“This is rubbish!” a man shouted. He steamed out of the crowd and picked up the dead kid’s body. “At least see him off to sea. I’ll give him a worthy Nurlie burial, but I won’t leave him in the sand.”
He took the kid in his arms and waded waist-deep into the water. The others watched as he let the body drift away on the current. He gave a salute and uttered some half-forgotten hymn under his breath. Then he started shouting.
“Ow! Hey, get away from me. Ow! What the …?”
He struggled to shore, no one daring to jump in the water and help. He started up the bank and collapsed, twitching with spasms in the sand. Zawne and the others ran to check on him, and in the light of the moon, they could see pink and purple sores where jellyfish had stung him. He foamed at the mouth, seized, mumbled something, and died. His body was pink, and his veins distended from the jellyfish poison.
“Anyone else want to paddle?” Zawne asked. He received only silence as an answer. “All right. Let’s get into groups and find that water. The desert awaits.”
“Five thousand miles,” Nkem said. It was dawn, and they were still walking, Nkem, Stingl, and Zawne. The others were mirages in the distance behind them, like wavering shadows following through the awakening scrubland. “Coast to coast, I mean. Five thousand miles from here to the north coast. It’ll take us maybe eight months.”
Stingl laughed. “Yeah, only eight months.”
“It is nothing compared to a lifetime of discipline,” Zawne said. “I remember when my brother, Jaken, returned home from his Aska training. He was the same man, but different. His emotions had cooled. He was sharply aware of everything. He seemed like a stronger person, someone still capable of love yet capable of great horrors. I saw a secret truth in his eyes, and the possession of this truth strengthened him and gave him purpose. That’s what I seek in this desert. I seek truth and purpose.”
“Deep, man,” Stingl said.
But Nkem wasn’t convinced. “You’ll get truth all right, Prince. You’ll get truth in the way of pain and misery like you wouldn’t believe. Let’s talk again after you’ve been stuck inside your own head for two straight months. That’s the real torment. You, your thoughts, your regrets, your secret truths. Your mind will haunt you until you’ve gone insane.”
Then Nkem laughed, raised his hands to the great dust plain and said, “Welcome to your doom, Prince. Welcome to the infinite horrors of your psyche.”
Zawne shrugged it off. His pace was fast, but Nkem and Stingl kept up well. All three were fit and lean, made for desert walking. “Nothing can compare to the recent horror I’ve faced,” Zawne said, “my wife being decapitated by a crazy groundskeeper. Lordin had given the world so much. She had given me so much! And some lunatic took it all away. The pain of this desert is nothing to me. The memory of Lordin will carry me through.”
“Let’s hope,” Nkem said, “for all our sakes.”
They slept at high noon in the scanty shade of a cactus, and when they woke five hours later, the sun was a flare of death on the horizon. Nkem cut open the cactus, and they drank its milk. It was the only cactus they had seen thus far.
“I hope there’s more of these,” Stingl said. “I’m not sure what we’re going to do for food.”
“Or water,” Nkem said.
That night, as they marched, the scuffling of many feet could be heard circling them as nighttime predators stalked them in the blackness. Zawne, Stingl, and Nkem walked clustered tightly to dissuade attack. If there was food to be had, it was too dark to find it. The same went for water or cacti.
As dawn’s first light began to warm the desert sands, Zawne said, “We should walk in the day. We can find no food at night. We also risk attacks from animals.”
So they walked through the day under the hot wrath of the sun and didn’t sleep. They were far ahead of the other groups. The only sound was their harsh breathing and the call of the wind. As darkness fell, they used what few tools they had in their packs to set traps. Each man had an empty tin can. They dug three holes in the sand and placed an empty can in each one. “The dried juice on the bottom of the cans will lure scorpions,” Nkem said. “We’ll check them in the morning.”
They caught one scorpion during the night and ate it raw in the morning, sharing the paltry bit of meat between them. The next night, they used the small tarp provided to make a solar still. They dug a wide hole and stretched the tarp taut over the hole, and through the night, the moisture dripped from the tarp into one of their tin cans. It was just enough for a sip, just enough to stay alive.
It was six months and roughly four thousand miles later when Nkem was explaining to Zawne and Stingl about the primal history of the Ava-Surrvul.
“See, they used to farm salt out in these flatlands. It was maybe a thousand years ago, so the salt has mostly dried up. The Ava-Surrvul worked all day in the sun without water or food, chopping salt out of the ground in huge chunks. They shaved it, strapped it to their camels, and marched back to civilization to sell it. The tradition lasted until the unification of Geniverd, even after the advent of cars and machines. The Surrvul have always been a hardy people. They thrive in this wasteland.”
“It’s interesting,” Zawne said. “But what I want to know is how you can still be so chatty after four thousand miles of stark
