Part 8: In the Desert

For an hour Uni closed her mind to Bobby, and Bobby did not try to interrupt. He simply rode on her back, holding on as she galloped across the sand, trying to get to Rahmoud's camp ahead of Majnoun. After the first hour, however, with the Realm's three moons clear and high in the night sky, Bobby could no longer stay silent. "Can you tell where Majnoun is?"

We passed him some time ago. We should be able to get to Rahmoud's camp, get him and start back before Majnoun even arrives.

"Why don't you teleport?"

We cannot travel such great distances that way; a few hundred yards at most. After all, I'm only a unicorn. Besides, I want to wait; we may need to use that power to make a fast escape.

"Oh, yeah. That makes sense."

Uni didn't like Bobby's distracted air, or the violence in him that had been surfacing with little or no provocation. She'd seen it before, and knew where it could lead. Still, she wanted to wait until the time was right.

"Is Rahmoud's camp close to Menelik?"

No, the archers forced Rahmoud and the Orcs to retreat. They're about a mile from the city.

"I was just hoping I could pin a medal on the guy who got Rahmoud."

That would be hard to do, Bobby, since only the women of Menelik can be archers.

"Get outta here!"

It's true; they're accurate and dedicated fighters. Rahmoud is fortunate that his injury wasn't more serious.

"Well, I don't like the idea of bringing him back to help us, after everything he's done." The unicorn raced on silently, seeming not to have heard Bobby. But she could see clearly enough into Bobby's mind, and did not like what she saw. He was entertaining several different scenarios, each one involving Rahmoud as the victim of some extreme and painful torture. It got to be too much for her to stomach; she closed her mind off to Bobby's until he noticed her absence. "Hey, Uni, you awake down there?"

For better or worse, the time was now. Bobby, I have a gift for you. It isn't much, but it's all that I have.

"What do you mean? We can't stop now."

We won't stop. But you must do as I tell you.

"What is it?"

Close your eyes. Don't speak. Don't think. Just listen.

Bobby did as he was told.

At first, there was nothing but the desert wind on his skin, in his ears the unicorn's rhythmic breathing and hoofbeats muffled by sand. Then those sounds seemed to expand until he was inside them--no, until they were inside him. He experienced, directly in his mind, Uni galloping through the desert night, felt the air rush by, the sand beneath. Her breath was pulsing like an engine in time with the galloping hooves; and they were his breathing, his hooves.

Then the vision began to expand. Bobby saw night turn to day, desert turn to forest and pasture, seashore and mountain. He was experiencing all the places in the Realm he had visited a decade before, and all the places he hadn't seen yet. Speech in unknown tongues flew through his mind, spoken by a host of the Realm's residents--some fearsome, some comically absurd--and Bobby understood them all. He saw plant life that lived its whole cycle in an hour; germinating and growing, blooming and fading and decaying. He saw animals, all of them strange yet familiar, as they passed through the cycle of living and dying.

Then he was taken to a mountaintop in the dead of night, when even the multiple moons of the Realm were gone, and saw the stars themselves come into being, burn for a time, and then go out, some darkening like a spent candle and others flashing out as a supernova. He experienced it all as unicorns experience it, who are, for all practical purposes, immortal.

On and on Uni's mind traveled, and Bobby's with it. He knew the lives of the Realm's animals, from the smallest insects to the mightiest dragons, and their passage through time. He experienced a thousand births and a thousand deaths, small and large nested within each other, and came to regard them as an immortal being would: there was no sense of delight in birth and tragedy in death, nor was there an aloofness, a detachment from the cycle of life. Life itself, the continuity of all existing things, WAS life to a unicorn. In short, Bobby became for that hour what no human had ever been before or would ever be again: a unicorn of the Realm. And when Uni finally slowed to a walk and then stopped, and Bobby opened his eyes to see the multiple moons, he saw them with a unicorn's eyes, and could only say, "Oh."

We're here.

Bobby seemed to wake up from his reverie, returning to himself and to the present time and place; his journey not forgotten, but put away until another time. "What now?"

They are over that dune.

Bobby got down and carefully climbed the dune until he could just see over the top. On the other side he saw Rahmoud's camp. Even though it was midnight in the Great Desert, the camp was lit as brightly as noon by torches and oil lamps; the multiple moons in the sky could add little light. The largest tent, and most brightly lit, was obviously Rahmoud's. It was at the far left edge of the camp; "third base", Bobby fleetingly thought to himself.

"Now what?  There must be a hundred Orcs with him."

What would you have done last time?

"I guess now somebody would try and remember some hint that DungeonMaster gave us to help."

What did he say?

"Not much of anything, this time--"

What did he say?

"He said we had it covered, okay, Uni?" Bobby was getting angry again, but keeping his voice down, afraid that he might be heard in the Orc camp. "He said we had everything we'd need. But all I got is this club and a ton of sand. What am I supposed to do with that?  Dammit!" Bobby had pulled his club out of his belt when he'd mentioned it; now he threw it into the sand.

The sand rippled away from the club, like a pond disturbed by a stone.

Bobby wasn't sure if what he heard next was a memory or a projection from Uni's mind, but the voice of DungeonMaster seemed to echo around him: You have everything you need.

In an instant, Bobby knew what he had to do. He slid down to the base of the dune and quickly checked it out from several angles, like a golfer lining up a winning putt. He suddenly took his club in both hands and slammed it into the base of the dune.

The dune shifted. Slowly at first, then gaining speed as it gained momentum, the mass moved along the desert toward the encampment, picking up more sand along the way. The few Orcs who saw it coming and had time to sound an alarm had never before seen such a thing: a tidal wave of sand.

The wave hit the camp almost soundlessly. Most of the Orcs fled ahead of the moving dune deeper into the desert. An unlucky few got buried. Bobby and Uni watched as the dune levelled almost all of the camp. It missed Rahmoud's tent by inches.

Once the travelling dune had cleared the camp, Bobby jumped on Uni's back. She galloped as fast as she could to Rahmoud's tent. They both knew that they had to get Rahmoud out before the Orcs regrouped or Majnoun arrived.

The interior of the tent, like the exterior, befit Rahmoud both as a king and a military commander. In a far corner of the vast tent, Rahmoud was lying propped up by several huge cushions. His clothes were still pure white. He'd been hit in the right shoulder with an arrow, and those clothes were torn and bloody, but were covered by bandages that were still immaculately white. And just beyond reach of Rahmoud's right hand, on the floor of the tent, lay his scimitar--the magical weapon that was so recently the source of so much grief in the Realm.

An hour earlier, Bobby might have coldly walked over to Rahmoud and finished him off. Uni's song, however, had driven all traces of that impulse out of his mind. He dashed over to Rahmoud, saw that he was asleep, and shook his good shoulder. "Hey, Rahmoud!"

The king slowly opened his eyes, then stared at the blonde giant before him. "Who are you--"

"Your ticket outta here," Bobby cut him off. He reached for the scimitar. "Let me get this--" Bobby had grabbed the handle and pulled, but only succeeded in pulling himself off-balance, falling flat on his face. The scimitar stayed rooted to the floor of the tent. Bobby straightened his helmet and spit sand out of his mouth. "What the hell--"

"Help me," Rahmoud said, his voice weak and still half-asleep. He leaned on Bobby and reached with his good left arm for the scimitar, which he picked up effortlessly and stuck into his belt. "Where do we go?"

"Huh?" Bobby was as befuddled as Rahmoud had been. "Oh--out here." He helped Rahmoud outside to where the unicorn stood, tall and majestic, but sniffing the air and stamping nervously.

Recognition started to dawn in Rahmoud's eyes. "I know you--"

"Yeah, but can we talk about it later? You've gotta get on."

It was awkward trying to fit both men onto Uni's back, especially with Rahmoud's weakened arm. Finally they worked it out; Rahmoud sat in front, almost leaning on Uni's neck, with Bobby supporting him as best he could. As soon as they were settled, Uni wheeled and started toward Rahmoud's castle at a brisk walk.

In less than a minute, though, Uni's head jerked up briefly, whereupon she took off at a full gallop. It was all Bobby could do to hold himself and Rahmoud on her back.

"What is it?" Bobby yelled, "the Orcs?"

Worse.

Bobby almost knew what he would see before he looked over his shoulder. The Orcs had regrouped and mounted every beast of burden in the camp. They were in pursuit of Rahmoud and the unicorn. But that was not the worst of it. At the head of the stampede was Majnoun, clearly recognizable by the light of the moons. He had not only arrived, but had marshalled the Orcs and was leading the chase.

Worse, they were slowly closing the gap.

I'm sorry Bobby; this was a bad idea.

"Come on, Uni; you can do it."

Not carrying two of you. And not with so little rest between trips.

"Well, now's the time. Teleport!"

I told you, Bobby, Uni's thoughts were almost impatient, we unicorns only teleport as far as we can see.

"Has any unicorn ever tried to go farther?"

No--

"Because no unicorn ever wanted to, right?"

Well, yes--

"Then how do you know?"

Uni pondered the logic of this for a second. Do you really think I can do it?

One of the Orcs threw a spear, which landed to the right of Uni and her riders. "Uni, I believe with all my heart that you can do it. Please try!"

Majnoun and the Orcs saw the alicorn take on a white glow, which held for a few seconds, then exploded into light like the firing of a photographer's flashbulb, the light engulfing the unicorn and her riders--

as they found themselves drowning in a flood of light, the light freezing their lungs, preventing them from taking a breath, as they moved as fast as thought through the river of light which separates somewhere from somewhere else--

and just as suddenly found themselves nearing the top of a dune. Only now, the desert night was still; there was no pursuing Orc army. Uni, who was near collapse, staggered to the top of the dune, from which they could look down and see--Rahmoud's palace, no more than a mile away.

"Man," Bobby said in a voice hushed with awe, "how far did you take us?"

Rahmoud could barely find his tongue. "We have just travelled ten of your miles in an instant."

Uni's legs gave out; she knelt abruptly on the sand, barely giving Bobby and Rahmoud enough time to dismount and get clear before she fell over onto her side. But her thoughts were ecstatic: I've just GOT to tell the others about this!

Bobby and Rahmoud knew that they too could rest awhile; for Uni, it was absolutely necessary. Rahmoud seemed almost shy as he turned and asked, "Excuse me, but--you are Bobby, are you not?"

"Well, sure. I guess I've changed a bit--"

"More than a bit. You have grown so strong and tall, and this marvelous unicorn has grown beautiful and powerful." Rather than ask about the others, Rahmoud hung his head. "While I have grown old and foolish."

This was not the Rahmoud they had remembered. Was he still partly under Majnoun's influence? "The rest of us are here, too. Well, most of us. Sheila's disappeared."

"Your sister, vanished? Like my Ayisha?"

"We think they're being held here together."

"I could not find my daughter by myself, nor with the help of an army. But you and your friends--" The little enthusiasm Rahmoud had just shown started to flicker out again. "Well, even they may not be enough to help."

Bobby tried to rouse him again. "How did you do that with your sword?"

"Do what?"

"I couldn't even pick it up."

"That was not my doing. Menelik, el-Rabadh--those were my doing." He sighed and seemed to sink into himself again, no longer acknowledging that Bobby was there.

Bobby tried again. "The sword?"

Rahmoud awkwardly pulled the scimitar from his belt and set it on his lap. "Perhaps you can see it by the light of the moons. This etching here, near the base of the blade? It is the inscription of a magic spell--what you would call a safety device. The spell was cast when the blade was first forged."

Bobby watched as Rahmoud's hands lightly traced the etching. "What does it say?"

"We all knew that I was being given a very powerful weapon. I felt that the scimitar could fall all too easily into dangerous hands, so I asked for a spell that would impose limits. Now, the spell makes the scimitar too heavy to lift. The spell reads: THE STRENGTH OF TWO GOOD ARMS, OR THE COURAGE OF SEVEN HEARTS."

"Does that mean that, like, seven guys can lift it?"

"The handle is too small for seven hands to fit it. Besides, it has never been out of my keeping, so I cannot really say what it means."

"But two good arms. Let me try again."

Rahmoud thought for a minute, then lay the scimitar on the desert sand. "Surely I can trust you."

Bobby grasped the scimitar with both hands and tugged at it; nothing happened. It stayed anchored to the sand in spite of all his efforts to shift it. "Maybe it's because I'm not from around here."

Rahmoud again picked up the scimitar with ease and slipped it into his belt. "This weapon was made for my hands, and no others, it seems." Rahmoud sighed deeply and laid down on the sand

Bobby started to say something to Rahmoud, when he looked past the king at the horizon. A red and purple glow was starting to tint the night sky.

Bobby, it will be dawn soon. There isn't much time left. Rahmoud needs the gift of my song.

Bobby glanced at Rahmoud, who seemed to have nodded off to sleep. "You think it'll help him to sing to him?"

Why not? It helped you.

Bobby thought back on the dream-like magical vision Uni had shared with him. "So what was that all about? And how's it gonna help him?"

Bobby, please understand. The Realm is all about magic; it lives and flows throughout the Realm. And not all its forms are benificent. There was a magic working on your heart ever since you saw those bodies at el-Rabadh; a magic that found its way past your defenses from the shock of death. You were changing, subtly and slowly at first, but changing nonetheless.

"Well, I guess my fuse has been a bit short since then--"

Bobby, if someone hadn't done something, you would have ceased to be a Barbarian and moved to a far more violent plateau.

"What do you mean?"

You were in great danger of turning into a Berserker.

"Is that as bad as it sounds?"

Imagine me, and Sheila, and Ayisha, and Rahmoud, all lying at your feet, dead by your hand. Only, you do not know it, you do not remember it, and you do not care, as you look only for more blood to spill.

The glow on the horizon had shaded from purple and red to yellow and orange. Uni staggered to her feet. Bobby picked up Rahmoud, laying him across Uni's back. The two of them walked back to the palace. Bobby, pondering what Uni had just told him, knew better than to disturb her as her thoughts hammered away at the last bitter defenses that walled in Rahmoud's heart.

Coming November 15 :

Part 9: Confrontation