Camel Malfunction

When the sun rose, the Knight checked, double-checked, and triple-checked the gear the nomads had provided—even though he had done the same before purchasing the supplies. All the packs were of excellent quality. The camels were well-trained and calm. The food was smoked meat—unsalted. The nomads had even provided rolls of soft paper for sanitary purposes and a skin cream to prevent sunburns.

“Use it if you want,” said the Knight, “but I’m not going to. It smells like my camel’s arse. I don’t trust it.”

He checked everyone’s drinking water most carefully. First he smelled it. Then, he ran his fingers along the rims of the waterskins—presumably checking for the telltale residue of certain poisons. He poured some into his hand to assess the clarity. Finally, he tasted it.

“Alright,” said the Knight, “tastes fine. We’re off.”

The Morl rejoined the group, although he kept his distance from the Old Lady, riding twenty feet behind the rest of the pilgrims. After a few hours of the Morl’s voluntary exile, I couldn’t stand it anymore and steered his camel alongside my friend.

Dear Human, I trust that I need not explain my actions to you. I wasn’t sulking. Indeed, I had known who Madam Bela was long before the trip began, having orchestrated her being there in the first place. However, I wished to effect the illusion that I had just discovered her identity. Bela is, after all, a common last name in the South Sea Nations.

It wouldn’t do for the pilgrims to start suspecting that some were here by my design.

“I thought priests were supposed to forgive,” I said.

“She’s not asking for forgiveness,” snapped the Morl. “She won’t ask for it. And it’s not my place to give it. As far as I’m concerned, the two of us have a perfect arrangement. So how the hell do you fit in? We morls have a saying that we tell our younglings: ‘Poking your nose between two boulders is a good way to get your nostrils squashed.’”

“I’ll stop poking my nose where it doesn’t belong if you can give me one good reason why you shouldn’t forgive someone for an accident that occurred fifty-four years ago—because I can give you loads of reasons why you ought to get down off your stupid high horse—not the least of which is that your being up there is making everyone feel really, really awkward. No one is talking. And the Fool has been trying to pull out his hair all day long.”

I assure you Nial said this word-for-word and with a healthy dose of annoying self-righteousness. The fact that I was “making things awkward” was indeed his complaint. This was a moment where I could not help but stare in amazement at Nial, who seemed to be completely out of touch with the violence, racism, and genocide my people have experienced since our arrival in the South Sea Nations.

“One reason?” he said, calmly. “I’ll give you a whole book full of them. You have your pencil and paper ready? Try this. There once was a morl a bit younger than I am now. In your book, you may call him Father Iro. It’s my name backwards. Iro had just been accepted into the priesthood. Does that seem strange? It’s not really. The church takes everyone into its fold. Especially those who represent good financial investments. The Morl Nation represents a vast untapped reserve of worshippers and happens to be the fastest growing economic power in the South Sea Nations. Inducting morl priests is a necessary first step to tapping those resources. They enrolled Father Iro in classes, trained him in the financial matters of running a church business, and shipped him off to a new church on the border of the Morl Nation and Lopesa. It was supposed to be a gateway establishment, a conduit for peaceful relations between the two nations.

“One day, a Lopesan farmer crawled through the door to Iro’s office and groveled, begging for forgiveness. What crime have you committed? Father Iro asked. And the answer was, Murder. Twenty years ago, the farmer had fallen in love with a morlish youngling who found him repulsive and had laughed at his advances. So he had struck her in the face, hard—accidentally driving her nasal bone into her brain. He told me he had buried her in the soil of his farm beneath a black oak tree. This secret had been slowly turning a crank in his mind, clamping down on his sanity little by little each year. He was a shriveled wreck of a man who just wanted a moment of rest, and he begged Father Iro to give it to him. So Father Iro took him into his arms, pressed his head onto his shoulder, and let him sleep there for an hour, perhaps more. It was the first time the man had really slept for years. He became a one of Father Iro’s acolytes, began to live in the church, coming to be known for scrubbing the church floors with such zeal that the stone tiles turned smooth within a year.

“The church loves me, he would say; and I love the church. He died shortly afterward, falling prey to an infection. But at the end of his life, he held Father Iro’s hand and wept as he thanked him again and again, praised Father Iro’s compassion and that of the church, and bequeathed his meager farm unto Father Iro. The priest traveled one night to the black oak tree that the farmer had spoken of and found an unmarked gravestone. It had been a long walk, and Father Iro chose to sleep there, his back against the tree trunk. But when the nightmares came, Iro regretted his decision, waking up screaming. His hands tore into the dirt, grappling with mud, rocks and roots—and finally bones.

“I won’t tell you about the nightmare, but I will tell you that the pit of morl bones Father Iro found beneath the tree was deep. He retrieved every shimmering bone, holding each to the moonlight and placing it reverently on the ground. When Father Iro realized that the skeletal remains had once been morl children, he knew exactly who the man had been. Do you know who this was, Nial? No? Of course not, for the history of the morls is not exactly a hot commodity on the book market. Twenty years ago, there was a man who would kidnap morl younglings from their beds. Children would just disappear, unheard from for a week, and then—after doing who-knows-what to them, the captor would leave a severed head on the doorstep of the child’s house. The Morl Nation’s enforcers couldn’t find any evidence on their side of the border. And the Lopesan police didn’t care to look on theirs. Eventually the murders stopped. And for twenty years people could do nothing but wonder. Here’s a logical exercise for you, Nial. How did Father Iro know that the mass grave he uncovered was created by that same mass murderer from our history books?”

It dawned on me that it was because there were no skulls in the pit, but I choked before I could say it. Father Ori must have seen my sudden comprehension.

“Twenty merit points for you, Sir Nial. If you’re as smart as I think you are, then you know that this story isn’t the only one of its kind. My younger brother was beaten nearly to death as he walked down the streets of Seadom. Two morlish girls in my congregation were stabbed to death by two human boys only three years older than them. On and on and on. I could tell stories for a week. And I’m just one morl. Think of how many libraries the Morl Nation could fill. So even if I could forgive someone for the injuries done to me—that is, the ones recorded in a single chapter of a single book nestled in a remote corner of a library of remembrances—how could I ever forgive someone for the existence of the library itself? And guess what? If there is any one person who can potentially be blamed for everything that’s happened in the last fifty-four years, that person is riding less than twenty feet from you and I. The Madam Bela—the Scourge of Reindel, the Barber of Tanset—we have so many names for her. Of all the human generals during the war, she was their genius. It is a tragic coincidence really. I have been handed an opportunity that most of my people would die for—to be able to kill the woman who started it all. And yet, I am a priest. A man of peace. So just as I cannot pursue any of the beautiful women on this fine journey, I must sit here and burn myself from the inside to the out. However, if you wished to kill her, I promise that I would forgive you for it.”

The conversation ended before I could reply. The Morl’s camel made a sputtering noise, a convulsive jerk, and collapsed. Father Ori rolled across the sand. By the time he had reached his feet, the camel was already dead. I shouted a halt.

***

The pilgrims gathered around the dead animal, which had fallen chest-first into the sand. Its tongue hung out. Its bleeding eyes were wide and still. A fly was already buzzing around.

“Perhaps a snake?” said the Hunter, making me wish I wasn’t standing on the ground.

The Knight examined the body and shook his head. “I don’t see any bites.”

“You wouldn’t see them,” said the Hunter. “Desert sidewinders can be the size of your little finger. Completely deadly. Rare though. And the poison has a delay—no symptoms for a few hours. Then…” She snapped her fingers. “The bite has plenty of time to close.”

Rare though they might be, I climbed back onto my own camel, not trusting the surface of the sand, which, like the ocean, concealed what lurked beneath. The rest of the pilgrims followed suit.

“We’ll load what we can on the other camels,” said the Knight. “Father Ori, you’ll have to double up.”

The Morl climbed behind me while the Knight transferred what he could from the fallen camel’s pack. Within an hour, we were on our way. An hour after that, my camel dropped, sending us both crashing down the slope of a dune. Upon rushing back, we were just in time to watch the camel twitch for the last time and expire.

“Maybe it’s me,” said the Morl.

“Another snake?” demanded the Knight.

The Hunter spread her hands. “It’s possible.”

“Likely?” asked the Knight.

The Hunter said nothing.

“I’ve been across this desert three times,” said the Knight. “I’ve never seen anything like—”

Before he could finish the sentence, another camel toppled. It sputtered, tongue flapping and gathering sand. Like the other two, it died quickly.

“Not likely,” said the Hunter.

Two more camels crashed to the sand. I dove to avoid being crushed. The Noble screamed as one dying beast snapped at her ankle, almost chomping through an expensive silk sock. One by one over the next half hour, like falling trees, the animals thudded to the ground, leaving the ten pilgrims standing amidst a litter of hairy bodies. A chilly evening wind blew through the sand graveyard.

“I don’t understand…” said the Knight.

“Check the water,” said the Hunter.

“I checked the damn water!” said the Knight.

I swallowed, suddenly thirsty.

“Check the camels’ water,” said the Hunter.

Silence fell among the pilgrims as the sun began to set. The Knight cut loose a large waterskin from one of the corpses and removed the thick tube that allowed the camels to drink while walking. He cut away the rubber gasket, sniffed the opening, and peered into the darkness. When he was about to stick his finger inside to check for residue, the Hunter shouted, “Wait! Let me do it.”

The Hunter peered into the waterskin. I watched over her shoulder. Inside: nothing but darkness. It reminded me of peering into the Morl’s bedroom—into the darkness that had concealed a murderer. Slowly, the Hunter poured the water out.

“Don’t waste it,” said the Knight.

The Hunter didn’t listen. She emptied most of the container. A moment later the first snake wriggled out. The Singer gasped. Grimly, the Hunter kept pouring. Three more snakes followed. Their bloated, waterlogged bodies writhed on the wet sand. When they found a dry patch, they burrowed and disappeared. We all took an involuntary step back.

“How did you know?” asked the Noble.

The Hunter said, “How else could they all have the same symptoms? If I were a nomad who wanted to rob ten pilgrims, I might let them get pretty far into the desert, then strand them there. Then, I’d wait for them to grow too weak to fight. If you leave snakes in water long enough, their venom gets mixed into the liquid. Lots of poisons are made that way.”

“Thank you for the exquisite denouement,” said the Wizard. “But how do we get un-stranded?”

Suddenly, we ten pilgrims seemed very isolated in the sea of sand. And as the stars came out, we looked around, wondering where to hide. There was no story that night; we were hardly in the mood. For hours, we sat in an outwardly facing circle, looking across the frozen waves of sand. Which direction would the nomads come from? How many of them would there be?

“This is what they want,” I observed. “For us to lose sleep. To wear ourselves out.”

But no one went to sleep. I wrote through the night. Presently, as I write this, the sun has risen, and we can all see the nomads on the southern horizon, like an approaching line of ants.

Dear Human, you might be suspecting that this is part of my plan. But you would only be half-right. Morlish operatives had indeed met with the nomads months before, securing their support with large sums of gold. Something must have gotten garbled in translation, or perhaps the nomads decided to extract additional value from the situation. The instructions were to sabotage five of the camels, just enough to make the journey slower, buying me more time to complete my mission. It was important to arrive at the shrine at the precise moment, just as my fellow morls made their moves across the South Sea Nations. The game we were playing was complex. When I saw the last camel drop to the sand, I knew improvisations would need to begin.