"It's pretty big for a spider."
"Yes, it's one of the larger breeds of spiders in the desert," Denai agreed. "It's not very fast, so it relies on camoflage to protect itself. And since it is so venomous, few predators will try to kill one unless they're very hungry."
"If they're not so fast, how do they catch mice?"
" Zubu are great hunters," Denai answered. "They track down the mice and attack them in their burrows, where the close quarters keeps them from getting away. Some also hunt by staying very still in a place that's well-travelled. They move slowly, but they can move very fast in a short jump. They use that to spring on unwary prey from ambush. If something can evade that spring, they'll get away from it, because it can't move quickly."
"Some of the spiders I know do the same thing," Sarraya told her. "We call them jumping spiders."
"That is what zubu do," she affirmed.
Tarrin rose to his feet, swishing his tail a few times, then turned his back to the pair of curious women and looked towards the west. He drank from the skin that Denai gave to him, finding the water to be somewhat stale and hot, but that was normal for water in the desert. The noontime heat hid the far distant from his eyes, hiding it behind the shimmering haze caused by the hot ground, but he could still make out a single rock spire not too far away from them. He was primarily looking for sandstorms, but he'd come to discover that it was rare for a storm to kick up during the midday heat. The winds that fueled them died down during the hottest part of the day. Only the big storms that came off the Sandshield rumbled across the desert in the midday hours.
"You done?" Sarraya asked, coming up from behind and hovering just beside his head.
"Guess so," he replied. "No luck, though."
"I sorta expected it," she told him. "As soon as we eat, we can move on. Are you hungry?"
"Not really," he told her.
Denai came up on the other side of him, rather close. It concerned him a little that she would get so close to him, but she didn't seem to notice. "That's the Lone Spire," she said, pointing to the singular rock spire in view. "It's a landmark. We're only about a day from the Great Canyon. Do you want to see it?"
"What do you mean?" Sarraya asked.
"It's a little out of the way, but it's very beautiful," she replied. "If you're curious, we can turn west and see it, then just follow the edge to where we can cross."
"We're not here to sightsee," Tarrin told her gruffly. "I have to cross the desert as fast as I can. That's the only reason I'm bringing you along, girl. If I'll lose time, then I'm not going that way."
"It was just a suggestion, Tarrin," she said mildly. "If you don't want to go, that's fine."
"How soon will we reach it if we go the other way?" Sarraya asked.
"About two days, but what you'll see there is nothing compared to what's that way," she said, pointing west. "It's still a formidable canyon where we're going to cross, but there are paths to get down the canyon walls. Over that way, it's just a cliff."
"How long is this canyon?" Tarrin asked curiously.
"If you're down at the base, it takes three days to run from one end to the other," she told him. "But that's if it was an easy run. The canyon floor is a maze of fallen rocks and rough terrain. It takes alot longer than that."
"What made it?"
"Nobody really knows," Denai answered. "There are smaller canyons in the desert made by old rivers that dried up, but the Great Canyon doesn't look the same as them."
No river made it. It sounded curiously like the Scar, the rift in northern Sulasia, only this one was considerably larger. Considerably.
"Your people go down there alot, Denai?"
"Oh, no," she replied. "It's a hunting ground for inu and kajat, the same as the Maze of Passages. The faster we start up the other side, the safer we'll be."
"There's enough food down there for them to survive?"
"Water pools in the deeper areas of the canyon," Denai told her. "The water supports plants, and those support enough prey for them."
"How wide is it where we're crossing?"
"About a morning's run," she replied.
"A morning run?" Sarraya asked in shock. "It has to be longspans across!"
"I don't know exactly, but it's pretty wide," she replied. "Wider there than most other places. My father thinks that the width of the canyon there has to do with the fact that its walls aren't so steep."
Now he was getting curious. But it was a curiosity that would be satisfied in two days, when they got there.
"Come on, I'm hungry," Sarraya said. "Those cakes are getting cold."
"What a strange thing to say," Denai chuckled as they left Tarrin.
After the meal, they started out again. Tarrin again instructed Sarraya in the Sha'Kar language, and Denai paced him step for step. They moved from the sparsely vegetated area into a thickly grown region, the plants half-buried in deep sand and dust. A sandstorm had passed through in recent days, leaving the area nearly submerged in sand.
"How do the plants survive?" Sarraya asked as the other two ran.
"They're used to being buried," Denai replied from behind her. "They go dormant until the winds blow away the sand."
"Makes sense," Sarraya shrugged.
The afternoon wind kicked up as the sun began to set, and it was particularly fierce. Tarrin and Denai had to turn their backs to it as it assaulted them in the face, but Sarraya used her Druidic magic to repel the blowing sand and dust.
"This is almost as bad as a sandstorm!" Tarrin said in annoyance.
"It's just the evening wind," Denai told him. "It'll die down after sunset."
"Then let's find some shelter. I don't think a tent will stand up in this," Sarraya called.
They found something that was almost a cave in a broken spire, a hollowed-out niche protected from the winds by the fallen top half of the rock column, forming an isolated courtyard of sorts covered by soft sand. Sarraya conjured up wood for a fire as Tarrin hung up a leather sheet at the narrow side of the enclosure to break up the wind funneling through it. Denai had left them to find something to eat, but returned moments after Tarrin got the fire going with an umuni dangling from her hand. It had a small puncture wound in the top of its head, probably from Denai's dagger. He'd seen that she was deadly accurate when she threw it.
"I didn't think those things were edible," Tarrin said to her. "They don't smell like they are."
"Smell? They're edible, so long as you don't eat the head," she told him. "Why wouldn't they smell edible?"
"Remember what I told you, Denai?" Sarraya reminded her.
"Oh, yes. Well, they're edible. Not very tasty, but the sandstorm that buried the plants made all the animals I'd rather eat move on until the sand blows off. I could use a chisa right now. Even a sukk or a goat."
"You can keep it," Sarraya said as she used her Druidic magic. Several large apples, a pile of berries, and a few tomatos appeared on the sand in front of her. "I conjured up extra for you two. It'll stretch out that lizard meat in a meal."
"What are these?" Denai asked, picking up a tomato. "And where did they come from?"
That Denai wasn't too surprised to see them wasn't itself a surprise. She had seen Sarraya-and even Tarrin-Conjure more than once since she joined them, and he had the feeling that Sarraya explained that to her while he was sleeping. Denai knew that they were both shaman.
"They're called tomatos," Sarraya answered. "And they're from wherever they were when my magic picked them up. Try it, you might like it."
Denai bit into the tomato, and was a bit startled when its juices dribbled down her chin. Then she laughed. "It has its own water!" she said in delight. "It's good. Tangy. My people like food with tang." She took another bite. "You can make anything you want appear?"