The Desert Kid's Arc

Chapter 3 of 10

The wind came up an hour past the fork. The Desert Kid had been keeping the pale peak on his right shoulder, just as the chart had shown. Then the sand rose in a wall and swallowed the horizon. The mountain vanished. He stopped walking. Without the landmark, the right track and the wrong track were the same track. He crouched low and pulled his collar over his mouth. The compass needle spun, then settled. He pictured the salvaged chart in his head — the thin blue line bending east of the white peak, the dry route bending west. He matched the needle to the memory. East was still east, storm or no storm. A shape moved in the brown air. A man on foot, leading a thin mule, turban wrapped tight across his face. He stopped three paces away and lowered the cloth. It was not the westbound trader. This one had careful eyes and a quiet mouth. "You are off the track," Rashid Zahar said. His voice did not rise above the wind. "Two steps more and you walk the dry line. I have walked it. I came back once. No one comes back twice." He pointed with a flat hand, not east, not west, but to a narrow seam between two ridges the Desert Kid had not seen. "The chart is old. The sand moved the path last season." The Desert Kid looked at the compass. He looked at the seam. He thought about the heat in his skull and the water at his hip and the fact that knowledge was the only thing he had come for. He folded the memory of the chart and set it aside. He stepped off the bearing and followed Rashid into the seam. The storm closed behind them. The bone-white peak, when it showed again an hour later, was on his left shoulder now — and a thin green smudge sat low on the far horizon.