Anything.
"Come on," he said. But he had only gone a few stretches from the shade of the trees when the heat from the sand burnt through the soles of his shoes, sending him hopping and swearing back to the pool.
"Too hot to travel," said Adras, yawning. "We should wait till it cools off."
"I guess so," said Tal reluctantly. He inspected his boots. He hadn't noticed before, but the morning's trek through the strange desert had burned several holes through the hide. They were Icecarl boots, built for ice, not burning sands. "We'll have to make up the time tonight."
Adras nodded.
Tal put his back against one of the trees, looked up to make sure that no cakefruit was likely to fall on him, and closed his eyes. He wouldn't sleep, he vowed. He'd just think everything through. Finding the Codex was the first step, but there was a lot more to think about.
"How do I find the Codex?" he mumbled to himself. Did he just keep on walking east till he fell over it?
Tal knew it wouldn't be as easy as that. He would rest now and save his strength. Then he would walk all night. He'd make up the lost time. He had to.
But the sun was very hot, even in the shade of the cakefruit trees, and Tal's thoughts drifted off into dreams.
He slept, even when the breeze came up and cake-fruit dropped with soft plopping noises all around him.
He slept on, even as something slithered down the trunk of the cakefruit tree above him. Something long and scaly, though very flat and thin. It had thousands of tiny hooked legs. They rippled under it, each hook digging out minute flecks of bark as it made its circular way down and around the trunk.
It had two heads at the end of its ribbonlike body. They were of unequal sizes. The smaller head had a bulbous cluster of eight multifaceted eyes, and two jointed tendrils that quested ahead. The other head was twice as big. It was all mouth, currently shut.
The thing seemed in no hurry. It moved steadily down, until it was right above Tal's sleeping head. The tendrils from its small head brushed his hair, and the eyes glittered as it measured up the Chosen boy.
Then its mouth began to open. At first it didn't seem possible that it could open wide enough to do Tal any harm. But the lower section of the thing's head continued to open wider and wider, the mouth spreading back well past the second head, into the creature's body.
It didn't have any teeth, but an ugly green spit began to drip from the back of its throat.
The thing shifted a little to line Tal up better, and then slowly began to lower its jaws down over his head, as the green drool spread across his scalp.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Tal awoke to the sound of strange rumbling, and a sun that was low in the sky. He sat up a little straighter and scratched his head. Something sticky came off on his hand and Tal jerked his fingers back down to look.
"Errrch!" he yelled, and stood up. Some disgusting tree sap or something had dropped on his head while he was asleep. He rushed over to the spring and washed his hand off, then stuck his head in and gave that a good wash as well.
The level of the spring had sunk a good hand's breadth, and it was easy to see where it had gone, and where the strange rumbling sound was coming from. Adras was floating just above Tal's head, snoring. He had taken in so much water he was a fat butterball of a cloud, all fluffy white, without a streak of the lean, mean darkness of a storm.
"Call yourself a Storm Shepherd!" said Tal, but he didn't say it too loud. He could hardly blame Adras for falling asleep. He was disgusted that he had himself, though they probably would not have been able to set out any earlier anyway.
Mind you, he thought, it was lucky nothing happened. Aenir was not a world where it paid to sleep unguarded.
He was just thinking that when he saw the hideous creature with two heads. It was on the ground only a few stretches away, wriggling toward him, a trail of the hideous green slime dribbling from its mouth.
Tal raised his hand and focused on the Sunstone. He would blast it with a Red Ray of Fiery Destruction.
The Sunstone flashed red and began to shine. But before the Red Ray was complete, Tal blinked and lowered his hand.
The grotesque two-headed worm or snake or whatever it was had left a trail of its own bright saliva in particular patterns. It had scribed a whole series of characters onto the ground under the trees.
Tal stared at the writing. At first he couldn't work it out. Then he realized that he was looking at everything upside down. So he walked around, taking care to give plenty of space to the two-headed snake, which was still writing.
There was the letter C again, and an arrow pointing east. But there was also a picture of something. A key, Tal thought. And then several letters, which spelled out H-A-Z-R-O-R.
"Who are you?" asked Tal, talking to the snake. "How do you communicate through creatures?"
The snake twitched and began to drip another letter onto the ground. Tal walked a bit closer, keen to work out what the letter was going to be. It looked like the first part of a C.
He was only a stretch away when there was a titanic explosion of air. Tal was thrown backward and a great spray of dirt shot into the sky, accompanied by pieces of two-headed snake.
"I got it!" roared Adras, punching the air with one huge cloud-fist. "I've saved you!"
Tal picked himself up and counted to ten. Adras was worse than Gref. At least Gref knew he was annoying when he interfered with whatever Tal was doing.
"Why did you do that?" Tal asked slowly, when he could get the words out without screaming.
"It was a Two-Headed Gulper," said Adras, as if that was explanation enough. "Lucky I was keeping an eye open."
This was too much for Tal.
"You were sound asleep, you idiot!" he shouted. "And it was writing me a message. A message from the Codex!"
"It wasn't a Two-Headed Gulper?" asked Adras innocently.
"Yes, it was," agreed Tal. "But it wasn't… I don't know… being one right at that second."
"What have you done to your hair?" asked Adras, tilting his puffy head to one side as if he couldn't work it out.
"What?" asked Tal. "What?" "Your hair," said Adras. "It's changed color."
Tal forgot about telling the Storm Shepherd exactly how stupid he was and rushed over to the spring. But it was bubbling too much to be a useful mirror.
"Green," added Adras. "In streaks."
Tal touched his hair again. It seemed all right, but when he pulled out a few hairs they were bright green.
As green as the saliva of the Two-Headed Gulper, he realized. It must have been dripping on his head, just before it was taken over or whatever the Codex did and made to write the message.
He looked back at the tree where he'd been sleeping, and saw the pattern of the Gulper's clawed feet heading down, and a few patches of green on the bark just above where his head would have been.
"I feel sick," he said suddenly.
Adras watched in total puzzlement as the boy staggered over to another tree and threw up. It seemed rather an excessive reaction just because his hair had changed color. Storm Shepherds changed color all the time.
When Tal had stopped being sick, he turned back to Adras.
"Adras," said Tal. "I think it's time we set down some rules. First of all, you must not go to sleep when I am asleep. You must keep watch."
"But I feel sleepy when you're sleepy," answered Adras. "Because we share a bond."
"I am the Chosen," ordered Tal. "You are my Spiritshadow. Or you will be. You must obey."
"Why?" asked Adras. "Why shouldn't we work things out together?"
Tal stared up at the sky. This was not how he'd imagined dealing with his own Spiritshadow.
If only Milla hadn't interrupted him back at the Hill, he would have bound this hulking great creature properly. Now Tal had given away his shadow, instead of using it to secure absolute obedience.
Adras mistook Tal's silence for some sort of sulk.
"Well, if that's the way you
want it," he said, "I'll sleep when you're awake. I'll sleep now."
"No!" exclaimed Tal. "We need to keep moving. The sky is clear I'll be able to see well enough to find a path through the crystals."
"But where?" asked Adras. "To find Odris?"
"No!" said Tal. "We've been over that. The Codex at least I think it's the Codex - has sent me another message."