuscript was still inside, but that was all. They had not packed anything else in that bag for fear of inadvertently damaging the pages.

"I guess we keep moving," Tazi finally announced.

Steorf gauged their position by the sun, and they simply kept going.

After what felt like an hour, they mutually decided to rest near a small outcropping of stones. Both Tazi and Steorf had burned their faces. Fannah, much darker skinned than her friends, managed to avoid the painful sunburn. However, that did not protect her from the thirst that infected all of them. Not even the setting sun gave them any relief from that.

While Fannah described to Steorf some succulent plants that they might spot along the route, Tazi got up and wandered a little way from their camp. The night brought the double-edged sword of desert life: freezing darkness after a scorching day. She wrapped her arms around herself, hissing at the painful burns along her bare arms.

This is my fault entirely, she thought morosely. Fannah was right. Without having completed that ritual properly, I have doomed this whole mission.

"I think we should gather up what scrub we can find and build a fire soon," Steorf said from behind her.

Tazi turned and came to a decision.

"I can do that alone. What I need for you to do is take Fannah out of here right now."

"What are you talking about?" Steorf asked.

"This isn't working, and we can't afford to gamble with Fannah's life any longer. You were right," she admitted. "We should've stayed in Calimport, translated Ciredor's writings there, and above all else, kept Fannah safe."

"I am safe," Fannah answered, moving to join Tazi and Steorf.

"No, you're not," Tazi argued. "I couldn't have made you more vulnerable than if I dropped you off on Ciredor's doorstep, which is basically what we're doing right now."

"That's right," Steorf growled. "We would've been much safer in a city where we didn't know anybody and had no way of knowing how many of Ciredor's minions were there. Hundreds, thousands, maybe more. That is exactly what Ciredor expected us to do: stay and hide, not root him out."

"Look at us," Tazi implored them through cracked lips. "We're dehydrated, weakened, no food, no water, and we're on foot in the desert."

"We're alive," Fannah pointed out quietly.

"Who knows for how long?" Tazi muttered darkly. "You two need to return to Calimport. Please see the logic in that."

"Tazi, we know where Ciredor is, or nearly so," Steorf told her. "The hard part is almost over."

"I know," Tazi replied, "and that's why you can go back. I will face him alone."

Both Steorf and Fannah flatly refused.

"That is not an option," Fannah told her.

"I think we're alive because we're together," Steorf added.

Tazi turned away from her friends.

"You won't go?" she finally asked. "Then I suppose we might as well collect what we can to get a fire going."

She could see that her friends were relieved that she had changed her mind. Tazi still felt they were making a mistake, but she saw there was no way she was going to convince them otherwise.