by Shae Ford
When she reached it, she dropped her pack at the dune’s base and climbed its slippery side. It was much wider on top than it’d looked from a distance, which would suit them just fine. She balanced herself on the edge, and then slipped into her dragon form.
A good bit of the dune collapsed under her weight, sliding downwards as her claws dug in. She curled her tail up behind her for balance, and then she took a deep breath.
Every dragon had two sets of lungs: the ones they used to breathe air, and those they used to breathe fire. Kyleigh inhaled as deeply as she could, held her breath for a moment, and felt the click in her chest as the vault opened over her second pair of lungs. Heat bubbled from her middle, rising up her throat like bile. When the fire touched her tongue, she exhaled.
A river of yellow flame burst from her mouth. It followed the trail of her breath to the sand beneath her. She exhaled for as long as she could, tilting her head up and down, making sure that the whole top of the dune was covered. When she closed her mouth, the sand around her glowed red — like the fiery cap of a mountain.
“It’s glass!” Jake said from behind her. He tried to sprint up the dune, slipped, and had to grab onto the spines of her tail to keep from tumbling down. He drew the vial of dirt from his pocket and shook it at his ear. “The flakey bits on top of the dirt — the thing that made the ground so hot — it was glass!” His smile faded and his mouth dropped open. “Good lord, the sun’s even hotter than I thought it was. What have we gotten ourselves into?”
“We’ll have worse than the sun to deal with, if this glass doesn’t cool quickly,” Silas muttered. He crouched at the base of the dune, his ear pressed against the sand. “The little voices are getting closer.”
“I might have a spell to cool it — ah, if you’ll help me up.”
Kyleigh bent her head down and Jake grabbed onto one of her horns. She lifted him easily to the top of the dune. He seemed to think for a moment, muttering to himself as his staff hovered over the cap. Finally, he decided.
His staff came down and tapped the edge of the glass. The glowing red retreated from it, fading back like ripples in a pond. For a moment, the glass cap lay before them, clear and perfectly cool. Then for some odd reason, it started to crinkle — and wound up looking like a gigantic leaf of transparent, rumpled parchment.
“Huh,” Jake said, staring at it. “Well, I don’t understand that at all.”
“There’s no time for your wonderings, shaman.” Silas scampered up Kyleigh’s back — dodging swiftly when she bit at him. He leapt out into the middle of the glass and pounded down with his heels. It made a loud thunk, but didn’t break. “Yes, this will do nicely.”
“I still don’t understand what the two of you are so worried about,” Jake began, but Silas thrust a pack in his hands.
“You’ll see soon enough. Why don’t you get our dinner roasting while the dragoness and I set up the tents?”
When Kyleigh came out of her dragon form, she felt a bit dizzier than usual. She realized it was probably because she hadn’t eaten much: between her constant heaving at sea and her scant breakfast, her stomach didn’t have a lot to work with. And the cook in Roost kept her so well-fed that she supposed she must’ve gotten spoiled.
While there wasn’t much that could chill a dragon’s blood, the desert nights were cold, and Kyleigh feared her companions might freeze without a proper shelter. Their tents were small and fastened closed at both ends. She’d also brought along a bundle of animal pelts to line the floors.
It didn’t take them long to set the tents up. Silas learned quickly: she only had to show him once. The glass was thick enough that they were able to drive the stakes in without cracking it. In fact, Kyleigh didn’t think they even hit the bottom.
“The sun hasn’t gone down, yet,” Silas said, when she pointed it out. “Methinks you celebrate too quickly.”
Kyleigh rolled her eyes. “Why don’t you just admit that I saved your smelly hide and be done with it?”
“You saved nothing,” he said haughtily, shoving a pelt into the nearest tent. “A few more moments, and I would have thought up an answer for myself.”
“Oh really? And would that have been before or after you finished wringing your paws?”
“I wringed nothing —”
“You were mewing like a kitten.”
He threw the pelt he’d been fumbling with onto the ground. “Lies,” he hissed. “I do not mew.”
Kyleigh shrugged. “I don’t know … I could’ve sworn I saw a tear —”
“What’s that?” Jake said, cutting over the top of whatever nasty retort Silas had at the ready.
A strange, chirping had begun to fill the air, as if a large flock of birds was about to land on top of them. Voices joined the song by the dozen, growing louder as the last of the sun fell behind the barren hills. Kyleigh felt the earth quake as hundreds of eager bodies squirmed their way to the surface.
“Get back!” she shouted at Jake, who’d wandered to the edge of the glass.
“Do you not hear that —?”
Sand sprayed up in front of him and a white, wriggling beast leapt out. Kyleigh ripped Jake behind her and swung Harbinger blindly. There was a squeak, a shower of slime, and the two separate halves of a giant worm sailed past them.
One half stuck wetly to the top of Jake’s boot. He slung it away and leapt back. “What is that? And why has it got so many teeth?”
“Minceworms,” Kyleigh said grimly.
The heat in Whitebone was bad, and the sand made travel difficult — but the minceworms were the real reason nobody journeyed through the southern desert. The worms had white, fleshy skin and looked a bit like overgrown maggots. Thousands of razor-sharp teeth lined their gullets, and their mouths could stretch to fit around just about anything.
Kyleigh had once seen a swarm of minceworms devour a company of the Baron’s guards — armor and all.
She heard the thumping beneath them as the minceworms tried to ram their way through the floor. Their hot breath fogged the glass, and their teeth squeaked wetly as they pressed their jaws against it. But fortunately, they couldn’t get through.
For half a breath, Kyleigh thought her plan might actually work. But that was before she realized just how far the little blighters could leap.
“Get back,” she said to Jake, when a worm burst from the sand and nearly latched onto his boot. She elbowed him to the middle of the camp, swinging Harbinger as she went.
At least when the worms landed on the glass, they seemed to lose their footing. Without the sand to grip onto, they flopped and squirmed helplessly, creeping forward mere inches at a time. Kyleigh hacked the ones that came too close, and Jake blasted them with spells.
“There’s no end to them!” Silas cried. He wielded one of their pans like a club. A minceworm wriggled up to him, hissing furiously, and he squished it flat.
The worm’s flesh stayed pressed down for a moment, looking like a berry crushed underfoot. Then it suddenly sprang back to life — and came after him all the more furiously. When Silas clubbed it again, the worm stuck to the bottom of the pan. He yelped and threw it away.
“We can’t keep this up all night,” Jake said. Sweat was already beginning to plaster his brow. “Even a mage has his limits —”
“I know,” Kyleigh said, taking her frustration out on the nearest worm.
All around them, the sands had come to life. Pale bodies bounded up and out of the dunes, like fish riding the waves. Their chirping grew louder as they swarmed. She could smell their excitement. It was the same bloodlust she’d felt just hours before. Only now, the worms were the hunters.
And she was the prey.
“Ha!” Jake sent a fireball into a crowd of minceworms, and it worked rather well: the fire caught onto their flesh, racing from worm to worm like flame through oil, burning them up instantly. “It seems they’re quite flammable … wait, I’ve got it!”
Jake leapt forward and Kyleigh had no choice but to
follow. He dragged his staff across the ground, muttering to himself, and fire sprang up in a trail behind him. Kyleigh moved with him, watching out of the corner of her eye for minceworms.
She hacked them away, sometimes cutting them straight from the air. The worms chirped and flopped after her; their fleshy jaws pulsed for her heels. She was so focused on not getting bitten that Jake had to jab her in the back to get her attention.
“Come on!” he said, waving frantically.
She dove between a narrow gap in the flames, and Jake quickly dragged his staff behind her. When she looked up, she saw that he’d drawn a protective circle around the whole camp, encasing them in a high wall of flame.
The few minceworms that tried to bully their way through the wall were burned up immediately. Their bodies burst into ash and the wind carried them away. After a few moments of hopeful circling, their chirping dropped in pitch — deepening to something that reminded Kyleigh of a disappointed grunt. Most of the worms sank back into the sands, leaving just a few dozen behind.
“Excellent,” Silas said grumpily. “Now that we no longer have to worry about being eaten, I can enjoy my dinner.”
“Finally decided to come down from the tent poles, have you?” Kyleigh retorted.
He hissed at her.
While Silas served himself some dinner, Kyleigh went after Jake. He knelt at the edge of the flames, inspecting the fire wall.
“A perfectly decent, proper spell,” she said. “And it’s done no harm to anyone.”
Jake nodded out at the worms. “They might disagree with you.”
“Well, they deserved it.”
He laughed. “They did deserve it. Vile little creatures, aren’t they? And yet … I sort of find them interesting.”
Kyleigh bit back a groan and instead, planted a hand on his boney shoulder. “You saved all of our hides tonight — mine included. And since that horrible little furball over there isn’t likely to thank you,” she jerked her chin at Silas, “I’ll say it for him: thank you, Jake.”
He nodded, made a great show of straightening his spectacles — and fought very hard to keep from looking too pleased.
Chapter 13
Lord of Southbarn
Escaping the plains was going to be a little more difficult than Kael had expected. Though oddly enough, it wasn’t the guards or the mages that foiled him: it was his own blasted body.
Every inch of him screamed out in protest. Something like molten iron ran along his bones, burning him furiously with even the smallest step. He couldn’t turn his head without hurting his neck, his shoulders ached too badly to raise his arms, and his legs — well, his legs just flatly refused.
He’d expected to be a little sore after pulling the plow, but nothing quite like this.
For days on end, things were the same. The stall doors screeched open at an hour before dawn, and Kael trudged down the aisle, past the giant-shaped scorch mark that Casey had left on the floor, and out to the water troughs for a morning drink. Then he followed Declan and Brend to whichever field they’d been assigned to plow. By the time they arrived, pale light had crept up over the horizon.
“Enjoy this sunrise, rat,” Brend would holler, as Kael worked himself into the straps. “You’ll likely not live to see another!”
The second full day of work nearly did him in. Kael’s body was so beaten up that he had no choice but to use his mind to drag the plow. He figured that stumbling along on his sore muscles would make him seem convincingly weak.
It worked. Not only did they get their own field finished, they were able to help a neighboring team finish theirs. By the end of the day, Kael only had a very slight headache, and he was rather proud of himself. But his relief didn’t last long.
The third day turned out to be the most difficult of all. Kael’s body still ached, and his short night’s sleep didn’t give his mind enough time to rest. At just past midday, his head throbbed so fiercely that he had to give up on his mind all together. He pushed through the rest of the afternoon on nothing more than his aching muscles.
They were lucky to finish their allotted field that day.
No matter how hard he worked, or how long he rested, Kael could never seem to catch his breath. He found himself trapped in a cycle of sore limbs and headaches — a torment with no end. The days never seemed to grow any shorter, and the plow certainly never got any lighter. At some point, he even lost his boots: they sunk into a particularly soggy patch of field, and were never seen again.
Brend assured him that the bottoms of his feet would eventually harden: “A few weeks of this, and you’ll be able to bend the pointy end of a nail back on its head!”
But Kael wasn’t sure he would make it another day, much less a few weeks.
Time passed so slowly that he thought every day might’ve counted for two. The sun crept its way across the sky as they worked, baking the mud onto their skin and drying their sweat in salty patches. Then at night, Kael swore the moon must’ve sprinted from one horizon to the next. It seemed like his head had barely touched the pillow before Finks was lashing them awake.
But somehow, Kael managed to survive. By mind or body or sheer, stubborn will, he dug his heels into the earth and pressed himself on.
Slowly, his worries began to fade. Jonathan still hovered in the back of his thoughts; Kael knew that they still needed to find someway to escape. But the exhausting work of the fields calmed him. It covered over the black beast in his heart, and all of his troubles grew distant. They washed away with sweat, trickling in a steady line to the dirt beneath him.
Kael would let the earth hold his fears for the moment, and he would worry himself only with the plowing.
*******
“Are you excited, wee rat?” Brend bellowed in his ear.
Kael was excited: the wagon that carried water barrels around to the fields had finally showed up. It was nearly two hours late.
The mage in the driver’s perch had flat feet and a hunched back — as if he’d steered the cart for so long that he’d actually become a part of it. He stared blankly into the distance while they drank, his whip hanging limply in his hands. And he seemed entirely unconcerned with how thirsty they were.
Declan had just passed Kael the ladle when Brend’s hand pounded down on his shoulder — sloshing nearly half of the water onto the ground.
“It’s the last day of plowing,” Brend went on, as Kael gulped down the remainder of his drink. When the ladle was empty, he reluctantly passed it off to Brend.
“Yeh, we’ll be starting on the wheat tomorrow,” Declan murmured. He raised his head to gaze around the fields, and the sun chased the shadow from his brow. Though his mouth stayed in a straight line, Kael thought he could see happiness in his eyes — though perhaps happiness was too strong a word. In any case, he didn’t look as cross as usual.
Brend finished his drink and passed the ladle to Declan. He glanced up, but the water wagon mage just went on staring. So Declan dipped the ladle in among the barrels for a second drink.
Brend yawned and stretched his arms high over his head, and Kael caught a whiff of something unpleasant — a stench that probably had to do with the dark stains in the pits of Brend’s shirt.
“Ole Hob is circling us again,” he said, reaching over to bat at Declan.
They looked to where he pointed and saw Hob wandering on the edge of their field, the many-headed whip clutched in his hand. He walked back and forth down the rows, searching for errors in their lines, but he found none.
Though Brend was obnoxious in countless other ways, he did a good job of steering the plow. He hollered from sunup and on, ordering them to turn a bit more this way or that, shouting with hardly a pause until they scraped a perfect line. So Hob could search for a reason to lash them, but Kael knew he wouldn’t find one.
Declan scooped out a second ladleful of water and passed it down to Kael. His eyes disappeared into the crevice of his brow as he glared at Hob. “He’s got the wench-tongue with him.
”
“The what?” Kael said between gulps.
“That whip he’s carrying — we call it a wench-tongue.”
“Why’s that?”
Brend pounded him on the back, and a good portion of Kael’s next sip shot up his nose. “Because she’ll bite you with every lash! There’re little bits of metal woven into each strand. Makes for a mightily powerful bite, it does. But don’t worry,” he plucked the empty ladle from Kael’s hand and went to fill it, “they’re only allowed to hit us twice with a wench-tongue.”
“Gilderick’s careful with his stock,” Declan said, in answer to the question on Kael’s face. “He knows that every time one of us bleeds, there’s a chance the wound will kill us. The mages aren’t allowed to draw blood — unless we don’t get our work finished, that is.”
“Or if we’re rebellious, or if we even think about trying to escape,” Brend added with a snort. “They could flog us for anything and Gilderick would never hear about it. He hardly ever leaves his clodded castle.”
“So why don’t they?” Kael wondered. He knew for a fact that Fallon couldn’t wait to strip the meat off his back — he’d told him so that morning.
Declan’s mouth tilted into an almost-smirk: “Because His Lordship is a raving lunatic … and they know it.”
Brend let out a bark of laughter. “Not even being a mage’ll save them. Take Churl, for example.” He nodded to the water wagon mage, who still stared listlessly into the distance. “I hear that he tried to sneak into the castle without permission, once — and Gilderick caught him. He’s never been quite right, after that. But that’s not the worst of it,” Brend said, his eyes glinting. “Wait till you hear what happened to Ludwig —”
“Time’s up!”
Churl had suddenly snapped awake. Now he slung his whip in wide arcs over their heads, his eyes wild with madness. “Get away, beasts!” he shrilled. “Get away from my cart!”
