The Nomad - By Simon Hawke Page 0,12
slender and her breasts were full and upturned, supported by a thin leather halter. The young woman had sandals on her well-shaped, graceful feet, and she wore barely enough for modesty—a brief, diagonally cut wraparound that scarcely came down to her upper thighs, with nothing but a cloak to protect her from the desert chill. She had the aspect of a slave girl, but it didn’t look as if she had ever performed any sort of demanding physical labor.
“Please…” she said. “Please, I beg you, can you help me?”
“Who are you?” asked the Guardian. “Where did you come from?”
“I am Teela,” said the girl. “I was taken from a slave caravan by the marauders, but I escaped them and have been wandering this forsaken plain for days. I am so tired, and I thirst. Can’t you please help me?” She stood in a seductive pose, calculated to display her lush body to its best advantage, completely oblivious of the fact that it was a female she was addressing. What she saw was Sorak, not the Guardian, and it was clear she was appealing to his male instincts.
The Guardian immediately became suspicious. The effect such a beautiful and apparently vulnerable young woman would have had on a male was indisputable, but the Guardian was immune to her obvious charms, and her protective instincts were aroused, instincts that were protective not of the vulnerable-seeming girl, but of the Tribe.
“You do not look as if you have been traveling on foot for days,” she said with Sorak’s voice.
“Perhaps only a day or two, I do not know. I have lost all track of time. I am at my wit’s end. I have been lost, and I could not find any trail. It is a miracle I have encountered you. Surely you will not turn away a young girl in distress? I would do anything to show my gratitude.” She paused, significantly. “Anything,” she said again, in a low voice. She started to come closer.
“Stay where you are,” the Guardian said. The young girl kept coming forward, placing one foot directly in front of the other, so that her hips would sway provocatively. “I have been alone so long,” she said, “and I had lost all hope. I was sure that I would die out here in this terrible place. And now, providence has sent a handsome, strong protector…”
“Stop!” the Guardian said. “Do not come any closer.”
Ryana stirred slightly.
The young woman kept on coming. She was only about ten feet away now. She held out her arms, spreading her cloak wide in the process and revealing her lovely figure. “I know you will not turn me away,” she said in a breathy voice that was full of promise. “Your companion is sound asleep, and if we are quiet, we need not disturb her…”
“Ranger!” said the Guardian, speaking internally and slipping back, allowing the Ranger to the fore. Immediately, Sorak’s posture changed. He stood up straighter, shoulders back, and his body tensed, though outwardly he looked relaxed. As the young woman kept on coming, the Ranger’s hand swept down to the knife sheathed at his belt. He quickly drew the blade and, in one smooth motion, hurled it at the advancing woman.
It passed right through her.
With an angry hiss, the young woman lunged at him suddenly, and as she did so, her form blurred and became indistinct. The Ranger adroitly sidestepped as she leapt, and she fell onto the ground.
When she got back up, she was no longer a beautiful young woman. The illusion of the scanty clothing that she wore had disappeared, and the warm, pale tone of her flesh had gone a milky white with shimmering highlights. She no longer had long thick black hair, but a shifting mane of salt crystals, and her facial features had disappeared. Two indentations marked where her eyes had been, a slight ridge where there should have been a nose, and a gaping, lipless travesty of a mouth that opened wide, with a sifting dribble of salt crystals, like sands running through an hourglass.
Sorak awoke and beheld the sand bride, a creature he had only read about before. Like the blasted landscape of the planet, the creature was a result of unchecked defiler magic. A powerful defiler spell that drained the life energy from everything in its vicinity could, at times, open a rift to the negative material plane, and a creature like the sand bride could slip through. No one knew exactly what they were, but