The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps Read Online Free PDF Page A

silver night ablaze for him, Demane ran ahead to where wetness rose richest, near a boulder.
    Bent over, noses in the sand and pressed to the rim of the half-ton slab, even the others could smell it. But there was no trickle, only a dark stain in the sand. Nor could they shift the stone, and to bring down more hands would only crowd and hinder, not help.
    “Let me try something,” Demane said. He had the captain give his highest, sharpest cries, and listening to echoes the rock returned, chose a spot to crouch. He milked his third eye for vitriol. It took time, and to the others it seemed that Demane only knelt, lost in thought or prayer for water. He’d once accomplished this feat as a boy, when still a novice, but never since in earnest.
    Master Suresh called down bitterly.
    Dolce
, the captain called back.
    Some time later, Messed Up nudged Demane’s shoulder. “Damn, Sorcerer.” He breathed by mouth, and poked Demane again. “Why you just
setting
there
?” Demane tried to wave him off, focusing on the contract-release of the tiniest, most obscure muscles.
    Captain pulled Messed Up back.
    Mouth full, Demane bowed and pressed his lips to a crack under the rock. He spat hard. Weak phosphoros was hid by his body, but the rock cried out—inorganic cavils and groans. “
¡Coño!
” “The fuck was
that
?” the brothers exclaimed. Virulent potency sheared deep feet through rock, and then sinking, smelted and cracked the stone. Igneous fumes,
hot
, hissed out. Demane jumped up and back with the rest. When the fiery stink had cleared, Captain waved Demane beside him, and the other three to the rock’s opposite side. This time their strength sufficed to tip the boulder out from the greater shelf beneath. They sent it on its way, sliding to the sandy bottom.
    “Pero no veo naá . . .” Wock began, and then
heard
. So did they all: a burbling sigh, the sweet sound of water pissing through fractured stone; then saw the starlit froth too, as it welled up, running away in glitters over the thirsty sand and gravel. Messed Up fell greedily to hands and knees.
    “
Water
,” Captain sang to the ridge above. “
Come down
.” The caravan came.

    Abundant water flowed with the effect of wine. The caravan drank and drank and lay down anywhere. Brothers should have known the routine. Five different men guarded each quarter of the night, while four slept the night through. They’d done so more than eighty times already, at every sleep-camp when Captain called the watch. But by the lucky springs, so late it would dawn soon, Captain sat for a moment in the sand. And it must surely have felt soft to him, for he began to nod, his lips slackening. Across camp, watching between slow blinks, Demane lay stretched out already. It had been a long day of highs and lows; he too was at lowest ebb. His knack for medicinals, as it turned out, had proved no help at all with venoms. That feat had drained Demane to the dregs. He ought to practice more, but why,
nasty
stuff . . . Demane slept too.
    Some nightmare woke him. The fleshcolored sky was sallowing in the orient. Over the lip of the ridge, down the arroyo’s east bank, ragged shapes with machètes or spears loped from rock to rock, sliding where their footing crumbled, descending on the caravan asleep in the bottom sands. Thirty? No, there were
fifty
of them at least!
    Desperados.
    Demane’s alarums woke the camp. Snoring brothers took hard kicks. Some sleepers he snatched up by the hair and dropped on foot awake. As soon as Demane began to yell, every bandit set up whooping, lunatic as hyenas. Twice the number of blades bristled downslope as up, and there was nobody silent, everyone screaming. Before the teeth of spears could chew them, the merchants scrambled past the brothers to cower against the western bank; and then top and bottom jaw of the skirmish closed. The merchants all lived. Brothers died.
    Where was Captain? Amidst the enemy already, a blur of black robes, quarter-way-up