Never before had Aric known the sensation of being outdoors with no light but the stars to show his way. Because they were the only thing to see, he tilted his head back and stared into the sky, turning his body to make the stars spin. When he stopped, he was dizzy. He bent forward, hands on his knees, until the feeling passed.
Which was when panic set in.
Had he turned himself completely around? With no visible landmarks, he wasn’t sure which direction camp was. All he could hear was the wind, already hurting his ears. He shouted, but the wind whipped the words away so fast he could barely hear himself.
Someone could die out here in no time, cut off from shelter and warmth. The expedition carried much of its own firewood; there was precious little to be collected out here in the sandy wastes. How much time would it take to freeze to death? An hour? Less?
Stop, he told himself. Take a deep breath and think.
He took several. His thoughts were jumbled, piling up on each other in a way that he believed meant panic was returning. He knew that if he let it have its head, he would wind up running in one direction after another, wearing himself out. There was a chance of coming into sight of the caravan, especially if he climbed a high dune. But the chances were far better that he would wind up running in circles, never getting anywhere near his comrades, until he fell and couldn’t get back up.
Footprints, Aric thought. The sand was soft enough here to leave deep prints when he walked. He could simply follow those back, if he could find them in the first place. He looked toward the horizon, saw the first glimmerings of Ral there. Guthay would not be far behind.
He dropped to hands and knees, looking for his tracks. Where he had stood and turned in a circle—that stupid circle!—there were plenty.
Beyond that, nothing. The wind had already erased them.
He couldn’t just stay here. Soon Ruhm, who had objected to him going out in the first place, would go looking for him. Maybe with others. If they all got lost, it would be that much worse.
He decided to climb the nearest dune, to see if he could spot the sparks streaming up from the campfires.
He was on the steep side, but he leaned into it, planting his feet carefully, sidestepping for traction.
He was halfway up when the wind died momentarily and he thought he heard something break the silence. A shout from camp? No, something harsher, shorter. A chuff of breath, he thought, and close by.
He looked up to see how far from the top he was. Something blocked the stars for an instant, as if hunching at the rim, looking down. He barely registered it and then it was gone.
And that was the other reason he never should have done this. “Weather don’t get you,” Ruhm had said, “beasts will.”
“I’ll have a sword,” Aric had countered. “And I won’t be far from camp, just far enough to see what it’s like out here at night.”
“Don’t want to know.”
“That’s easy for you, Ruhm. You’ve experienced these things. I’ve heard stories, read a few, but my knowledge all comes from somebody else. I want to see for myself.”
“Crazy,” Ruhm had said. “Stupid.”
Aric hated it when Ruhm was right.
He leapt from the dune’s face, landing on the harder ground below. Right where he had started from, before deciding to climb. He still had his sword, and he raised it in case whatever was up on that dune sprang at him. It wasn’t steel, but it was sanded to a keen edge, and agafari wood was nearly as hard.
Now he was back in the same spot, unable to see the camp, and not sure in which direction it lay. Only one thing had changed—now he was being hunted.
Despite the extreme cold, sweat tickled Aric’s ribs.
Could whatever was up there see well in the dark? He guessed it probably could, if this was its typical hunting ground. But was it even still there? Or had it circled around, climbing down the gentler slope, so that even now it crept up behind him?
He spun around, half-expecting to see yellow, feral eyes glowing in the blackness. But he saw nothing there, only dark emptiness. He felt only wind and terror.
It took almost a minute to realize that he could see better, however, than just a short while earlier. He didn’t know if it was his eyes adapting to the darkness or the fact that Ral had climbed above the horizon, and now distant, golden Guthay was edging above it.
He decided to take a chance—to start in the direction that felt right, based on where the moons were rising—and hope for the best. Better than standing here waiting to be attacked.
With new determination, he took one step, then another. With each pace, he felt better, more sure of his decision. He kept the sword ready, scanned the way before him with every step, stopped occasionally to check behind and around. He was going the right way, and he started to breathe easier.
That certainty lasted until he had been walking for a while—longer than he had walked on the way out. Then it abandoned him all at once. He gave an anguished, wordless cry.
“Aric!” he heard in response.
“Ruhm?” Wind whisked his words from his lips.
“Aric!”
The voice seemed to come from off to his left. He adjusted his course and started toward it, calling out every few moments.
Finally, he saw torches, borne aloft by Ruhm, Amoni, and some others. He ran to them, rushing gratefully into the overlapping circles of light. “There—there’s something out there.”
“Course,” Ruhm said.
“There are no doubt many somethings out there,” Amoni said. “Ruhm said you wanted to see what it was like in the darkness.”
Aric was shivering. The cold, he told himself, but not convincingly.
“I d-did.”
“Like it?” Ruhm asked.
“Not a bit.” That wasn’t precisely true. At first, he had. He had liked the novelty of it, had liked the solitude, the sensation that he was alone in the world instead of hemmed in by a city full of greed and strife and anger. But that hadn’t lasted long, and the parts he hadn’t liked had taken over.
Ruhm clapped him on the shoulder with one big hand, and led him back toward camp. Because he was a goliath, stern and sullen much of the time, not given to excessive conversation, he didn’t say “I told you so.”
But Aric knew he was thinking it, just the same.
On the sixth day out from Nibenay, they left the trade road. Each day they had passed at least one caravan, bound for Nibenay or Raam, usually glad to see a large armed force. The Gith Horde, people said, had been leaving their ancestral homes in the Blackspine Mountains to raid travelers, and although fifty soldiers might not be much of a deterrent, it was better than nothing.
But after they struck out north from the road, they stopped seeing anyone. These wastelands weren’t entirely deserted. The group saw the domed roofs of a wezer colony, and a couple of the giant insects even buzzed the expedition. Probably put off by its numbers, they apparently decided not to try to abduct any of its members and hurried back to their own colony. At one promising oasis, they saw a sand bride who took on the appearance of the most beautiful woman Aric had ever seen. On his own, he would certainly have gone to her, and would just as certainly have perished in her embrace. But the expedition had enough experienced hands along that they recognized the oasis for the trap it was.
After these dangers were spotted, along with numerous less-lethal creatures, word was spread to encourage everyone to ride inside the argosies rather than walking. As Ruhm had predicted, when the heavy wagons were hot and crowded, the smell grew worse and the unceasing rocking and swaying made Aric think his spine would splinter before journey’s end.