The Guards shrieked in terror. Paralyzed with shock, hardly able to believe their eyes, Lief, Barda, and Jasmine lay rigid beneath the concealing cloak. The monster had been perfectly hidden in the dune. Waiting. One more step, and they, instead of their enemies, would have been its prey.
Lief stared in fascinated horror. The creature was eight-legged, with a tiny head that seemed all mirrored eyes. Dozens of leathery bags, like the one they had seen lying on the ground, hung from its body. Sand still poured from its joints and crevices. It regarded its captives without curiosity as they struggled and swung in its terrifying grip. Then it opened its mouth, leaned forward … and abruptly, mercifully, the screaming and the struggling stopped.
It had all happened in seconds. Sickened by what they had seen, Lief, Barda, and Jasmine remained huddled under the cloak, not daring to move.
Delicately, using its pincers, the monster picked the clothes from the dead bodies of its prey, like a bird shelling snails. The companions watched as clothes, boots, money bags, Jasmine’s medallion, metal canisters of blisters, slings, clubs, and water bottles thudded onto the sand. Then the creature sat back on its spiny haunches and began to eat, taking its time. Lizards and flies crawled out of the sand in the thousands to feast on the scraps that fell from its mouth.
Lief buried his face in his arms. He had no love for Grey Guards. But he could not watch this.
The lowering yellow cloud blotted out the sun so completely that Lief lost all sense of time. For what seemed like hours he, Barda, and Jasmine lay motionless while the creature ate its fill and slowly the bags hanging from its body swelled till they looked like gigantic grapes hanging from a stalk.
“They are stomachs!” breathed Barda in disgust. Lief shuddered. And even Jasmine, familiar with so many weird creatures in the Forests of Silence, wrinkled her nose with distaste.
At last, the flies and lizards scattered and the beast stood upright. One of the swollen stomachs, bigger than all the rest, tore away from its body and rolled to rest in the sand, leaving only a ragged stump behind. Seemingly unconcerned, the creature crawled forward and settled on top of it.
“What is it doing?” breathed Lief, unable to keep silent.
“I think it is piercing the stomach and laying an egg inside,” Jasmine whispered back. “That way, the hatchling will have food while it grows.”
Barda turned his head away.
But the sand beast had already finished its egg-laying and was moving again. Sluggishly, it ambled through the ruined dune in which it had hidden and climbed the next, soon disappearing over the top. The companions waited a moment to be sure it would not return, then climbed stiffly to their feet.
Without hesitation, but still gripping her dagger, Jasmine hurried over to where lizards and flies still swarmed over the Guards’ bones and the bloodstained tatters of their clothes. Beating away the scavengers, she began rapidly sorting through the rags, putting aside in a small pile things that would be of use: the Guards’ slings and blisters, their clubs and water bottles, the money bags. After a moment she looked up, startled.
“The money bags burst as they fell,” she called in a low voice. “Most of the coins spilled out. But they are not here any longer. They are gone! And so has my medallion.”
“That is impossible!” Barda strode towards her and himself began searching. Lief followed more slowly. His attention had been caught by a flat patch of sand just beyond where his friends were crouching. What he saw there made his flesh creep.
“The creature was blocking our view for hours as it fed,” Jasmine was insisting. “Something or someone crawled in unseen and took —”
“It cannot be!” Barda was growing impatient as he fruitlessly searched the tumbled sand.
“Look!” Lief’s voice sounded choked, even to himself. He cleared his throat, and pointed.
The smooth patch of sand was covered with hundreds of strange, circular marks. Marks that had not been there before.
Jasmine stared. “Never have I seen tracks like these,” she said finally. “What creature could have made them?”
“We cannot know,” Lief said flatly. “But whatever it is it is something that does not fear the sand beast, and something that likes gold. Perhaps it likes gems, too. Perhaps it is the Guardian.”
“But surely the sand beast is the Guardian!” Barda exclaimed.
Jasmine shook her head. “I think it is just one of the creatures of the Sands,” she said positively. “We have just seen it lay an egg. What is more, we passed an empty stomach skin on our way here. That hatchling had already emerged to fend for itself. There could be hundreds of sand beasts here. There could be thousands.”
Barda cursed under his breath.
The low, droning sound drummed in Lief’s ears. He stared at the circles on the sand. They seemed to mock him. He tried to look away, but his eyes kept being drawn back to them. He forced his gaze up to the sky — but there was no relief there. The unchanging roof of cloud seemed to press down on him, hemmed in as he was by faceless dunes. And all the time fear plucked at him like the flies which had returned in force, stinging, stinging …
Suddenly he could stand it no longer. With a muffled cry he leaped upon the tracks and kicked at them, destroying them, digging his heels deeply into the soft sand and scattering it everywhere.
“Lief! Stop!” he heard Barda call. But Lief was past listening. He shouted and fell to the ground, beating and tearing at it. Barda and Jasmine ran to him, trying to pull him to his feet. He fought them away.
There was a soft shifting sound and a low rumbling. Then the earth began to move. Lief heard Barda and Jasmine cry out. And just in time he grasped their hands as huge columns of sand began to thrust themselves upward all around them.
Jerked off their feet, the three tumbled together, rolling helplessly, blindly, as the sand roared and quaked beneath them. Lief could hear Jasmine screaming for Kree, and the bird’s answering screech. He could hear his own voice, too, groaning in fear.
There is something here.
He knew it. He could see nothing, for his eyes were tightly closed against the stinging sand, but he could feel a terrible, rage-filled presence all around him.
And he knew what it was. It was the thing that had been drawing him on. The thing that was hungry for what it sensed he could give it.
It wants the Belt … It will not rest until it has …
Then, suddenly, he felt the power withdraw. And immediately, as quickly as it had begun, the storm ceased and the ground quieted.
He lay still, dizzy and panting, as the last of the flying sand fell around him like rain.
With a rush of wings, Kree landed on Jasmine’s arm. He was unharmed, though powdered all over with red dust. He began ruffling and preening his feathers, trying to clean himself. Filli chattered excitedly inside Jasmine’s jacket. She murmured to him, calming him.
Lief brushed at his face with trembling hands.
“An earthquake,” mumbled Barda. “So — that is why this place is called the Shifting Sands. We should have realized …”
“It was not an ordinary earthquake,” snapped Jasmine. “It cannot simply be chance that Lief was kicking those marks away when it began. Lief, why did you do that? What is wrong with you? Are you ill?”
Lief could not answer. He was staring blankly around him.
Everything had changed. Dunes had collapsed and formed again in different places, and great valleys had opened where hills had been before. All tracks and signs that had previously marred the sands were gone. The ruined dune, the place where the Guards had died — both had disappeared.