Dragons on the Sea of Night by Eric Van Lustbader Page A

void, as if whatever had once been Sanda – her spirit – had been torn from her along with her insides.
    Sanda! he cried soundlessly. My sister! His heart was beating so fast it seemed it might fly out of his chest or break into ten thousand pieces. He wanted only to talk with her – to her – not all these manifestations. He ached for reassurance that this was indeed a nightmare – everything she had ever been had been taken from her in the manner of her death.
    Then she opened her mouth and, to his horror, blood spilled out. There was a horrid gurgling sound that eventually resolved itself into two words repeated over and over, and even when he awakened, bathed in sweat, trembling, his pulse pounding and his heart constricted with grief, he heard it still, echoing in the utter silence of the desert dawn:
    Save me!
    A blood-condor screamed, its iridescent purple plumage swooping just beyond the top of a dune. Tamuk called for the column to halt, and swinging his co’chyn around, rode back to where Moichi had reined in.
    â€˜The settlement is on the far side of that dune,’ he said tensely. ‘But you know as well as I do what the presence of the carrion eater augurs.’
    â€˜Why have we stopped?’ Aufeya asked, coming up on her co’chyn. ‘I see no sign of a settlement.’
    â€˜I fear for them, lady,’ Tamuk said, wheeling his mount round. ‘There were twenty settlers and Fe’edjinn.’
    â€˜But there are no palms, no signs at all that we are near an oasis,’ Aufeya insisted. ‘Even the Fe’edjinn could not have pitched camp without a steady supply of water nearby.’
    â€˜She’s right,’ Moichi said. ‘Are you certain we are in the right place, First Darman?’
    Tamuk snorted derisively, then, signalling to his men, who drew their scimitar-shaped weapons, he spurred his co’chyn toward the long rise of the dune beyond which the blood-condor continued to circle and swoop. Moichi and Aufeya followed the Fe’edjinn at a distance.
    One of the Fe’edjinn, fed up with the bird’s grating cry or perhaps nervous at what was waiting for them, loosed an arrow which struck the blood-condor in its breast. It plummeted straight down, disappearing behind the dune.
    Moichi stood in his stirrups, urging his steed slowly forward as he scanned the horizon. There was naught to see in any direction but an endless sea of gently rolling dunes, here and there tufted with powdery sand as gusts of fiercely hot wind swirled.
    Tamuk and his men crested the dune and began their descent of the far side. In a moment, they had disappeared, and Moichi urged his co’chyn up the slope. At the dune’s crest he paused, waiting for Aufeya.
    â€˜Where are they?’ she asked, staring down at the waad, the deep depression below. It was devoid of all life. ‘It’s as if the desert itself swallowed them whole.’
    At that moment, they felt a rumbling. Their co’chyn snorted and skittered nervously as rivulets of sand began to stream down the far side of the dune into the waad. The rivulets soon became rills and streams that plumed into the air like rapids and waterfalls. The co’chyn screamed and bucked as their footing was eroded and they began to slide down the dune into the waad, which itself had changed radically. It was now an evil-looking swirl of sand that seemed to have turned molten, to be revolving, expanding before their eyes.
    â€˜Quick!’ Moichi shouted. ‘Off the co’chyn!’
    He slid off his terrified mount, only to see it shoot past him, tumbling into the waad, which sucked it down like a gigantic maw. He turned, slipping in the cascading sand, pulling Aufeya off her co’chyn, as it slipped to its knobby knees, then tumbled trunk over tail into the maelstrom of the shifting waad.
    â€˜Let’s get out of here!’ Moichi shouted, keeping hold of her as he tried to struggle