'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.
'If we can find some that have buried roots,' Fannah cautioned her. 'Only those will have liquid in them.'
'I will find them,' Tazi swore. 'I want you to stay with Steorf in case he needs something.'
'I don't know what I can do for him,' Fannah said, slightly flustered.
'You can be with him,' Tazi explained. 'Let him know he's not alone.'
Fannah nodded and moved back over to Steorf's side. She gathered up one of his hands in hers and squeezed it tight. Tazi wasn't sure what he was aware of at this point. She emptied the sack containing Ciredor's writings and left them in Fannah's keeping.
'I'll need something to put the roots in,' she told Fannah confidently.
She stroked Steorf's forehead, shocked by the heat that radiated from him.
'I'll be back as quick as I can,' she promised her two friends.
'We will be waiting,' Fannah answered.
Tazi turned and marched off to the west. The sun had reached its apex, and Tazi could feel her arms burn under its glare. With only her leather vest and pants, her arms were near to blistering. She occasionally wiped at her eyes, which had become bitterly painful. As she became more and more dehydrated, she could literally feel her eyes pull back in their sockets. Tazi realized that her orbs were mostly comprised of water and she was losing that at an alarming rate, so her body stole from itself. There was nothing to be done about it other than finding the Calim cactus.
Part of her rational mind was convinced that they were going to fail. There was no other logical outcome. But deeper down, in her soul, she hadn't quit, and that was the force that drove her on. It was as though the desert had burned away everything excessive that she carried and left her only her core intact, like a worn stone. The mild winds had smoothed and shaped her and left her determined.
'That's why Fannah knew I needed to pass through the ritual successfully,' she said aloud. 'Out here, we are nothing but our true selves, whatever they may be.'
A little farther to the west, Tazi saw what she thought was some scrub and rocks.
'Please,' she whispered in a voice rapidly becoming hoarse, 'let that be real. No more illusions.'
