Down a Lost Road (10 page)

Chapter 7 – Akhmar

I trudged in silence behind Yatol, caught up
in my own rambling thoughts. I had long since lost track of the
time, and nothing around me ever seemed to change to remind me of
the distance we had come. I only saw the sand swirling in pathetic
clouds around my feet, settling quickly to the ground in the dead
still air. Yatol kept up a brisk pace, only occasionally glancing
back to make sure I wasn’t lagging too far behind.

My sandal tapped on a piece of parched
earth. What happened to the sand? I stared around in surprise. Took
another step forward. And where I’d expected more solid ground, my
leg sank to the knee in a shifting pit of…yep. Sand. Fantastic.

I tugged violently at my leg. I couldn’t
move it at all. Yatol walked on, oblivious. He was going to keep
going, and I would be stuck here forever. Maybe there were
scorpions. Or snakes. I could feel beady eyes watching me already,
waiting for Yatol to disappear so they could snack on me. But I
couldn’t call for help. Couldn’t let him see me thrashing around
like a frog in quicksand. I gave my leg one final yank. It released
so suddenly that I fell to hands and knees, blinking and coughing
while a film of dust settled on my face. I must have looked
absolutely pathetic when Yatol suddenly swung around.

“
I forgot to mention it,
but watch out for the sand pits.”

He turned, but not quickly enough to hide
the silent laughter on his lips. I glowered at his back. Okay. I
probably looked pretty ridiculous, no thanks to him. I grinned as I
trailed after him, hopping from plate to solid plate.

A few minutes later and all my good humor
squelched in dull irritation. I was sick of walking. Sick of
sand.

I swear I’ll never go to another beach as
long as I live.

Thirst gave me a splintering headache, but I
could hardly force myself to drink the tasteless water from my
waterskin. The tepid liquid made my stomach knot in disgust. And
after a while I realized a rough abrasion was forming on my foot
under the sandal straps. It burned like crazy, like a hundred pins
were jabbing and tearing my skin. Yatol turned back once more, but
I couldn’t tell if he watched me long enough to see me limping
along. At any rate, he didn’t seem worried enough to slow down. For
a while it even felt like he had sped up the pace.

Somehow I forced myself to keep going. I’m
sure things could have gotten much worse, but when I glanced up to
make sure I hadn’t lagged too far behind, I found Yatol waiting for
me on top of a mound of dark clay – a big heap of clay, right in
the middle of flat nowhere. And Yatol just sat there carelessly, as
if he’d been there for hours, arms crossed and mouth twitched
upward in the strangest expression of amusement.

“
Come on up, Merelin!” he
called down to me. “We can’t wait around till
nightfall.”

“
Ouch,” I yelped. I
stumbled up and scrabbled vainly at the mound with useless bandaged
fingers, muttering, “Is that the royal ‘we,’ Yatol?”

I didn’t hear an answer.

“
What are you
doing
up there?”

“
Waiting for
you.”

I grumbled and made a few attempts at
climbing up. No luck. Every outcropping of mud I tried to grasp
crumbled under my hold, every patch of rough dirt turned slick and
smooth under my feet. After the fifth failure, I stepped back and
gazed up at Yatol, shading my eyes.

“
So, why can’t I just walk
around it? I can’t get up.”

“
I need you up
here.”

I let out my breath in exasperation. “You’re
crazy! How did
you
get up there? Mind lending me a
hand?”

“
You’re taking it for
granted. It will never help you if you take it for
granted.”

“
All right, you really are
crazy. You talk like it can think and feel. It’s just
mud!”

This time I could hear Yatol laugh. I had
never heard him laugh like that, deep and rippling like a bell.
Then I realized it wasn’t Yatol’s voice at all. I leapt back.

“
Who did that?”

“
He did.”

“
He?”

Using the word for impetus I jumped to catch
a handhold, and found myself sprawled across the broad back of an
enormous fire-hued creature. I lurched upright, then sat absolutely
frozen, staring wide-eyed at Yatol. Cautiously, I let my gaze drift
down to the silky crimson mane, then I got nervous again and looked
back at Yatol. He was laughing now, as I kept staring from him to
the creature in disbelief.

“
But…but…” I stammered
idiotically, and couldn’t think of anything to say.

“
We’re ready now, Akhmar,”
Yatol said, swinging his leg over the creature’s neck to sit
astride.

“
Ready for wh—”

Akhmar stirred, and in two strides had leapt
into a gallop. Dizzyingly fast. I instinctively clamped my legs
against the thing’s flanks and closed my eyes, only to open them
again and find myself clinging frantically to Yatol. I jerked my
hands away from his torso, terrified of aggravating his wounds, but
I had to keep hold of his shirt.

“
Yatol,” I said suddenly.
“You spoke English to him.”

He grinned at me over his shoulder. “Do you
really think I know your language that well?”

“
What do you
mean?”

“
You didn’t know? You’ve
been speaking the language of Arah Byen since you
returned.”

“
I
what
?”

The bell-like laugh rang out again – it was
like the sound of pure joy.

“
But when…but how did I
learn?”

“
I don’t know,” Yatol said.
“Maybe you always knew it. Sometimes strange things like that
happen here. Believe me, this isn’t the strangest.”

“
Does Akhmar
talk?”

“
Of course,” came a
beautiful voice.

I couldn’t say anything else. I thought,
though. But then I realized I was more interested in finding out
what language I was thinking in than the actual thoughts. I
couldn’t tell. It all seemed the same. The idea made my head spin,
as much as the sight of the ground flying past beneath Akhmar’s
huge paws.

The landscape blurred past, all the same –
sandy dunes with the occasional broad plateau of cracked mud
marching out toward the horizon. For a while I gazed around
ceaselessly, in the constant expectation that something new would
appear. But nothing changed, and the dazzling brightness of the
sand wearied my eyes. I closed them at last, to soothe the burning.
I felt the gentle rolling motion of Akhmar’s pace, heard the
constant thud of his paws on the baked earth, saw the land
unchanging around us whenever I opened my eyes. It was the perfect
soporific.

I woke under the shade of a fern-like plant.
At first I couldn’t remember where I was, or how I had gotten
there, but then I remembered Akhmar and realized I must have fallen
asleep while we rode. It amazed me that I hadn’t tumbled off and
killed myself.

I tilted my head and found Yatol sitting
cross-legged by a little pool of water, talking to Akhmar. For the
first time I could actually see the beautiful creature’s face, but
it was his eyes that gripped me the most. Even across the distance
they seemed so clear, deep-hued gold with flecks of radiant light,
calm and infinite, piercing.

He was gazing full at me through those eyes.
“Our friend has woken,” he said.

At the sound of his voice, a strange deep
peace flooded through me, and I wandered over to sit near them.

“
How long did I
sleep?”

“
Almost half the day,”
Yatol said.

“
That long?”

“
You needed the
rest.”

I glanced again at Akhmar. His lucid gold
eyes now fixed on something far in the distance, something too
remote for either of us to see. In the dying daylight his crimson
coat seemed to be on fire. I couldn’t say if he were winged – there
were certainly no physical wings you could touch or see distinctly.
But arching over his back were the faintest glimmers of light like
flames, which would have been almost invisible unless you thought
to look for them. And his face, so beautiful, almost human but
somehow so ethereal, so terrible even, that it didn’t seem human at
all. I just wanted to gaze at him, but the feeling was somehow
frightening. I stared at the quiet pool of water instead.

Presently Akhmar stood, raking his huge paws
on the dusty earth.

“
Wait here,” he said. “I
will return soon.”

And just like that he left us, bounding away
with long, powerful strides. Part of me longed to run after him.
But I didn’t move, or couldn’t, and soon Akhmar had vanished. After
a while Yatol got up, dragging down the low-hanging branch of a
nearby tree and plucking a few pieces of fruit from it. He tossed
one to me, and bit into his just like an apple.

“
What, you’re not going to
cook for me?” I teased.

He canted his head to spear me a withering
look, then I could have sworn he rolled his eyes as he glanced
away. The fruit he held at his lips didn’t succeed in hiding his
smile, though. I grinned and sank my teeth into the piece of fruit.
My inner voice worried that if this was all we were going to have
for dinner, I was in trouble. Still, it tasted delicious, subtly
sweet like papaya, juicy like a nectarine. And for the moment, at
least, it settled the hunger pangs in my stomach.

“
Where’d Akhmar go?” I
asked presently.

Yatol lifted his face to the red sky, his
eyes flickering. I shivered. In that light, with those brilliant
eyes of his, his face seemed almost like a diminished echo of
Akhmar’s.

“
He’ll be back.”

Not exactly an answer, but hey, it was
something.

I took a few long sips of water from the
pool – it was cold and perfectly clear, and so much more
drinkable
than the lukewarm stuff from my waterskin. My
instinct was to gorge myself on it, but I knew enough to resist the
urge. I drank a few more sips, and then returned to the
broad-leafed plant. It reminded me of those giant elephant-ear
shrubs my mom grew on Earth – I shuddered involuntarily – but its
leaves were a pure, marbled gold. I laid down and gazed up through
its fronds at the darkening sky, while a gentle breath of wind
fanned my sore and burning face.

“
I’ve never seen any clouds
here,” I said. “Does it ever rain?”

“
It rains, of course,” said
Yatol, leaning back against the trunk of a squat silver tree. “Not
often here in the desert. More often it just gets scorching winds
and these long months of dry heat.”

“
Is it always this
hot?”

I shot a glance at him, half-afraid of
annoying him with my questions. A wicked little part of me
wanted
to annoy him. But he didn’t seem perturbed. He smiled
a little, closing his eyes and tipping his head back, and I figured
that was as much of an answer as I could hope for.

But then he said, “No.”

I might die of shock
. I waited for
some elaboration, but that was it. I made a face.

“
So…does it get
cold?”

“
No.”

I groaned audibly, smacking my forehead.
Then I heard a quiet sound and propped myself on my elbows to stare
at him. “Yatol, are you laughing at me?”

There was the slightest pause, then his
voice drifted over to me, “Yes.”

Grinning idiotically, I flopped back onto
the ground. I tilted my head and gazed slowly from one side of the
sky to the other. The dim sun still lingered by the horizon no
higher than I had first seen it that morning. I finally realized
that the subtle darkness shadowing the world wasn’t night at all,
but like a veil over the bright sky so that the creatures of Arah
Byen could sleep. I thought I saw one of the moons on the far
horizon, then realized it was Akhmar still gleaming as though on
fire, returning from wherever he had gone.

“
Look,” I said. “Akhmar is
coming back.”

Yatol made some noise of affirmation but
said nothing.

“
Yatol, what is
he?”

I tried to guess what Yatol would say – if
anything. I thought maybe some mythical creature, like a sphinx or
manticore, but I’d always thought manticores would look vicious.
Akhmar was anything but frightening, at least not in the horrific
kind of way.

“
He is one of the
Powers.”

I jolted upright. “He’s a
what?
”

“
He is one of the
Brethren.”

They’re real
. An icy tingling washed
over me, and I found myself shivering. I turned my gaze back to
Akhmar, as though seeing him for the first time. He was far more
formidable and beautiful than I could ever have imagined while on
Earth – this time the idea didn’t make me shudder. I felt giddy
with the strangest jumbled sensation of joy and wonder and
admiration.

“
Does he always appear as
a…what do you call that? A sphinx?”

“
Sphinx? I’ve never heard
of it. We call that form a
shedim
. It’s his chosen aspect
here.”

“
Only here?”

He said nothing.

“
So, why did he look like
that mound of dirt earlier?”

Yatol laughed. “No reason, really. You
would’ve been able to see him like this from the start, but I
thought it might be too shocking to see all at once. He often hides
that way when he comes among us, and the people who can’t see the
Brethren would see only dirt, or stones, and never know the
difference.”