The Mage Heir

by Kathryn Sommerlot

  “I can’t sleep,” Yudai said, groaning. “It’s so hot.”

  “We need the rest,” Tatsu said, though he wasn’t able to relax any better. Outside, the sun was beating down on the sand, the heat rising up and wavering across the horizon when he squinted out at it from their boiling respite in the shade.

  At some point, he did manage to drift off, only to wake in fairly regular intervals when his body simply was too hot to sleep. When the evening finally arrived with bursts of color across the still cloudless sky, he was painfully aware of how little sleep he’d gotten. His limbs felt heavy and foreign, as if they were filled with the same sand they were moving across.

  He sat up and began pulling his layers back on. To his left, Yudai did the same, moving sluggishly. The heat was a physical weight on their shoulders, slowing all of their actions.

  “I’m exhausted,” Yudai admitted.

  “Me too,” Tatsu said and sighed. “We’ll see how far we can get tonight.”

  Lack of energy slowed their pace considerably. Tatsu couldn’t tell exactly when his boots began to feel heavier, but it increased throughout the night as they traveled by the stars. He kept them moving northwest as best he could, charting from the constellations he’d known since childhood. He saw a snake slithering across the granules and a large arachnid that clung to the side of several small rocks. Above them, another desert hawk made lazy circles in the sky, punctuated by a few screeching calls. Around the middle of the night, when the air reached its coldest point and they shivered against the chill, the clouds rolled in and their route disappeared. They had to double back a few times after that to wait for a glimpse of the navigational stars between the clouds.

  By the third day, Tatsu’s whole body might as well have been dragging across the dunes behind them. His legs ached from the extra exertion needed to move across the sand. His cheeks felt raw from the wind and his lips were chapped from the heat. Their water stores were down to half, and he’d seen nothing that would allow them to refill.

  As dawn crept nearer, the wind picked up around them. What had only an hour before been the calm roll of the sand, tinged blue by the low-hanging moon, was suddenly alive in a swirling mass of air. It reminded Tatsu of Yudai’s magic in their escape from Dradela, accompanied with all the grains of sand that the wind could pick up. They both removed their outermost tunics and tied them around their faces to shield their noses and mouths, but the intensity of the storm increased with each minute that ticked by.

  “There,” Tatsu yelled over the roar of the wind. It was an incredible stroke of luck—in front of them, half-concealed by the nearest sand dune, was a small stretch of rock slightly taller than them. “We can find shelter from the wind!”

  It was a struggle to make it to the rocks, but they did, just as the sandstorm seemed to reach its peak. Tatsu had only meant that they could crouch down behind the stone and let the land take the brunt of it. He certainly hadn’t expected to find a small cavern carved into the rocks, low and black in shadows. Visibility dropped to almost nothing as he almost fell into it. He could have wept in relief as they both stumbled inside, sand falling from their clothes and hair.

  Outside, the howl of the storm battered against their rocky shelter, and when Tatsu pressed his fingertips to his cheekbones, pain blossomed along the raw-rubbed skin. He didn’t know how long sandstorms in the desert lasted. Summers in Chayd would sometimes bring dust storms in from the coast, and the white-washed buildings in Dradela would later be covered in a fine layer of dirt, but he’d never seen anything so devastating before. The wind echoed in his ears, low and steady, accompanied by erratic clicks.

  “Gods,” Yudai huffed from behind him.

  “We’ll stay here until the storm passes,” Tatsu said.

  He shrugged off his pack, and it hit the ground with a strange sort of crunch. He was so rattled by the sting of the sand that it took a moment for the sound to register. Far too slowly, his eyes started adjusting to the darkness. He felt Yudai’s fingers wrap around his elbow in a grip that was almost tight enough to be painful.

  “Tatsu. Do you hear that noise?”

  He had to be talking about the clicking—the odd sound hadn’t gone away, even when the reverberations of the wind had. Tatsu couldn’t see the back of the cave without light, and everything was swallowed outside by the wind and rage. His body froze in response, muscles clenching. The two of them stood motionless until Tatsu’s eyes slowly started to make out the dips and swells of the rocky interior around them.

  To his left, the wall was moving.

  “Yudai,” Tatsu whispered, and couldn’t have gotten anything louder past his lips if he’d tried. “Back away.”

  “What are you talking about?” Yudai hissed. “That’s back into the storm!”

  “We have to get out of here.” Tatsu took a single step backwards until he realized he’d left his pack on the floor where it had fallen. His eyes were glued to the movement on the wall that he’d thought to be jagged rocks—it was instead hundreds of scurrying, clicking exoskeletons, walking over and under and between each other in a revolting mass of legs and mandibles.

  They’d walked straight into a scorpion nest.

  “Tatsu?” came the shaky question from over his shoulder. Tatsu reached for his bag, thinking only about their water supply kept within the leather, their only source of survival in the desert. Instead of his strap, his hand closed down around a wriggling insect. A second later, there was a flash of pain through his palm and then another on the back of his hand. He yelped and yanked the bag back, bringing several of the creatures with him. Another prick of pain to the back of his hand, and he stumbled backwards, finally dislodging the rest that had crawled up onto his pack.

  “Run,” he gasped, pulling his throbbing hand towards his chest as he slung his bag over his shoulder. “Yudai, run!”

  There was nowhere to go but back into the sandstorm itself. Tatsu pulled his tunic closer to his mouth, throwing his other arm up to try and shield his eyes from the worst of it. With Yudai barely visible in front of him, they ran into the mass of whirling sand until there was nothing else around them: no rocks, no sky, no horizon. There was only the wind shrieking around their ears and the sand biting at their cheeks.

  Tatsu tried to push his tunic closer to his mouth when sand leaked in through the side and caught between his lips, but his arm, aching and stinging all the way up to his shoulder—had it always been hurting so far up?—didn’t obey his commands. It fell back down to his side as he stumbled, and the sand around him went black at the edges.

  “Yudai,” he tried to say and wasn’t sure that he did. The wind was whipping at his clothes, but it was tilting to the side as the whole world started to topple over on itself, taking his body with it. He was only vaguely aware that he had fallen, because it felt like he lifted instead, up into the storm that was threatening to steal them both away.

  He heard Yudai screaming his name, but that also got lost in the haze that seemed to float down and envelop him. The last thing he remembered seeing on the wind and sand was a hawk, that blasted desert hawk again, cutting through the worst of the clouds, and he wondered if the bird would finally find itself a warm meal out of their remains.

  Three

  He had no concept of how long he was out. When he finally came to in a burst of awareness both jarring and excruciating, there was only darkness and the sensation of cool water on his forehead. It took several moments for him to muddle his way through the foggy sensation enough so that he could crack his eyes open, only to immediately snap them back closed when the piercing light assaulted his vision. His head swam and his stomach roiled, but his throat was too dry to swallow the discomfort down.

  After pushing through his nausea, Tatsu tried again. The second time, he managed to keep his eyes open for long enough to take stock of his surroundings: tan leather stretched over his head, several clay-based bowls next to his reclining form, and a rack made of large, smooth antlers holding a f
ew wicked-looking blades. None of it was familiar, and bile burned up through his throat and into his mouth.

  There was a flash of movement next to his side that only escalated his pounding heartbeat until a hand came down gently on his right arm.

  “Loanai,” a woman said in a tongue he didn’t recognize and then added in Common, “Do not worry. I will bring you water.”

  Tatsu’s throat was too sore to respond. A splash of cold hit his lips, and his mouth opened greedily to gulp it down, but the flow of drink ended before he was fully quenched.

  “More,” he rasped.

  “Not now,” the woman said. “Your body is too sick. If you can keep it down, I will give you more as the sun sets.”

  Tatsu had to close his eyes again. Even the sunlight filtering through the thin patches of the leather tent was too much to handle. He swallowed several times, body still alight with pinpricks of pain, and tried to shift his position.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “In the Cabaj dominion of the desert,” was the response, “north of the ridgeline and east of the An-ny oasis.”

  None of that meant anything to Tatsu, though even if he had knowledge of the area, he wouldn’t have been able to place it. He was too light-headed to focus on much. As his thoughts fluttered in and out without settling on anything, he tugged his heavy eyelids open again. The woman standing over him was nearly covered in wide-woven layered fabrics, save for her face, which was dark brown in color. As she looked at him, the corners of her mouth were pulled down in what appeared to be sympathy.

  “Yudai?” he asked.

  “Ah, your friend,” she said, and her lips twisted into a smile. “He is quite fine. Bossy, but fine.”

  Tatsu sighed as his muscles uncoiled and his weight settled down into the hazy waves of throbbing pain. His body wanted to drift because it was easier than dealing with the reality of the situation, but his mind struggled to stay aware. He was in an unknown area, surrounded by strangers, and his training was screaming warnings at him. Walking into the wilds without knowing what manner of beast lurked within was suicide.

  Still fighting against the war inside, he took another slow, shuddering breath before his body won out, and he fell into the embrace of darkness.

  The second time he woke, his head felt clearer. The light still burned, but he pushed through it and opened his eyes to find Yudai seated next to him, hovering over the skins Tatsu was resting on.

  “You’re awake,” Yudai said. Tatsu couldn’t tell if he was concerned or irritated, and Yudai’s face betrayed nothing.

  “You’re alive,” Tatsu replied, joined by a rush of warmth in his blood. Yudai was intact and seemed to be in much better condition than Tatsu himself. “We both are.”

  Yudai’s face clouded. “But only barely. And your hand…”

  That alone was enough to jolt Tatsu out the rest of his haze. He hadn’t even noticed that he’d failed to get any responses from his left hand. He craned his neck down to look at it and found himself staring at several layers of wrapped linens, crusted and solid as if they’d been thoroughly soaked and then left to dry that way in the heat. He tried to wiggle his fingers inside the wrapping but couldn’t feel anything. Below his elbow, his senses disappeared completely.

  His chest tightened as he realized that he wasn’t even sure his hand was still there.

  “Is it…?” He couldn’t finish.

  “The toxins nearly killed you,” Yudai said. He no longer sounded annoyed; instead, his voice was thick with regret. “Nys said—”

  “Nys?”

  “The woman taking care of you,” Yudai said. “She’s acting chief of the Cabaj-walkers. She gave you some kind of tonic to neutralize the poison and then drew it out with these big leaves I didn’t recognize.”

  Tatsu stared down at the cloth covering his arm. “Is my hand still there?”

  “Yes.” The guilt hadn’t left Yudai’s tone, and wondering why made Tatsu’s stomach heave. He turned away from his arm, trying to think about anything else.

  Yudai leaned forward, dragging his hands slowly over his face before peering back down at Tatsu with a heavy expression. “Tatsu, I’m sorry.”

  “Why?”

  “This shouldn’t have happened,” Yudai said. “I should’ve been able to do something to stop this. If I had access to my magic, I could’ve helped you. I could’ve stopped the toxin.”

  “You can do that?” Tatsu asked.

  “I can do anything,” Yudai said, eyes blazing, and the absurdity of the claim made Tatsu smile. They sat for a few minutes in silence, and the coolness of Yudai’s hand on his good arm was a small bit of solace in the bright, sunlit bleakness. Then the flap of the tent opened as Nys walked inside carrying a clay bowl in her hands.

  “You are still here,” she said to Yudai. His face scrunched up at the edges, but he didn’t say anything. There seemed to be more behind her statement that Tatsu was missing.

  “I heard that you saved my life,” Tatsu said, and the skin around her eyes crinkled in a warm smile.

  “That is the duty of the walkers.” Nys shooed Yudai away from the side of the bed to take his place. “How are you feeling now?”

  “Tired,” Tatsu said, “but grateful.”

  He didn’t mention his arm, because he didn’t really want to know about it. In a perfect world, sidestepping the topic would cause it to disappear. But Nys reached for the hardened linens despite Tatsu’s mental prayers to avoid it and began to pull them apart.

  “Is he going to be all right?” Yudai asked from behind her shoulder. He inched around her near Tatsu’s head, radiating a nervous energy that seemed to rattle the whole tent.

  “He will live,” Nys said. It was not a comfort.

  The world seemed to still as Tatsu waited for her to finish unwrapping his hand, his heart sinking lower and lower with each piece removed. When Nys got to the end, there was nothing—no sudden feeling, no reaction from his arm. The skin of his arm looked pale and sickly, even in the well-lit interior of the tent, and there were long streaks of black just beneath his skin. Whatever the toxin of the scorpions was, the effects of it were still visible.

  “Do something,” Yudai ordered. “Wiggle your fingers.”

  “I’m trying,” Tatsu admitted quietly.

  And he was, only nothing happened. He couldn’t tell if the commands to his hand were being received. There was no response, not even the barest shiver of movement. His hand might as well have been missing below his elbow for all he could feel.

  Tatsu raised his eyes to Nys’ face, unsure what he was searching for. “I can’t move them.”

  She stepped forward to grasp his bad hand. “Can you feel this?”

  “No,” Tatsu whispered.

  Yudai stared at Tatsu’s motionless hand with a thunderous expression before storming out of the tent without another word.

  Nys sat back, and Tatsu tried to take some comfort in the fact that her expression hadn’t changed. “The toxin has been removed. I believe the feeling will come back in time, after your body has time to recover.”

  “And I’ll be able to move it?”

  “It is possible,” she said.

  Tatsu’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, prohibiting him from saying more. He stared at the flap in the leather that Yudai had disappeared through.

  “Give him time,” Nys said quietly as she smoothed the pelts beneath her knees. “He refused to leave this tent once we knew you had passed the critical phase and would live.”

  “What has he told you?”

  Nys stood, and Tatsu could hear the cracking of her knees. “Enough. Your survival was more pressing than your background. The poison of the enlusk scorpion is quick.”

  “Why help us?”

  “What danger were you to us?” she asked. “You were half-dead. I will bring you some food. It would be helpful for your blood if you got up and stretched your legs. The healing will progress faster if you are active.”

  It too
k an hour or two, plus a hearty meal of a grain-based stew, for Tatsu to feel strong enough to push himself up from the pelts and move around. Nys helped to set his lifeless arm in a linen sling held close to his chest. At first, he was unable to take more than a few steps without feeling winded, and his muscles were shaky from the period of disuse. But the worst of it was the sensation of a dead limb attached to his body—it was suddenly foreign, an object he didn’t recognize, grafted to his chest like the ghost of what he used to be.

  Slowly, he made his way outside of the tent. The sun was falling overhead, his only notion of time in the desert, and the air was beginning to cool. He didn’t know how many days he had been unconscious, which was unsettling, and he still didn’t know where in the desert they were. As he stepped out to face the setting sun, he couldn’t see any sign of mountain peaks on the horizon behind the leather dwellings.

  Nys’ band of Cabaj-walkers wasn’t large; Tatsu counted only seven tents, plus a half-tarp that appeared to be a makeshift stable for short, stocky horses. But all of the supplies looked sturdy and well-worn, as if the entirety of the camp had seen many seasons in the harsh desert. The leather was almost the same color as the sand itself, and if viewed from afar, the tents would blend in with the dunes. It was a good camouflage, especially if one expected hostile outsiders. He didn’t know the political situation within Joesar, but that aside, a good defense was a practical base for everything.

  With the sun going down, some of the walkers had set up torches in the sand that bathed the area in orange. The others milling nearby were dressed like Nys, with many light layers crisscrossed, likely to be taken off as the heat reached its peak during the day. Their heads were covered with loose hoods and their feet with tall boots that tied near the knees. Tatsu watched them move around the tents with practiced precision before he finally spotted Yudai near the far side of the camp, staring off into the distance. It was still difficult to move across the sand, and his exhaustion didn’t help matters.