02 Quetzals Flock

QUETZAL'S FLOCK
back, his enemy had also vanished. Eridos paused and stood upright from the
crouching position he had adopted. He pushed home his sword in its sheath and
uttered a sharp laugh of self-derision. Was his desire, his thirst for revenge, leading to
this? Was he now subject to waking nightmares in which he imagining Kane Ashford
to be walking towards him?
Eridos turned and strode back towards his encampment, and his Body
Companions, those who always secretly attended their Tepe in his lonely walks,
trailed him watchfully, hidden by the great shifting dunes and the dense foliage of the
Schwarm.
.....
Kane's coming to Jubal had been as he had seen in his nightmares. It had been
Taxila who had walked off the jutting rock and away from his Children, the Lynxe. He
had walked away from Maia and his unborn child. He had taken the Bole in one hand
and had clutched the wrist of Danyk, his Brother of the Image, with the other. He
wore the Pentacle which carried the image of the thin featured man. He had expected
his destination to be the sombre world he had seen in his dreams, but nothing could
have prepared him for what he experienced.
His tunic sucked to his body and he started to pour with sweat. It was
ferociously hot, it was like walking into the Old Earth concept of Hell. Kane looked
around - Danyk was gone! The shoreline was deserted and although he looked around
the outline of the natural rock arch into which he had arrived, Danyk was nowhere to
be seen. Kane felt panic rising, he had counted on having Danyk with him.
Apparently, the Masters of Psi had other plans.
He tried to calm down and sheltered within the little shade provided by the
arch. He needed to get his bearings. The black ocean was beyond. It rolled like oil,
turgid, almost unclean. It was uninviting. Above him was a red sky in which hung
motionless, heavy, aluminium-hued clouds. They looked like vast, lazy thunderheads,
poised to unleash some hellish precipitation which might not even be water.
Commanding the whole scene was an enormous, oblate spheroid. It was an
ancient sun, whose surface was varicosed with vein-like streaks meandering across its
bloated surface. It was wine-red and the bruised veins were a deep purple. On the
other side from the ocean, the shore rose slightly to sand dunes. Near the summit of
them began some sort of growth. His eyes couldn't pick the colour. He was confronted
with only one end of the spectrum. All the blue end, with green and yellow, was
missing. Everything was red or pink, or so deeply coloured, that it appeared to be
black.
He picked up the Bole and decided not to risk it getting bogged in the purple
sand. He had always complained that it weighed a ton, now, with the obvious increase
in gravitation, he was quite certain it did! He found it hard to breath and his heart
started to labour before he was half way up the slope of the dune. The powdery sand
shifted under his feet and he wondered if he was making any progress. He had to
pause and applied techniques which were used when someone who had been in space
for a long time, returned to the heavy gravity of Mars or the Moon. This world was
much bigger, he weighed much heavier, he knew he would have to be careful not to
do himself permanent damage.
The sand was more like talc, soft and purple. It oozed through his toes and
filled his open sandals. He looked back, already his tracks were becoming indistinct,
as the hot breeze skimmed the surface. He had no plan, other than to get away from
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