Voronica Whitney-Robinson - Sands of the Soul

"If there was not the worm toxin to consider, the next stages, in order, would be: cotton mouth, swollen tongue, shriveled tongue, blood tears, and finally, living death. I am not sure how the desert worm's sting will change any of it, other than to hasten the steps."

Tazi shook her head and found all she could say was the obvious, "We have to find him some water."

"We all need to find some water, Tazi," Fannah reminded her. "This is our fate as well, given time."

Tazi didn't even want to ponder that. She had already begun to feel the painful beginnings of dehydration herself. Her eyes were slowly pulling back in their sockets, and her nose felt like some small, foreign object hanging from her face. She could feel other subtle, and not so subtle, ways that her body was trying to conserve water as well, but the insidious fact was that to do so, her body was picking and choosing what parts of her were expendable and what parts were not. She was not in control.

Steorf's head rolled back, and that motion snapped Tazi from her dreadful realizations. She could see that his eyes opened slightly. He looked at her and Fannah, and Tazi saw an unreadable expression spread across his face. She started to motion to Fannah to slow her pace even more when Steorf had a small burst of strength and shook himself free of the two women.

"Get away from me!" Steorf shouted at Tazi and Fannah.

He stood swaying in the sand. With one hand he rubbed uselessly at his desiccated eyes. His eyelids had dried, and Tazi had noticed how difficult it had become for him to close them. He had taken on a blank stare because of it. He flailed his other hand out in front of him, desperately trying to ward off his imagined attackers.

"What's wrong?" Tazi asked him.

"It's all right," Fannah tried to soothe him, somewhat more aware of the confused state of mind Steorf was slipping into. "We're here."

Neither of the women's words had their desired effect on the failing mage. He staggered a few steps back from them and started to fumble around with his tattered shirt.

"Where's Tazi?" he demanded of his apparitions. "What have you done with her?"

Before Fannah could stop her, Tazi started to move slowly toward Steorf.

"I'm right here," she tried to convince him.

"Don't," Fannah warned her. "He no longer knows who we are."

Steorf tugged at his ripped shirt, and Tazi was startled to see that he was struggling to remove it. Without thinking, she reached over to him and tried to stop his jittery fingers. The moment she touched his hot, dry skin, Steorf swung a fist in her direction. The only reason it didn't connect was because Steorf was so disorientated that his aim was off. Tazi herself was too stunned to move out of his way.

Steorf staggered a bit more from the momentum of his badly executed punch but recovered enough to yell, "Where is she?"

"He needs to be stopped before he hurts himself," Fannah exclaimed, closing in on him from one side as Tazi finally made a move from the other.

Or hurts one of us unintentionally with either his fists or his magic, she thought.

Steorf was clawing at his sword's scabbard. She sprang at him, all the while trying to be careful of his open wound. Tazi hit him in the shoulders with her outstretched hands, and as they both tumbled to the ground, she tucked herself up to somersault away from him. As soon as her feet hit the ground, Tazi scrambled around and slipped her right arm around his throat. Kneeling behind his prostrate form, she grabbed her left shoulder with her right hand and secured him in a head-lock. She slipped her left forearm between her chest and the back of his head and applied increasing pressure until he became still, her chokehold the gentlest way she knew how to take him out.

"I'm sorry," she whispered as she relaxed her hold on him, certain he was unconscious.

She even allowed herself a moment to pass her hand through his hair. The strawlike quality it had taken on was simply one more reminder of their predicament.

"Are you all right?" Fannah asked her.

"Yes," Tazi choked out, "but we can't go on any farther like this."

"Then this is where we'll rest," Fannah replied and kneeled down.

As Fannah began to scrape away a large layer of sand from in front of her, Tazi asked, "What are you doing?"

"I'm removing the top cover of sand, which is the hottest. A few inches down," she explained to Tazi, "the sand will be significantly cooler."

Tazi fell to her knees as well and helped clear away the hot sands. When they had cleared a furrow large enough to hold Steorf, both she and Fannah dragged his inert body over and laid him in it. Tazi felt as though they were lowering him into a grave and tried desperately to keep that image from creeping back into her thoughts.

Tazi could only watch uselessly as Steorf suffered in mute torment. He came around shortly after being placed in the cooling pit, but he shook uncontrollably, caught in the grip of fever chills. When he faced Tazi, however, there was recognition in his eyes.

"What happened?" he asked weakly.

"You got a little confused," Tazi explained gently.

"And?" he prompted her.

Tazi wasn't sure what offered the most temporary relief: that he had regained consciousness at all or that he actually appeared to understand the conversation they were having.

"I think this was your way of getting even with me for years of tricks," she admitted. "You took a swing at me."

"Are you all right?" he asked, his own eyes filling with concern.

She leaned closer to him and whispered, "Not even on your best day could you ever hope to touch me."

Steorf tried to smile but instead stifled a cry of pain. Though he tried to maintain a brave front, Tazi knew with an absolute certainty that he was dying. Her faint smile died on her chapped lips. She and Fannah busied themselves and tried to make him as comfortable as possible. Fannah removed her outer robe and pillowed it under his head.

"There is not much more we can do for him," Fannah whispered to Tazi.

She looked more closely at him and saw that his wound continued to slowly seep. The discharge was a mixture of the worm's milky venom and a trace of his own blood. What filled Tazi's heart with dread were the red lines of infection that had spidered out from the original injury. Tazi knew that their inexorable march to his heart was what spelled Steorf's doom.

"I will not accept this," Tazi said. She was filled with the absolute need to move. "There has to be something we can do."

"I do not know of anything within the Calim that could cure him," Fannah replied.

She rubbed her forehead, tired.

"Think!" Tazi ordered the Calishite angrily. "There has got to be something here. Anything!"

"There maybe something that might at least alleviate his suffering somewhat," Fannah recalled eventually.

"What is it?" Tazi asked, ready to grasp at any straw offered.

"Before the worm attacked us," Fannah explained, "I had been telling Steorf about a plant that we might come across, and I had wanted him to watch for it. It is called the Calim cactus."

"What's so special about it?"

"The plant is rather unassuming; growing no more than three to four inches tall, and it provides very little nutrition. But it has an extensive root system that runs several feet across just under the sand."

Fannah described the thing deliberately, accurately drawing a mental picture for Tazi with her words.

"How can this help us?" Tazi asked, a seed of hope growing inside her as she committed the description to memory.

"What the plant does to trap moisture is raise its roots above the sands and absorb what water there is before pulling them back underground."

"So the roots are full of water," Tazi deduced, growing excited.