The Desert of Souls, page 24
The beast swung back toward me.
Though I had feared that it would ignore me to go for Dabir I did not now rejoice at success.
A long black tongue licked out over those deadly teeth, which once more faced me from on high. It was the eyes, though, which concerned me. They throbbed, the glow about their edges now brighter, now dimmer, like they answered to a steady drum. There was power there, and as the thing began a singsong chant in an unknown tongue I understood that it worked sorcery.
Instinct screamed to run at top speed as fast and as far as I was able. Instead I charged.
I was but a pace or two from its feathered scales when the world twisted. A haze passed before my eyes and then all was different. Instead of strangely beautiful iridescent feathers, the serpent’s body was slick with ebon scales marred by welts, scars, and yellow pustules. I too had changed—the lightness in my step was gone; my foot ached to the point of distraction. My breath was labored.
It was too late to question; I slashed and stinking blood erupted from the furrow I carved through the ancient scales.
From above came a birdlike caw of anguish.
Gone were my fantastic reflexes and superhuman strength. It took a moment too long to pull free my sword. The scabrous tail struck me full in the side and I soared some twenty feet, my sword trailing away in a glittering arc. So busy was I marking its progress that my impact into a dune came as a shock. My breath roared out of me in a gasp.
I lay stunned, expecting death to come, in pain from calf to shoulder. I rolled onto my back so that I might see my end.
The thing was retreating, its length arched above the sand in the places where I had struck it. No longer did it seem a creature of alien beauty, but a decrepit ancient monster, its scaly flesh mottled and worn and failing. Everything about me had altered. The stars, which I tried to blink into focus, were cold and remote and hopeless. They stared down unblinking, uncaring, and I was reminded of looking into the sockets of a skull.
I forced myself to rise, knowing that the serpent closed on Dabir. The moon loomed huge on the horizon, the craters and scars on its surface livid with dark shadows that rendered it a landscape more barren even than this. By its light I found myself on a chalky gray white powder. Here and there amongst this sand was a larger hunk of similarly colored substance and in a chill moment I realized it was bone—ground-up bone—as if every man, woman, and child who ever lived had been rendered fleshless and pounded by time into tiny fragments.
I climbed to my feet. I could not shake off my weariness, but I would not delay, and so I staggered off in the track of the worm. There was no time to seek my sword, so I pulled free my long knife and forced myself to a run.
The serpent had worked a spell, somehow stripping me of my ideal condition and rendering me a normal man. Was this landscape, then, in its true state? I did not know. More important, had I delayed the thing long enough for Dabir to work the sorceries? I could only hope.
I reached the height of the dune and looked down. No longer was there a star map, but hundreds of thousands of transparent figures lying supine and writhing silently in viscous black fluid that restrained their struggling limbs. Only the lines over which Dabir was hunched were unchanged. It was not gems he manipulated, but skulls. He himself was the same fellow I knew on earth, oblivious to his death sliding up from behind. Closer and closer it drew, and he all unaware.
“Dabir!” I screamed.
He whirled, caught sight of the beast.
“I have your name!” the serpent wheezed.
I forced iron-stiff legs down the slope. “God give me strength!” I cried, and plunged into a run. The moment I reached the slope’s bottom I pushed harder and sprinted, my legs and foot and side protesting earnestly.
The serpent reared up over Dabir, chanting in its language. Now and then I heard Dabir’s name worked into whatever dark sorcery it practiced. My friend staggered as if struck and raised trembling fingers to his face.
I tore forward as pain lanced my side like sword thrusts. My only hope was to cause the serpent such agony that it could not complete its spell.
Then Dabir sought my eyes. He still clutched his face with one hand, but with the other he jabbed out at a skull fifteen paces to his left. It was huge, misshapen, blackened and yellowed with age. I could not guess to what manner of earthly beast it had belonged, or if it were some creature only of nightmare.
I changed direction, panting so loud that I wasn’t sure I heard Dabir clearly, for his voice was weak and strained. Had he commanded me to smash it?
I looked to him for confirmation, but Dabir had sunk to his knees. The very substance of his body wavered and smoky wisps of color broke away from him as though he were being consumed from within by fire.
There was nothing for it. I leapt as high as I might and landed with both feet full upon the skull. It must have lain there for eons, for it was almost as fragile as glass and it splintered as I crunched down. One sharp edge sliced straight through my clothing and into my calf. My own grunt of pain was drowned out by a hoarse, deafening scream.
“No!” The serpent’s upper length reared high, shaking in fury. It whipped toward me as I jumped up and shattered the remaining fragments into powdered shards.
The snake’s shriveled mouth opened. Its sunken eyes and pointed snout looked entirely different from that which had sprayed me earlier, but I sensed its intent and sprang away. This time I was no superman, though, only a battered Asim el Abbas, and I did not completely clear the spray. I heard it sizzling on my boot as I came down on my bruised ribs.
Dabir was up and shifting another skull to the right, yelling for me to hurry. Out beyond the panel the souls were rising, drifting up and farther up, into freedom, toward the moon and the stars. They shimmered in gold and red and blue—aye, they were lovelier even than the stars of which I already wrote—and there were thousands upon thousands of them. How to describe what I saw in only that brief moment as I ran toward Dabir? Behind came a horrified bellow from the snake thing. Ahead I saw a coruscating multitude. It may be that all souls are beautiful, for I saw none that day that were old, diseased, or ugly. No, what I beheld were the smiling faces of men and women and children. Here was a grinning ancient black in strange red robes, rising heavenward. Nearby was a young child with pudgy cheeks and slanted eyes, all in green. There was a woman with long red hair who met my eyes. At that moment I felt her relief, and her gratitude poured into me, granting me strength. Beyond them were countless more, whose faces come sometimes in dreams. Farther out were stranger shapes and forms bending and shifting in ways human forms could not, too obscured by the press of bodies for me to closely watch. Whether they were fellow serpents or some other race unknown to scholars that had lived and fought and died on earth in ages past I shall never know.
Dabir was yelling for me to hurry. In the air beside him was a ripple of energy. His teeth were gritted, and one shaking hand was pushed to his temple as a man will do with a head wound, or a noble will do if complaining of a headache. The other hand, likewise shaking, was stretched to me.
A shifting ghost shot from the star field and straight at me. I recognized Hamil, his face beaming, triumphant but determined. I cried out in wonder, cursing him, for he did not veer. He crashed straight through me. I felt only a cold tingle; I heard a laugh, as if from far off, and then I reached Dabir’s hand and clasped it. Somehow then the wavering image beside him clarified into a dunescape beneath the stars.
“Jump!” he shouted, as though I needed urging.
We dived through as one and landed in the dunes of earth. I turned my head in time to see a wavering image behind us of the serpent’s head rearing away as the poet’s soul flew at his face and rose up. Then the wyrm’s head was down on level with our own, maw open wide.
The shimmering around the rim of the portal grew more pronounced as the serpent neared, then rim, portal, and snake all wobbled and faded from view as a final tormented shriek of fury echoed through the night.
15
The deathless still of the desert night rendered the sound of sizzling all that more ominous.
“Your boot’s smoldering!” Dabir shouted.
My muscles strained in protest as I fumbled with the top of my right boot. After all that I had just experienced, it was the thought of having my foot cooked away by serpent venom that nearly unmanned me. I clasped the leather about the ankle tightly and jerked my foot clear, then hurled the boot into the darkness.
“Are you all right?” Dabir asked.
“Yes.” I did not mention that I’d likely broken a toe or three.
Dabir loped off down the side of the dune—I knew not why—while I inspected the bottom of my sock. It did not seem as though the venom had eaten into it, Allah be praised.
“Keep your hands from your weapons!” a stern voice cried out behind me.
I groaned. In all the vastness of the desert, how is it we had come upon some place where there were men?
“Raise up your hands,” said a second man, his voice less certain.
I lifted my hands and turned, holding in a grunt of pain as my side protested.
There on the ridge above two men were silhouetted faintly by the starlight and the moon. Bedouins holding bows. Of course. Who else would be out here in the desert?
“Asim?” one of them asked, and it was then that I recognized his voice.
“Hadban?” I asked.
At the same moment I realized I faced our guide and his nephew I also heard the sound of footsteps brushing through the sand behind me. Dabir trotted up, my boot dangling from one hand.
Hadban’s nephew fired.
Dabir dropped like a stone.
“Idiot!” The pain was nothing to me then. I sprinted downslope in a lopsided gait, scattering sand with my booted foot and sliding with the other. Hadban cursed at his nephew.
I reached the scholar and sank down on one knee. “Dabir!”
He lay on his side.
“Dabir, where are you hit?”
“It is my arm,” he said.
I rolled him over gingerly. He cradled his left arm in his right. Search though I might, I saw no arrow shaft. “Did you already pull it clear?” I said, grasping his arm and straightening it to better see the wound.
Dabir yanked his arm back. “Leave off,” he said through gritted teeth. “He shot your boot, not me.”
“My boot? Then why are you holding your arm?”
“Because it hurts! I landed on it when we jumped the first time, and again just now, when I dropped as yon idiot tried to skewer me. I’m trying to feel if it’s broken.”
“Let me see.”
“Thank you, no.” He looked up, then added more gently, “I’ll be fine.”
The Bedouins joined us then. The nephew bent down and raised high the boot. The arrow shaft had punched through both sides.
“Congratulations,” I said to him, then asked Dabir why he’d gone after my footgear.
“I thought it likely you would need it for the return journey,” Dabir said dryly, “and that we could repair its sole. It may be mortally wounded now.”
“Come,” Hadban said, smiling. “We will stir up the fire, look at your arm, and have some food.”
Dabir and I struggled to our feet like crippled old men and followed the two Bedouins back to the campsite on the other side of the ridge. The camels were tethered there, and shifted their ungainly bodies around to stare at us. Three narrow tents had been raised up. Hadban’s son stepped forth at his command to stir the fire.
“Is Sabirah safe?” Dabir asked.
“She is,” Hadban answered. “She sleeps deeply, for she has grieved for hours, thinking you perished. Naji saw the wizard and two of his followers returning from the way you had gone. We stayed well clear of them.” He peered closely at us. “We thought you dead. How did you come to be here?”
“That is a long story,” Dabir said. “Let us talk over a meal.”
At my insistence Dabir allowed me to look over his arm while Kafiq, Hadban’s nephew, produced some dried fruit. I am no hakim, but have some experience with injuries. He fretted at my touch, for his flesh was tender, but I could find no break. “We should probably prepare a sling.”
“I will help with that,” Hadban said, for which I was thankful. Weariness had settled heavily upon me, my foot was throbbing, and Dabir was testy.
Hadban rigged up a cloth to support Dabir’s arm, then sat down with us around the fire while we nibbled on dried meat and fruits.
The son, Naji, presented us with two battered mugs of tea. It is a pleasure, on a cool night, to sit among friends and clasp a warm cup between your hands. And on this night, with the miraculous improbability of our survival and return sinking in, I felt truly blessed despite the new aches I discovered with every movement.
“We have seen wonders,” I said. “There was a vast city of ghosts, and an ancient feathered serpent longer than a camel train.” Dabir looked up companionably.
“Dabir? Asim?”
My sluggish brain identified the quavering voice as Sabirah’s only a moment before the slim figure dashed into our midst and flung her arms about us both. She sat with us then, demanding answers faster than they could be supplied. Dabir calmed her, and then he and I relayed all that had transpired.
At first Sabirah and the Bedouins interrupted us with questions. We patiently demurred, as would polished storytellers, saying all would be revealed in time. They listened to our words. Dabir and I traded off our narratives smoothly enough that it might have been rehearsed, and judging by the rapt attention of our listeners, we told to good effect. It may be that Dabir was too detailed and that I had more natural flair, but in all honesty it would be unfair of me to pass judgment.
Dabir even answered some of my own questions as he talked, providing greater detail of how he had found the location of our current company through the serpent’s sorcery, and opened a way to them. Also I heard specifics concerning the numbing pain he felt while manipulating the serpent’s magic, and the soul-wrenching agony of the serpent’s assault upon his mind and spirit.
Even then our listeners asked questions of us.
“So which was it?” Kafiq asked. “An ancient diseased worm, or a beautiful snake?”
“A worm,” I said.
“Something of both, I think,” Dabir said.
I drained my cup. “Whatever it was, I regret I did not slay it. The thing was evil.”
“I feel sorry for it, in a way,” Sabirah said after a short moment. She sat between us, huddled under a blanket.
“Sorry?” I said. “You did not see the souls trapped for eternity like so many bugs. One of them was our friend! How can you feel sorry for it?”
“I didn’t mean…” she demurred, embarrassed.
“No,” Dabir said. “Ignore Asim’s manner. Speak on.”
“It’s just … it spent how many years do you think? Thousands, tens of thousands, trying to build a way back home. And you said it was close to completion. What will it do now?”
“Die, I hope,” I said.
“It will probably start anew,” Dabir said quietly. “I, too, pitied the creature. I wonder—was it always evil, or did it become that way out of desperation and loneliness? Is that how all turn to evil?”
I sighed so that no one might mistake my feelings in the matter. “We freed tens of thousands of souls, Dabir, and found our way home. I am only sad that our friend died; at least, though, we should rejoice that he moved on to God. There is nothing to lament. Unless”—I pointed my finger at him—“you consider our current circumstance.” I shifted, testing the pain in my foot—which predictably reflared with movement. “Hadban, how far is Firouz ahead of us?”
“At least half a day, I think,” Hadban said. “We kept watch upon them from concealment until they passed. Then we waited longer before moving ourselves so that we would not accidently come upon them.”
“So,” I continued, “our enemy lies before us, and they have their artifact, as well as great sorcerous power. I’ve lost my father’s sword and”—I glanced to Dabir—“we’re in no condition to fight.”
“And Kafiq shot your boot,” Sabirah interjected.
“Yes,” I agreed, although at the same moment the others chuckled at my misfortune. Sabirah, too, smiled.
“Asim,” she replied, “you and Dabir have returned to us against all odds, and done deeds the caliph himself would praise. The gems you showed us from Ubar … won’t they be enough to buy passage back to Basra? If there is money left over perhaps we can even find you new footgear.”
The Bedouins laughed again at this.
“Allah has smiled upon us, Asim,” Dabir said. “We must press forward.”
I had never suggested abandoning our mission; I had just meant to point out difficulties.
I pitched a tent with no further word to the rest of them, though I was quite sore and would not have objected to the offer of aid. Once bedded down my mind retraced our many steps and I thought back to all that we had lost, soldiers and sailors, Mahmoud, Hamil, the sword of my father. And what had we gained?
These thoughts were poor company. Fortunately, sleep came fast. It was dreamless, and I was so tired still when I was roused that it felt as though I’d just closed my eyes.
Neither Dabir nor myself were in high humor for the next few days, for a camel is a poor seat when one is already in pain. Aye, between the aching and the baking beneath the sun it was easy to forget how glad I was not to be trapped in that land of ghosts and serpents.
I wore both boots. The venom had burned a great oval in the bottom beside the heel, but it was still better than nothing. The holes, Sabirah had pointed out, would aid in cooling. Of all of us, she was in the finest mood. If she was concerned about our final fate or how her family might receive her after so long an absence, it did not show in her manner. She did search the horizon like the rest of us, but I began to wonder whether she was apprehensive about finding Firouz, or about reaching the ocean and beginning the return trip.
