by Barb Hendee
Ghassan didn’t understand what Magiere would become just to survive out there.
She wouldn’t feel cold—or even heat—when the dhampir consumed her.
She’d considered taking a folded tent, but in the end they’d decided against this, as it would’ve been extra weight and the water was more important. If she stopped during the day, she had the walking staff to prop up the cloak for shelter.
She’d left at dusk.
Leesil had watched until he could no longer see her in the distance. He didn’t want that to be his last memory of her.
Since then, as today, he spent much of his time scanning the empty horizon.
A rustling made him turn his head to look back.
Chap emerged from the tent they shared, skirted the resting camels, and came toward him.
—Staring . . . will not . . . bring her . . . sooner— . . . —It will . . . only . . . blind you—
Leesil turned back to the desert, with its air rippling in the heat.
“Get back under cover,” he said. “In that fur, it takes too much water to cool you down.”
This was an additional problem. Even when they’d chanced upon a well along the way, Ghassan had watched everywhere as the rest of them refilled the waterskins. Taking a tribe’s water was worse than stealing its gold or property. Leesil could understand that, for it was so hot out here that any sweat dried as fast as it could form.
How long would they just sit and wait? What could they do to survive if they had to go after Magiere?
—It has been . . . only . . . six . . . days—
Annoyance bubbled up inside Leesil; he could count for himself.
Cocking his head, he looked toward the other tent for Ghassan and Brot’an. While setting up camp, neither had expressed the slightest hesitation at sharing with the other. At first Leesil found this odd, as not only were the two men strangers but both were secretive by nature.
Then he remembered that Ghassan had spent much of his life in a sage’s guild, with little day-to-day privacy. Brot’an had undergone long journeys with other members of his caste and would be similarly accustomed to shared sleeping arrangements.
Leesil had simply been glad that he and Chap had their own tent. The past six days would have been worse had they been forced to sleep beside Brot’an.
When—how—were they ever going to get rid of the scarred old assassin?
At more rustling in the quiet morning, Ghassan emerged from the second tent and approached. He didn’t appear affected by the heat, and his lips were less cracked or chapped than anyone else’s. The domin scowled at both Leesil and Chap standing out under the sun.
Leesil ignored this, as he knew the domin now knew better than to say anything about it.
“Any sign?” Ghassan asked, shielding his eyes and peering north by northeast.
“No, but maybe we should start looking for her.”
Ghassan didn’t answer.
Leesil had mentioned this option more than once. It always led to another argument, but this was the sixth day. He wasn’t giving in this time and was about to press his point when Ghassan stepped suddenly beyond him and squinted into the distance.
“What?” Leesil asked.
Ghassan dropped to one knee and began digging in his robe.
Chap inched in before Leesil could as the domin pulled out a roll of leather. Leesil had seen it before. The domin rolled it open to reveal two round glass lenses with studded brass frames. The few tools the man carried were all like this: parts broken down for easy storage that could be reassembled.
Ghassan rose up, placed the crude spyglass to his eye, and peered northeast. Leesil didn’t have a chance to ask as the domin turned on him.
“Go now!” Ghassan ordered. “I will get water, a wet cloth, and anything else.”
Chap lunged past, his back feet clawing up the hard-packed ground.
“Chap, no—you can’t help!” Leesil shouted.
The dog didn’t listen and raced away.
“Brot’an, she has returned!” Ghassan called.
Leesil bolted after Chap. If it hadn’t been for the dog outdistancing him, it might have taken longer to see where to run. He didn’t see anything until he began to grow dizzy with exertion in the heat. Then he saw . . . a figure far out beyond Chap, rippling in the air, and as he closed, he thought it was dragging something behind itself.
Leesil made out the white muslin on the figure’s head as he saw Chap slow and circle around Magiere. He knew he probably couldn’t carry her all the way back on his own, let alone drag what she’d found. But only he and Chap dared get near her when she was like this. They would have to break through to her before Brot’an arrived.
Magiere didn’t appear to see him and kept planting one foot slowly after the other. Panic was the only thing that kept Leesil going in the heat as he came to a halt ten paces in front of her. Chap was panting as he paced, watching her.
Leesil saw her fully black eyes.
“Magiere?” he tried to say, but it came out hoarse and half voiced.
Her pale skin wasn’t burned, but it looked paper thin to him; the shadows of veins were visible in her face and neck. Still he waited and watched her trudge as he listened for Brot’an’s footfalls. She was thin, as if she hadn’t eaten enough. Only one waterskin hung over one shoulder and looked flat and empty.
—Look—
At that single word in his mind, Leesil’s gaze shifted.
What Magiere dragged was heavy and bulky inside the cloak cinched at the end of the rope. The bulk appeared large and round. She took a few more steps toward him, and he looked at her again.
A thôrhk—orb key—hung around her neck.
He wondered wildly whether it was her own . . . or a different key. He hadn’t seen her take one with her, but they all looked so similar. The instant Leesil heard Brot’an’s fast footfalls coming from behind, he looked to Chap.
“Now!”
Chap lunged into Magiere’s path, and she halted. She wavered as her face barely twisted in a snarl at him. Then came a shudder, and she almost lost her footing.
Leesil lunged one step before stopping himself, and all he could do was watch.
Whatever Chap did—whatever memories he called up in Magiere to wake her other half—took hold. The black of Magiere’s eyes receded rapidly like ink sucked into her pupils. A hoarse cry escaped her mouth as her eyes closed and she started to crumple.
Leesil rushed in to catch her. He was so exhausted that her weight drove him to his knees. He got one of his arms around her back and the other beneath her legs as he prepared to lift her.
—She . . . found . . . it—
Leesil almost snapped at Chap for breaking his focus. When he looked up, Chap had clawed open the cloak . . . and there it was.
Brot’an dropped down on one knee, reaching for Magiere.
“No!” Leesil told him. “Get the orb . . . and bring it with Chap.”
* * *
A day and a night passed, and Magiere still did not awaken. Chap never left her side. He watched as Leesil tended her, wiping a damp cloth on her face and trying to squeeze drips into her mouth.
It did not work.
Ghassan came with healing salve but was dismissed. Neither manacles nor weapons had injured her, and she would have healed from such on her own. She suffered something else now, and no matter how Chap tried, how often he dipped into Magiere’s mind, he never found a single rising memory.
Once, he had understood the workings and limitations of her dhampir nature. In the past year and a half, the depths of it had become a mystery again. She pushed her body through trials it should not have withstood, and this time it had been too much.
This time it was his fault as much as hers.
She understood as he did what the others would not, including Leesil, who was too obsessed with taking all three of them home.
Back in the sanctuary, when Ghassan had announced where the orb might be hidden, in the lon
g moment that followed, Chap and Magiere had privately agreed to this plan before she’d openly stated that she alone could survive the journey. This had been the only way to accomplish what had to be done.
The final orb had to be recovered, and no one else could survive.
Now Chap clung to the hope that Magiere would come back to herself and awaken, though something even more dire distracted him upon her return. Both Ghassan and Brot’an took too much interest in the orb of Air. It was within easy reach of a renegade master assassin and an enigmatic domin skilled in the dead art of sorcery. So Chap had Leesil drag the orb into the tent they shared, and he never let it out of his sight.
Chap seethed at being trapped in this small camp, and it troubled him more than ever that he could not dip one rising memory in either Ghassan or Brot’an.
Amid the second day, when the heat built again, he grew desperate. Through Leesil, he ordered that cloth of any kind, along with water, be brought for Magiere.
He had Leesil strip her down and cover her in soaked cloths.
When Ghassan later warned they were dangerously low on water, Chap lunged and snapped at the domin. Eventually, that next night, Leesil succumbed to exhaustion. Chap forced his oldest friend to crawl aside and sleep, but he remained lying with his head near Magiere’s . . . trying again and again to find some surfacing memory inside her mind.
Sometime in the night, Chap lost consciousness.
When he started awake and realized what he had done, he panicked. Then he grew angry with himself for having fallen asleep. Listening in the dark, he heard her shallow breaths. Had he not awakened, he might not have heard . . .
“Leesil.”
At Magiere’s whisper, Chap pressed his muzzle against her face. He did not wait for her to try to touch him and lunged across the small tent, ramming his forepaws into Leesil’s side. Before Leesil thrashed awake, gained his wits, and grabbed the cold-lamp crystal, Chap was back to Magiere.
Her eyes were still closed, but when he dipped into her mind, this time he caught fleeting fragments of memories. This was enough to calm Leesil once Chap told him.
By late afternoon the next day, Magiere’s dark eyes fluttered and stayed open.
“Leesil?” she repeated in a hoarse whisper.
Leesil sagged in such relief that Chap feared he might fall ill. Ghassan, now sitting inside the tent, reached back to push the flap open and called out, “She is awake.”
Chap wrinkled a jowl and waited.
Brot’an crouched in the opening. “Is she well?”
Ghassan shook his head. “I do not know.”
Magiere croaked something and tried to sit up. Before Leesil could, Chap pinned her shoulder with a paw. Then Leesil held her head and carefully gave her a sip of water from a small cup made of carved horn.
“The orb,” she whispered. “Where . . . where is it?”
“It’s here,” Leesil said. “Don’t worry.”
He said nothing more and made her drink again. The instant he withdrew the cup, Magiere began to sob, shudder, and thrash weakly.
“I saw her burn!” she whimpered. “I didn’t know . . . but she was there! I tried to stop it . . . but I . . . didn’t . . .”
Alarmed, Leesil grabbed Magiere’s face and tried to hold her still as he looked to Chap.
They had both seen her enraged, wild, out of control. Chap had never seen her like this.
“Hush, that’s enough,” Leesil murmured to her. “Everything is all right.”
Chap did not believe so.
Leesil again grabbed the small cup and put it to Magiere’s mouth. She drained it and then lay in incoherent fits, whispering words too garbled to understand. Even the flickers of rising memories that Chap caught in Magiere’s mind were scattered and broken and told him nothing of use. After a little while, Ghassan brought dried figs and brittle flatbread. She ate as if starving. Though this was another good sign, Chap watched her with growing rather than diminishing concern.
Brot’an remained in the tent’s opening as Leesil and Ghassan continued to care for Magiere. When it grew dark outside, Ghassan set the cold-lamp crystal inside a real lamp to amplify it. Partway into the night, Magiere rolled her head and looked up at Chap. She seemed calm and more aware.
“You found the orb,” Brot’an said.
Magiere’s eyes shifted toward him, but she only stared.
Chap wanted to take Brot’an’s face off for bringing that up again.
“Was there a guardian?” he asked.
Chap snarled, bearing his teeth, and did not stop until Leesil nudged him. Magiere rolled her head away, and Leesil twisted where he sat to face the shadow-gripper.
“Get out!”
“Different,” Magiere whispered. “Different . . . from anything . . . before.”
Chap swung back around as Leesil looked at her. “Not now. It can wait.”
Magiere shook her head. “You have to know. I have to tell you.”
That was unlike the Magiere that Chap knew. She never needed—wanted—to talk about anything. He did not try to reach for what rose in her mind for fear it might shake her even more. Magiere kept her eyes only on Leesil as she began to speak . . .
* * *
The first night’s trek wasn’t difficult. The sky was clear, and the stars and full moon offered some light. Magiere had heard that deserts were hot during the day and cold at night. That wasn’t exactly what she found. She’d grown up in the dank, wet cold of Droevinka on the eastern continent. The temperature dropped but still felt warm to her.
Even after the sea voyage to this land, and her time here, the arid air of the Suman region was still so . . . foreign.
All through that first night, she gripped the tracking device, feeling its pull. It led her farther and farther northeast.
From Ghassan’s best guess, she had perhaps three days’ travel to reach the crater that had once been a salt lake. When she’d complained about being weighed down with two full waterskins, he’d told her, “You will not have that weight when coming back.”
Before she knew it, dawn arrived.
As the sun crested, it was not yet unbearably hot, so she continued for as long as possible, and the first hint of something glittering in the cracked ground caught her eye.
Magiere stopped and looked down at countless crystalline shards around her boots. Each one reflected the rising sun like tiny precious gems. She’d hoped she wouldn’t see them so soon, for they marked the fringe of the worst to come.
The light from above and below began to burn her eyes as she went on. Tears started to run down from her seared eyes, wasting precious water. Still, she followed the pull of Wynn’s device. By midmorning, the heat on her pale skin grew unbearable, and then the pain in her eyes worsened as the world brightened, became white.
Suffering broke her will, and she felt the burning in her stomach rise into her dry throat as her teeth began to elongate. Her dhampir half came to the defense of her body, and clear thought grew more difficult with every step. Even the device strapped to her left hand began to make her palm sting.
She had to stop and wait out the sun before she lost all control.
Magiere dropped, pulled off her cloak, and used the walking staff to hook the cloak’s hood so that the back of it faced the sun. She weighted its hem with whatever chips she could scrape off the ground with the Chein’âs dagger, and then curled up in the tiny shelter, holding the staff upright by locking its base in her folded knees.
The water she sipped from one skin was nearly hot enough to make tea. The figs inside her small pack had almost baked together, and the flatbread crumbled apart in dried bits.
She and Leesil had often longed for privacy in their travels. But now she was so alone without him. No Leesil complaining about, well, everything; no Chap digging through the packs looking for any leftover jerked beef.
Nothing but silence . . . And the heat grew.
She stopped thinking of anything as the sun rose overhead and
the cloak shelter couldn’t shadow her boots anymore.
Again, the burning began rising from her gut into her throat, and that was the last thing she remembered.
Awareness came back slowly. When she cracked open her eyes, the cloak tent had fallen to cover her body, and she pushed the fabric off her head to find the sky darkened by night.
Everything rushed back to Magiere.
She cursed and grew frantic wondering how much time she’d lost lying there. Her eyes and teeth felt normal, and her head was beginning to clear. She lifted a waterskin. Though still warm—hot—the water gave her some relief, but when she stopped gulping, the first skin felt so much lighter.
She was going through water too quickly. The first skin had to last until she found the orb. Even then, the second would have to be stretched out on the return, when she’d be in even more need as she would be dragging something heavy.
She picked up the cloak and, this time, kept it thrown over her shoulder. Then she took up the staff.
Magiere closed her left hand on the device and prepared to regain her direction toward the orb. She did not need to reactivate it, as it had never lost contact with her skin. While Ghassan had taught her how to activate it, and she’d tried speaking the Sumanese phrase, it hadn’t worked. On impulse, she tried again in Numanese and failed, and then again in Belaskian, her own native tongue, or one of them.
“By your bond, as anchor to the anchors of creation, show me the way!”
The device came to life, but that wasn’t enough for Magiere. She worried that if she succumbed to her dhampir half, saying those words—let alone remembering them—might not be possible. And she knew she would succumb, eventually, just to survive. That was why she’d asked for the device to be tied to her hand.
Now she simply lifted her arm, swinging it until the device stopped twisting, and she moved on. The night was not as quiet as the last, with the crunch of her footfalls numbing her ears and mind.
At dawn, the heat began building at the first spark of light on the horizon. By midday, her dhampir half had risen so fully that it took her a long time to erect the cloak tent.
