Faerie Lord

Sixty-Two

Henry thought his hands were turning blue.

He stared at them, frowning. They weren’t actually blue, not cobalt or azure or navy or anything like that, but they definitely had a bluish tinge. At first he’d thought it was his imagination and then he’d thought it was a trick of the light, but now he was certain something physical was happening. Maybe the desert did that to you. There might be something in the sand, or something in the spectrum of the sun, the way a desert sun at home would give you a deep tan.

The interesting thing was Henry was toughening up and drying out, a bit like an old boot. (An old blue boot.) Neither his arm nor leg hurt much any more. His thirst was a constant low-key background he could generally ignore and he needed far less of the liquid Lorquin produced from time to time. He could also keep going for longer before he had to stop and rest. He was even developing that peculiar loping gait Lorquin had. It was a half-conscious imitation, but the new way of walking ate up the miles with minimum effort.

Henry was less successful in his attempts to find his way around. Lorquin made valiant efforts to teach him. The secret was, apparently, to study the angle of the sun along with patterns the wind made in the sand. Henry could follow the bit about the sun easily enough – it moved across the sky much the same way it did at home but try as he might, he couldn’t see the patterns Lorquin saw in the sand. And the deep desert was as featureless of landmarks as it had always been.

For some reason Henry had assumed Lorquin’s people would be fairly close to the place where Lorquin killed his draugr. And maybe they had been when Lorquin set out on his quest. But they were nomads and they were certainly not close by now. After two days of walking, there was no sign of them. But then he still couldn’t see anything when Lorquin announced they’d arrived.

Henry looked around. He’d half expected a rock face with caves, or inhabited ruins, or a community of crude tents. But all around him was a plain of flat, featureless sand. Even the rolling dunes had disappeared.

‘Welcome to my village,’ Lorquin said, grinning proudly.

Henry looked around again. Was Lorquin’s village invisible? Somehow it didn’t make sense. Why cast a spell over an entire community? And if you did, how would people find each other? No, it wasn’t invisibility. But there wasn’t any village round here either. After a minute, feeling foolish, Henry said, ‘Where?’

He started violently as something whooshed up out of the sand. Then something else and something else and something else. In an eye blink he was surrounded by a ring of blue-skinned, naked people. Some of the men carried spears. One sported fearsome – and very colourful – tattoos. They glared malevolently at Henry.

Henry took a step backwards, his heart suddenly thumping. But Lorquin hurled himself forward to embrace a glowering, ugly, beetle-browed individual with what looked suspiciously like filed teeth, ‘I did it, Dad!’ he shouted, ‘I killed the draugr!’

The words galvanised the gathering. In seconds people were leaping and whooping in a lively dance. Several of the men came forward to thump Lorquin on the back and Henry noticed one of the younger girls grinning at him. A plump woman with kind eyes and a broad smile pushed through the crowd to hug him fondly: Henry imagined this had to be Lorquin’s mother and fancied he even saw a family resemblance. One unusually tall man (a tribal chief?) called out, ‘Tonight we feast!’ The announcement was greeted by a loud communal cheer; then Lorquin was being pushed from one to another, fondly shaken, kissed, grinned at, congratulated.

Then suddenly it stopped. In the absolute silence, they turned slowly and stared at Henry.

Henry took another step backwards, smiled nervously and said, ‘Ah – ’ He stopped smiling, licked his lips and wondered if there was the slightest possibility he could outrun these fearsome people in the desert. Somehow, he didn’t rate his chances.

Then Lorquin had his father by the hand and was dragging him across. ‘This is my Companion,’ he announced.

And with that the atmosphere changed again, dramatically. Suddenly Henry was closely surrounded. People were smiling, people were touching him, tugging curiously at his clothing, people were talking to him in such a jumble of voices that he could understand none of it. He was aware of a collective body odour, not at all unpleasant, but spicy and strong. The word Companion bounced across the hum of noise like a ball. It was clear the whole tribe took their customs as seriously as Lorquin.

The tall man shouldered his way through the throng, said something to Henry that he couldn’t catch, then abruptly stood still and stretched to his fullest height, slowly rotating his head in a bizarre movement that took it round further than Henry would ever have believed possible. ‘Vaettirs coming,’ he said shortly, although there was nothing in sight for as far as the eye could see. He wound back his incredible neck and glanced in Lorquin’s direction. ‘They pursued you long.’

What happened next was so swift Henry scarcely had time to follow it. The members of Lorquin’s tribe took one another’s hands, but in a very specific sequence that reminded Henry a little of a Mexican Wave. Lorquin was last in line, but lunged forward to grab Henry’s hand. There was a sensation of falling, or, more accurately, sinking, as if he was in quicksand. To his horror, he realised that was exactly what was happening – the entire tribe was sinking into the sand and him with them. He started to call out, but the sand was up to his shoulders now, then his neck, his chin, his mouth… He was drowning in sand!

Henry started to struggle violently, but Lorquin had an iron grip on his hand. Seconds later, the quicksand engulfed him.