The Nomad Read Online Free Page B

the shape of a closed eye. “Through this, I shall monitor your progress. And if you should need my aid, you may reach me through this ring.”
    Valsavis took the ring and put it on. “Will that be all, my lord?”
    “Yes. You may go now.” The hulking mercenary turned to leave. “Do not fail me, Valsavis,” said the Shadow King.
    Valsavis paused and glanced back over his shoulder. “I never fail, my lord.”

    * * *

    “Sorak, stop! Please! I must rest,” said Ryana.
    “We shall stop to rest at dawn,” he said, walking on.
    “I don’t have your elfling constitution,” she replied, wearily. “I’m merely human, and though I’m villichi, there is nevertheless a limit to my endurance.”
    “Very well,” he said, relenting. “We shall stop. But only for a little while, then we must press on.”
    She gratefully sank to her knees and unslung her waterskin to take a drink.
    “Be sparing with that water,” he said when he saw her take several large swallows. “There is no way of telling when we may find more.”
    She looked at him, puzzled. “Why should we fear running out of water,” she asked, “when we can scoop out a depression and employ a druid spell to bring it from the ground?”
    “You must, indeed, be tired,” Sorak replied. “Have you forgotten the surface we are walking on? It is all salt. And salty water will not quench your thirst, it will merely make it worse.”
    “Oh,” she said with a wry grimace. “Of course. How thoughtless of me.” With an air of regret, she slung the waterskin back over her shoulder. She looked out into the distance ahead of them, where the dark shapes of the Mekillot Mountains were silhouetted against the night sky. “They seem no closer than the day before,” she said.
    “We should reach them in another three or four days, at most,” said Sorak. “That is, if we do not stop for frequent rests.”
    She took a deep breath and expelled it in a long and weary sigh as she got back to her feet. “You have made your point,” she said. “I am ready to go on.”
    “It should be dawn in another hour or so,” said Sorak, looking at the sky. “Then we will stop to sleep.”
    “And roast,” she said as they started walking once again. “Even at night, this salt is still warm beneath my feet. I can feel it through my moccasins. It soaks up the day’s heat like a rock placed into a fire. I do not think that I shall ever again season my vegetables with salt!”
    They were five days out on their journey across the Great Ivory Plain. They traveled only at night, for in the daytime, the searing darksun of Athas made the plain a furnace of unbearable heat. Its rays, reflecting off the salt crystals, were blinding. During the day, they rested, stretched out on the salt and covered by their cloaks. They had little to fearfrom the predatory creatures that roamed the wastes of the Athasian desert, for even the hardiest forms of desert life knew better than to venture out upon the Great Ivory Plain. Nothing grew here, nothing lived. For as far as they could see, from the Barrier Mountains to the north to the Mekillot Mountains to the south, and from the Estuary of the Forked Tongue to the West and the vast Sea of Silt to the East, there was nothing but a level plain of salt crystals, gleaming with a ghostly luminescence in the moonlight.
    Perhaps, thought Sorak, he was pushing her too hard. Crossing the Great Ivory Plain was far from a simple task. For most ordinary humans, it could easily mean death, but Ryana was villichi, strong and well trained in the arts of survival. She was far from an ordinary human female. On the other hand, he was not human at all, and possessed the greater strength and powers of endurance of both his races. It was unfair to expect her to keep the pace he set. Still, it was a dangerous journey, and he was anxious to have the crossing over with. However, there were other dangers still awaiting them when they finally reached the mountains.
    The