The Day of the Tempest

Chapter 6 Sand to Flesh

Fissure sat cross legged on the desert sand, bis drifting to the lone barrel cactus he spotted. Stark green against all the trackless ivory, it looked like a blemish on the face of the Northern Wastes. He reached a slender gray finger up to scratch his bald head. “A giant walking cactus as a guard for the Storm’s lair?” he mused aloud. “It could hurl needles and… no, that would be no better than the wyverns. What to bring the Blue?”

An hour passed and still the huldrefolk contemplated the matter. The sun was climbing above the horizon. Soon the temperature in Khellendros’s desert would be intense and unrelenting.

The heat didn’t bother Fissure. A faerie, and a master of the element of earth, he took the weather in stride, willing his body to allow the waves of warmth to pass through it like the wind blew through an open window. But he detested the light that came with heat. The huldrefolk coveted the shadows where they could hide and slip among the inhabitants of Krynn unnoticed. But being here—at this hour—was a necessity if he was to keep the Blue happy and cooperative.

A scorpion skittered across his path, pausing for an instant. It looked up at the odd little man, then skittered away, apparently uninterested in him.

“Now there’s an idea.” The huldrefolk thrust his thin fingers into the sand and brought up two handfuls. He held his palms out to his sides, like plates on a scale, and let a little bit of sand slip through the fingers of his right hand until the small piles seemed identical in weight.

“Life springs from the earth,” he said matter-of-factly. “Let life spring from this sand.” His large black eyes grew wide in concentration, and wrinkles formed across his otherwise featureless gray brow. He pictured the scorpion in his mind, and his senses focused on the sand. He felt the pleasing coarseness of the grains of sand agitating in his palms. He directed the magical energy that flowed through his veins to agitate the grains faster, then to meld them together into two liquid blobs. For each of the two shapes, he envisioned eight legs, lobsterlike claws, and a flat, narrow body the color of obsidian. Then he imagined for each a tail that curved up and over the body and ended in a needlelike stinger.

The vibrations stopped and Fissure glanced at his hands. A scorpion sat in each palm—each lifelike, though unmoving, and each roughly eight inches long. Smiling at his constructs, he gingerly placed them on the sand in front of him, a few yards apart, then scooted a safe distance away.

“You’ll do. I think you’ll do nicely,” he said to himself. He pushed his palms against the desert floor and rocked back and forth. “Now, let’s make you suitable for the Storm.” His fingers glowed blue and the light raced to the tiny statues and engulfed them, surrounding them like halos. “That’s it,” he encouraged, “more now.” The glow brightened and spread outward in a sphere shape, and the scorpions began to move slightly within their prisons of blue light. Their tails twitched, their lobsterlike pincers opened and closed, and their heads turned so they could better see their creator. Then the twin glowing spheres folded in on themselves, and the scorpions absorbed the arcane energy and began to grow.

Fissure watched with satisfaction as they doubled in size, then doubled again and kept growing. “A little larger,” he commanded, and the scorpions seemed to comply. Their mandibles rose above his diminutive form, and they kept growing until he could see the underside of their glossy, segmented abdomens. “There. That should do it.” He stood and scrutinized his creations. Each was four feet tall from the ground to its chitinous back, and each was a little more than twice that long. Their tails curved upward and writhed like snakes, and the huldrefolk smugly noted a trace of venom on each point.

“Almost perfect,” he judged. “Now, unfortunately, for the finishing touch.” He shuffled forward, stepping between the two. He tugged on his right hand until it came loose from his wrist, and then worked the hand like clay, forming a ball that he thrust into one of the creature’s mouths. Fissure repeated the process with his left hand and the other scorpion, then looked down at his marred stumps. Already the hands were growing back. He could shape his body like a sculptor shaped clay, although now there would be a little less clay to work with next time.

“Can you understand me?” The huldrefolk stroked the underside of one of the scorpions.

The construct clacked its mandibles and its black eyes fixed on the huldrefolk. “I underssstand,” it hissed.

“You are of my flesh,” Fissure stated. “You share my memories, and I will share yours. You will know my thoughts when I desire it, and I will know yours.”

“Your flesh,” it repeated.

“Your flesh,” the other echoed. “Your thoughtsss.”

“You will do exactly as I say. And you will unerringly serve the Storm Over Krynn—for as long as I command it.”

“We ssserve the Ssstorm,” they hissed hi unison.

The huldrefolk had used a similar process to create the wyvern sentries. They weren’t very bright, but still he shared their memories. He knew exactly what happened when Palin and his associates came upon Khellendros’s lair, knew that the secret of the Storm’s desert stronghold had been unwittingly revealed. Fissure had elected not to pass that information onto the Blue.

He had given the wyverns little more than a thumb’s worth of himself. His greater sacrifice had been to the scorpions; constructs that had a far greater intelligence and, he suspected, a greater malevolence. Creating them cost Fissure a little of his own magic, and some of his spirit But such a sacrifice would be worth it if he could again access The Gray and once more feel the mists wrap around him.

“Search my memory, your memories,” he ordered the scorpions. “Picture the lair of Khellendros.”

“The Ssstorm” one of the scorpions hissed.

“Home,” the other added. “We know thisss place.”

“Go there,” the huldrefolk said. “Go there and follow the Storm’s bidding.”