Part 19 (2/2)

The resemblance was more than a fortuitous coincidence, went deeper than something that looked vaguely like a s.h.a.ggy head attached to a c.u.mbersome body and limbs. The degree of detail was frightening, from the flattened nose to the wide, deep-set eyes. Edging closer, the herdsman found himself staring intently into hollow pits of fractured salt crystal. Should they s.h.i.+ft, however slightly, to look back at him, he was afraid that he might cry out.

They did not. The image was composed wholly and unequivocally of salt; immobile, inanimate, and dead. Nothing more. But how then to explain the startling likeness? Not to mention Ahlitah's herd of sculpted prey and Simna's inviting castle. Reaching out, he took Hunkapa Aub's left wrist in both his hands and prepared to pull again, this time with all his strength. He did not. There was something odd about his hulking friend's hair. Usually it was soft and pliant, so much so that Simna often teased its wearer about its feminine feel. Now, suddenly, it felt granular and gritty. Releasing his grip, Ehomba put two fingers to his mouth and touched them cautiously with his tongue. The taste was all too familiar.

Salt.

Whirling, he raced back the way they had come. He found the black litah with his teeth sunk deeply into the side of a mound of slightly reddish salt. The big cat's burning yellow eyes were still open, still alert, but dimmed. As if slightly glazed over. With salt.

”Ahlitah, wake up, come out of it!” He pulled hard on one of the cat's front legs, then on its tail, all to no avail. Equally as heavy as Hunkapa Aub, the black litah was just as difficult to move. Stepping back, the herdsman saw to his horror that the sleek ebony flank was already beginning to show a crust of rapidly congealing halite crystals.

Uncertain what to do, he turned a slow circle. This part of the lake bed was a maze of mounds and pillars, knolls and motifs, configurations and oddly organic shapes. If he burrowed into some of the more recognizable forms, what might he find concealed in their brackish depths? How many of the formations were natural-and how many molded on unlucky travelers both human and otherwise who had preceded him and his companions to this occulted corner of reality? Did he dare dig within? High above, the blanched moon shone down and proffered no explanation.

His mouth set in a grim, determined line, he swung his backpack around in front of him and fumbled inside until he found the vial he was looking for. Little of the inordinately pungent liquid within remained.

Hopefully, it would be enough. Since Ahlitah was the first and most seriously affected, Ehomba determined to try to emanc.i.p.ate the big cat first. But as he prepared to remove the stopper from the bottle, something off to his right caught his eye. He stared, then found himself staring harder, but it would not go away. Three pillars, streaked with brown and less so with red. One tall and two short, gazing back at him out of hollow, glistening eye sockets. Three pillars of acc.u.mulated, weathered, freshly precipitated mineral salts. Together, they formed a family of salt.

His family.

There was no mistaking the ident.i.ty of the tallest figure. It was Mirhanja, complete to the smallest detail, her ashen arms extended pleadingly in his direction. He took an instinctive, automatic step toward her.

Preparing to take another, he forced himself to halt. His right leg, his whole body trembled. A battle was taking place within, a war between himself as he was and himself as what he knew. It was a conflict that, if lost, would find him once more in the bosom of his family. Embraced by the ones he loved most in the entire world-and encased in patient, precipitating, all-embracing salt.

He would join his companions and their hapless predecessors not in crossing the surrounding sickly, bloodless terrain, but in becoming a part of it.

Always dispute what is happening around you, his father had told him. Never, ever, stop questioning everything and anything, even that which you perceive to be indisputably and undeniably real, for reality can play all manner of unpleasant tricks on the c.o.c.ksure. Ehomba had grown up skeptical and politely suspicious of the world around him. As he was now.

Think!he screamed at himself. What has happened here? Whatis happening here? Ahlitah saw a herd of prey animals, and the salt became prey animals. Hunkapa Aub saw himself reflected in the salt, and the salt became his reflection. You see your family, the thingyou most want to see.

But Simna ibn Sind had walked off toward a salt castle. Other travelers and animals could have wandered into this ghastly place and become embalmed by the salt, creating so many of the strange and now ominous formations surrounding him. But a castle couldn't just pick up and move. Therefore what they were seeing was being drawn, had to be drawn, from the hidden places of their own minds. Simna might dream a castle full of willing concubines, but he would want to take possession of the castle first.

So the salt had, by inimical magicks unknown and unimaginable, risen up from the lake bed, precipitated out, and formed itself into a small castle for him to inspect. If he entered it fully, Ehomba sensed, his friend would never come out.

Reaching down to scratch an itch, his fingers came away with tiny white grains beneath the nails.

Employing every ounce of energy and every iota of determination he could muster, he wrenched himself away from the heart-rendingly realistic figures of his family. As he did so, a cracking sounded beneath his sandals as he broke free of the encrusting salt that had already begun to crawl up his legs. He was free again, but for how long? And what of the fate of his friends?

No!he shouted silently. He had not brought them this far to lose them now, so near to their goal.

Realizing that the nearly empty bottle of oris musk would not be enough to shatter the saline illusions the accursed landscape had precipitated around his friends, he fumbled anew with the contents of the backpack. But what could he possibly use? There was nothing, nothing he knew of that was stronger or had a more powerful effect on the living than oris musk.

No, he thought as he stopped digging through the jumble at the bottom of the pack. That wasn't true.

There was something more powerful. Furthermore, he had plenty of it.

Slinging the pack around to where it rested comfortably against his shoulders once again, nestling against the twin scabbards, he unlimbered his water bag and tucked it firmly beneath his right arm. It was nearly full, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with the stuff of life hard-won in sinister Skawpane. Carefully he removed the stopper and let it dangle by its cord from the lip of the bag. The contents sloshed gently in response to his actions.

Turning his back on his imploring but inanimate family, he walked up to where the black litah stood frozen in the midst of suffocating halite. Taking careful aim with the mouth of the bag, he brought his right elbow and arm roughly against his side, squeezing the bag sharply. Water sprayed from the opening to drench the big cat. It struck his mane and shoulders, ribs and legs. It got in his eyes and nose.

For the first time in many long moments, Ahlitah blinked. Thanks to the water that had gone up his nostrils, this was followed by a sneeze of truly leonine proportions. Running down his flanks, the precious water dissolved away the salt. Even as the big cat was cleansed, fresh salt was trying to precipitate out around his feet, to make its way up his legs and trap him anew.

Shaking his head, the litah sent a shower of sparkling halite crystals flying in all directions. ”What happened?” Wrinkling back his lips as only a big cat can do, he spat disgustedly to one side. ”What have I been eating?”

Ehomba pointed out the places where the uncannily saiga-shaped lump of mineral salts showed claw and tooth marks. ”Everyone likes a little salt with their meal, but there are limits. While you were trying to eat the salt, the salt was starting to eat you. It was not meat that was salted-it was your thoughts.” Steeling himself, he turned and gestured in the direction of the three sculpted figures of his family. Now that he was fully conscious of the slow, terrible death they symbolized, he was able to look at them more clearly and see them for what they really were. This time they looked less like Mirhanja and his children than they did like three small pillars of acc.u.mulated whiteness.

Revelation proved sanguinary for Ahlitah as well. ”I can't believe I was chewing so single-mindedly on that.” His snarl of antipathy and contempt echoing across the lake bed, he brought one ma.s.sive paw around in a great arc and decapitated the nearest formation. Lumps of shattered salt went skittering across the hard, crusty ground.

”Bring your water.” Ehomba spun on one sandaled foot. ”We have to free the others.” He stamped down heavily as he walked. ”And keep moving. Do not linger too long in one place. As swiftly as the salt distorts and affects your mind, it also clutches at your feet.”

It took the contents of an entire water bag and part of another to free the hulking Hunkapa Aub from his saline entombment. When confronted with the reality of his mirrored self in salt, he could not be dissuaded from pus.h.i.+ng it over. It smashed to bits, leaving a pile of salt rubble where moments before had stood a perfect likeness of the s.h.a.g-covered man-beast.

Continuously brus.h.i.+ng salt crystals from their arms and legs, they hurried on to the knoll of salts that had a.s.sumed the guise of a small castle. Breathing hard, Ehomba slowed before the sculpted entrance-but of his good friend and companion there was no sign.

Scratching ceaselessly as he fought off the persistent salt, Hunkapa Aub turned a slow circle. ”Not see friend Simna.”

”I don't smell him, either.” Head back, the black litah was sniffing repeatedly at the air. ”Between the new dampness and the old salt it's hard to scent anything else.”

”Keep trying.” Grateful for the moonlight, Ehomba strained to see through seams in the salt formations.

They appeared to be taunting him, mocking his efforts to penetrate their encrusted secrets, laughing silently from origins he preferred not to contemplate.

His eyes widened slightly as he realized what must have happened. Whirling to face the blocky, crenellated formation once more, he aimed the water bag he was holding and directed Hunkapa Aub to do likewise with his. Bereft of hands, Ahlitah could only look on and watch.

Water gushed from the mouths of both bags to play over the flanks of the consolidated castle. Minarets dissolved into soggy lumps, and then the lumps themselves became components of thin briny rivers that flowed down the flanks of the formation. Turrets and spires sagged and crumbled, melding into the walls as they liquefied beneath the soaking a.s.sault.

It took more of their supply than the herdsman cared to think about, but halfway into the castle they finally caught a glimpse of Simna ibn Sind's backpack. Still riding high on the swordsman's shoulders, it gleamed dully in the moonlight. The surrounding, enclosing salt imparted a sickly blue cast to the exposed portions of his skin.

Moving closer and wielding the shrinking water bags like firearms, Ehomba and Hunkapa Aub dissolved the salt from around their friend's encrusted body. He had been completely entombed. Salt plugged his ears and formed a crust over his eyes. But his nostrils were still unblocked, though barely, the advancing salt having been held back by the moisture breathed out by his lungs.

Stiff and unbending, his body was dragged out into the open air and laid gently across Ahlitah's back.

Lying him down on the ground was not contemplated, as it would just be returning him to the grip of the relentless, inimical salts. Water from still another bag was poured over him, drenching his body and clothing, soaking his face. When he finally revived, the herdsman did so sputtering violently and shaking his head.

Sitting up, he wiped animatedly at his face and took a long, deep breath. ”What happened? I feel as if I've come back from the land of the dead.” Rising to his feet, he suddenly pointed and yelled, ”That cursed castle tried to kill me! It grabbed me and tried to suffocate me!”

”Salt you down is more like it.” Careful to keep moving his feet and arms, Ehomba proceeded to explain. ”I think that if we had been five minutes longer in melting you out, the salt would have filled your nose and stopped your breathing. And your heart.”

Wiping at himself as if he had just emerged from hiding in the depths of a cesspool, the swordsman found himself p.r.o.ne to a momentary case of the shakes. He was prepared to face death, had been ever since he had taken up the sword, but suffocating alive was among the least pleasant ways imaginable for a man to expire.

”Away from this place,” he declared with a sweep of his arm. ”Let's get away from here.”

His companions needed no urging. The matter of their suddenly and severely depleted water supply, which they had worked so hard to obtain in Skawpane, was not mentioned. Commentary was unnecessary. Having utilized the greater portion of it to free themselves from the grasp of the alkaline prison, it would now have to be rationed severely, and quickly replenished. In the waning moonlight, the silhouette of the Curridgian escarpment loomed before them more meaningful than ever.

There would be water there, Ehomba knew as he moved forward at the run. The snowy peaks promised as much. The only question was, how high up and how far back would they have to go to find it?

Behind them, fantastic contours and extravagant shapes stood silent sentinel over the salt plain. They did not move, and none uttered so much as a whisper. Rising from pools of rapidly dispersing and evaporating water, crystals of halite and gypsum sparkled like diamonds as they precipitated out of the chloride-heavy solution. In most places such a wealth of crystals would have been zealously guarded and protected, for salt was necessary to the perpetuation of life.

Only here, in this forsaken and barren place between mountain and misery, had it turned deadly.

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