Please let it end, she prayed silently to his star. Let it end soon, for I don't know how much longer I can go on. But it did not end, and it seemed that the nights grew longer, the sand deeper and more cloying around her feet, while each day seemed fiercer than the last and the heat beat down upon them like a blacksmith's hammerstrokes on the iron of the anvil.
Centaine found that she had lost track of the days and nights, they had blended in her mind into a single endless torment of heat and thirst.
Five days, or six or even seven? she wondered vaguely, and then she counted the empty egg-bottles. It must be six, she decided. Only two full bottles left. Centaine and H'ani each placed one of the full bottles in their pack, sharing the load exactly, then they ate the last shreds of dried fish and stood up to face the night's journey, but this time it did not begin immediately.
O'wa stared for a while into the east, turning his head slightly from side to side as though he were listening, and for the first time Centaine detected a fine shade of uncertainty in the way he held his small head with its crownlike nimbus of arrow shafts. Then O'wa began to sing softly in what Centaine had come to recognize as his ghost-voice.
Spirit of great Lion Star, he looked up to Sirius shining in the constellation of Canis Major, you are the only one who can see us here, for all the other spirits avoid the land of singing sand. We are alone, and the journey is harder than I remember it when I passed here as a young man. The path has become obscure, great Lion Star, but you have the bright eye of a vulture and can see it all.
Lead us, I beg of you. Make the path clear for us.
Then he took the egg-bottle from H'ani's satchel and drew the stopper and spilled a little of the water on to the sand. It formed small round balls, and Centaine made a little moaning sound in her throat and sank on to her knees.
See, spirit of great Lion Star, we share water with you, O'wa sang and replugged the bottle, but Centaine stared at the little wet balls of sand and moaned again.
Peace, Nam Child, H'ani whispered to her. To receive a special boon, it is sometimes necessary to give up what is precious. She took Centaine's wrist and pulled her gently to her feet, and then turned to follow O'wa over the endless dunes.
With the silences deafening her, and weariness a crushing burden to carry, and thirst a raging torment, Centaine struggled on, once again losing all sense of time or distance or direction, seeing nothing but the two dancing figures ahead of her, transformed by the rays of the waning moon into tiny hobgoblins.
They stopped so suddenly that Centaine ran into H'ani and would have fallen had not the old woman steadied her, and then quietly drawn her down until they lay side by side.
What, Centaine began, but H'ani placed a hand over her mouth to quieten her.
O'wa lay beside them, and when Centaine was quiet he pointed over the lip of the dune on which they were lying.
Two hundred feet below at the dune's foot began a level plain, awash with soft silver moonlight. It reached to the very limit of Centaine's night vision, flat, without end, and it gave her hope that at last the dunes were behind them. Upon this plain stood a scattered forest of longdead trees.
Leprous-grey in the moonlight, they lifted the blighted and twisted limbs of arthritic beggars of an uncaring sky.
The weird scene invoked in Centaine a superstitious chill, and when something large but shapeless moved amongst the ancient trees like a monster from mythology, she shivered and wriggled closer to H'ani.
Both the San were trembling with eagerness like hunting dogs on the leash, and H'ani shook Centaine's hand and pointed silently. As Centaine's eyes adjusted, she saw that there were more living shapes than the one she had first spotted, but they were as still as great grey boulders.
She counted five of them altogether.
Lying on his side, O'wa was restringing his little hunting bow, and when he had tested the tension of its string, he selected a pair of arrows from the leather band around his forehead, made a sign to H'ani and then slithered back from the crest of the dune. Once he was off the skyline, he leaped to his feet and slipped away into the shadows and folds of windblown sands.
The two women lay behind the ridge, still and silent as the shadows. Centaine was learning the animal patience that this ancient wilderness demanded of all its creatures. The sky began to bloom with the first promise of day, and now she could see more clearly the creatures on the plain below them.
They were huge antelopes. Four of them lying quietly, while one of them, larger and more thickset in shoulders and neck, stood a little apart. Centaine judged that he was the herd bull, for at his shoulder he stood as tall as Nuage, her beloved stallion, but he carried a magnificent pair of horns, long and straight and vicious, and Centaine was reminded vividly of the tapestry La Dame d la Licorne at the Muse de Cluny, which her father had taken her to see on her twelfth birthday.
The light strengthened and the bull gleamed a lovely soft mulberry-fawn colour. His face was marked with F darker lines in a diamond pattern, that looked as though he were wearing a head halter, but there was that wild dignity about him that immediately dispelled any suggestion of captivity.
He swung his noble head towards where Centaine lay, extended his trumpet-like ears and swished his dark bushy horse-like tail uneasily. H'ani laid her hand on Centaine's arm and they shrank down. The bull stared in their direction for many minutes, rigid and still as a marble carving, but neither of the women moved, and at last the bull lowered his head and began to dig in the loose earth of the plain with his sharp black forehooves.
All, yes! Dig for the sweet root of the hi plant, great and splendid bull, O'wa exhorted him silently. Do not lift your head, you marvelous chieftain of all gemsbok, feed well, and I will dance you such a dance that all the spirits of the gemsbok will envy you for ever! O'wa lay one hundred and fifty feet from where the gemsbok bull was standing, still far beyond the range of his puny bow. He had left the shadow of the dune valley almost an hour before, and in that time had covered less than five hundred paces.
There was a slight depression in the surface of the plain, a mere indentation less than a hand's span deep, but even in the vague light of the moon O'wa had picked it out unerringly with his hunter's eye and he had slid into it like a small amber-coloured serpent, and like a serpent moved on his belly with slow, sinuous undulations and silent prayers to the spirits of Lion Star who had guided him to this quarry.
Suddenly the gemsbok flung up his head and stared about him suspiciously, ears flared wide.
Don't be alarmed, sweet bull, O'wa urged him. Smell the hi tuber and let peace enter your heart again. The minutes stretched out, and then the bull blew a small fluttery sound through his nostrils, and lowered his head. His harem of fawn-coloured cows who had been watching him warily relaxed, and their jaws began working again as they chewed on the cud.
o'wa slithered forward, moving under the flattened lip of the depression, his cheek touching the earth so as not to show a head silhouette, pushing himself over the soft earth with his hips and his knees and his toes.
The gemsbok had rooted out the tuber and was chewing on it with noisy gusto, holding it down with a forehoof to break off a mouthful, and O'wa closed the gap between them with elaborate, patient stealth.
Feast well, sweet bull, without you three persons and an unborn child will be dead by tomorrow's sun. Do not , great gemsbok, stay a while, just a little while longer. He was as close as he dared approach now, but it was still too far. The gemsbok's hide was tough and his fur thick. The arrow was a light reed, and the point was bone that could not take the same keen edge as iron.