“Do they ride horses?”
“Ride them? They share their tents with them.”
“Where away?”
“The pit country. A bit east of southeast from here. You would reach it by nightfall, and if you have a dragon’s nose, you’ll smell the water by afternoon.”
“Do you know many more vultures?”
“We are a far-flying people.”
“Tell them to gather for a feast, above this oasis at dawn tomorrow.”
“You speak bravely for something I took to be a meal in a day or two.”
“What is the worst that can happen? If the waste-elves get me, they may pick at my hide.”
“Young drake, the desert is a changeless place. To be honest, I find it a little boring a’times. I shall call my aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews, and relations thrice removed to observe events. Look for us when the sun rises. We will enjoy the show from on high, though the ending may ill-suit you.”
Auron followed his nose to the sinks. The desert became rockier, and he reached a country of tortured landscape. It was as if long ago boulders had plunged from the sky and into the desert, leaving sheer-sided craters when they punched through the surface. He wondered what mad work of Earth or Water Spirit had created them in the forming of the world.
He had to restrain himself from rushing forward at the smell of water. He heard songs in high elven voices mixed with the shouts of men—and occasional screams—echoing up from the largest of the craters.
The sun descended behind him, and Auron did his best to cover the last distance across the desert with the sun directly behind him. If they had guards watching the empty space around the pit country, they would not be watchmen for long if they spent their time staring into the horizon-touching sun. When he could distinguish voice from voice, he stopped and hugged the dirt; nightfall would mask the rest of his approach.
He saw a hominid—it was too far away to determine if it was man or elf—climb atop a claw-shaped rock and stand, staring out into the desert to the east. Water trickled, its sweet sound tantalizingly near within the pit. Auron crept to the edge of the sink and looked down.
A sea of creepers hung from the rocks. The bottom of the sink was sand and bush, flowing from a notch that gave the oval a teardrop shape. At the widest part of the circular canyon, there was a pool, fed by trickles of water coming out of the vertical rock face. The narrow end had either been shaped or dug into a long fissure inclining up to the surface of the desert, a good six drake-lengths above the canyon floor. It was here, at the only entrance that didn’t involve climbing, that the watchelf stood on his promontory.
Caves and shelves filled the sides of the canyon, and the waste-elves had turned these into little homes, each inhabiting one like owls sharing an ancient hollow tree. Ropes and ladders hung from some; others could be reached by stepping rocks in piles or handholds cut into the stone. A corral of stacked stone stood by the pool with a few camels; the horses, as the vulture said, must be in the tents covering the pit floor. A capacious tent: a patchwork of rugs and what looked like sail material from a ship ran from the opening of the incline to the surface halfway across the floor of the canyon. Lamps burned within, and disturbing sounds rushed into the darkness, shouts and screams of women. Auron smelled blood, and he looked over to a blackened pit where a limp form lay pale in the darkness.
Charcoal in little pots and troughs had meat roasting above on skewers. An elf or two, in sandals and loose robes with thorns growing in their hair, wandered from tent to tent, wine bottles dangling in their fingers. Auron saw scimitars and recurved bows scattered in the little caves and shelves. These were warrior elves, and judging from the sounds in the tent, cruel.
Auron made a mind-picture of the pit, and moved away from the edge and crept among the stones, slithering with his belly scraping the cold rocks toward the watchelf. He tasted the air. There was more than one there, though where the others might be the airs did not say. At least he knew where one stood.
He thanked his star that the waste elves kept no dogs. He needed water, food, and rest . . . but to do that he needed to drive the waste elves away.
But how?
After a few moments’ thought, he slithered forward at a stalk, his body the color of the night sand. He withdrew his claws to climb the watch-rock silently, sticky sii finding grips in the wind-cut limestone. He had to be careful with his iron-sheathed tail, however. He could not climb with it as he was used to, for fear of the metal scraping the rock.
The waste elf nodded above, seated cross-legged on the rock with his head lolling against his chest. Auron climbed sideways as he neared the top. The elf’s ears must have picked up something, but in the second it took his brain to answer the call, Auron’s tail lashed up, catching him full in the face with the tiny shield. His tail knocked the elf backwards into his waiting jaws, and the skull gave way with a crunch.
The splattering rain of blood landing on the stones below woke the others. Auron heard one call a jest about the sentry relieving himself too noisily. The elves spoke Parl. Auron saw two figures below stir in their sand-covered blankets, and he jumped down among them.
The murders were done in an instant. The elves waited there prepared to blow a warning on brass horns, not to fight a lion’s weight of claws, teeth, and tail plunging onto them from a height.
Auron ate a selection of organ meat and lapped at the salty blood, feeling strength from the meal flow into his limbs as fast as the liquid flowed into his stomach. When he finished, he went to work on the bodies, rending flesh and tearing joints until the remains could not be identified as coming from man, horse, or swine by anyone save a scholar of bone fragments. Then he searched the ground for his footprints and obscured them with brushes of his tail.
He returned to the pit.
The revels had grown louder with the night progress.
Auron scaled the sink-side, above the water. When he sank into the pool, it was like a pleasant dream brought to life—the water seemed to caress his skin with living tongues. He drank, but not too deeply.
Two men staggered out of the great tent at the canyon mouth, carrying a body by the wrists and ankles. Long hair wet with blood trailed on the sand as they hauled the burden to the mass grave. They tossed the corpse onto the other without word or ceremony, sending an empty bottle crashing against the rock wall after it. They turned back toward the tent, but one found the effort of corpse-removal too fatiguing, and slid to the floor of the pit in a stupor. The other chuckled something Auron could not make out and moved for the glow shining out from a crack in the tent flaps.
Auron took another welcome tongueful of water and then went to work among the bloody ruins of the elves’ victims before settling down for a wait.
Only one more body came out of the tent after the screaming stopped, but the bearers could not be bothered with dragging it all the way to the other end of the box canyon. They tossed the torn body of the pathetically skinny boy against the canyon wall. One gestured at the other with a bloody pair of tongs, and the other cackled as they staggered back inside.
The sun came up an hour after the last sounds of bloody revelry died. Auron looked up into the sky and saw the vultures circling. Perhaps six or seven rode the air currents above, with new ones arriving every few minutes. The others came of their own instinct, attracted by the sight of their brethren gathering.
A pair of waste elves came running down the canyon entrance on the other side of the tent, shouting an alarm. Half-awake elves and men rolled to their feet, reaching for weapons.
Auron let them gather under the unsettling sight of the carrion beasts above and hear the tale from the relief.
“Twas a ghastly sight. Gongglass and Nardi are in pieces. Couldn’t tell who was who. They were taken unawares, and the intruders left no tracks anywhere near the fight. Whatever it was tore them apart from the wind.”
The elves and men muttered, looking around the canyon walls, then to the vulture-filled sky.
“Blood, blood on watch rock!” one said, looking toward the lookout Auron had visited.
“Where’s Tirl? And Sandglitter?”
“Dead!” Auron roared, lifting his head from the pile of bodies. He had festooned himself with guts and tucked severed arms into his crest so they stood up like antlers. “Your lives were forfeited with the treasure you stole! It bore a curse. All who touched it are the Revengerog’s, summoned from the abyss at the breaking of the Hidden Seal.” From the pit Auron swayed back and forth, surreptitiously letting go his urine in a wide arc. He had been long without water, and it was strong with a bitter acid odor.
The horses and camels, already nervous with the waste elves’ fear in the air, caught the powerful scent in the swirling airs of the canyon. The camels bellowed and the horses screamed and ran, adding to the confusion before the tent. Elves threw themselves from their caves as the crowd dissolved pell-mell through the tent, in a footrace where a roaring blood-drenched demon would take the hindmost. In the rush, the supports were knocked out from the tent, and it came down on men and animal alike.
Auron placed his front legs on the edge of the pit, stretching his neck as far as it would go. A transfixed man stood gaping from under a wide hat, eyes blinking in the dust of fleeing men and animals. Auron would have to kill one more. He dragged the costume of intestinal tresses across the floor of the canyon.