Chapter Three

Zyran woke up. He felt a horrible surge of panic when he couldn’t hear the Song before he remembered what had happened.

It surprised him. He honestly hadn’t expected to wake up after losing consciousness. The thought frightened him, that he had accepted the limitations of being mortal so easily that he truly believed he could die. But he did appear to be mortal.

He suddenly realized that following that line of thought, his continued existence made no sense whatsoever. He had a hole near the center of his thoracic cavity and a smaller, but still devastating, wound in his abdomen. That would kill a mortal. But he wasn’t dead. Was he then not a mortal?

He opened his eyes. He was still lying on his back in the desert. But the sky was lighter. If this world was anything like those he had been to in the past, dawn was approaching. A warm breeze shifted the sand around him. Smoke drifted with it. He turned his head and saw his night’s work. Dead animals were everywhere. Their structures were blasted to smithereens, scattered among the rocks. A few small fires still burned lazily.

He was surprised to discover that moving wasn’t particularly painful. Rather than localized pain, he found that he was simply remarkably sore all over. He cautiously lifted himself to a sitting position. It did hurt, but not terribly, nothing like the world-ending nightmare of the night before.

There was no blood.

That seemed impossible, so he looked around again. There was no blood in his immediate vicinity. There was blood around the mortal corpses, but the pool where he had fallen was gone. The sand was dry as bone. The only sign of blood was the line of rusty brown underneath each of his fingernails.

He looked down at himself and flinched. There was a great gray spider the size of his hand sitting on his chest. He was about to flick it away when he realized that it was flat. And it didn’t really resemble a spider that much. It was a scar. A strangely shaped scar, roughly circular with numerous grooves branching out from it. It was shiny, like a burn. There was another one on his stomach, a much smaller straight line, but with the same strange furrows. Zyran poked experimentally at the one where the gaping hole in his chest had been and nearly dropped back to the sand. It hurt. It burned, burned like fire.

But the pain passed quickly, and Zyran was just starting to examine his surroundings again when something touched him from behind. He spun, his hands rising to throw fire before he remembered that he couldn’t.

But it was only the sakiru. It was floating close to the ground, its long fins motionless, its tail drooping. As he watched, it sank down onto the sand and simply lay there, apparently utterly spent. He reached out and touched it cautiously. It fluttered its dorsal fin weakly.

Zyran couldn’t see any other solution. There was nothing else in the vicinity, and sakiru were nearly mythical on most worlds, even so far as to be revered as gods in their original realm. It was certainly possible that they had healing powers. Zyran had never made much study of the various types of fairies. In retrospect, that had been a serious error. Of course, he had also expected to have plenty of time to learn more.

“You saved my life,” he said.

The sakiru wiggled its left fin. Zyran thought that was rather odd, as its left fin was pinned underneath its body in a position that must have made moving it uncomfortable. But sakiru can’t communicate, either verbally or telepathically...

He glanced upward. “The sky is blue.”

The sakiru wiggled its left fin again.

“Issimil is the Lord of the Song.”

Left fin.

“Mortals cannot die.”

Right fin.

“We are still in the Hollow.”

Right fin.

That seemed clear enough. He picked it up gently and held it in his lap. It was surprisingly heavy for a creature that appeared to be made out of orange light. It felt like…mist made solid. He couldn’t have said what temperature it was, only that it felt pleasant against his skin. “Do you know where we are?”

The sakiru was motionless for a few seconds. Then it slowly raised its head and looked around. It gestured toward the sand. Zyran scooped up a handful and held it close. The fish-fairy sank its fins into the sand. It burrowed around in it for a while before withdrawing its fins and wiggling the left one.

“Is there anywhere nearby where I could find someone to make a portal and take me back to the Hollow?” Right fin. Zyran’s heart sank. “Anywhere on this world at all?” Left fin. “Can you take me there?” Left fin.

Zyran got to his feet a little unsteadily, the sakiru in his arms. He wasn’t sure what he would do when he got back to the Hollow. If he had really been relieved of service, Death could easily just send him back, or even punish him. But no, of course not. Surely he would be rewarded for his loyalty. Besides, Death had only fired him to appease Issimil. Yes, he would be restored to his position. He was sure of it. All he had to do was get there.

Of course, there was the question of his safety. It seemed to be safe to assume that this world was populated largely by mortals. Unless there was some kind of mortal he wasn’t aware of that had blue-gray skin and no mouth, he was going to stand out, and his robe probably didn’t do much to help. If he had been immortal, that wouldn’t have been a problem in the slightest. Even if he could just get the Song back, he probably would have been all right. It was amazing what a deterrent turning into a walking column of fire could be. But now he had nothing to fall back on, no trump card to throw in a mortal’s face should they best him by normal methods. If he intended to make it back to the Hollow, he was going to need to blend in.

The least damaged clothes he could find belonged to the cultist that had hit him with the spear. He removed its—her, he needed to use the proper pronouns if he spoke with anyone; mortals tended to be obsessive about that sort of thing—long coat-like robe and loose tunic. He found her veil nearby. They were all such a dark red that they were nearly black. He was reluctant to discard his own robe, so he left her pants behind. When he removed her thick knotted belt, he discovered that it wasn’t a belt. It was a seven-foot leather pouch. It could only be for one thing.

He found the strange bladed staff that the mortal had tried to stab him with, scraped off the sand and dried blood, put it in its sheath, and slung it over his shoulder with its convenient strap. Interesting concept, straps.

Unfortunately, the mortal’s soft, tightly wrapped boots didn’t fit him. He had to scavenge a number of corpses before he found a pair that did. He was surprised at how many of the cultists were female. He had always been under the impression that mortals were rabid over gender roles. Apparently not. Or maybe that was just a cult thing.

But more importantly, the corpses were all animals, all broad of face and round of ear, with skin in varying shades of browns and pinks, and with hair on their heads. He considered that they might have altered themselves with the Song to appear more frightening to their kin. That was a possibility, if far-fetched. Still, they vaguely disturbed him. Animals did not talk. Well, he supposed it didn’t matter very much. Sapient mortals, animal mortals…little difference, really. They all died the same, and none of them were people.

Zyran discovered a bag in the ruins of a tent. When he had fastened it to a belt he found on another cultist and convinced the sakiru to sit inside it, he found himself looking very mortal. He pushed his revulsion away. At least he looked like a Fey, not an animal. And it was just for the duration of his task.

That brought on another thought, one that cheered him up considerably. What if this was all actually a test? He knew that servants of Death were all at some point given a task that catered to their specific weaknesses in order to ensure that they could overcome them. He had thought that that usually occurred much later, but still. What if this horror was his? The more he thought about it, the more certain he became. Yes, it was true. Death hadn’t abandoned him at all. It was simply a test, a measurement. Yes. He would return to the Hollow, Death would reward him by returning his immortality, and he could go on serving his lord.

Feeling much better about the situation, he opened the bag. “Can you point me in the direction I need to go?” The sakiru dragged itself laboriously up the side of the bag to peer over the top, waved a fin in the direction of the distant mountains, then collapsed back to the bottom of the bag. Zyran closed the flap carefully and began walking.

Eight hours later, the mountains didn’t look half as close as Zyran would have liked. Going up and down dunes was astonishingly tiring. He tried following the crests for a while, but it wasn’t much better. Then he tried following the valleys between the dunes, but he kept losing his sense of direction. It was infuriating. There just didn’t seem to be any good way to progress.

In addition, the sun had risen and traversed much of the sky. It was miserably hot, and Zyran lacked the ability to sweat, which was a cooling mechanism common to many mortal species, sentient and otherwise. His dark robes only magnified the heat.

He didn’t know whether he was capable of overheating. He hadn’t been while he was immortal, as far as he was aware. He had never felt any of the effects, such as disorientation or seizures. But that could just have been his body mending itself whenever he reached dangerous temperatures. He wished fervently that he knew more about his own physiology. He knew that he was in many ways similar to Mondralians, which he knew plenty about, but there were enough differences, such as the absence of the need for nourishment, or even for hydration, that he could only guess at what his particular requirements might be.

That brought another worrisome thought. He had a digestive system. He had always assumed that it was simply vestigial, nonfunctional and unnecessary, but now that he considered it, most of the differences between himself and mortals could be explained by his healing. If he needed to eat or drink, he had no way of doing so. He could cut open the Veil, he supposed, but he wasn’t sure how much of his digestive system was operational. He might not have any way to survive as a mortal.

Well, there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He didn’t have any signs of overheating that he could discern, nor did he feel any signs of requiring food or water. The lack of sweating did help drastically with water conservation if he needed to worry about it, he supposed. In the meantime, the only thing to do was to keep slogging.

He walked through the night. When the sky began to light up to his left and he felt no particular exhaustion, he took it as a sign that he at least had no need of sleep, the state of muscle relaxation and mental near-shutdown that was regulated by mortals’ circadian clocks. That was convenient, especially combined with his excellent night vision. He could walk twice as far in a day as a mortal.

He supposed he now had to count himself as a mortal, a fact that disgusted him. He had lived for over three hundred years. He was a ridiculously young immortal, but he was far older than most species of mortal could ever hope to live. He hated comparing himself to those juvenile creatures. At least he wasn’t an animal, however similar his facial structure might be to the ones he had slain. With his blue-gray skin, he looked more like a Mondralian, really. A proud people, with a long and storied history. He could try to pass as one of them. Then he remembered that his ears were round underneath the Veil. And his eyes were blank white, without iris or pupil, not the rich crimson of Mondralians.

He stopped in his tracks. The animals. They have round ears. They have faces like mine. He shook his head and began walking again. Stupid. It was highly unlikely that a connection existed. Highly unlikely. He was not related to animals. He had been created by Death herself. She would never model him after an animal.

Although the animals of this region would probably have a very good way of getting around in the desert. Their short life spans allowed for rapid and highly specific evolution, often in symbiosis with other animals. He was speculating on how they might travel across the unforgiving landscape when he saw it.

It was a big, catlike creature, perched on top of the dune in front of him. It had four legs and a long tail and was built very slimly and gracefully, with the exception of its massive paws. It had short, thick fur and a long, streamlined head with large eyes and long lashes. It watched Zyran impassively, its considerable ears constantly swiveling. As he came closer, it stood up, unfolding its long legs. When he was halfway up the dune, it pinned its ears flat behind its head and widened its eyes. Zyran wasn’t sure what that meant in desert-cat-creature body language, but he suspected it wasn’t anything good. He was considering going over to the next dune to avoid getting too close to it when another one crested the dune. This one had some sort of saddle and a tan-robed rider on its back.

Zyran froze. The mortal watched him for a while.

“Who are you?” it said finally. Zyran thought it was female, but it was hard to tell by voice.

“My name is Zyran,” he said. He honestly wasn’t sure what else he was going to say, but he was spared the need when the creature without a rider gave an ululating shriek, making both Zyran and the mortal jump. The mortal shaded her eyes with a dark hand and gazed into the distance behind Zyran while the beasts milled restlessly. Zyran saw her eyes widen. She glanced at him and hesitated for an instant before screaming, “Tenzen! Run!”

He obeyed and charged up the hill toward the trio, now completely confused. The beast with the rider was now raising its front legs into the air repeatedly, an action that Zyran believed was called “rearing” in other transportation animals. The mortal appeared to be struggling to maintain control of it. The other beast was contenting itself with pawing frantically at the sand. When Zyran reached the top of the hill, the beast dropped into a sitting position.

“What are you waiting for?!” the mortal cried. “Tenzen! Get on!” Zyran obeyed her again, awkwardly mounting the beast. The instant he touched its back, it lunged down the dune in the direction Zyran had been going. The other rider was next to him, her larger beast slowly outpacing his.

It was like nothing Zyran had ever experienced before. The creatures moved in massive leaping bounds, their spines bending and straightening with each stride. They crossed sand effortlessly, their huge feet keeping them from sinking into it. They covered ground much faster than Zyran could run.

They were also astonishingly uncomfortable. Within seconds Zyran was wishing fervently that he had taken the cultist’s pants. The creature’s strange stride was the reason it moved so quickly, but the amount of bending the spine did also meant that there was a very small space that Zyran could sit on comfortably, and he was thrown off balance so much that he never seemed to spend more than an instant there. It was all he could do to grip the creature’s neck and not fall off. It didn’t help that the steep dunes meant that the creature was constantly changing angles.

The other rider rode the transitions effortlessly, perched just behind her beast’s shoulders in that comfortable spot. She hardly seemed to move.

“What are we doing?” Zyran called to her. She didn’t respond.

Zyran summoned up the courage to shift position so that he could look behind them. In pursuit was a group of about a dozen small, four-legged reptiles. They were a yellowish brown color, their scales blending almost perfectly into the sand. They seemed to skip over the surface, easily keeping pace with the mount-beasts. They had large golden eyes with round pupils. Zyran was surprised. He had expected something very large with sharp teeth, not a pack of creatures that were actually quite cute.

Then one of them opened its mouth—which turned out to be impossibly wide and overflowing with long needle-fangs—and let out a high-pitched cry. The rest of the reptiles responded, opening gaping jaws and building the cry into a screeching roar that made Zyran’s blood run cold. He turned his head back around and pressed himself lower against his mount-beast.

They were falling behind. The smaller rider on the larger beast was now rapidly pulling away from them. When she was a full dune ahead, Zyran stole a glance at the reptiles.

To his horror, they were now snapping at the heels of his mount-beast. He urged the creature on, but it was clearly doing all it could. It was panting hard, its sides soaked with sweat. Then, as it reached the crest of a dune, it tripped, sending Zyran flying.

As he rolled down the other side, the bladed staff thumping him painfully, he heard an earsplitting shriek. The mount-beast was being torn apart, swarmed by the reptiles. He didn’t dare pause for a look, but got his feet under him as quickly as he could and started scrambling up the next dune.

To his surprise, the larger beast exploded over the dune’s crest in a burst of sand. It skidded to a halt by him, and the rider snatched him by the shirt and pulled him onto the beast behind the saddle. He grabbed her shoulders and held tightly with his legs, and they were off again, the beast’s breathing now quite labored.

“What are those?” Zyran coughed into the rider’s robe. He had inhaled a lot of sand when he fell, despite the veil.

The rider turned her head to give him an odd look. “You never see a tenzen?”

“I am a stranger here.”

“Now you know,” the rider snapped, bending low over her mount’s neck. Zyran copied her awkwardly, nearly falling off. “They eat everything. But they won’t cross into another pack’s territory. So we run.”

Zyran didn’t know how large tenzen territories were, but the reptiles had apparently finished the first beast in a matter of seconds and were rapidly gaining on them again. He estimated they had twenty to thirty seconds before the tenzen caught them.

The rider was whispering things to her mount, apparently egging it on, but it was slowing. Its paws were dragging a little, kicking up more sand than before. Zyran glanced behind them, hoping that the tenzen would be slowed from their meal, and was forced instead to shave ten seconds off of his original approximation. The reptiles were nearly on them once again. He watched with horror as they flew across the sand, quickly drawing almost level with the beast’s long tail. He pulled his legs up a little, trying to keep them out of reach.

A tenzen snapped at the mount-beast’s tail. The beast let out a terrified yelp and flicked its tail away, but more were on either side. It gave a desperate lunge that carried its passengers across the top of a dune and halfway down the other side, stumbled, and slid down the rest of the way. It never lost its footing, but the mistake cost a vital instant.

A tenzen locked its jaws around the leg of the rider and yanked her off the beast. Zyran, who had been clinging to her tightly, lost his grip and nearly fell. He threw his arms around the beast’s neck instead. The beast skidded to a halt and made to turn around.

“No!” the rider screamed. Three tenzen had already eaten one of her legs. “No, Fejyat, run, run—“ She was cut off by a many-toothed mouth catching hold of her jaw and tearing.

The beast hesitated for a split second, then spun so quickly that Zyran really did fall off. It lunged back down the dune and hit one of the tenzen with all of its weight, its long jaws snapping in every direction. Zyran watched for a moment, saw the tenzen gnaw off the beast’s left rear leg, and ran.

There was shrieking behind him. He didn’t know when it stopped. He was too busy trying to move faster. The horrible sand kept tripping him up, slowing him down. He half ran, half crawled over dunes.

He didn’t know how far he went before he felt something catch his robe. He shrugged it off instantly and kept going, screeches ringing in his ears. More teeth caught a boot, and he kicked fiercely. The boot came off, and the sand burned his bare foot. He didn’t have time to care. Nothing mattered but moving forward. The tenzen took his other boot. He kept going, terror coordinating his movements. A hundred tiny fangs clamped down on his right arm. He pulled. It hurts. Something tore loose and he threw himself forward in desperation, falling down a dune.

He covered a good deal of space on his stomach before he realized that it had stopped.

He rolled over and looked back up at the top of the dune. The tenzen were gathered there, snarling and hissing, as if an invisible wall had sprung up. One was snuffling at a spot of blood from Zyran’s arm, its nostrils flaring.

Zyran let his head drop back the sand with a groan. He had made it to the next pack’s territory. One mortal had spotted him, and she wouldn’t be spreading word of a mouthless creature walking the desert. He felt a strange twinge at the thought. He didn’t recognize the sensation, but it was unpleasant. He almost wished the mortal had lived. Then he could have at least gotten information. As it was he knew two new things: the mortals of the desert got around on large, uncomfortable, very loyal furry creatures, and they were preyed upon by ravenous knee-high reptiles called tenzen.

It suddenly struck Zyran that it was very odd that he had understood the rider. He was used to understanding everything that was said to him, no matter where the speaker was from, because part of the deep understanding that came with the Song why is it gone was the ability to make sense of any language. The Song was essentially a form of communication, albeit one based upon the elements, and all sentient beings drew words from it, knowingly or not.

But now that he was cut off from the Song, mortal languages should have been incomprehensible, as he only knew spirit tongues. The rider must not have been speaking a mortal language, which was nearly impossible. Mortal contact with the spirit worlds was minimal, and usually accidental. Zyran tried to focus on what the rider had actually said, not just the meaning he had gotten from it. He was unable to place the words. Content with the Song, he had never bothered with any form of language study, and had paid no attention to which words belonged to which language. Yet another question to add to his list of things to ask Death when he made it back to the Hollow.

His arm interrupted his musing. It was painful. Nothing to the earth-shattering agony of two nights ago, but still very unpleasant. He sat up and examined it. The tenzen hadn’t actually managed to remove much flesh, which he supposed was lucky. It had shredded much of his bicep, though, which resulted in a loss of control. He tried flexing it in an attempt to assess the damage and howled in pain. He let it drop back to his side and waited for the pain to fade. It did, very slowly. After a few minutes, it was back to its previous state of sharp throbbing.

He tore off that sleeve of his tunic with his left arm and tied a makeshift bandage. It was only when he stood up and the bandage slid down that he became aware that he had tied it very loosely. I am already learning to avoid pain. His anger at the realization made it easy for him to grab one end of the knot and yank. He swallowed the scream this time. He was only a mortal temporarily. It was no excuse to become a weak, noisy thing like them. Even if it did burn please stop please. He did his best to ignore the pain and opened up the bag, which had miraculously remained on him, along with the bladed staff.

The sakiru gazed out at him from the bottom. It didn’t seem to have cheered up at all. It remained huddled there, making no attempt to move.

“Can you heal my arm at all?” Zyran asked it.

The sakiru wiggled its right fin.

Zyran sighed and closed the bag. He had expected that. The sakiru appeared to have spent a considerable amount of energy mending the wounds that had nearly killed him. It was doubtful that it would recover anytime soon.

He climbed up to the top of a dune, doing his best to ignore the growls and snarls of the tenzen pack on the dune behind him, which apparently hadn’t given up hope. The mountains looked substantially closer. He ignored the pain from his arm and bare feet and started walking.