Sheeana pointed at an angle to her left, directly into the light breeze from the desert. “Out there. We must hurry.”
Without waiting for permission from Odrade, Sheeana ran lightly down the causeway, past Waff and out onto the first dune. She stopped there until Odrade and Waff caught up with her. Off the dune face she led them, up another with sand clogging their passage, out along a great curving barracan with wisps of dusty saltation blowing from its crest. Soon, they had put almost a kilometer between themselves and the water-girded security of Dar-es-Balat.
Again, Sheeana stopped.
Waff came to a panting halt behind her. Perspiration glistened where his stillsuit hood crossed his brow.
Odrade stopped a pace behind Waff. She took deep, calming breaths while she peered past Waff to where Sheeana’s attention was fixed.
A furious tide of sand had poured across the desert beyond the dune where they stood, driven by a storm wind. Bedrock lay exposed in a long narrow avenue of giant boulders, which lay scattered and upturned like the broken building blocks of a mad promethean. Through this wild maze, the sand had poured like a river, leaving its signature in deep scratches and gouges, then plunging off a low escarpment to lose itself in more dunes.
“Down there,” Sheeana said, pointing at the avenue of bedrock. Off their dune she went, sliding and scrambling in spilled sand. At the bottom, she stopped beside a boulder at least twice her height.
Waff and Odrade paused just behind her.
The slipface of another giant barracan, sinuous as the back of a sporting whale, lifted into the silver-blue sky beside them.
Odrade used the pause to recompose her oxygen balance. That mad run had made great demands on flesh. Waff, she noted, was red-faced and breathing deeply. The flinty cinnamon smell was oppressive in the confined passage. Waff sniffed and rubbed at his nose with the back of a hand. Sheeana lifted herself on one toe, pivoted and darted ten paces across the rocky avenue. She put one foot up on the sandy incline of the outer dune and lifted both arms to the sky. Slowly at first and then with increasing tempo, she began to dance, moving up onto the sand.
The ‘thopter sounds grew louder overhead.
“Listen!” Sheeana called, not pausing in her dance.
It was not to the ‘thopters that she called their attention. Odrade turned her head to present both ears to a new sound intruding on their rock-tumbled maze.
A sibilant hiss, subterranean and muted by sand — it became louder with shocking swiftness. There was heat in it, a noticeable warming of the breeze that twisted down their rocky avenue. The hissing swelled to a crescendo roar. Abruptly, the crystal-ringed gaping of a gigantic mouth lifted over the dune directly above Sheeana.
“Shaitan!” Sheeana screamed, not breaking the rhythm of her dance. “Here I am, Shaitan!”
As it crested the dune, the worm dipped its mouth downward toward Sheeana. Sand cascaded around her feet, forcing her to stop her dance. The smell of cinnamon filled the rocky defile. The worm stopped above them.
“Messenger of God,” Waff breathed.
Heat dried the perspiration on Odrade’s exposed face and made the automatic insulation of her stillsuit puff outward perceptibly. She inhaled deeply, sorting the components behind that cinnamon assault. The air around them was sharp with ozone and swiftly oxygen rich. Her senses at full alert, Odrade stored impressions.
If I survive, she thought.
Yes, this was valuable data. The day might come when others would use it.
Sheeana backed out of the spilled sand onto the exposed rock. She resumed her dance, moving more wildly, flinging her head at each turn. Hair whipped across her face and each time she whirled to confront the worm, she screamed “Shaitan!”
Daintily, like a child on unfamiliar ground, the worm once more moved forward. It slid across the dune crest, curled itself down onto the exposed rock and presented its burning mouth slightly above and about two paces from Sheeana.
As it stopped, Odrade became conscious of the deep furnace rumbling of the worm. She could not tear her gaze away from the reflections of lambent orange flames within the creature. It was a cave of mysterious fire.