Open Desert

The next day, the Morl was weak and tired, but he vehemently denounced any charitable delay. “The cut is shallow,” he insisted. “And we shouldn’t stay in this town any longer. The sooner we get to the wilderness the better. Leave society behind, I say.”

The Knight shrugged. “If you say so. Come on. We’ll help you load up.”

I marveled at how quickly they accepted the Morl into their group. Until that night, he had been an outcast, an alien. And now, he was one of us.

By sunrise, we were on our way up the escarpment, following a narrow trail cut into the rock wall. Within 20 minutes of plodding single-file, I could see all the way back across Drymar to the South Sea when I looked over my shoulder. Behind me on the trail, I could see the Fool, who grinned at me and looked over his own shoulder. Then the Fool gave a guttural, inarticulate scream, as if he had just realized how high up he was. He hugged the neck of his horse so tightly with his massive arms that the animal started to squirm and took a surprised step toward the sheer ledge.

“We have a problem!” I called. I was second-to-last in the line of pilgrims (a fact that had not escaped me when the Knight had arranged us in a line to ascend the escarpment). In front of me was the Old Lady, then the Nobel, and so on. The Knight was so far ahead that he had already passed the next switchback. His head poked out over a ledge above my head.

“What?” he demanded, annoyed.

“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s freaking out or something.”

The Wizard’s head poked out beside the Knight’s. They had both dismounted to look down at the situation.

“Nial,” called the Wizard, “this is not a convenient time. Can’t it wait?”

“It’s not me,” I insisted.

The Fool was moaning, and his horse was jerking sporadically, trying to free itself from the Fool’s vice-like grip. I didn’t think the animal would throw itself off the cliff to get free, but then again I had never read any books about horses, so maybe it would.

“Whatever you did,” called the Wizard, “try to undo it, please.”

The Knight nodded.

I tried speaking words of encouragement to the man behind me, but he couldn’t hear (of course). His face was buried in the horse’s mane.

In front of me, the Old Lady, contorted her frail spine to see what was amiss behind her. The operation left her wheezing and out of breath, but she managed to say, “Someone will need to lead his horse.”

I tried to dismount, but realized that the pathway was razor thin where my horse stood. If I dismounted on my right, I would be dismounting into emptiness and a screaming death; if I dismounted on my left, I would have to rudely shove my horse toward the same fate. If I could make my horse go backward, maybe I could get back to where the path was wider, but I didn’t know how to make a horse do that. “Um, can horses go backward?” I asked.

I heard the Noble snort a laugh up ahead, which hurt. The Wizard and Knight rolled their eyes simultaneously.

“I shall charm the animal with magic,” said the Wizard, in a tone that very clearly said, As usual, I will clean up Nial’s mess.

“No need,” said a voice behind me. It was the Hunter. I turned around in time to see her climbing up over the lip of the path behind the Fool’s horse. How had she gotten back there?

I watched in amazement as she gracefully emerged from the deadly drop, found her footing on the path, and took the horse’s reins. She also patted the Fool on the shoulder, which seemed to help with the terrified moaning. I realized that somewhere up ahead, she must have dismounted and scaled the escarpment sideways, passing beneath the Nobel, the Old Lady, me, and the Fool, coming up behind him in the end. She hadn’t even broken a sweat.

She called ahead, “Carry on everyone. My horse will go with the flow. I’ll make sure this one does too.”

Every now and then I looked back to see the Hunter calmly and perhaps a bit wistfully looking south, toward the South Sea, apparently not deeming it necessary to watch her step.

***

At the top, a sea of red dunes stretched northward as far as I could see. It was the Northern Desert. I knew that this precise point, at the top of the escarpment, was the only place in the world where you could see both the South Sea and the Northern Desert in their entirety, each extending away from each other toward opposite horizons. The Northern Desert’s horizon was the jagged blue zigzag of the Northern Mountains. In the other direction, at the distant coastline of the South Sea, before it stretched out to the perfectly flat horizon, I could see the spire of the church cathedral where the pilgrimage had begun. Somehow the spire’s stones had been quarried in those faint mountains to the north, somehow lugged across the dunes, somehow lowered down the escarpment, and somehow brought all the way to the cusp of the sea where the capital city of Drymar now lay, groveling before the tower. It was incredible, and for the second time since embarking on the pilgrimage, I was reminded that I would soon have to ask a question at the shrine. Perhaps this archaeological mystery should be it. The answer would, no doubt, yield a best-selling book.

I had thought the Knight would call a stop at the top, but he did not. Wordlessly, the Knight continued into the desert. The terrain was still somewhat rocky here, but was quickly giving way to pure sand.

But I found that I could not indulge myself in the usual fantasy of becoming a published writer. Now that the more mundane terror of the escarpment was over, the innkeeper’s accusations from the night before began to press at the edge of my mind. I could feel the Knight’s story nestled in my pocket, a tale about killers in black masks—killers who had perhaps been mere citizens of the town, shadow mercenaries. There was no way to tell. Take off a mask, and you merge back into society, or back into a group of pilgrims. With paranoia making it hard to breathe, I targeted the one pilgrim I knew the least about. The Mourner. Her veil was pressed against her face by the hot wind coming out of the desert. I could make out no features except the general shape of her nose.

“Hi,” I said, bringing my horse alongside hers as the pilgrims began embarking toward the pure dunes.

She nodded at me. Kind enough. Though, perhaps she was scowling beneath the veil.

“So, what’s with the veil?” I asked. When she didn’t answer I tried, “I’m Nial, what’s your name?” Meeting with more silence, I began to open my mouth for a third attempt. She stopped me with:

“I don’t want you to talk to me.”

My face flushed. I had been nothing but nice to her! “Fine,” I said, “I don’t want to talk to you either.”

She didn’t answer. I waited, watching the veil blow in the breeze. Finally, she said, “Please go away.”

“I’ve been perfectly nice to you,” I informed her. “I just want to point that out.”

“I don’t want you to be nice,” she said in the same flat voice.

“You want me to be mean?” I retorted.

“I want you to go away,” she said.

“I’m a nice person, okay?” I said, angry, but for good reason. No one had a right to talk to people that way. It was just common decency. When you’re nice to someone, they’re supposed to be nice back. It was how the world worked. There were rules.

Dear Human, this short paragraph was much longer in Nial’s original manuscript. In order to keep the tale coherent, however, I have redacted about 10 pages of analysis on “deep” philosophical issues such as whether one person’s niceness ought to compel another person to respond in kind. At two or three points in those 10 pages Nial seems on the verge of the epiphany that when someone says they don’t want to talk to you, the nice thing to do is to comply. But he never quite says it succinctly. Oh, well. I hope you will excuse the redaction.

As I was opening my mouth to explain more social rules to the Mourner, the Hunter rode up on my other side. There was a streak of dirt across her brow, but it didn’t seem out of place. She was the sort of person, I guessed, that always had a streak of dirt across her brow or cheek or chin. Taking a bath, wearing clean clothes, washing her face—these things didn’t seem in her nature. Her leather armor gleamed in the sun, like an exoskeleton.

“Nial,” she said, “perhaps Madam Du Vreil would like to be alone, no?” At this, a snort of assent came from beneath the Mourner’s veil.

“Perhaps she would,” I said, pointedly at the Mourner, trying to convey that it was her loss. Then, to further convey what conversational fun the Mourner was missing out on, I cheerfully asked the Hunter, “Are your clothes for hunting?” To my annoyance, the Mourner kicked her horse forward, trotting away to where the Singer and the Knight rode, at the front of the party.

“It helps,” said the Hunter.

“What kind of animals do you hunt?”

She turned dark eyes on me. Her face was drawn into a permanent frown—as if she had maintained the expression so long that it had stuck.

“Different kinds,” she said.

“Are you going to do any out here?” I asked.

“Probably not,” she said. “But old habits are hard to break. I’m not comfortable unless I’m wearing it. Plus, it’s enchanted, so it keeps me cool even in the heat.”

My paranoia returned all of a sudden: “I’m worried. Whoever tried to kill Father Ori last night might still be with us.”

“Following us?” she looked back doubtfully. There was nowhere to hide amongst the sand and rocks.

“I mean they might be us. One of us.”

She wiped at her brow, moving the streak of dirt across her temple. “I didn’t think of that. You’re a very creative thinker.”

“Thanks,” I said, my heart warmed. “I get that a lot.” Some people in this world, it seemed, knew how to be decent human beings.

Dear Human, I feel compelled to point out that I was riding nearby when this exchange occurred. When I heard Asuana (“The Hunter”) tell Nial that he is a “very creative thinker” I almost burst into laughter. She clearly knew what to say to get people to like her. I realized that of the people who were on the pilgrimage by coincidence, this one needed to be watched. It even occurred to me in that moment that perhaps she had knowingly said this loud enough for me to hear, subtly letting me know that she was the kind of person who knew how to get people to like her. Even in those days, I’d been dealing with humans for a few hundred years, and I like to think my intuitions about people are often correct.

In any event, I began to watch her.

“And the worst thing is that it could be anyone” I went on. “There’s no way to tell. No way that I can think of anyway.”

“Me neither.”

“Actually, there might be a way,” I said. “That stuff that Sir Mau put in the fire last night could be strong enough to make someone speak up.”

She looked at me with awe and wonder, which warmed my heart further. “Nial, that is a truly brilliant idea. However, I doubt it would make anyone confess to attempted murder.”

I deflated, “You’re right. I doubt Sir Mau would have told that story if it wasn’t already yearning to be told.”

“But we should keep our eyes open,” she said. “And we shouldn’t make any assumptions. For all you know, it could have been me. Or it could have been you.”

For a moment we were silent, then we burst into laughter—or rather, I burst into laughter while the Hunter snorted twice in quick succession.

“I’ll keep my eye out,” she said in a low voice. “If the morl hadn’t been the target, I’d suspect him right away. Morls are dangerous.” She cocked her head. “Could he have done it to himself, do you think?”

I glanced around to locate Father Ori. It took a surprisingly long time. The same magic that made you not notice morls seemed to extend to things like the horses they rode on. When I finally saw the horse, not far away at all, I peered into the shimmering air atop the animal. From what I could tell, the Morl was reading a book. Good, he hadn’t overheard.

Dear Human, you know by now not to fully trust Nial’s account of things. I don’t read when I ride. It makes me ill.

“No,” I said. “I saw someone leave the room. He ran straight past me.”

“He?”

“Or she,” I said.

“Any ideas?”

“Whoever it was knocked me aside like I was nothing,” I said. “So—”

“No offense, but most people could knock you aside,” she said, but with a half-smile and a wink.

I decided not to take offense. “So it probably wasn’t the Old Lady.”

“Bela,” the Hunter said. “That’s her name. Madam Bela—if you’re feeling proper. And I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss her. She’s not what she appears. I can’t put my finger on it.”

“She must be eighty!” I said.

“You saw how she took command last night. Suddenly, she knew exactly what to do and how to give all the right orders. Whoever she is, she’s used to being in charge.”

I remembered the change that had come over her last night. All at once, the weak voice had turned strong and powerful.

“As for being old and weak,” said the Hunter, “it could be an act. Not the oldness, but the weakness. I’ve met hundred-year-old panthers that could still take off your head in one swipe. But those are stories I’ll save for when it’s my turn to talk. We’re falling behind. Let’s go.”

“By the way,” I said, when we had caught up to the rest of the group. “I’m Nial.”

“Asuana,” she said. We shook. And I felt stronger, having forged at least one new alliance.

Dear Human, it was at this point that a nagging thought began to take root in my mind. I felt that perhaps I had met Asuana once before, long ago, or that I had heard her name. In retrospect, I wish I had pondered the matter more deeply. But I must admit, I was still in the grips of a Nial-esque hubris: I believed that my own plans were the only political forces in play here. You’d think that after getting attacked, I would have been primed to see that things might not be going according to plan. But as I have already said, I had written off the attack as a random act of violence. Silly really, I admit.

It was late afternoon when the Knight reined in his horse and addressed us. The slanted light of the sun made his stubble cast a bristled shadow across his face. “By sundown we’ll rendezvous with a tribe of Drymarian nomads. They pass through every few months to trade with pilgrims. We’ll trade our horses for camels and other supplies.” He ran a hand through his hair, looking nervous—an out-of-place expression on his face. “I’ve never had any problems with them before. But I’ve heard stories. Don’t get too close. Let me do the talking. You—” He pointed at the Noble. “—stay in the back, out of sight. Don’t let them see your clothing. These people are traders. They operate according to a code of honor that I don’t pretend to understand. Be ready for anything. But try to relax.”

Before sundown, the group of nomads crested a distant dune, traveling on an intercepting vector. The sun dipped in the west, transforming the red dunes into a sea of blood and shadows. We halted—close enough to the foreigners to smell the camels. The Knight rode forward and spoke to a man with a beard. The discussion seemed to stretch out forever. I grew more and more anxious.

The Knight came back grinning. “He’s being very generous. They’ll give us ten camels, plenty of water and food, and bags to carry it all.”

“Sir Mau?” I said. “Do you think they have any paper?” I wasn’t running low yet, but it wouldn’t hurt to have more.

The Knight rolled his eyes and ignored me. “All of you, dismount. Take off the packs, but leave the saddles.” When the horses were unloaded, he brought them to the bearded man. A moment later, he came back with ten camels.

When the nomads had gone and night had fallen, the Knight relaxed and decided to celebrate by saying, “Nial, in the interest of furthering your continued education, I nominate you to unsaddle everyone’s camels.”

I had already resigned myself to being this pilgrimage’s version of a deck boy, and glumly went about unhooking things from camels that didn’t particularly like me. One bit my elbow. Another spit in my eye.

“What’s this?” I dared to ask, pointing to something I had been wondering about since the camels arrived but had been too afraid to mention (lest I sound stupid). The item in question was a waterskin attached by ropes to the side of the camel’s neck. All the animals had one just like it.

“That,” said the Knight, “is so you don’t have to worry about giving them anything to drink. Those contraptions allow them to drink from the tubes you see running from the waterskin to their mouths. They just have to angle their heads properly. It even works when they’re walking, so you never have to stop. It might seem wasteful when they dribble, but the alternative is to pour water into a portable trough, which means you have to pack a bulky tough along with all your other stuff. And you waste a lot of water just by exposing it to the air. It’s a myth that camels store water in their humps, but with those contraptions, a well-trained camel can get extremely good at conserving water.”

“Should I remove it for the night?”

“If you had been walking all day, would you want someone telling you that you couldn’t drink for an entire night?”

The pilgrims drew together in a tight circle, pulling their sleeping bags around them like blankets. The stars shimmered from their celestial vantage points. There was to be no campfire, but the Knight produced a small incense bowl which generated clouds upon clouds of smoke after the Wizard’s magic lit the powder it contained. The pilgrims passed it around and inhaled. My eyes embarrassed me by filling up with tears, and my lungs joined in the fun by making me cough almost as much as the Old Lady did.

There was no vegetation to be seen, but the Knight produced blades of dried grass from his pocket. We drew straws and the Old Lady came up with the short one. She sighed and drew her sleeping bag around her like a cloak. “I suppose,” she said, “with temperatures like this. I’d better tell a story or two before it’s too late.” She looked truly ancient in the starlight; and the drug-induced relaxation did nothing to smooth over her wrinkles. “I have a confession to make to you, Father Ori—about what happened to you last night.”

My frantic hand wiggled to my pocket, feeling like it didn’t belong to me. My mind had become detached from that heap of muscles, flesh, and skeletal support that comprised what was commonly known as Nial.

Dear Human, the Morl Nation has known Madam Bela’s story for a very long time. Needless to say, I felt quite privileged to hear it from her own mouth once, before her death. Say what you will about Nial; his contribution to the morlish historical record is undeniable. It is with great pleasure that I present to you Nial’s recounting of Madam Bela’s recounting of one of the most pivotal moments in morl/human history prior to this pilgrimage itself, of course.