Holy Sacrifice

Just before sunrise, the pilgrims buried the Morl with the Knight’s sword and one canteen of water. Only his face was exposed—but it was invisible in the twilight. He looked like any other desert shadow.

“Make sure,” said the Morl, “that dusk is falling when they arrive.”

“May I,” I said, pointing at the Knight’s helmet—all that was left of his shining armor. He had abandoned his breastplate miles back. Several yards away from the Morl, atop a dune, I placed the shining piece of armor. “A beacon,” I said. “So we’ll know when they’re in place. Hopefully they’ll stop when we do.”

“Now,” the Morl said, as the sun began to crawl into the sky. “Leave me.”

***

“Just a little farther,” said the Hunter, looking over her shoulder. “Okay, now.”

I collapsed on the sand. It had not been an easy day. In the distance, a tiny nomad was picking up a gleaming object—the Knight’s helmet, shining orange in the light of the failing sun. Despite my exhaustion, I shouted in triumph as the nomads began to make camp.

“I just wish we could watch,” I said.

“We can,” said the Wizard. “Obviously. It’s called scrying.” When no one answered: “It is a highly technical field of study, but one that I happen to have mastered.” He took out a waterskin. I winced as the Wizard poured water onto the sand. It was gone within seconds, leaving only a hard patch.

The Old Lady, wheezing lightly, said, “I didn’t know you could scry on wet sand.”

“Shows what you know,” said the Wizard. He passed his hands over the wet patch, circling slowly. “You’d be surprised what you can scry with. Those with great skill can even scry with nothing but our minds.”

The patch of sand began to twinkle, as if it were covered in gold dust. I leaned forward, looking into the miniature galaxy of stars. All at once, the twinkling stopped, and eyes blinked up at me. I gasped and jerked backward.

The Wizard gave me a look of infinite disrespect. “You have read a few books and you think you’re educated. Try to keep your pulse down next time.”

Through the patch of sand, I could look down upon the Morl, still buried. The Wizard made a motion with his hand, causing the point of view to rise upward, revealing more and more—a bird’s eye view of the nomad camp. Around the Morl were dark tents and camels. Four feet away were two nomads standing watch. Curved swords hung from their belts.

“It’s a wonder they don’t see him,” said the Singer.

“To them,” said the Wizard, “he is much less visible than he is to us. Scrying often reveals what cannot be seen with the naked eye.”

“But they’re right on top of him,” said the Singer.

“They’ll never know what happened,” said the Knight, grinning.

“He’s not going to kill them,” I said.

Eight sets of eyes turned on me. Only the Fool was smiling.

“I don’t know what he is planning,” I said. “He wouldn’t tell me. But he’s not going to kill them. He’s a priest.”

The Knight cursed. “And you didn’t think to tell us this?”

“I trust him,” I said. My vision swam; I blinked away tears before they could embarrass me in front of the Noble. I hadn’t realized how distraught I really was. “I think he means to…”

The Knight’s face softened. He looked south, into the distance.

“But,” said the Singer, “we never even heard his story.”

The Fool started crying. I wondered how much the deaf man had gathered from the faces around him.

“Look,” said the Wizard, pointing at the sand. “He’s moving.”

Beside the two guards, the Morl climbed out of the sand. They continued talking and looking north—presumably toward the pilgrims. The Morl barely glanced at them as he walked by, passing only a few feet away. Camels eyed him and went back to sleep. Clutching the Knight’s sword, the Morl approached one of the camels and removed its waterskin. After placing the massive container on the ground, he poked a small hole in it, allowing the water to flow out silently into the parched sand. Then, he moved to the next camel, performing the same task. Then, he moved to the next. And the next.

The guards never saw him, facing the opposite direction as precious water was lost. The Morl was meticulous until the end, draining forty-five waterskins completely. He ignored five camels, however, leaving their supply untouched.

“Why doesn’t he do them all?” asked the Singer.

“Because,” I said, “he doesn’t want to kill them. He’s leaving enough for the nomads to retreat, but not enough to keep chasing us.”

The Morl wasn’t finished. He knelt in the sand, shoving the sword into the ground before him. His lips moved silently, face tilted toward the sky. All the while, my stomach grew tighter; I chewed my lip, as the Morl asked the heavens for protection or guidance for whatever he was about to do.

Then, the Morl took hold of a camel’s guide rope. He led the animal near a second camel and tied the rope to its saddle. Next, he tied the second camel’s ropes to a third camel’s saddle, fastening them together in a chain. Camel by camel, the chain grew behind the guards, who were drawing designs in the sand. Ten camels, fifteen, twenty. The Morl was incredible—deft and sure, a born creature of the night. When the chain consisted of thirty camels, one of the guards glanced over his shoulder.

We tensed as we peered into the scrying patch. Thirty camels standing in a line wasn’t exactly a natural occurrence.

One guard turned to the other. They both squinted into the heart of the camp. Then, they stood up and began to approach, swords drawn.

“He sees them,” said the Hunter. The Morl stopped chaining animals together and began leading the first animal out of the camp as quickly as possible. The camels moved sluggishly at first then picked up speed. The guards watched in amazement as camels—seemingly of their own accord—began to trot southward. The Morl jogged at the head of the line, urging them faster and faster. The camels were well trained and used to being led; they reached a trot before the stunned guards could raise an alarm.

The guards shot after the defecting camels. Nomads poured out of their tents, rubbing sleep from their eyes and looking around.

The Morl was sprinting now, pulling the first camel ever faster. The two guards managed to catch up to the line and cut one camel loose. But by then, the camels were at top speed; and the guards were too tired to keep running. The Morl jumped onto the lead camel and rode it southward, offering a prayer of thanks to the sky.

The Wizard moved his hands frantically, trying to keep the Morl in sight of the scrying patch. But soon the twenty-nine camels had disappeared.

“The point of view,” explained the Wizard, panting, “cannot be shifted quickly.”

I sighed and collapsed on the ground, not caring how the sand invaded my ears. The Fool was clapping and laughing. The Singer hugged the Knight and kissed him; he kissed her too, finally succumbing to her endless pressure. I was too relieved to judge.

But after the momentary relief, reality returned, like a persistent shadow. We were still running out of water. The nomads weren’t defeated, despite their loss of twenty-nine camels and most of their water. And the Morl? He was riding south with a chain of camels and hardly an water at all. I gradually began to grieve for the loss of a friend.

***

Sounds of shouting drifted across the dunes from the nomads’ camp and showed no signs of stopping.

“They’ll come after us by morning,” said the Knight. “Some of them at least. The Drymarian nomads can hold grudges for generations.” The Singer clung to his arm and put her head on his shoulder. For the first time, he stroked her hair.

I did my best to ignore them and sat next to the Wizard. “Can you… would you mind… trying to scry for Father Ori again?”

“If you had an inkling about magic, you’d know that you can’t scry if you don’t know where to look.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Besides,” said the Wizard, scratching his beard. “The sun will kill him by noon tomorrow. He hasn’t enough water. You should accept it.” His expression said, This is tough-love, my boy. It’s for your own good. I crawled into my sleeping bag and tried to write. In addition to the events of the day, I tried to write poetry about how some stories could end without warning, how good souls could pass so quickly out of the world. But everything I wrote ended up being crap. So I crumpled up the page and buried it in the sand.

Dear Human, as you might expect, I circled the camels in a wide southward arc, then made my way back north with one of them. By later that night, I had neared the pilgrims’ encampment once again. I sent my camel back southward with a small supply of water and continued the rest of the way on foot. I had decided, in classic morlish fashion, that being invisible might be a tactical advantage. Given that my mission was in large part to determine what was beneath the surface of these pilgrims, I took it as a gift that I could now observe them without being observed.