Book Three of the Travelers Page 4

  When she woke up, Loor felt much better. She was a little surprised at how long she’d slept, though. The sun was heading down toward the horizon.

  She stretched and sighed. She felt a lot better! Stronger, lighter, cooler. She stood. Maybe it was her imagination, but the robe itself seemed lighter.

  Suddenly she had the oddest sensation—as though she were not alone. She whipped around, assuming a fighting stance, ready for anything. Then she laughed.

  The hindor.

  The big black bird was perched at the top of the dune on which she was standing, looking down at her with its large yellow eyes.

  “Hello, bird!” she called. “Are you going to bring me luck?”

  The bird, of course, just stared at her.

  Loor didn’t think of herself as the sort of person to talk to birds. But out here? It no longer seemed to matter. “Are you going to lead me home?” she called.

  The bird stared at her for another moment or two, then disappeared over the dune. She was sorry to see it go. But then it glided smoothly back around in a slow arc, passing over her head and winging to the east.

  She decided to follow.

  Hindors led you to water—was that not what King Allon said? If the desert tribesmen believed it to be true, it probably was. Since the only water to the east was in Xhaxhu…well, that had to be where the hindor was heading.

  As the hindor soared east, she began walking. Her legs felt stronger, she was cooler, and she felt as if she were twenty pounds lighter. Her mood brightened.

  Even though she might not actually have the ax in her possession, she knew where it was. It would be easy enough to lead an expedition out and claim it, once she found her way back to Xhaxhu.

  She kept her eyes pinned on the slow-flying hindor as she swiftly walked on. After a few minutes she pulled the rubber hose out of the robe and took another sip. Again it gurgled. She bunched the robe up again to push more water to the hose. But still it gurgled.

  As she was standing there, she felt something on her leg. A tickling sensation, like an ant crawling on her skin.

  But she knew there were no ants out here. She looked down curiously. It wasn’t an ant, but a bead of water running slowly down her leg. Sweat? Maybe.

  Then she noticed something in the sand. A small round stain near her foot. A water drop. She snapped her head around and looked behind her. Parallel to her footprints in the sand were a series of little round stains.

  The robe’s water-storage system had a leak in it. She had been dumping water, drip by drip by drip, for twelve solid hours. No wonder the robe felt so light! As she slept, she’d been draining all her water into the sand!

  Had King Allon intentionally given her a leaky robe? Or had she punctured it somehow as she slept. There was no way to know.

  But it didn’t matter. The fact was, she was almost out of water.

  She looked back toward the mountains. She estimated that the sun would be setting in about an hour. Once the sun went down, water wouldn’t be a problem. She could easily keep walking all night without replenishing. But then once the sun rose, the heat would begin pulling the water out of her. She’d have a few hours, and then the well-tuned machine that was her body would fail.

  And that would be that.

  She had a decision to make. If she turned around right now and headed straight back toward the mountains, she might be able to find the valley where King Allon was. And she’d survive. She’d survive as the slave of a barbarian king.

  Or she could press on. And probably die.

  There was no time to waste. She had to decide.

  She took a deep breath. Last year she had run in the Pizon, the great fifty-mile footrace that was run every three years in Xhaxhu, where all the best warriors competed to show off their endurance. She’d come in fourth, a great showing for a girl her age. Fifty miles in less than eight hours. Would fifty miles get her to Xhaxhu?

  It might.

  Of course, during the Pizon she’d had water breaks. How much water had she drunk during the race? Gallons probably.

  Well. There was no choice was there? Not really. Not when you were a Ghee warrior. Death or slavery? That was easy.

  She spent the next ten minutes squeezing every last drop out of the robe. She was amazed at how much was still there.

  To the east the hindor was tracing a lazy circle in the air. As if it were waiting for her.

  “Here I come!” she shouted.

  She dropped the empty robe on the ground. And then she began to run.

  SEVEN

  The moon rose early, dusting the dunes with a dim silver light. It wasn’t bright. But it was enough.

  Loor ran without stopping. She’d run the Pizon on a flat surface, with shoes made for running. Now she was running on loose sand. Every stride took more effort. Climbing the face of a dune was a monumental struggle. Then once she started running down the other side of the dune, she had to be careful not to fall.

  Above her, the stars were so bright that she could make out the black shape of the hindor as it blotted them out, one after another, in its slow path through the sky.

  Soon Loor’s world had narrowed to only a few things—the dark shape of the hindor, the silver-flecked sand, and the pain. Pain in her muscles. Pain in her lungs. Pain in her feet as her shoes blistered her heels and toes.

  She ran on and on and on and on.

  Eventually she grew thirsty. Even in the coolness of the night, running for hours on end drove the water from her pores as surely as the sun did.

  Soon the thirst began to blot out the other pain, just as the hindor blotted out the stars. Still she willed herself on.

  Follow the hindor, she repeated. Follow the hindor. Follow the hindor.

  Soon it became a rhythm, merging with the sound of her footfalls in the sand, with the steady intake of her breath, with the beating of her heart.

  And slowly, stride by stride, her strength began to ebb away.

  Strangely, though, as her body began to fail, she felt an odd joy rising in her. It was as though she had separated from her body. Some part of her mind left the pain and exhaustion behind and floated up above her, light and buoyant as the hindor.

  This was the way to die, she thought. Driven to the utmost extremity of pain and fear and weakness. No one could say she had failed! She had done everything she could.

  As the sun began to paint the distant horizon with a wash of pink, she slowed to a walk. It wasn’t a choice. There was no running left in her. Her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. Her legs were chafed raw. Her feet were a ruin of blisters.

  The sun began to rise. And still the hindor flew east. And still she staggered on.

  There was no sign of Xhaxhu. Not a dried-up well. Not a fallen tree. Nothing but sand.

  And then the hindor began to drift down from the sky. At first she thought it was her imagination. But it was not. The hindor was coming down, down. Eventually it landed.

  Loor’s vision had gotten blurry. It seemed as though the hindor was perched on something. A rock maybe, sticking up out of the sand. It seemed a very long way away.

  She tripped and fell.

  Maybe I should just lie here, she thought. Maybe I should just rest.

  The hindor sat motionless on its perch, staring at her. Waiting.

  Loor stared at the bird. The bird stared back. And then she came to a sudden realization. Hindors were scavengers. They fed off the carcasses of the dead.

  She began to laugh.

  Water? The hindor wasn’t looking for water! It was just waiting for her to die. It had sensed the truth days ago: This odd creature, this human, was a stranger in the desert. This creature was doomed from the start.

  Loor sat up. The laughter hurt her parched throat. But still she couldn’t stop. All this time she’d been thinking this huge black bird was good luck. How wrong she’d been!

  She forced herself to her feet. “You are not getting my bones.” She had intended it to be a yell, a war c
ry. But it came out as a hoarse, pathetic croak.

  She fell, and began to crawl toward the bird. She would strangle it, she decided. Or beat its head against the oddly shaped rock on which it was perched.

  “We will die together, bird,” she whispered. She crawled closer and closer, every inch a struggle. Still the bird didn’t move.

  She could feel the heat of the sun beating on her, sucking the last moisture from her skin. She had stopped sweating a long time ago. A bad sign. But it didn’t matter. She was going to take the bird with her.

  And then, just as she reached the rock, the bird flapped its wings. Once. Twice. And then it rose lazily into the air.

  She pressed her forehead against the rock. It was strangely cool. It had a strange smell, too. What was it? Then she remembered. It was the smell of the Lake of Peace. The smell of water.

  There was a soft vibration in the stone. And she could hear something now—the sound of rushing water.

  She frowned. It was a hallucination of course. There was no water here.

  There was something odd about the stone, though. It seemed more like concrete than stone. She pushed herself to her feet and stared over the lip of the rock.

  It was perfectly circular. Her heart jumped. Whatever this was, it wasn’t natural. It was man-made. In fact, it looked like something made by the Rokador.

  She heaved on the stone lid with the last of her strength. It slid off, revealing a hole. A hole that went down into darkness.

  But the sound that came from the hole was unmistakable. It was the sound of rushing water.

  Astonished and completely out of strength, Loor sagged over the side and reached down. The water was too far away.

  Imagine, she thought vaguely, if she died here not more than an arm’s length from water. She reached down farther and farther, until finally she was balanced precariously on the edge. Her head was spinning and her ears rang. It was hard to maintain her balance.

  Then she slipped.

  Headfirst Loor plunged down into the darkness.

  EIGHT

  People who live in the middle of deserts rarely know how to swim. Loor was no exception.

  She fell headlong into a torrent of water that spun her and thrashed her like a doll. Water went up her nose, into her lungs, into her stomach. With what little energy she had, she flailed helplessly at the water as she was sucked along through the darkness. She tried to hold her breath.

  Suddenly, as she started to lose consciousness, the water slowed a little, and she hit something hard. She pulled herself forward, found herself on a flat surface of rock. Her toes and fingers trailed in the water. She moved her head until her lips were touching the water, then took a few sips. And with that, she collapsed.

  How long she lay in the cool darkness, she couldn’t say. It seemed like a long time. Every now and then she gained enough strength to take a few more sips of water. Then she would lose consciousness again.

  Eventually, though, the water revived her. She was able to sit up. Bam! Her head smacked into solid rock, and she saw stars.

  Carefully she crawled along the rock. She found herself on a sort of ledge, just inches from the running water. As best she could tell, she was in some sort of giant pipe. It had to be the work of the Rokador. But where it came from or where it led, she had no idea. She couldn’t see anything at all.

  So she just kept crawling.

  Eventually she saw a tiny point of dim light in the distance. She crawled toward it. Gradually it took the form of an arch at the far end of the pipe she was crawling through. Her knees were getting cut and bruised from all the crawling, but since she couldn’t swim, there was no other way to reach the light.

  Eventually she crawled out of the tunnel, through the stone arch, and into an immense chamber. It was more than just a room full of water. It was an underground lake.

  The illumination came from a small artificial light source on the wall. It lit the area immediately around it, and then faded into a distant gloomy darkness. The chamber was so large she couldn’t see where it ended.

  “Hello!” Loor called. Her voice was only a soft croak. But it echoed and re-echoed again and again in the huge underground chamber. She cleared her throat. “Anybody here?” Her voice was stronger now.

  There was no answer.

  The ledge she was on had widened out at the tunnel’s end. She stood and walked unsteadily until she was standing under the light. A small door was cut into the rock. On it was a sign that read DO NOT PASS.

  She tried the door, but it was locked. She banged furiously. No one answered.

  How far was she from Xhaxhu? For all she knew, she could still be fifty miles away. Even if she knew how to swim, it would be too far for her to swim in her weakened state. And since she did not know how to swim? There seemed no chance.

  That was when she noticed the boat.

  She had never actually seen a boat. But she had read about them. A boat was a thing that allowed you to float on water. This was a small wooden thing, not much longer than she was tall, tied to the edge of the ledge. It was dirty and looked as if it hadn’t been used in years.

  What choice did she have? She stepped into the boat.

  To her surprise the boat moved rapidly from side to side when she put her weight on it, wobbling wildly. She fell hard, smacking into the bottom of the tiny craft.

  When she finally managed to sit up, she saw that she had knocked the rope free. The little boat was drifting, slowly, slowly, slowly, away from the dock.

  How do you make it move? she wondered. How do you control it?

  She had no idea. She had seen in books that people used flat sticklike things with handles, dipping them in the water and pushing the boat around somehow. But this boat had no such device in it. In fact, it had nothing in it.

  Loor felt a momentary stab of terror. The boat wobbled every time she moved. It was drifting out into the darkness, heading…where? She didn’t know. And if the boat tipped over, she’d fall into the black water and drown.

  So she lay down, reached into her pocket, and pulled out the last soggy piece of dried lamb. Just the effort of chewing it made her feel tired. But the sweet taste of the lamb restored some of her determination. In a minute she’d figure out a way of moving the boat around, and then…

  She noticed the boat was moving a little faster now. She was bobbing along, deep in the darkness of the underground lake, far from the small light. It seemed as if the boat were being sucked along now. Then she heard a distant rushing noise.

  She huddled in the bottom of the boat. Something was happening. And she was powerless to do anything about it.

  Suddenly the craft was moving faster and faster. And then the rushing noise was all around her. She couldn’t see, but she could tell by the compressed sound that she was inside a tunnel again.

  The water grew rougher and faster. She clung to the boat with all her strength.

  I hate water! she thought. I hate it!

  The boat slammed and banged and thumped and rocked and bumped. It was about the most frightening thing she’d ever done, right up there with wading out into the Lake of Peace. Worse, actually, because she couldn’t turn back, couldn’t control the boat, couldn’t do anything but hang on and try not to scream.

  It seemed to go on for hours.

  And then suddenly the rushing noise became a roar, and the roar became thunder, and the boat went faster and faster.

  And then she was flying through the darkness.

  When she hit, she lost consciousness.

  NINE

  How long have I been here?” Loor asked, looking up from the bed where she was lying. Chief Councillor Erran stood over her. Loor saw her mother, Osa, seated at the foot of the bed.

  “Four days,” Erran said. “We thought we were going to lose you. A farmer found you lying in an irrigation ditch on the outskirts of the city. Where have you been?”

  Loor sighed loudly. “I failed,” she said.

  Erran and Osa exchan
ged glances. Erran sat and put his hand on her arm. “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me everything.”

  When she had gotten halfway through the story, Erran said, “Stop. I am going to take you before the council. Your story needs to be heard by more than just me.”

  An hour later four strapping members of the Ghee, the revered guards of the Batu people, were bearing her on a makeshift stretcher into the huge pyramid that housed the council. She was taken to the front of the council, through an utterly silent room, the eye of every councillor pinned to her.

  When she reached the front of the chamber, she was seated on a gold chair reserved for honored speakers. To her horror she saw that both King Khalek and Prince Pelle were seated on a dias at the front of the room. To their left, Osa sat with the other councillors. Loor felt sick with self-disgust. She had been given a huge assignment. And she’d failed. Why were Erran and her mother putting Loor through this grotesque public humiliation? She’d have rather been taken out somewhere and flogged. But she had been trained never to show weakness. So despite her fatigue, her aching head, she kept her back straight, her chin high, her gaze imperious.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw King Khalek nod to the chief councillor.

  “My friends,” Erran said, coming to the front of the chamber and standing next to her. “We entrusted this young warrior, barely more than a girl, on a mission of grave importance to our people just a little more than a week ago.” Then he turned to her. “Loor, please give His Majesty your report.”

  Loor pushed herself to her feet. For a moment she thought she might faint. She tried to avoid her mother’s eyes. But she couldn’t. She expected her mother to look at her with contempt after hearing about Loor’s failure. But instead, Osa’s gaze was calm and reassuring. Loor shook off the urge to collapse.

  Then she took a deep breath and began. Slowly at first, then gaining strength as she spoke, she told her story. She made no attempt to glorify her own actions or to excuse her failure. She simply told what happened.