“Hassan,” I said. “Do you live?”
“Yes,” said he, from near me.
We had been staked out in the crusts.
The sun was now down.
Under the Tahari sun some men last as little as four hours, even those who have made the march to Klima.
Water had been nearby, but we had not been given any. We kept company with the stakes. One moves as little as possible. One must not sweat. Further, one shields, with one’s body, the surface on which one lies. The surface temperature can reach one hundred and seventy-five degrees by late afternoon.
Oddly, I was now cold. It was the Tahari night. I could see the stars, the three moons.
The two guards had now gone.
“By noon tomorrow, we shall be dead.” said Hassan.
I moved the stake again, to which my right wrist was fastened, another quarter of an inch. Then, slowly, bit by bit, I drew it from the crusts.
Hassan’s face was turned toward me.
“Do not speak,” I told him.
With the freed stake and my right hand, I rolled to my left and attacked the crusts about the stake that held my left wrist down. Then I bad it free, and with my teeth and right hand, freed my left wrist of its impediment, then I freed my ankles of the straps.
“Save yourself,” said Hassan. “I cannot walk.”
I freed him of the restraints at his wrists, then of those which held his ankles. To my right wrist, dangling, hung the stake I had first drawn from the crusts.
“Leave,” Raid Hassan. “I cannot walk!”
I bent down and lifted him to his feet. I supported him with my left arm about his waist. His right arm was about my shoulder.
We looked up.
About us, in a dark cloud, scimitars drawn, were more than a dozen men.
I seized the stake in my right fist, to do war with steel.
The men about us parted. I saw, among them, carried on a sedan chair, the figure of T’Zshal. The chair was placed before us.
“T’Zshal!” I cried.
He regarded us, under the moons.
“Are you still determined to enter the desert?” he asked.
“We are,” I said.
“Your water is ready,” he said.
Two men, with yoke bags, falling before their body, on each side, stepped forward.
“We sewed together several talu bags,” said T”Zshal, “to make these.”
I was stunned.
“I hoped,” said T’Zshal, “to teach you the sun and the lack of water, that you might be dissuaded from your madness.”
“You have well taught us, T’Zshal,” said I, “the lack of water and the meaning of the sun.”
He nodded his head. “You will now, at least with understanding,” said he, “enter the desert.” He turned to a guard. “Cut the stake from his wrist,” he said. It was done. Then he turned to another guard, one with a one-talu bag, who had been one of the men who had watched us, when we had been staked out. “Give them water,” he said.
“You did not let me struggle in the straps,” I said to the guard.
“You saved the life of T’Zshal,” said the man. “I did not wish you to die.” Then he gave Hassan and I to drink from the water he carried.
Before we finished the bag, we passed it about the men, and T’Zshal, that each of us, there together, might have tasted it, the water from the same bag. We had, thus, in this act, shared water.
“You will, of course,” said T’Zshal, “remain at Klima for some days, to recover your strength.”
“We leave tonight,” I told him.
“What of him?” asked T’Zshal, indicating Hassan.
“I can walk,” said Hassan, straightening himself. “I now have water.”
“Yes,” said T’Zshal. “You are truly of the Tahari.”
A man handed me a bag of food. It contained dried fruit, biscuits, salt.
“My thanks,” I said. We had not expected food.
“It is nothing,” he said.
“Will you not,” I asked T’Zshal, “in your turn, when your wounds heal, march from Klima?”
“No,” said T’Zshal.
“Why?” I asked.
I have not forgotten the answer he gave me.
“I would rather be first at Klima than second in Tor,” he said.
“I wish you well,” said 1, “T’Zshal, Salt Master of Klima.”
Hassan and I turned and, with the water, and our supplies, into the night desert, took our way.
We stopped outside the perimeter of Klima. From the place in the salt crusts, where I had hidden it, I took the faded, cracked bit of silk that had been thrust in my collar on the march to Klima. I held it to my face, and to the face of Hassan.
“A trace of the perfume lingers,” he said.
“Perhaps I should give it to those of Klima,” I smiled.
“No,” smiled Hassan. “They would kill one another for it.”
But I had no wish to give it to any at Klima. Rather I wished to return it, personally, to a girl.
I tied the bit of silk about my left wrist.
Then together, under the Gorean moons, through the salt crusts, we began the trek from Klima.
We stopped once, on the height of the great shallow bowl, which encloses Klima, to look back. We saw Klima white in the light of the three moons. Then we continued our journey.
19 The Wind Blows from the East; We Encounter a Kur
I heard Hassan cry out.
Through the sand, I plunged toward him.
He stood on the side of a dune, in the moonlight. There was a flattish, large expanse of rock, exposed by the wind, below him.
“I saw it there!” he cried. “I saw it.” He pointed to the flattish extent of rock. The wind swept across it. I saw nothing. I “It is madness,” said Hassan. “There is nothing there. I am mad.”
“What did you see?” I asked.
“A beast,” he said. “A large beast. It stood suddenly upright. Its arms were long. It looked at me. Then it was gone.” He shook his head. “But it could not have been there. There is nowhere for it to have gone.”
“You describe a Kur,” I conjectured.
“I have heard of them,” said Hassan. “Are they not mythical, creatures of stories?”
“Kurii exist,” I said to him.
“No such beast could live in the desert,” said Hassan.
“No,” I said, “such a beast could not live in the desert.”
“Strange,” said Hassan, “that I should imagine a Kur here, in the Tahari.”
I went to the rock, and examined it. I found no sign of a beast. The wind whipped the nearby sand. I could not discern footprints.
“Let us continue our trek,” said Hassan, “before we both go mad.”
Shouldering again the water, I followed Hassan.
Yesterday we had finished the food. Yet did we have water. Hassan saw five birds overhead in flight.
“Fall to your hands and knees,” he said. “Put your bead down.” He did so, and I followed his example. To my surprise the five birds began to circle. I looked up. They were wild vulos, tawny and broad-winged. In a short time they alighted, several yards from us. They watched us, their heads turned to one side. Hassan began to kiss rhythmically at the back of his band, his head down, but moving so as to see the birds. The sound he made was not unlike that of an animal lapping water.
There was a squawk as he seized one of the birds which, curious, ventured too near. The other vulos took flight. Hassan broke the bird’s neck between his fingers and began to pull out the feathers.
We fed on meat.
We had been twelve days on the desert, when I detected, suddenly, in a moving of the wind, the odor.
“Stop,” I said to Hassan. “Do you smell it?”
“What?” he asked.
“It is gone now,” I said.
“What was it that you smelled?” be asked.
