The Nomad - By Simon Hawke Page 0,64

and we must place ourselves in her hands.”

He swung out through the window. Ryana followed, and they quickly crossed the garden, keeping well away from the main path by the entrance. They reached the wall, and Ryana made a saddle of her hands, giving Sorak a leg up. Once he reached the top of the wall, he held his hand down to her and helped her up. They dropped to the street and quickly lost themselves among the nighttime crowd.

It did not take them long to reach the east gate of the village. Ryana cast a longing glance at the stables as they passed them, thinking how much more comfortable it would have been to ride a kank than go again on foot across miles of hot salt. They had filled their waterskins at a public well on their way out of he village, but with a journey as long as they had ahead of them, Ryana knew that it would not be enough. Fortunately, however, they would be traveling with a pyreen this time. If anyone could find water in the dry wasteland between Salt View and Bodach, Kara could.

There was no sign of Kara at the gate, however. But then Sorak recalled that she had told them to meet her outside the village gate. They went through and stopped to look around, yet the pyreen was nowhere to be seen.

“Now what?” said Ryana, with a worried look. “She said that she would meet us here,” said Sorak. “So? Where is she?”

“She will be here,” Sorak replied confidently. “I certainly hope so,” said Ryana dubiously. “She is pyreen,” said Sorak with conviction. “She would never let down fellow preservers. Especially those who served the Sage. Perhaps we should continue on ahead for a short distance.”

“Only what if she comes after we’ve gone and waits for us by the gate?” Ryana asked.

“A shapeshifter will have no difficulty finding us,” said Sorak. “She will assume we must have gone on.”

“Very well, if you say so,” Ryana replied, but she had her doubts, and the prospect of the long journey ahead, on foot and without a guide, was not a pleasant one.

They started walking down the trail leading away from the village. After a few moments, they became aware of something moving off to their right. They heard the rapid pattering of small paws, and Sorak, with his superior night vision, could make out a creature running on all fours a short distance away, parallel to their course.

“What is it?” asked Ryana.

“A rasclinn,” Sorak said.

“Here?” said Ryana, with surprise. “In the flat-lands?”

“Somehow, I do not think this one is an ordinary rasclinn,” Sorak replied.

And sure enough, the creature trotted ahead of them and crossed their path, then stopped on the trail. A voice in their minds said, “This way. Follow me.”

They left the trail, following the rasclinn as it trotted off into the scrub brush. They had to run to keep after it. After a short while, in addition to the faint sounds made by the rasclinn as it trotted through the desert scrub, heading toward the foot of the lower slopes of the Mekillots, they heard other sounds, as well. Loud, rustling sounds ahead and to their left, in a small grove of pagafa trees.

“What is that strange, rustling noise?” Ryana asked.

Sorak frowned. “I do not know,” he said.

“You don’t think it’s a trap?”

“I cannot believe a pyreen would lead us into a trap,” said Sorak. “She is sworn to the preserver cause.”

The rustling sounds were growing louder as they approached.

“I do not like this, Sorak,” said Ryana apprehensively.

A moment later, Sorak said, “Antloids.”

Ryana stopped. “Antloids?” she said with some alarm.

“There is no need to fear,” he said. “The antloids are our friends, remember?”

She recalled how Screech had once summoned the antloids to help rescue her and Princess Korahna from Torian and his mercenaries, and her apprehension abated somewhat, though it did not disappear entirely. And a moment later, they reached the grove of pagafa trees, where Kara waited for them, having shapeshifted back to her natural form.

In the shelter of the grove, a dozen or more antloids were hard at work, stripping branches from the pagafa trees and bringing them to another group of antloids, who were using their mandibles to weave them together with the thick, strong, fibrous leaves of desert dagger plants, which grew to a height of ten feet or more, with long, wide, blade-shaped leaves up to five or six feet in length. Some of the