Panyat faced north and inhaled deeply. He exhaled and said, “I think you may be right. Let us walk while we may.”
They strapped their sand-skis on again and shuffled through the night. Balkis was feeling even thirstier now, but managed not to speak of it—one glance at Anthony's face showed that he was feeling it, too. She hoped they would soon find an oasis, if not the edge of the desert itself.
Through the darkest part of the night they traveled, speaking less and less as thirst sapped their energy. Finally, Anthony brought out a wineskin and offered it to Balkis. She stared. “From whence came that?”
“From Piconye,” Anthony answered. “Do you not remember? Their king gave it to us as a parting gift.”
“How welcome it is now!” Balkis said fervently as she took the skin. She squirted a few sips into her mouth, swallowed, then coughed and held it out, eyes bulging, hand at her throat. “Tay … take it, Anthony, but only a swallow!” she gasped, her voice hoarse. “It is terribly strong!”
“I had forgotten that.” Anthony's face turned tragic. “Forgive me, sweet companion!”
“I shall thank you instead,” she rasped, “for it is better than nothing—though not by much! Sip at it, Anthony. We shall surely make that last!”
Anthony drank, and they shuffled onward, following Panyat, who watched them with troubled eyes. Now and again they would stop and share a sip or two of brandywine, but the skin was still almost full when Balkis realized that she was hearing a distant roaring sound, had been hearing it for some time, but that it had grown louder so gradually that she had not remarked upon it.
“The river!” Panyat cried. “Hear you that sound? It is the river that flows into this sandy sea!”
Balkis stared. What manner of river made so much noise? Was it one huge waterfall?
“Then we have come to the end of the desert?” Anthony asked hopefully.
“To the end of the sandy sea, at least,” Panyat said. “There is more desert between the seashore and the mountains, but it is far less harsh than this, and has more frequent water.”
“That will be a blessing, certainly.” The mere thought of water seemed to revive Anthony. “Come, Panyat, let us see this river of yours!” He set out at a quick pace.
Panyat looked up at the note of his voice and cautioned, “There is not much water there.”
“Not much water?” Anthony stared. “How can there be a river without water?”
“Because it has many rocks,” Panyat told him. “Come, you shall see for yourself.”
They came to the river in the unreal half-light that comes as night is beginning to yield to day. First it was only a line of deeper darkness against lighter, but as they approached they saw it broaden even as its noise grew to thunderous proportions—not a roaring anymore, but a crunching and grinding. Coming closer, they stared in disbelief, for they saw a jumbled stream of rocks of all sizes, from boulders to pebbles, ail turning against one another, over and over as they rolled on like a river swollen with springtime rain.
Anthony stared at it, aghast. “If there is any water in there, it would be death to dip for it!”
“Very true,” Panyat said, “but there is moisture trapped beneath the stones, and if you dig a hole in the bank, it will fill with enough for a mouthful now and then. I saw the traders drink thus while they waited to cross.”
“Waited to cross?” Balkis asked. “Did they not see a ford or a bridge?”
“There is none, for shallow or deep, the turning rocks would grind you to meal,” Panyat said, “and none could build a bridge, for the pilings that hold it up would be swept away in minutes. For three days in the week it flows, casting up stones both great and small, and carries with it also wood to the sandy sea—but on the fourth day the river slows, then stills. Then we may cross it.”
Balkis gazed out over the turning stones. “So we must wait three days?”
Panyat shrugged. “Perhaps three, perhaps one—perhaps even tomorrow the river will stop. Who knows on which of those three days we have come?”
As the day brightened, Balkis saw how the grinding rocks could carry wood—whole tree trunks slid along on its surface, the stones rolling beneath them. Following their course with her gaze, she saw the end of the river—the place where the huge stream of rocks and wood poured into the sandy sea, the stones and wood disappearing into the sand.
“Yonder is its ending!” Balkis pointed. “Can we not simply walk around itV
“Nay, Balkis. You can see how the stones sink into the sand, how it swallows them up. It is a quicksand, and no one knows how far it extends.”
“Do we have to cross the river at all?”
“Yes, for the land of Prester John is on the other side—far on the other side. This side leads only into more wasteland.”
“A drink!” Anthony rose from kneeling beside a foot-wide hole, flourishing his waterskin triumphantly; it bulged very slightly at the bottom. He presented it to Balkis as though it were a treasure, which indeed it was.
“Many thanks, sweet fellow,” she said, and upended the skin, letting a mouthful trickle past her lips. Then, with a supreme effort of will, she handed it back to Anthony.
He took and drank, too, afterward pushing the skin back into the hole he had dug. Looking out over the river, clear now in dawn's light, he said, “Can it be that all the sand of this sea has come from these rocks grinding themselves to powder as they flow?”
“Perhaps,” Panyat said, “though I should think it would take a great many such rivers, and this is the only one of its kind in all the world—or so say the traders.”
As the day brightened, Anthony's little well slaked their thirst a mouthful at a time; then he set himself to filling both waterskins. As he waited, Anthony scouted along the river-bank and gathered small branches and other bits of wood that had broken off the rolling trunks and been carried to the sides. As he stacked kindling and small sticks to build a fire, Balkis set out the baskets one last time. As Panyat had said, it was too shallow for good fishing, but they did catch several small sandfish and made one last meal of the savory creatures. Then Balkis and Anthony buried the butts of their branches in the sand and stretched their cloaks over the improvised frame to give them shelter from the sun.
They napped in the afternoon, sleeping peacefully in spite of the noise of the river—they had grown so used to it that it troubled them not at all.
The ant was faint with hunger; even for an ant, there was little to eat amidst the sand dunes. It had slowed to half its normal speed but kept plodding on as long as daylight lasted. Its thirst was raging; it had lost the humans' scent, but doggedly pushed ahead, sure it would find them. Poor insect, it could not know that it had strayed, that its path had curved amidst the shifting dunes, that it was far from their route of march.
Its antennae quivered; ahead, it detected moisture. Energy flowed, and it moved toward the source, if not with its old speed, at least faster than it had been going.
It came to an oasis and sped toward the water, ignoring the palm trees, the birds, the lizards that fled as the ant's acrid scent reached them, ignoring everything but the scent of water. It was a brackish pond, but it was wet, and the ant drank deeply. Finally, its thirst assuaged, it became aware of the pang of hunger again, and turned to seek the scent of living things.
They were all around it, six times as tall as it was, and all of them carried clubs.
Among the things the ant had ignored was the skin tents that circled the oasis, for it was home to a clan of humans— but rather strange humans, for their shoulders were level and uninterrupted by necks or heads. Instead, faces looked out of their chests, huge eyes just beneath the collarbones, mouths just beneath their rib cages. The women with babies in their arms stayed back by the tents, waiting curiously for the rest of the clan to deal with the little intruder. All the rest, men and women alike, gathered about the creature, raising clubs.