Between Two Ends by David Ward Page B

was, she certainly played the part well. In the few minutes he had known her he decided he liked her immensely.
    He stared into the gloom, keeping one hand at the ready and the other feeling along the wall. He was plunged into the darkness. It never occurred to him that Shari could have deceived him. He knew there would be a door leading to the town.
    Sure enough, within a minute the passage came to an abrupt end. Upon opening the door he was struck by a blast of dry heat, very different from the cool of the garden, even though he was still underground. A rocky path sloped away from the palace and wound its way to a cluster of tiny lights in the distance.
    It was an awful feeling when he broke into the fresh air again. He crept like a sand crab along the dark and dusty track. Someone barked an order from high on the parapet, and Yeats pressed himself to the ground. Torchlight revealed a guard’s silhouette on the sand. But the guard’s back was turned and his hail was answered fromthe nearest tower. Yeats waited for the voices to stop before hurrying on.
    He crossed a stream, stopping briefly to drink and wash the scratches on his leg. He wondered if this was part of the same river that met the sea near the palace. “Too small,” he murmured. The world turned flat away from the walls of the palace, and the gray desert stretched to the horizon under the moon where it met the last crack of sunset.
    Only a little heat came from the ground, the last vestige of a boiling day and cool night. He was glad to be wearing his running shoes. He wondered what his father and Shari had done for disguise and if their clothes were the very things that attracted attention and caused the girl to be taken. Then he frowned. “I’ll have to find clothes somehow in the town,” he said to himself. “Can’t go around dressed like this. That’ll bring guards in a hurry!”
    Yeats wrapped his arms around his chest for warmth as he walked. Only the lamps, glowing from the town ahead, provided him with enough light to choose a direction. All else had turned toblackness. He stumbled frequently. To keep from falling he kept his eyes on the cluster of flat-roofed houses glinting like bone in the yellow lamplight.
    â€œIt’s no good,” he muttered. “I should have stayed with her. What if something happens to me out here and I can’t get back?” The thought made him bite his lip. He imagined his parents sitting at the table in Gran’s house, worrying to death about him. “Steady, Yeats,” he murmured. “Dad got out. I will too. And I have information he didn’t: I know how to break the spell and bring Shari back.” He grimaced. “Theoretically.”
    Sometime later the ground surrounding the path became clearer. It happened so gradually that at first he did not realize there was a light shining from behind him. The brilliant moon traveled farther into the night sky, lighting the path to the town and the desert beyond. His footsteps crunched on the pebbly path.
    Half an hour after setting out he came to his destination. There were walls here as well, surrounding the city, but nothing so ornate as at the palace. The gates were made of wood,weathered and beaten by the sun, and they stood wide open. More from neglect, he thought, then in welcome. There were no guards.
    Through the gap the moonlight revealed whitewashed homes with cracked walls, most connected by flat-topped roofs. Lamplight flickered from a few arched windows, and Yeats smelled the acrid scent of oil burning. He turned at every sound: a cough, a baby’s cry, his own scuffing feet. Something savage barked beyond the walls. There were scattered conversations as well, soft voices and whispers as families brought their day to a close.
    And then something quite awful rose above the expected nocturnal noises. Weeping. There was no warning. It simply broke out in one home and spread to the rest. From every