The Darkness Before the Dawn - By Ryan Hughes Page 0,25

them alive until they reached civilization. When some of the other elves protested, the chief had compromised on three days’ provisions, which he said was enough to get them to an oasis. When Galar left to pack the food he even gave them directions for finding it—at the base of a long, rocky ridge just south of due west—but what they did from there was up to them. They would just have to figure that out when the time came; right now they had more immediate problems.

Jedra bent down beside Kayan, letting his shadow fall across her while he worked her pack off and helped her lean back against it. He removed his own pack and got out the waterskin, gave her a swallow of its precious contents, and put it back without drinking any himself. The oasis might be three days away for an elf, but he had the feeling they would need every drop of water they had and then some before he and Kayan managed to reach it.

To think that he had bathed in a barrel of the stuff only two days ago. The elves had been right: fortunes changed quickly in the desert.

Theirs were going to have to change back awfully fast or the two of them would be dead of heat stroke or dehydration by nightfall. Jedra didn’t see much opportunity for shelter in the immediate vicinity, only gently rolling dunes and occasional rock outcrops as far as he could see in any direction, dotted here and there with stubby bushes and gnarled, spiny cacti. He didn’t see any of the barrel-shaped plants like the one the elf child had cut open for water yesterday, nor anything else that looked promising. All the vegetation he could see was too thin to have a pulpy core. Too thin to provide shade, either, which was an even more pressing need at the moment.

Kayan moaned and tried to sit up.

“Stay there,” Jedra told her. “We wouldn’t get twenty paces in this heat before we had to stop again. I can see that far, and there’s nothing better over there.” He spoke aloud, even though mindspeech would have been easier. He still felt so drained from the battle with the cloud ray that he didn’t want to use even that little bit of psionic energy.

Either Kayan felt the same way, or she just followed his example. “We have to keep moving,” she whispered.

“We have to sleep and recover our strength,” he said. “Once we’ve done that, then we can start walking again. We’ll start at dusk, like the elves do.”

“I suppose that does make sense,” she admitted.

Jedra looked around again, trying to think like an elf. What would they do in a similar situation? Spend the hot hours in the shade, for starters, but the Jura-Dai’s generosity hadn’t extended to a tent.

Or had it? He looked again at the thin, spiny cactus growing only a few yards away. It branched in two about four feet off the ground, and each arm extended out and upward another four or five feet. If he were to stretch his robe across those arms, the thorns would hold it in place and the cloth—even as thin as it was—would provide shade.

There was only one problem with that idea: he’d seen how some of the desert plants protected themselves by swinging their thorny arms at passersby. He wasn’t sure if this was one of that kind, but he didn’t want to find out the hard way.

Hmm. How could he tell whether or not it was dangerous without getting too close? Throw rocks at it?

It was worth a try. Jedra found a small outcrop not far from the cactus and picked up a flat slab of flagstone a little bigger than his hand. He didn’t see the multilegged beetle that had been hiding under it until it clicked angrily at him, startling him into dropping the rock on his toe. The beetle scurried under another slab of flagstone, and Jedra once again picked up the piece it had been under to begin with, making a mental note to check more carefully before he grabbed something like that again. Even the smallest desert creatures had some kind of defense against predators, and most of them were poisonous.

He carried the rock to within easy throwing distance of the cactus, took aim, and tossed it at the trunk. The rock thunked into it and broke off a few spines, but the branches never moved. Hmm. Maybe it wasn’t