The Darkness Before the Dawn (Dark Sun: Chronicles of Athas 2)

Kayan came back to stand beside Jedra, and they watched in horrified fascination as the b'rohg's burnt-orange skin turned pale and its flesh slowly shrank around its bones.

"It's carnivorous," Kayan whispered incredulously. "That's why your blood wouldn't clot. The cactus drinks blood, so it secretes something to keep it fluid."

The b'rohg shuddered once more, then lay still. The spear fell from its grasp and thumped to the sand.

Jedra shuddered, too. He was just as responsible for the creature's horrible death as the cactus was. The fact that it had attacked him didn't make him feel much better about it. He had used his psionic power to kill another intelligent being. Not a very intelligent one, to be sure, but smart enough to use a spear. The b'rohgs Jedra had seen in Urik had been able to understand a few spoken commands.

Why had it attacked them? he wondered. Probably for their water, given that the b'rohg didn't have a waterskin of its own. It didn't have much of anything, just a scaly reptile skin of some sort wrapped around its waist, and the spear.

Hmm. The spear.

"We should try to get that," Jedra said. Trying to ignore the desiccated corpse, he crab-walked toward the weapon, sweeping the sand in front of him with his robe as he went to detect any more thorns. When he reached the spear he grasped it by the haft just below the stone point and dragged it back out, careful to step in his same tracks.

The spear was nearly ten feet long, and three inches thick. The haft wasn't solid wood; it was a hollow tube honeycombed with holes. Jedra suspected it was the heartwood of one of the long, skinny kinds of cacti he'd seen farther back where vegetation had been more plentiful. Whatever it was, it was lightweight and strong. The heaviest part of it was the stone point that had been flaked to a sharp edge and bound to the haft with rawhide thongs. The whole thing had a weight and a balance to it that felt right. Though Jedra had no idea how to throw a spear, it felt good in his hand.

"Maybe we should put some distance between us and this place," Kayan said. "Something else might come to investigate the noise."

"Good idea," Jedra said. He wanted to leave anyway. He made a wide detour around the sand cactus and its captive, limping a bit on his not-quite-healed left foot, and led the way toward the west. He winced with each footstep, not just because of the pain, or because of the small but noticeable hole in each sandal, but because he expected to encounter another invisible patch of thorns at any moment.

Despite his fears, they made another mile without mishap, and when they had put a couple of large dunes between them and the hapless b'rohg, they stopped to rest again. Kayan finished healing Jedra's left foot, then they shared another of their honeycakes and washed it down with a drink of water. They had ten cakes left out of the twelve Galar had given them, but they were going through water fast; Jedra figured they only had enough for another day and a half at this rate. They needed refreshment now, though, to help recoup the strength they had lost to the sand cactus.

"Oh, I don't know," Kayan said with a grin. "As long as you walk in front, I don't mind healing you."

"Right." He knew she was joking, but something about her attitude still irked him. Then he remembered some advice an old veteran of the streets had once given him, and he laughed. "You were pretty quick to take the lead when the b'rohg attacked," he told Kayan.

"Yeah, well, the ground cactus seemed the lesser danger at the moment."

"Someone I knew once told me, 'When you go hunting wild inix, you should always take a companion with you. That way you never have to outrun an enraged inix; you only have to outrun your companion.' "

Now it was her turn to miss the joke. "Jedra, I wasn't trying to leave you to the b'rohg! I was running for my life, and I thought you were right behind me."

"I was kidding," he told her.

"Oh."

She still didn't laugh, so Jedra dropped it. He toyed with the spear some more, thinking that he could wave it in front of him to detect sand cactus, save that their progress would be excruciatingly slow if they had to sweep every inch of trail ahead of them. He wondered how the elves did it. He hadn't marched at the head of the column, so he'd never seen what the scouts did for protection. Spotting a pile of bones that hadn't been disturbed would be a fair indication that you were in cactus territory, but that wouldn't protect you from a young plant that hadn't fed yet. Maybe heavier sandals would provide more protection, or there might be a way to spot the needles if you knew what to look for.

He didn't have either the sandals or the knowledge. What he had was a spear, a knapsack, and his robe.

Hmm. His robe was already ripped

to shreds; he'd hardly miss another chunk off the bottom of it. If he tied that to the spear...

"What are you doing?" Kayan asked when he ripped off a foot-wide, two-foot-long strip of his robe.

"Watch," he told her. He tugged it through the holes at the butt end of the spear, leaving two loose ends that flopped down on either side, then he tied two of the corners together so the bottom hem ran in a continuous line from side to side. Standing up, he put the spear over his shoulder so the heavy stone point would counterbalance the rest of it, and he took a couple of steps with the rag just scraping the ground in front of him. "There," he said. "A crude but functional sand cactus detector." "Wow," Kayan said. "That just might work." "Of course it'll work," Jedra said, his pride wounded by the thought that she might not think so. He jounced the pole on his shoulder a time or two and said, "Are you rested enough? I want to try it."

Grinning at his boyish enthusiasm, she stood up and put on her pack again. "All right. Lead on."

It took him a few minutes to get the hang of it. At first the end of the spear would dip down and dig into the ground every few steps, or it would lift up too high and the cloth wouldn't drag the surface, but he soon settled into a smoother stride that kept the spear butt aimed down at the right angle. He couldn't take his eyes off the ground for long, though, so Kayan had to navigate from behind, calling out, "A little to the right," or "Watch out for that rock."

Eagerness to test his new invention kept him going for another mile or so, but then fatigue began to set in again and he wondered if he were being silly. Maybe these sand cacti were exceptionally rare, and he was doing the equivalent of keeping a constant watch out for dragons.

Then the cloth snagged on something, and the spear haft jerked backward in his hand. Jedra stopped with his foot still upraised, his pulse suddenly pounding. He slowly backed up a pace.

"Find one?" Kayan asked.

"I think so." Jedra tugged the cloth free and waved the end of the spear around in a circle, and sure enough, it snagged again a foot or so away. Very carefully, he worked his way around in a half circle, sweeping out a clear path around the perimeter of the needle patch. This one was about eight or ten feet across, and once again there was nothing to indicate it was there except for the needles.