“No!” I shout. “What are you doing?”
“Stay back,” Caleb calls, “or we’ll slaughter your wolf.”
I see Brute now, bound with rope to a lone Joshua tree near the sleds. He growls and strains against the rope. Looped over Fran’s shoulder is a quiver of arrows.
We can’t lose our alpha.
We can’t lose our water, either.
“Why are you doing this?” I say. “We helped you.”
“That’s why we’re only taking half of your supply,” Fran says.
Petre and Caleb finish loading the barrel onto their sled. They strap it into place with leather lashings. Next to me, Orion is rigid with the desire to throw his spear.
“Don’t,” I whisper.
I would rather drink mud than see our alpha wolf killed before my eyes.
The barrel is fully attached to their sled now, and Fran whistles to their wolves. Their sled begins to move away. Petre lifts a hand in farewell. It isn’t mocking. It could just be my imagination, but the tilt of his head makes me think he might be regretting his actions.
As they move back through the dunes, the way we came in yesterday, Orion lets loose a string of curses so vile, they would make even Markus blush. The travelers’ sled is out of sight when he flings his spear forward. It lands in the mud, tail end in the air like an exclamation.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “If I’d woken up earlier—”
“Inez, you came out plenty fast enough,” he says. “You didn’t even get dressed.”
I look down at my legs, the tops of which are barely covered by my long undershirt.
“Right,” I say, moving back toward my tent.
“Either way,” he says, “it isn’t your fault, not any more than it’s my fault. I thought they were our allies.”
“I’m beginning to think the drought doesn’t leave any room for allies,” I say, finding my pants in the tent and pulling them out so I can tug them on. My boots come next, followed by my tunic, belt, sword. I start sweating as soon as everything is on, but at least the clothes are another layer between my skin and the buzzing insects.
I eye Orion’s broad shoulders as he faces our sled. “I’ll go free our alpha while you put your tunic on.”
He looks down at himself in surprise. “I didn’t realize. Sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize,” I say, although I’m unable to admit that I was rather enjoying the view. “The insects will make a feast of you if you don’t cover up, though.”
He nods shortly and turns to his tent. I make my way to Brute, passing the tiny pond of water. My boots squelch in the mud, and I retrieve Orion’s spear on my way.
Brute is still growling low in his throat when I reach him. The ire isn’t directed at me, but at the valley between the dunes where the travelers disappeared.
“We can’t go after them,” I tell him. “They’re long gone, and we have a more important mission.”
But even as I say the words, doubt creeps into my mind. Petre’s story of the water dragon is what prompted this journey to begin with. Was it all just an elaborate ruse to get us out of the city with our barrels of water?
No—it would be an awful lot of effort for so meager a benefit. I think they simply took advantage of our vulnerability.
It was a pretty rotten way for them to repay us for saving them from the scorpion dragon. I hope the ancestors are watching them, and judging.
I bring Brute to the sled. Orion has packed up our tents and leads the rest of our team over. They’re agitated, confused by what just happened—likely picking up on Orion’s and my sour moods.
When I look at the water barrel that the travelers left behind, I groan. “They took our drinking water, and left us with the wolves’ supply.”
The water in the two barrels wasn’t substantially different; it just doesn’t sit well with me to drink water the wolves’ tongues have lapped. It’s simply an additional insult.
Once the wolves are fed and watered, dusk is upon us. I climb into the sled. The book of dragon prophecies rests on the sled’s floorboards, and I consider hurling it into the stinking, stagnant water.
Orion follows my gaze and climbs up into the sled after me.
“You can leave it here if you want,” he says. “I wouldn’t blame you. But it might come in useful.”
Shrugging, I kick it beneath one of the benches where I won’t have to look at it, or Melina’s handwriting on the front. Melina isn’t the one who betrayed us, but she very well might have, if she’d lived.
“What now?” I ask, taking a seat. I reach for the reins, but he grabs them first. It’s a mark of how despondent he is that he doesn’t even smile at his victory.
He holds the reins loosely. “I don’t think we can make it home with what little water we have left. The plan was to refill our barrels here.”
I look beyond the oasis, to the abandoned city. It’s old, and we don’t know why its inhabitants died, but perhaps it could be useful to us. “There might be a well in Lament.”
“Inez…” His voice trails off.
“What is it?”
“Master Kenneth told me things about Lament. I don’t think we should go there.”
I squint to see the ruins in the quickly-fading light. The buildings look jagged, like sandy teeth from a half-exposed skull.
“What did he tell you?” I ask.
He shakes his head. Faint whiskers coat his cheeks and chin. I wonder how often he shaves his face when we’re at home, whether he will shave at all while we travel. Then I remember I should be listening to him speak, not gazing at his strong jaw like an enamored camel.
“Probably old tales,” he says, “meant to scare children.” He gives a rueful laugh. “They worked too well—I am still scared.”
“Where else can we go?” I ask. “Farther north? Do we cut around the city and continue west as planned? I don’t know when we’ll hit the next oasis, whether it will be mud like this one…”
Orion’s nodding, but he doesn’t look happy. “Lament might be the best option.”
“Do I want to ask for details of Master Kenneth’s tales?”
“No, you don’t.”
I decide to trust his word and close my mouth to the questions I wish to voice.
The sky above is a mix of indigo and purple, the stars brilliant freckles across its face. Orion whistles the wolves into motion and they start forward immediately, almost as if they are relieved to be moving. The conflict with the travelers, they did not understand. But forward movement, the whistled commands of someone they trust—this makes sense to them.
I vow to myself that I will set them free before we run out of water, to give them a real chance at survival in the wild.
“Why don’t we go to the Northern Lands?” I say. “We can forget the Western Lands altogether.”
“I asked Elda and Master Kenneth about this before we left, because Markus brought up the idea,” he says. “Elda said the Northern Lands won’t have us. They’ll trade with us, sure, but they would never allow us to stay.”
It doesn’t take long at all to reach the outskirts of the abandoned city. I don’t say anything to Orion, but when I pick up a spear to hold, he gives me a short nod of approval.
The buildings are sun-bleached like the buildings in the City of Sand. They glow bluish-purple in the moonlight. The broken southern wall bears graffiti, no doubt left by ages and ages of traders passing through. I stare hard at one phrase painted in a harsh black paint, sounding out the letters slowly. Then I grin when I realize it’s a crude rhyme about the former king of the Kingdom of Stars.
I shouldn’t be grinning—I should be terrified. But here, in front of me, is another opportunity to seize my moment, to be a hero. If we ever needed a hero—if our kingdom ever needed a hero—it is now.
Orion holds his mouth tightly closed and stares straight ahead.
“Hey.” I stand and tug on the edge of Orion’s tunic. “It’s going to be all right.”
“If there’s something bad in there, I’ll stab it,” I say, holding up the spear.
He shakes his head. “You can’t stab evil.”
Watch me, I think, but I don’t say it out loud. I don’t want to tempt the stars, but all thoughts of freeing wolves aside, I do not want to die of thirst in a ghostly city. We will find a well and there will be water in it and we will survive.
“We haven’t talked about what’s next,” I say in a quiet voice. “Will we go on to the Western Lands? Do you still believe we should look for a water dragon?”
“We have to do something,” he says. “Our dwindling water supplies aren’t sustaining the kingdom.”
The sled is moving closer and closer to the city walls. My momentary excitement dwindles like the water supply now that we’re here. The alpha wolf stumbles as he crosses the entrance, but he catches himself and resumes his gait. Orion’s lips tighten; he takes Brute’s misstep as a bad omen.
“We don’t have to be superstitious of everything,” I tell him, but my voice is hushed.
Orion turns an earnest gaze on me. “If something happens to me in here, I want you to get out as fast as you can.”
“What?”
“Promise me,” he says. “No heroics. Because as much as I care for you, I will be leaving you behind if it goes the other way.”
“Why, Orion, I had no idea you cherished me so,” I say, hoping the sarcasm in my voice will hide the sudden hurt I’m feeling.
“It isn’t like that, Inez,” he says in a fervent whisper. “Traders say people change in Lament. They go mad. Hurt their own. Don’t try to save me if I get like that.”
I have no response, and the shushing of the sled tracking over sand is the only sound. The path we entered on narrows, so Orion whistles the wolves to a halt. He wraps the reins on the front railing before turning to me.
“I’m not trying to scare you,” he says.
“Some things,” I say, “you can do without trying.”
He gives a wry little chuckle.
“What else do you know about this place?” I ask.
“Now isn’t the time for old legends,” he says, taking my hand. “Let’s find a well.”
He lets me go and reaches for a spear. I climb down from the sled and unfasten one of the smaller, empty barrels from the rear. Orion takes a barrel as well. My sword is sheathed at my side. I put the barrel under one arm and carry a spear with the other. It will make for an awkward gait, but I’ll feel better.
I take a few steps forward, ahead of the wolves. Brute whines, so I click my tongue in reassurance for him. Orion gives them a short double whistle, signaling they can rest despite the harnesses, and a few of them sit on their haunches. Brute, though, remains standing, alert, ever the alpha wolf. Ever the protector.
The sand doesn’t give to my weight as much as it ought to. Scraping my boot over it, I find the hard-packed dirt of the street. Orion does the same.
“Do you see it?” he asks, shoving more sand and dirt aside with his foot.
“No, what is it?”
“The designs. I think we’re standing on a mosaic.”
I look closer. Beneath my boot isn’t hard dirt as I had originally thought; it’s tile. If we had time, I would uncover it, examine the design the people of Lament loved so much they would tile it into their city’s entrance. But my parched throat reminds me we don’t have time to spare.
“Should we go forward?” I ask. The center of the city is the most likely place to find a well, I think, although a massive city like Lament probably has more than one.
With a glance at the yawning doors of the buildings on either side of us, Orion nods.
Wind whistles through nooks, through piles of crumbled brick and stone. I’m torn between curiosity and fear. If I look too closely at those piles of rocks, will I find bones and skulls?
Yet as we march down the narrow street, I see no evidence of the horrors Orion hinted at.
Orion’s tension keeps me on my guard, however.
“We should have brought along one of the wolves,” I whisper.
He gives a quick shake of his head. “They’re too unpredictable. Best it’s just us here.”
The street widens up ahead. On the breeze, faint whispering reaches my ears. Questions begin to probe my mind. What is your purpose here, who is that with you?
I start to answer, because the whispers seem to be coming from my own mind. But I shouldn’t be asking myself these things, as I already know the answers.
“Windhaunt,” I whisper, tugging on Orion’s sleeve.
We each find the wax balls we always carry in our pockets and stuff them in our ears. The wax dulls the questions, although it won’t stop them entirely.
I point to one of the closer empty doorways. Orion and I hurry toward it and duck inside.
The small room looks like it used to be a shop of some kind. A long stone bench rises up adjacent to one wall, with deep shelves behind it, cut into stone.
Faint questions echo in my mind, but I hum a little tune in my head and ignore them. Nima taught us to tell ourselves stories during a windhaunt attack, but I need to think. Master Kenneth always says that a battle with a windhaunt is as much about the mind as the sword.
“It’ll find us in here,” Orion says.
It will find us anywhere. Windhaunts hunt by thoughts and dreams, not by sound, which makes it impossible to hide from them.
“We’ll be ready for it,” I say, setting down my water barrel and taking up an offensive stance near the door.
You’re thirsty, I can tell, the windhaunt whispers. It’s a soft, maternal coo in my mind. The well is not far. Just tell me, who have you brought with you, give me his name. And I will tell you where the well is.
I recite a nursery song in my head, something Elda taught to the little ones when she helped care for the young. That was her role, before she became the leader of the Kingdom of Sand. I remember her pulling me into her lap and enfolding my small, pudgy hands with her firm, large ones as she showed me how to clap out the beats. She always smelled faintly of cardamom, which made my nose itch, but it never bothered me because it reminded me of my mother, who—
“No,” I say aloud. The windhaunt can’t have that—it can’t have my mother’s scent memory—it’s the only thing of hers that I’ve kept.
With another yell, I leap into the doorway. I expect to see the windhaunt a few paces away, but it’s right there in front of me. Tattered, sun-bleached robes encase its form. Where the robes end are desiccated hands and feet. Blunt-tipped fingernails, whitened with age, curl at the ends of skeletal fingers. Its face is a storm of shifting sands.
It shoves against me, surprisingly strong. I stumble back and trip over something, falling to a seated position. My spear clatters to the ground.
Tell me, girl, about your mother. Did she smell of cardamom?
Orion shouts and stabs the windhaunt with his spear. The blow isn’t enough to kill the creature, but it does make it pause. I clamber to my feet, pull out my sword, and swing.
The windhaunt’s head slices clean off. The robes and body fall to the stone floor in a pile of sand, mixing with the other piles of dirt and sand that have accumulated over the ages.
Orion catches his spear before it falls. The whites of his eyes are visible in the moonlight as he faces me.
“Are you all right, Inez?” he asks, tugging the wax from his ears.
I do the same. “I’m fine. You? Did you lose any memories?”
He gives me a rueful grin. “I don’t remember.”
That’s the way of it. We won’t know if anything is missing until later if we try to think of it and it’s gone. But sometimes a memory is stolen so completely, we never even know to miss it.
“It tried to take memories of my mother,” I say. “Luckily, we killed it first. I still remember sitting at her skirts while she cooked, and smelling cardamom.”
He takes my ha
nd and squeezes. Our eyes meet.
A wolf’s howl cuts through the night. It isn’t a cry of alarm, but of impatience.
“We’re wasting the night,” I say, and Orion drops my hand. “Let’s go.”
We leave the small building much more cautious than we had been going in. That wasn’t the first windhaunt we’ve killed—we killed many in the battle that reunited the Kingdoms of Sand and Stars. But the fight has reminded me of how alone we are. If one of us gets taken by a windhaunt, the survivor would have to fight off two windhaunts, the old one and the new.
A few paces more, and the street opens up into a wide square. This was definitely a gathering place for the citizens of Lament. In the center of the square is a stone structure reaching up to chest-height. It’s difficult to see from my vantage point, but it looks wide and round. An iron ring is affixed to one side—likely for a rope used to lower water buckets in and pull them out again.
“It’s the well,” I say.
Orion starts hurrying toward it when a deafening whump—whump, loud as a thousand drums, echoes in the street. I start to look up, but Orion grabs my arm and pulls me into the nearest doorway. I hurry to the window and look outside. The shadow passes over the night sky. It is much too big and loud to be an owl.
A tail follows the shadow. Long, with spikes on the end.
I can’t believe what I’ve just seen. Perhaps I hit my head at some point during the fight with the windhaunt.
“Is that a dragon—” I start to ask.
Orion puts his hand over my mouth and whispers in my ear, “Shh. I don’t know how well it can hear.”
Something shakes the ground. I grab onto the windowsill to maintain my balance, and Orion does the same. His hand brushes against mine.
The loud pounding has stopped. A fearful silence fills the city of Lament. The wolves are quiet. If any windhaunts remain, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were full of terror.
I don’t have the courage to look.
Orion’s face is pale and his mouth is closed so tightly it looks as if he’s holding back vomit. But he leans forward over the sill to peer out, his chest against my shoulder. His gasp is something I feel instead of hear.
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