The Sorceress of Qar by White Ted

Author:White, Ted [White, Ted]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Lancer
Published: 1969-10-08T05:00:00+00:00

With dawn came a lightening of the overcast. The rain had stopped. High overhead, clouds still boiled, still scudded one under another across the heavy sky. But no wind touched the surface of the sands, where already crusts had formed. These clouds, Shannara guessed, were not rain clouds, but a re-formation of the vapors that had boiled off the desert sands during the night. It would not be long before the sand was dry once more, the sky clear.

But up ahead the way was no longer that of unending sand dunes. For high against the sky stood a great range of mountains, purple in the dawn twilight and ruggedly forbidding.

“We’re much closer!” Shannara said, as she sank to her knees in weariness upon an out-thrust slab of rock.

Elron kicked at the sandy pebbles beneath his feet. ‘Do you know what day this is?”

She shook her head wearily.

“This is the seventh day we have been in this place. Five days we’ve traveled.”

“You kept count?”

He nodded.

The land here was a strange mixture of the rugged hills beyond and the desert sands behind them. Slag-like slabs of soft, clay-colored rock seemed pitched upon the ground, thrusting up at odd angles, the sand drifted around and between them. In places the ground was washed bare, exposing a hard, baked clay that was almost brick. In the dry streambeds there were pebbles and small rocks, also of the same light clay in appearance.

Elron turned to survey the land behind them.

They had climbed—without knowing it, they had gradually climbed several hundred feet. When he locked back, it was upon the basin of the desert, stretching gray-white below him into the distance under the overcast dawn. Far off he thought he saw the towers of Vagar and the heavier gray of the sea, but he could not be sure, for the light was yet too dim.

They had come a better distance than he’d imagined. It buoyed him, and Shannara felt it when he returned to her. He bent, kissed her forehead softly, and said, “We must find a place to sleep the day, now that we’ve lost our cover sheet.”

She’d been half-dozing, but his new optimism lifted her to her feet, and she followed him as he climbed a low hill, then beckoned her over the crest.

Below, on the other side, the hill was undercut, its strata exposed in jagged layers. A wet-weather stream had undercut the hill, carving out an overhang and leaving still a few pools of water.

“Elron! We’ve really found shelter,” she said, her voice echoing her surprise.

“You did not expect it?”

“It’s unwise to expect anything good out here. Isn’t that what you believe?”

He slipped his arm around her and pulled her close. She moved willingly into the crook under his arm, letting her head fall against his chest and allowing her eyes to close.

“Yes, my dearest,” he said softly. “That is what I believe.”

He stowed the knapsacks beneath the cliff, then chipped at a gap between two strata with his rods until they were anchored there, and unrolled his leathers, hanging them there like curtains.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.