Short Story: The Land of the Mad

Heldir blinked, his vision blurred by the sting of both the sand and his own sweat. The sun burned, blistering him, consuming his thoughts and destroying his mind. Again he found strength, and in his crawl inched further toward the crest of the dune. For weeks, they had searched the desert and followed Warbar's guide. But even as they neared the end, the wyrms had attacked in the early dawn. Sand horrors, Warbar had called them, before he died.

Heldir licked his lips, cracked and bleeding from the desert wind, numbly feeling the thickness of his tongue. The warding against the sun had long since lapsed, and without water there was no hope. But the wizard and the priest both lay dead in the bellies of the wyrms.

Now at the top of the dune, he could see the marble dome and the sandstone obelisks rising out of the sands of the Lyrmaddyn. The ruins and wealth of Uldak Payle, one of the richest cities of the First Solvarin Empire, were his alone. No, they were his to share with all the rest who had come to take its treasures and failed.

It was Anwar who had commanded the genie of the air to carry them across the desert. The wind spirit had warned them against disturbing the powers of the sand and the wind. It had called the desert the land of the mad, and Heldir could feel his own sanity slipping beneath the relentless torment of the sweltering sun. He could not hope to walk out of the desert alive. With the rest of his group dead, he would not survive long against the sand terrors when they came again. Heldir could feel the sand blowing into him, across him, covering him. But only as darkness enveloped him did he realize that the sand beneath him had slipped away.