Текст книги "Vessel"

Автор книги: Sarah Beth Durst

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As Korbyn focused on the child, Liyana sidled closer to Fennik and Raan. The three of them watched the camp. A plume of sand advanced from it. “He’ll collapse after he heals,” Liyana said. “He always does. It’s his worst trick.”

Both of them looked grim. “We are fortunate that the Falcon Clan does not have horses, but even on foot, they’ll catch up,” Fennik said.

“Loan me one of your bows,” Raan said.

“We cannot shoot unarmed people,” Fennik said. The sand cloud obscured the number of people, but it had to be more than a dozen. It could have been a hundred. It could have been the entire clan. “Plus I do not have enough arrows.”

Liyana rubbed her forehead, trying to think. She kept feeling the stones that her clan had thrown at her. If Jidali hadn’t intervened, this could have been her fate, and her clan could have condemned themselves. This baby could have been her cousin.

Fennik checked on Korbyn. “He isn’t finished yet.”

The plume of sand drew closer. It spread out wide, blanketing a stretch of the desert. Liyana heard shouting roll across the desert toward them.

“They’re coming,” Raan said. “A lot of them.”

“Five minutes, and we interrupt him,” Liyana said. If he isn’t finished healing the baby by then . . .

Fennik tightened the saddles on the horses, who pawed the ground and snorted. Closer, Liyana recognized the magician and the chieftess at the head of the horde. At least a hundred men and women fanned out behind them.

“I don’t think we have five minutes,” Raan said.

Liyana knelt beside Pia and Korbyn, but she couldn’t speak. She kept picturing Jidali as a baby. It wasn’t this child’s fault that his god hadn’t come.

Singing the words in the same lullaby tune, Pia said, “Leave me here, and I will deliver the baby to her mother when she comes.”

“You can’t risk it,” Liyana said. “Your clan needs you.”

Pia broke off singing. “I cannot leave a baby alone and merely hope they find her!” Hearing Pia’s agitation, the baby scrunched her face into a knot and screamed. Her cheeks flushed red.

Korbyn’s eyes snapped open. And then he toppled over.

Using one of Raan’s choicest swears, Liyana shook him. “Korbyn, wake up! You need to ride!” She and Fennik hauled him to his feet and with Raan’s help, they hoisted him onto a horse.

Fennik secured him on and called to Pia, “You need to mount now!”

“I’ll take the baby back,” Raan said. She lifted the child out of Pia’s arms. Immediately, the baby began to wail, reaching for Pia. Raan bounced the baby on her hip with a practiced ease. The baby fussed but then settled against her.

The Falcon Clan was close. The chieftess shouted to them. Liyana could nearly distinguish words in the yell. Fennik scooped up Pia and tossed her onto a horse. “Raan has the baby?” Pia said. “I don’t hear crying. . . .”

“I’ll escape north after I deliver the child,” Raan said. “Be there so I don’t die of dehydration.”

Liyana began, “How can we trust—”

Raan flashed Liyana a smile. “You don’t have a choice. Or rather, you do: me or Pia. And which of us has more practice escaping?”

There was zero time left to discuss it. Liyana swung herself onto a horse, and they galloped away, leaving Raan to greet the doomed clan.

* * *

Just north of the Falcon Clan, Liyana climbed the branches of a tamar tree. She squinted at the sands beyond and saw no one. The camp was a smudge in the distance. Below her, Korbyn, Fennik, and Pia camped in the tree’s wide shadow, obscured from view by the spread of drooping limbs. The ancient tree covered nearly thirty feet of desert with limbs that reached the ground and then stretched vine-like a hundred feet in every direction. In the heat of the day, its broad leaves had curled into tight rolls, but the branches still sheltered Liyana and the others from the endless hot wind.

So far they’d waited half a day.

Liyana climbed down the tree, negotiating her way through the tangle of branches. She dropped to the ground next to their tent. “She isn’t going to come,” Liyana said. “We should have left the baby.”

At the base of the tree, Pia cried, “Are you heartless? It was a baby!”

“I didn’t say leave it to die,” Liyana said. “The clan was five minutes away. If we’d left it on bright cloth, they would have seen it, rescued it, and taken it happily home. Raan used that baby to flee.”

“She’ll rejoin us,” Pia said. “She has to. She won’t let her clan die.”

Another hour passed. And another.

Korbyn lit a fire, a small fire with little smoke, on the opposite side of the tamar tree. He set the various rodents, insects, and other food they had to cook.

Fennik oiled his bows. He also worked on fashioning new arrow points from rocks he’d collected. Liyana tried to practice her magic on the tamar tree. She wondered if her family had attempted their dreamwalks. Without Bayla, they couldn’t have chosen a new vessel. She wondered if they felt despair. She thought about her mother and father, Jidali, Aunt Sabisa, her cousins . . . She thought of Talu and wondered what she had done when the dreamwalks failed. Eventually Liyana gave up on her practice, and she crawled into the shade of the tent. Korbyn lay there with his eyes closed and his arms crossed over his chest. She pulled her knees up to her chin and looked out the tent flap, through the drooping branches, toward the Falcon Clan. “What should we do?” she asked Korbyn.

Eyes still closed, he said, “I could have been sleeping.”

“You weren’t,” she said.

“How did you know?” He opened his eyes.

“You have a little purr to your voice when you sleep.”

“I don’t purr.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s a divine purr.”

His mouth quirked a little, but the faint smile faded too quickly. “This shouldn’t be my responsibility,” he said without looking at her. “I’m not leadership material. I’m a trickster god. Little tricks. Not this!”

Liyana was silent, considering how to reply. She thought of Jidali crying “Why me?” when he was asked again to card the goats. And she thought of herself after she’d been chosen in the dreamwalk. “Why is it you?”

“I was with Bayla on the day she was summoned,” he said. “Her soul was drawn east, though your clan was west.” East, she thought. At last there was a direction. “No one believed me. It happened again. . . . The Scorpion Clan, the Horse Clan, Silk, Falcon. All drawn east. Still no one believed me, for who would believe a trickster god? I did this to myself. I made myself untrustworthy, and here is the price I pay.”

“Surely they must believe you now,” Liyana said.

“Most don’t watch the world,” Korbyn said. “You can’t affect the world of the living from within the Dreaming, and it hurts to see your clan suffer and be unable to help.”

“How did you avoid the fate of the others?”

He snorted. “Side effect of being a trickster god. Trust no one. When I was summoned east, I suspected a trick. I did not leave until I was certain that it was my clan who called.”

You’re trusting me now, she thought, but she didn’t say it out loud. This was the most truth he’d spoken to her in weeks. “Who’s in the east who would do this?”

He didn’t answer. Instead he watched the sky above the tamar tree. Above, two sky serpents danced. Their glass scales caught the sunlight and reflected it like a thousand jewels as their bodies twisted and intertwined. Their eyes burned like minisuns as their bodies etched through the blue.

Quietly Liyana said, “You don’t know. You don’t know who took the other deities or why they were taken, or even if others have been taken since. That’s why you never answer questions. You have no idea how to rescue them. Just like you don’t know what to do if Raan doesn’t come.”

“You know, I used to be a very good liar.”

“I’m sure you still are.” She patted his hand. “You just don’t want to lie to me.”

“Oh, I don’t?” He looked amused.

“You don’t,” she said, her hand still on his. “Because you don’t want to do this alone.”

He stared at her, and then he covered her hand with his.

Fennik raced to the edge of the tamar tree. “I see her!”

Jumping up and down, Pia clapped like a child. “I knew it!”

Liyana chased after him. Korbyn followed closely behind. They stayed just within the branches as a figure walked toward them.

Fennik rode out to meet her, leading a second horse. In moments, both rejoined them. Raan slid to the ground and collapsed onto her knees.

“I knew you’d return,” Pia crowed.

Raan covered her face with her hands. Her sleeves rode up her arms, and Liyana glimpsed bandages. Kneeling beside her, Liyana pushed Raan’s sleeves back. Raan lowered her hands but didn’t resist. The bandages were wrapped all the way up her arms, over her tattoos. Hesitating, Liyana unwound the bandages.

Underneath, the skin was red and raw in between new black markings of soaring falcons. Liyana looked at Raan. Raan’s eyes were wet. “I didn’t plan to return,” Raan said.

The falcons obscured the scorpion images. Recoiling, Liyana wrapped her own arms around her stomach as if that would protect her own clan’s tattoos.

“They were supposed to take me in and help me return to my clan. Then my clan would quit waiting for a miracle and find a way to save themselves. But instead . . .” Raan stared at her arms, and her arms shook. “This isn’t . . . I can’t . . .” Her voice rose higher. She looked at Liyana, and then at Pia and Fennik. Lastly she looked at Korbyn. “You must fix this!”

Liyana had never heard a story of a clan stealing another’s vessel. A vessel was a clan’s future. To force Raan . . . Such a thing should have been inconceivable.

Korbyn knelt and held the girl’s wrists. He studied the wounds. “I can help the pain. I can’t change the marks.”

Raan yanked her hands away from him. With fumbling fingers, she reached into her robe and pulled out a small waterskin on a cord. She yanked out the stopper and poured yellowish liquid onto her arms. She hissed as the drops hit, and Liyana smelled alcohol.

Fennik nodded approvingly. “That will ward off infection.”

“Raan . . . ,” Liyana began. She didn’t know what to say, how to comfort her. She knew Raan hadn’t wanted to be a vessel, but to have her destiny stolen from her . . . To have her clan condemned by another . . .

Raan lurched to her feet and stumbled over the roots of the tamar tree.

“What is she—” Pia began to follow the sounds of Raan’s passage.

Liyana put a hand on Pia’s shoulder to stop her. “Let her mourn in peace,” Liyana said softly.

Raan dropped to the ground beside Fennik’s fire. She pressed her alcohol-dampened arms directly onto the embers. Flame shot into the air and blanketed her skin. Raan screamed.

Fennik lunged forward and crossed to her in three strides. He wrapped his arms around her waist and yanked her away from the fire. Her arms continued to burn. Fennik smothered the flames with the cloth of his robe. Raan kept screaming.

Korbyn seized her shoulders and dropped into a trance while Fennik held her still.

“What’s happening?” Pia cried.

Liyana clapped her hand over Pia’s mouth to keep her quiet. “He’s healing her,” Liyana whispered. “Shh.”

A few minutes passed, and then Korbyn released her and stumbled backward. He sank to the ground and dropped his face in his hands.

Raan curled against Fennik’s chest, whimpering. Liyana took her hand off of Pia’s mouth. “It’s over,” Liyana said.

“What happened?” Pia asked.

Slowly, Raan held out of her arms. All the tattoos were now a swirl of red scars. Even the ones that marked her as a vessel were obliterated. She took a great, shaking breath in.

“She burned them away, the markings, all of them,” Liyana said.

“But . . . her clan!”

“The Falcon Clan had already taken them from her.”

“She’ll need new tattoos,” Pia said.

Raan wrapped her arms tightly around her. She stood and backed away from them. Her gaze darted across the desert. Liyana knew she was thinking about running, but there was no place to run to. Certainly not back to the Falcon Clan. “Only when you’re ready,” Liyana said as soothingly as she could. “For now . . . we should ride.”

A few minutes later, the camp was packed, and they were each mounted on a horse. They had three hours before sunset. “Which way?” Fennik asked.

Everyone looked at Korbyn.

But it was Liyana who answered. “East,” she said.

Chapter Sixteen
The Emperor

The emperor signaled to his guards. At his feet, a man knelt, and the emperor knew the man was dying. He’d smelled the stink of infected wounds before, and he recognized the signs in the man’s mottled, red hands, bloated to stiffness.

“You have done well,” the emperor told him gently. “Your empire thanks you.”

The man shook his head. “They came from the sky. Blinding, like the sun. At the top of the mountains. We tried to fight them. As hard as we hacked, we couldn’t damage them. But their scales cut like swords, and they sliced us like we were wheat in a field. Three of us lived. Of them . . . I am all that is left. Your Imperial Majesty, forgive my failure.”

Escorted by the emperor’s guards, the doctor and his assistants entered the tent. The four men wore the traditional blue facecloths obscuring all but their eyes. The emperor held up a hand to halt them. He had to ask one more question. One more question wouldn’t change this man’s fate, but it could mean everything for the empire. “Did you see it?”

“Oh yes.”

“Describe it.”

“A green valley. Sheer cliffs. And a perfect oval lake. Most beautiful sight I have ever seen.”

The emperor nodded to the doctors, who rushed forward. One had a stretcher. The man collapsed onto it, and he and the smell of dying were whisked out of the emperor’s command tent in a swirl of blue robes.

The emperor wanted to sink down into the cushions and bury his face in his hands. But he was not alone, so instead he walked in a measured pace behind his desk and studied his collection of sculptures. Each was carved of diamond from the northern mountains of his empire. He picked up the falcon. It fit in the palm of his hand. The feathers caught and twisted the candlelight, sparkling like a thousand stars. Calmer, he placed it back on the shelf.

At least he knew the lake was real. He tried to console himself with that. Before, he had not been certain, and instead of engaging an entire army to discover whether he was chasing a myth, only one group of soldiers had suffered. But still he felt each death as if it were a knife to his gut.

He let none of his emotions show on his face. “Summon the magician.”

The emperor paced in a circle around his tent. The silk carpets whispered beneath his sandaled feet. The heat in the tent pressed against his skin. He paused to drink water from a silver pitcher. He couldn’t question himself, not now, especially not now. He should be glad to have confirmation. None of this was a waste, and they could proceed.

The magician entered and bowed low until his forehead nearly touched the carpets. The emperor let him stay in the bow for a few seconds longer than was strictly protocol. He’d learned it was best to start these conversations with a reminder of their roles. The magician often forgot, and that was something the emperor couldn’t permit to happen. His generals barely tolerated the man. If they ever felt that he received undue favor or carried greater influence than they . . . Emphasizing the difference and distance between the emperor and the magician helped keep the magician alive. Not that the emperor could explain that to him.

He had no one to whom he could explain any of his actions. His parents had had each other. He remembered how they used to stroll through the gardens, heads close together, deep in conversation. As a child, he’d trailed after them, playing in the flowerbeds and watching the birds with their jewel-like feathers. He wondered what his parents would have said about his actions here. Would they have been proud? Or would they too have believed he risked too much?

“Rise,” the emperor said. “I have my confirmation. I am satisfied. But it seems the sky serpents pose a greater threat than we anticipated.”

The magician threw himself prone on the carpets. “Forgive me, Your Imperial Majesty. I did warn you, but—”

Every time the man groveled, the emperor had to resist the urge to kick him. He was certain that the man did not do it out of any real respect or remorse. It was merely a way to preserve his skin. The emperor wondered if the magician had ever respected anyone. “Get up.”

The magician scrambled to his feet.

“You warned me, and I took a calculated risk,” the emperor said. “It was my decision, and the responsibility and the burden are mine. Absolve yourself of guilt. So long as you share your knowledge, you do not need to concern yourself with how that knowledge is applied.” He paused. “I do hope you have shared all relevant knowledge?”

“Yes, of course!”

The emperor let the silence stretch. He’d learned that technique from his father—it often induced people to fill the silence with words they hadn’t meant to say. But this time, it didn’t. Unfortunate, he thought. He had hoped the desert man would cough up further helpful secrets. Perhaps there were none. “Very well. Once we have sufficient supplies, we will enter the desert. You will speak to any clans we encounter, explain our purpose, and solicit their cooperation.”

“They will not listen,” the magician objected. “I know my people.”

“It must be tried,” the emperor said. “If there is a chance that we can have the lake without bloodshed, then we must attempt it.”

“With all due respect, your Imperial Majesty, the desert people are not yours,” the magician said. “You don’t need to concern yourself with their fate.”

The emperor smiled. “And that, my good man, is why you are not emperor.”

“They will fight us.”

His smile faded in the face of that truth. “If they do, they will not win.”

Chapter Seventeen

“Sandstorm coming,” Korbyn said.

Liyana scanned the horizon and saw—oh yes, there it was, a smudge of tan that blotted out a patch of blue sky. All of them dismounted. Liyana and Raan pitched the tent while Korbyn unsaddled the horses. He tossed the supply packs into the tent. Without guidance Pia crawled inside and pushed the packs so they’d brace the walls. Fennik hammered stakes into the ground around the tent and secured the horses’ reins to them. He wrapped cloth around the horses’ heads to protect their eyes from the sand. It couldn’t protect the horses from the sand wolves, but it would at least prevent the horses from panicking and drawing the wolves. All was completed with practiced ease well before the sandstorm arrived.

As Fennik and Raan joined Pia inside the tent, Korbyn plopped down cross-legged in the sand. Pausing at the tent flap, Liyana asked, “Aren’t you coming in?”

“You need another magic lesson.” He patted the sand next to him.

Liyana checked the sandstorm. The wall of sand advanced across the desert, blackening the sky above it. The wind had already picked up, tossing grains of sand and debris into the air. Behind them, the horses stomped their hooves and sniffed the air.

She sat and waited for him to explain.

“You are going to push the wind,” Korbyn said. “It’s already moving, so this is far easier than starting a sandstorm from scratch. You are simply going to encourage it to blow around us.”

“And you?”

“I’ll keep the sand wolves from eating you when you fail.”

She scowled at him. “I won’t fail.”

“Good for you, goat girl.” He grinned at her. “Go on and impress me.”

Liyana regarded the mass of writhing black clouds. “It’s said that once, the god of the Tortoise Clan spent an entire century inside a sandstorm. The weathering of the sand and wind is what gave the tortoise its distinctive shell pattern.”

“Oh yes, we teased him about that for days.”

She studied him, trying to determine if he was serious or not. “If I make a mistake, will we be stuck in a sandstorm for a century?”

“I hope not,” he said cheerfully.

She drew her sky serpent knife out of her sash. “This seems to work on the wolves. It sliced through the one that attacked me before I met you.” She handed him the blade.

Korbyn examined it. “Beautifully made.” She watched his fingers caress the carved handle. The bone had been worn down to fit smoothly in one’s hand. The blade was lashed to the handle with goat sinew in an elaborate array of knots.

“It’s been in my family for generations,” Liyana said. “Don’t lose it.”

“Your lack of trust wounds me.” He slashed the air with it. “I assume there’s a story about how a sky serpent scale came to be the blade in your knife?”

“It’s a family story,” Liyana said. She watched him cut designs in the air, and her fingers itched to take the knife back. She didn’t know what had possessed her to share it with him. It had never been wielded by anyone outside the family before. She felt as if he were holding a piece of herself.

“You can tell me. I’m like family.”

She snorted like Raan. “You are nothing like family.”

He mimed a stab to the heart with the hand that did not hold the knife. “After all we have been through together . . . you wound my heart.”

“Tell me one of your family secrets, and I’ll tell you mine.” She didn’t know what possessed her to offer that bargain. She simply . . . wanted him to share something of his as he held her knife.

“I don’t have a family,” Korbyn said. “Gods were never born. We simply . . . are.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Tell me a secret of the gods.”

He leaned close to her. She felt his breath on her neck, warm and soft. She shivered as if his breath touched all of her skin. In a mock whisper he said, “Sendar has horribly bad breath.”

She heard Pia giggle from within the tent.

Also in a mock whisper Liyana said, “Tell me one of your secrets.”

“You want to play confession?” Korbyn’s eyes glittered, and a smile played over his lips. She felt as if she were playing with a flame. She didn’t back away.

“One thing,” Liyana said, “and I’ll tell you about the knife.”

Korbyn was quiet for a while. Liyana watched the sandstorm build in front of them, a wall of blackness. Not far away now, it obliterated the line between land and sky. “I can’t dance,” Korbyn said at last.

Liyana laughed.

“Bayla doesn’t know,” he said mournfully. “So far I have hid my inadequacy by always serving as audience. But she loves to dance. One day she’ll discover my secret and flee from me in horror.”

Liyana patted his knee. “I’ll teach you. Before you’re reunited with Bayla, you’ll be a master of dance. She’ll never need to know about this horrible flaw in your character.”

“I accept your offer,” Korbyn said solemnly. “Now, the knife?”

“My great-great-great-great-grandmother was in love with the chief’s son. But he said that he would only marry her if she was the bravest woman in the clan. She asked how she could prove her bravery, and he said that she had to walk into the forbidden mountains and return with proof that she had been there.”

Liyana heard a gasp, and then Pia stuck her head out of the tent to hear better. “She did that? But no one has ever entered the forbidden mountains!”

“According to the chief’s son, she did it, and he married the bravest woman in the clan. But according to my mother and my mother’s mother and my mother’s mother’s mother . . . she stole it off a sky serpent only a few miles from home while the serpent was distracted with . . . um, mating.”

Korbyn roared with laughter.

“I think that still qualifies as the bravest,” Pia said, after consideration.

After he wiped the tears from his eyes, Korbyn pointed at the storm. “Almost here. Concentrate on the feel of your body. Think of the lake.” Behind them, Pia retreated into the tent, and the flap was sealed shut.

Liyana rested her palms on her knees and straightened her back. She tried not to think about how exposed they were outside the tent. Around them, the horses snorted and stamped their feet as the wind tossed sand. Liyana breathed. In and out. In and out. Keeping herself firmly tethered to her body, she imagined her lake.

In her mind, she saw her lake. But the surface bubbled and frothed as if the wind stirred it, too. The cliffs roared with the sound of the sandstorm. She plunged into the churning waters, and she felt the magic fill her.

“You are the desert,” Korbyn said in her ear. The piece of her still in her body heard his words and felt his breath on her neck. “You are the wind.”

She poured herself into the air around their tent and felt her soul overflow. She rushed over the sands to meet the oncoming storm, and she slammed into it.

Wind crashed into her, and she felt as if she were splintering. Sand swirled around her and into her, and she was caught and twisted. The world spun with her, blackening as the sand blotted out the sun. She heard howls within the wind.

“Liyana!”

She heard her name from far away, as if the speaker were at the base of a well. She tried to draw closer to it, but she was whipped in circles. She felt herself rip from the center and shred within the storm.

“Do not lose yourself! Remember you!”

She was wind. She was desert.

She ran with the wolves.

She felt her own jaws made of rock and her own flesh made of sand. Her wolf body shed sand, dissolving and reforming as the storm spiraled. She howled and felt sand pour down her throat. She swallowed the sand as if it were air. She breathed sand.

“Liyana!”

The name sounded like mere syllables. She was more than a name. Releasing her wolf form, she spun into a cyclone of wind and sand. Faster and faster. She felt herself race over the desert floor.

She felt hands on her shoulders, her human shoulders, and for an instant she was yanked back fully into her body. She lost the feel of the wind inside her, and instead she felt the sand pelt her skin, stinging where it hit, but then her spirit stretched. She was more than a body! She was pure spirit merged with the storm—

Liyana felt warmth, a soft pressure, on her lips. She was aware of hands on the nape of her neck and fingers entwined in her hair. She breathed in and tasted Korbyn’s sweet breath. She kissed Korbyn as he kissed her.

He released her. “Change of plans!” he shouted over the storm. He pressed the handle of the sky serpent blade into her hands. “I’ll turn the storm. You watch for wolves.”

Lips tingling, Liyana clutched the knife. Beside her, Korbyn faced the storm. After a moment, she felt the wind spin faster and faster. It’s working! she thought. Korbyn’s cyclone tightened around their tent, and the wind stilled within it—their tent was in the eye of Korbyn’s storm. The true storm raged around them, but within Korbyn’s wall of wind and sand, the air did not move. She lowered the knife.

Through the furious circle of wind, Liyana saw shapes move, blurs at first but then more distinct. She caught a glimpse of a muzzle and then a thigh. She stared hard at the dark swirl of sand. The silhouette of a wolf appeared. It vanished into the storm.

Suddenly a wolf burst through the wall of wind and sand. It leaped at Korbyn. Springing toward it, Liyana sliced with the sky serpent blade. It hit the wolf’s torso, and the wolf dissolved into a spray of sand that spattered her and Korbyn.

His concentration broke, and his cyclone collapsed.

Wind and sand knocked Liyana backward against the tent. She clung to the tarp and to her knife. Wolves howled around her. She saw their shapes as shadows rushing in circles around them. Sand stung her eyes.

She tried to yell, “Korbyn!” but sand poured into her mouth. She coughed and gasped for air. She felt arms wrap around her and yank her down. Her cheek was pressed against Korbyn’s chest. Sand pounded at her back, and the howls shook her bones. One of the horses screamed.

He needed to drive the wind away. But to do that, he had to quit protecting her and let her protect him. Into his ear she shouted, “Forget me! Stop the storm!” She broke away from him.

Eyes shut against the blinding sand, she held her knife ready and listened.

She heard a howl, and she sliced at the sand. She felt the blade hit. She struck again. And again. And again, as the wolves lunged for them.

An eternity later, she felt wind, clear wind, push from behind her, pushing the sand away. Korbyn’s wind intensified, blowing harder and faster. The howls receded.

Slowly, eventually the wind stilled.

Behind her, Korbyn collapsed.

Liyana was coated in sand. Her eyelids were caked with grit, and her eyes burned. She tried to wipe her eyes with her sleeve, but she only smeared more sand onto her face. With shaking hands she tucked the knife back into her sash, and then she collapsed beside Korbyn.

* * *

After the sandstorm, no one objected to Liyana’s magic lessons. The wolves had come too close for anyone’s comfort, and everyone knew it was sheer luck that the horses had survived. At every stop, Liyana practiced.

Occasionally Raan joined her, though she lacked the concentration to picture the lake for more than a few minutes. She wasn’t able to pull magic from it at all. Liyana, on the other hand, continued to improve. When at last she caused a desert bush to burst into bloom, all of them, including Pia, cheered. Liyana bowed before she collapsed in the sand.

An hour later she opened her eyes. “Ready for lesson two?” Korbyn asked.

Shaking the sand out of her hair, she sat up. “Your turn. I promised you dance lessons.” She got to her feet and held out her hand toward him.

He shot a look toward Fennik, Pia, and Raan, who were watching from the other side of the fire. “With an audience? How will I continue to impress with my omnipotent divinity once everyone has seen my feet fumble?”

“Think of them as musicians, not an audience,” Liyana said. “And no one is all that impressed anyway. Fennik, I’ll need a steady drumbeat.”

Unable to suppress his grin, Fennik fetched a pot and hit it with the heel of his hand.

“Keep it even. Like a heartbeat.” Liyana hauled Korbyn to his feet. “First step is to feel the music inside as if it’s your heartbeat. Bum-ba, bum-ba, bum-ba.” She placed her hand over his heart, and she put his hand on her heart. For an instant she couldn’t move, feeling the warmth of his hand.

His eyes were fixed on hers. “I feel it.” She wondered if he meant the drums, her heartbeat, or her.