The Shifting Sands

Lief was alone, among rippling dunes that had no ending. He knew that somehow the night had passed. Light was filtering through the thick, yellow cloud. The sand beneath his feet was warm.

It was day. His terrible vision had come to pass, as he had always known it would.

He remembered the sand rising beneath him in darkness and tossing him into the air. He remembered the sound of Jasmine’s and Barda’s voices shouting his name. He remembered the burning coals of the fire spraying through the night, dying as they flew.

But that was all. Now there were only his own tracks trailing off into the distance over smooth, sandy wastes. Now there were only the dragging, useless tails of the rope still tied around his waist. Now there was only the droning sound, louder now, filling his ears, filling his mind.

He was clutching something in his hand. He looked down, and willed his fingers to open.

It was the painted wooden bird that Jasmine had put in her pocket in Rithmere. He must have found it, picked it up, after …

Numbly, he slipped the little object into the top pocket of his shirt. His legs were aching. His throat was parched — dry as the sand itself. His eyes were prickling. He could hardly see. He knew he must have walked for many hours, but he had no memory of it.

The Center.

He was being drawn towards the Center. That much he knew. His strength was almost gone. He knew that, too. But he could not stop, for if he stopped he would sleep. And if he slept, death would come. That he knew most of all.

He staggered on, reached the foot of another dune, took a step to begin climbing. Without warning his legs gave way underneath him and he fell. The sand cushioned him, soft as a feather bed. He rolled onto his back, but could move no farther.

Sleep.

His eyes closed …

In Del, friends are laughing, splashing in the choked and overflowing gutters, picking up gold coins. He wants to go to them. But his mother and father are calling … And now he sees that the gutters are choked not with garbage but with buzzing red bees. The gutters are overflowing with Queen Bee Cider that is pouring from broken barrels lying in the street, running to waste. The bees rise up in an angry cloud. His friends are being stung, and Grey Guards are watching, laughing … His friends are dying, calling to him, but he is so tired, so tired. His eyes keep closing as he staggers into the humming red cloud. His arms and legs are heavy, weighed down. Behind him his mother says, “Softly, softly, boy!” and he turns to her. But her face has turned into the face of Queen Bee. Bees cover her back and arms and swarm in her hair. She is frowning, screeching harshly at him, shaking her fist. “Smoke, not fire! Smoke, not fire …”

Lief’s eyes flew open. The screeching went on. Something was circling high above him, a blurry black shape against a dull yellow sky.

Ak-Baba! Run! Hide!

Then he blinked, and saw that the circling shape was Kree — Kree, soaring lower, calling to him. He tried to sit up and found that he had settled so deeply into the sand that he had to wrench himself free. Sand had already covered the whole lower half of his body, his hands, his arms, his neck …

He scrambled, panting and trembling, to his feet. How long had he been asleep? What would have happened if Kree had not woken him? Would he have slipped deeper and deeper into the sand until at last it covered him? Would he have woken even then?

The dream was still vivid in his mind. And suddenly he understood what it meant. The words of the verse rushed back to him. “Not ‘be now,’ but ‘below,’” he whispered. “Not ‘survive,’ but …”

“Lief!” Barda and Jasmine had appeared at the top of the next dune. Shouting, they began to slide down towards him. Lief felt tears spring into his eyes at the sight of them, and realized that he had thought they were dead. He began staggering forward to meet them.

Jasmine screamed, piercingly. She was pointing behind him.

He turned, and saw what had emerged from the dune at his back. It was another sand beast, even bigger than the first. Sand still poured from the joints of its legs. It had been stalking him, but as he met its mirrored eyes it froze. In moments, he knew, it would spring.

Backing away, holding its gaze, he felt for his sword, then, with horror, felt himself falling clumsily, entangled in the trailing ropes that had tripped him. The next moment he was struggling in the sand, his sword trapped beneath him. Wildly he scrambled to his knees, hearing Jasmine and Barda shouting, knowing it was too late, feeling as though he was caught in a nightmare. The monster lurched forward …

Then it jerked, with a grating cry, as a blister exploded on its body. It staggered, lunged again, then toppled sideways as another blister found its mark. Its spiny legs kicked, and it began to spin, digging great trenches in the sand.

One ankle still caught in the rope, Lief crawled away, sobbing and gasping with relief. Jasmine came panting up to him, hauling him to his feet, freeing him from the rope. Barda was right behind her, a sling still in his hand and another blister at the ready.

Lief began to choke out his thanks, but Barda waved him away. “If I have saved your life, Lief, it is not the first time, nor will it be the last, I fear,” he growled. “It is my fate, it seems, to be your nursemaid.”

Shocked and deeply hurt, Lief took refuge in sullenness, and turned away.

Barda took him by the shoulder and spun him around. “Do not turn away from me!” he shouted. “What are you playing at? Why did you run away alone? Why did you not try to find us after the quake?”

He was shaking with anger. And slowly Lief realized that it was the anger born of shock, fear, and worry. It was the anger he had sometimes seen in his parents’ faces, when he came home long after curfew. When he took risks.

“Barda, I could not —” he began.

“There is no time for this now,” snapped Jasmine, her eyes on the monstrous creature thrashing in the dune. “Argue another time. We must get away from here, and quickly. The beast is not dead. It may yet recover and come after us again.”

“Do not worry,” said Lief quietly. “Where we are going, it will not follow.”

They walked for many hours, but spoke little. It was as if Lief was listening to something that neither Barda nor Jasmine could hear, and they themselves grew more and more silent the closer they came to the Center.

They saw it long before they reached it — a lone peak rising high from a flattened circle and ringed by rounded dunes. It shimmered against the yellow sky, alien and mysterious in the fading light. A mighty cone with darkness at its tip.

“A volcano,” hissed Barda.

Lief shook his head. “You will see,” he said.

Filli crept, whimpering, under the shelter of Jasmine’s collar. She whispered comfortingly to him, but her green eyes were dark with dread.

The droning noise grew louder as they approached their goal. By the time they had reached its base and slowly begun to labor upwards, the air was vibrating with sound.

And finally they had reached the top, and were looking down into the peak’s hollow core. A whirlpool of red sand roared far below, flying in the darkness as though driven by a mighty wind.

But there was no wind. And the sound was like the humming of bees in their countless millions.

The Belt burned around Lief’s waist.

“What is this?” Barda was breathing hard, staring down, his big, blunt hands gripping his sword.

Softly Lief repeated the rhyme carved on the stone. And this time, the last lines were complete.

“Death swarms within its rocky wall

Where all are one, one will rules all.

Below the dead, the living strive

With mindless will to serve the Hive.”

“The Hive …” Jasmine repeated slowly.

“The Sand is the Guardian,” said Lief.

Barda shook his head. “But — it cannot be,” he breathed. “The sand is not alive! We have walked upon it, seen creatures —”

“The creatures we have seen are crawling on a much larger host,” said Lief, his voice very low. “The dunes we have been treading are only a covering, made up of the long dead. The living work below. Serving the Hive. It is they who collect the treasures that fall. It is they who make the marks on the surface. They who cause the storms.”

“The gem —”

“The gem, dropped anywhere on the Sands, would at last be drawn to the Center,” Lief murmured. “That is why we are here.”

He tore his eyes away from the whirlpool within the core and turned to Jasmine. “We need smoke,” he said. “Smoke, not fire.”

Without a word she knelt and began pulling things from her pack. Her hands, Lief saw, were trembling.

His own hands were not very steady as he gave his sword to Barda and took the rope in exchange. But as he knotted the rope around his chest, he was half-smiling, and his voice shook only a little.

“I fear you must be my nursemaid again, Barda,” he said. “Again I need your help and your strength — and your rope as well. But this time, I beg you, do not let me go.”