Onslaught

CHAPTER SIX: VISION'S FUGITIVE

Sun struck the sand like a mallet on a drum, continuous and thundering. Wind roamed the dunes, tearing apart anything it found.

It found Ixidor. As he trudged, grit gnawed his sandals to strips and heat blistered his feet until the water within boiled. His burnt brow was scaled with salt, and his muscles were so dry they rasped in his skin. Instead of eyes, he had dead hunks of glass in his skull.

He had lost the one thing worth looking at: Nivea.

She appeared as she had throughout a day and a night and a day-white and gleaming, with arms wide open. She was not in that burning desert. Nivea stood beyond the sands, her feet grounded amid grass. She stood in a beautiful place, and she invited him to join her.

Ixidor clambered toward the vision, but she retreated, her eyes clouding.

Don't weep, my sweet, he said, though his breath made no sound in his dry throat. Don't weep for me. I will join you. I will run across this desert and catch you and join you.

There was only one way to join her. His body could not pass that shimmering portal. Only when it was torn away could he be with her. Sand and sun were his allies, picking at his flesh with small hands, the fingers of Phage.

Phage. She stalked the comers of Ixidor's mind, pursuing his visions. She closed in on her quarry and leapt. Her hands took hold of Nivea. Light turned to darkness and life to rot. Once again, Nivea dissolved to nothing.

She had died a thousand times during the day and night and day. Each time, grief ripped into Ixidor anew. He watched his only hope dissolve into blinding tan below and blinding blue above.

Eyes of glass reflected the razor horizon.

Ixidor trudged. He would die; it was a certainty. The Cabal was very efficient. He would die and join Nivea, but only after every tissue flaked away and every hope fled into the killing sky. He would die by degrees, a penance for letting Nivea die in an instant.

In truth, he would die slowly because he could not give up life. The survival instinct was stronger than the blazing sun and the winnowing grit. Even without hope, he walked on.

And then, hope: a green spot in all that gray. Water, plants, life.

It was a mirage, of course, like the others. Still, false hope was better than no hope. It drew Ixidor, and he strode toward it.

If this oasis were a mirage, why need it be a small, mean place? Why not something grand? Ixidor squinted. Why not date palms and coconut trees? Those slender slips of tan along the edge-why shouldn't they be gazelles? What about a wide pool-pure, clean, and charged with fish?

Ixidor tried to take a deep breath, though his lungs felt fused. He walked faster. His legs crackled like stilts. Closing his eyes, he imagined the oasis, willing it on the world.

Why not paradise? Why not life?

He opened his eyes. It was gone-not only his vision of palms and pools, but even the green wedge. It all had been but a fold in the air, a trick of the heat.

Ixidor shuffled to a halt. There was no reason to go on. He wondered how far he had come and looked back across the ridges of sand. His footprints stretched away over two dunes. A breeze had followed him, erasing his steps as he made them. Even now, a dozen tracks drifted in a brown ghost on the wind. It was as if he had gone no distance at all. The desert was an endless scroll, rolling out before him and rolling up behind.

Ixidor dropped down to sit on the sand. It burned his backside. He didn't care, waiting for the pain to ease. He needn't march himself to death. He could simply sit himself to death.

How long he remained there, he wasn't sure. He might have slept. Orange sand and blue sky began to tumble over each other. Shapes appeared in the heavens-leviathans swimming amid faint stars. They dived toward Ixidor. He did not cower away. A pod of kraken flew past his ears. Their tentacles spread and closed to propel them over the sand. They left snaking trails of dust in their wakes but were not fast enough. The leviathans jabbed down. They bit, caught, killed, ate, and swam back to the stars. Only thin red trails told of their passing.

When Ixidor awoke, one side of the world had turned dark. A wall of black cloud boiled up out of thin air: a desert thunderstorm. It held the promise of rain and shade and cool. It would wash him, slake his thirst, would fill hidden wadis and lead him where the water went. Salvation was coming from the brutal skies.

Ixidor sat and waited. He smiled, knowing it would all be over soon.

The storm galloped across the desert, darkening as it ate ground. In its heights, leviathans sported and swam. Kraken and jellyfish twirled their helpless tentacles in the eddies while schools of silvery fish churned the squall nearer to Ixidor. It was very close. He heard it-moaning wind and rumbling thunder-though sound only barely outpaced the i racing thing. Droplets came down with dry, crackling reports.

Then Ixidor knew: This was no rain cloud but a dust storm. The only promise it held was death.

Still, he sat. It would be over soon.

The storm billowed like a brown curtain across the dunes. It rushed upon him. The last of his footprints were snuffed out. The wall struck him.

He could not keep his eyes open. Lids and lips clenched. Head curled down. Even though he knew he would die and meant to die, the survival instinct was strong. He lifted his collar up over the bridge of his nose, and his breath felt cold against his chest.

The storm roared until it filled his ears with sand. The wind battered him numb. He tried to shift, but already his legs were buried. It wouldn't be long now. He was dying by the slow murder of particles.

Nivea, you came to me while I fought to live. Come to me now as I fight to die. Bring your brilliant vision and wide-open arms. Ixidor's voice made no sound in the sandy space between his shirt and his chest. Still, she should hear. He spoke the words beside his very heart. The dust eats me as Phage ate you, and we will be together.

She did not come. No light pierced the dust. No voice came except the roaring wind. The only hand that clasped his was a hand of sand.

He was buried to the waist.

I don't want to die. Why not live?

Ixidor struggled to rise. The sand held him down. He dragged his arms from the entombing ground and dug around his sides. Each handful he scooped only slid back. His legs trembled to escape. The sky poured more grains atop him, inches piling up every moment. He desperately fought to break free, but the storm was equally desperate to kill him. His collar slipped down off his nose, and the breath he took clawed through his lungs.

That was it. He had to stop digging to pull his shirt up, and then coughed blood while the sand filled in around him. From chest downward, it clutched him in a giant hand. Sand rose like flood waters and swallowed him to the shoulders. It poured down until only the crown of his head remained, then that too was gone.

All grew strangely quiet except for the fast panting of his breath. The air in his shirt was stale. How deeply would he be buried?

Nivea, listen. I will join you, yes, but not now, not yet. Save me. Dig me free. Come, my angel, and save me.

He willed light into darkness, life into death. He willed Nivea into being and made her come and save him. If it was all a dream, it might as well be a grand one.

Nivea came to him with angel wings that sang as she flew.

She glowed last in his mind before nothing glowed there again.

Ixidor awoke beneath a sky riddled with stars. The air was cold, but the sand breathed heat all around him. He sighed. He could breathe. The sand was gone from lips, ears, and eyes. He lay cradled in the lap of the desert.

What had happened? What of the storm? He had been buried alive.

Ixidor sat up. By starlight, he could see dunes undulating to a distant horizon. He also could make out, near his leg, the deep well in which he had been entombed. The sand retained the shape of his body.

Someone had dug him out.

"Hello!" He could speak-even shout. "Hello!" There came no answer from the dark desert. Who would have dug him out, cleaned him up, and left him lying here?

"Nivea!" Ixidor stood, a smile spreading across cracked lips. "Where are you? I know you're here." He laughed, holding his hands up. "I know you're here. Nivea, come to me. You've given me life. You could have taken my life and brought me to be where you are but instead you saved me." He laughed again.

The sound was eaten by the vast darkness.

Ixidor quieted. He wasn't saved yet. If Nivea had dug him from the sand, she had only brought him from a swift death to a slow one. "Lead me. Lead me from this place to somewhere I can live."

A light flitted nearby, on the periphery of his vision.

Ixidor spun just in time to see the gray form disappear across the sand. Was it Nivea or a phantasm of his tormented mind? "That way. Yes, I will go that way." He walked toward the spot where the ghost had disappeared. The sand beneath his feet felt silken, cool on the surface but as warm as a balm beneath. He could walk this way a long while.

"Show me where to go. Show me where the water is."

The gray figure appeared again, gossamer like a woman swathed in veils. The form shrank, not so much retreating but dissolving inward. His own voice echoed back to him: Show me where to go. Show me where the water is.

The request was ardent. Where was water? He was done with date palms and gazelles. Where there was water, he would find all the rest.

"Where?" His ghost guide was gone. "Where?"

Ixidor pivoted slowly, eyes scanning the desert. Beneath a billion stars, the sands were not so forbidding. The heat-folds were gone from the air. He saw dimly but saw true.

In the gentle weave of sandy hills, there was a single irregularity-a place where the warp and weft of wind had laid bare a long narrow ribbon. Shadows clung strangely to that spot, perhaps only the crouching shoulders of nearby dunes, but perhaps something solid. A long, narrow ribbon "There. The water is there," Ixidor said, his finger jabbing before him. His eyes marked the spot. "Water."

The apparition appeared again before him. She flitted across the hills toward the distant oasis. She seemed almost to dance now, glad he neared.

Ixidor suddenly understood. It didn't matter whether the figure was real or phantasm, savior or muse, as long as it inspired him to save himself.

Come, my love, come to our undreamed land.

Ixidor walked. His eyes were trained on that jumble of shadows and his heart on that dancing ghost.

She smiled and laughed. Her arms opened to receive him and closed to spin atop the sands. Her feet marked out his path.

I needed Nivea and brought her back from death. If I can do that, I can bring water into being.

It grew nearer, the undreamed land. He kept to the ridgelines so that he would not lose sight of the spot. His mind shaped the shadows into a palm forest. His thoughts dug out a wadi of wet clay.

"Just there is a cool curve where the water rushes, and that is a pool, deep and clean. Palms lean there and there, and off on that side is a cave into rock, where the river runs." He stared them ' into being.

Reality is unkind to dream. As Ixidor approached, the shadows told a different tale. The curve where the water should have rushed was just a dark bank of sand hollowed out by the caprice of wind. The jangle that should have been a palm forest was only the tangled shadow of a descending dune. The cave mouth was nothing at all.

Ixidor did not stop like last time. He kept striding, driven not i by desperation but by anger. How dare the world deny him? How dare this desert resist? It had presented him with death after unacceptable death. Ixidor was furious. He glared at the landscape, eyes reconfiguring it.

That is a stream. That is a palm. That is a cave.

The ghost glided through the scene. In an aura around her, the place was transformed. She brought daylight beauty to the nighttime desert, but the changes did not remain. All of it devolved back into dust.

At last, Ixidor stood in the midst of the illusory spot. It was desolate. No stream, no trees, no pool. Even his muse had given up the ghost. He was alone in nothingness. Only cruel sand and killing wind surrounded him. Still, Ixidor did not sit. Rage stiffened his spine.

He closed his eyes. He imagined individual ripples on the water, touched the damp banks, smelled the waves, and heard their manifold muttering.

Ixidor knelt. He reached out and slid his fingers into the water. Cupping his hands, he drew up a dripping mouthful.

His eyes cracked a moment, and he saw sand filling his grip.

He didn't care. Closing his eyes again, he lifted his hands and poured the drink down his throat. It was cool and clear. It filled his mouth and rolled down his chin. He swallowed. The water sent joy through him. Either he was dying in an ecstacy of delusion, or he was drinking, truly drinking.

Letting fall the last of the water, he sat back on his heels and slowly opened his eyes.

There before him spread the oasis, just as he had imagined it A stream wove, wide and patient, across a bed of clay. It rushed around a smooth curve. Farther along, palms reached roots down into the water and stretched fronds out above. At the end of a plush palm forest, a cave opened its mouth to swallow the spring.

It was real, all of it-and not just as he hoped it might be. It was real as he knew it must be.

Either that, or he was insane, drinking handfuls of sand.

Did it matter? Live or die, but do it happily.

As he stooped to drink, his muse danced in a circle around him. Together, they were glad in their undreamed land.