First and Last Sorcerer

Chapter Eighteen

Half a moon later, Leesil pushed through the flap of a tent he shared with Chap and stepped out into the glare of the great Suman desert. Heat enveloped him instantly, though inside the tent was only slightly less hot.

To the east, west, and south all that he could see was endless hardpack with no vegetation. To the north, there were dunes in the distance, and farther north he could make out the vast Sky-Cutter Range. Those endless peaks separated the continent’s north half from its south and, from what Wynn and Ghassan claimed, stretched from coast to coast.

Six days and nights had passed since Magiere had gone on alone, north by northeast.

Leesil had made one last attempt to go with her, and again Chap had gotten in his way, not that Magiere would even listen to Leesil’s arguments. Before her departure, Ghassan had taught her how to activate the tracking device and, just in case, came up with a way to strap it to her off hand.

However, though the device worked, it hadn’t behaved anything like when the domin had tested it with Wynn in the hideaway.

Magiere’s arm didn’t lurch outward. Maybe distance mattered, but Leesil saw her arm tremble enough to know she wasn’t faking. She had turned north by northeast and raised her arm, shifting it for a guild line. In secret, he’d half hoped the device wouldn’t work and she’d have to find another way ... one that didn’t involve her walking deeper into the desert alone.

They were well supplied and, before she left, they’d made certain she carried as much as she dared. In addition to loading her down with a small pack of food and two large, bulging waterskins, Ghassan gave her a stout walking stick and a cold-lamp crystal, for she had to keep moving at night as much as possible. He then tied a piece of white muslin over her head. The cloth draped halfway down her back and reached her eyebrows in the front. He made her take her cloak, claiming that, after the day’s heat, she might feel cold at night.

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 long 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.

As she curled up in that tiny shelter, breathing became so difficult that even her inner nature couldn’t keep her from passing out again.

Once night fell, and that other half receded, she awoke weakened and drained. The water began to taste salty. The figs had burst sometime during the day, and all of their inner moisture was gone. She rose, packed up, and went on as before, though at times she no longer knew why.

Something inside of her felt ... pulled. This made her remember she hadn’t checked the device’s pull before she’d started out. When she stopped and did so, she was already heading where it pulled her. She tried to remember why she was doing this. Fragmented memories came, many of them in Wynn’s voice.

More than a thousand years earlier—perhaps more—something of many names, an ancient enemy, had made the first of the undead: thirteen vampires. Wynn had said they were called the Children. Toward the end of a great war, the Children left into five groups, each group carrying off an orb to faraway places ... and they no longer needed to feed. The power of the orbs fed them.

The orbs of Earth and Spirit had been moved from wherever they’d been originally taken, so Magiere didn’t know where those Children—those guardians—had gone. The orb of Water, the first found, had been guarded by three—Volyno, Häs’saun, and Li’kän—in the ever frigid heights of the Pock Peaks on the eastern continent south of where Magiere had been born. As the centuries passed, Häs’saun and Volyno had somehow perished, leaving only Li’kän, and then she had slowly gone mad, forgetting how to speak.

Magiere had locked Li’kän forever in the cavern beneath the castle where the orb of Water had sat for centuries. Back then, she’d thought this better than exposing her companions to battle with something insane and so powerful that it had lasted so long.

The orb of Fire had been taken to the icy wastes at the top of this continent by at least three of the Children. And again, only one had survived the long wait: Qahhar. And like the first orb, that one had been placed on a pedestal like a sacred object.

Magiere never learned the names of Qahhar’s two companions, only that he’d killed them to keep the orb for himself. His madness wasn’t the same as Li’kän’s, and he’d proved far more dangerous. The only way she’d finished him was by giving in utterly to her dhampir half.

That had started other changes in her, after she’d torn him apart and swallowed his black blood.

She didn’t regret killing him, only what it had done to her ... sometimes. She became stronger but with less control. It was easier to call up her other self but harder to drive it down again. And more than once, if it hadn’t been for Leesil, let alone Chap, there were things she might have done that she couldn’t live with later.

And now she was once again getting close to ...

According to the clues Wynn had uncovered, the orb of Air would still be where it had been taken. There would be another guardian, perhaps more than one. What would it cost Magiere this time to gain the final orb?

She didn’t slow, and nothing could turn her back, as she struggled to put one foot in front of the other. As night ended and the horizon began growing lighter, she pressed on, determined to walk for as long as she could. When the sun crested she saw something glittering ahead that was far different from the shards in the hardened sand. It was vast and shone like a mirror.

It seared her eyes, reflecting the rising sun.

Magiere shielded her eyes. For an instant, she thought she was looking out across water. The sun had risen fully above the horizon when she reached the lip of an even deeper depression in the desert ... and it went on as far as she dared to look. She was at the edge of what had once been a great salt lake.

The device lurched in her hand.

The heat made it hard to breathe, but she let the device pull her onward. Along the edge of that deeper depression loomed the outline of a building ... or did she only imagine it?

Ghassan had warned her of illusions in the desert.

Magiere closed in on that structure, and it grew even larger in her sight. She stopped to stare blankly at an enormous dwelling, constructed of tan stone, on the shore of the cracked and glassy plain.

Wynn had said the poem suggested the orb lay in the water—or the shallows of such. Yet this dwelling stood on the edge—the shore—of the deeper depression. And if this was another place where ancient undeads guarded another orb, why hadn’t she felt them yet? In her two previous encounters, she had long before she was near enough to see them.

Almost immediately, a twinge of hunger was followed by rage that grew with the light and heat of this third day. Yet it was different from her dhampir half trying to strengthen and shield her.

There was something undead here.

She dropped the staff and drew her falchion. There were no surrounding walls, no sign that anything living had ever existed here. She walked straight to the heavy doors in the square entry, but there was no lock that she could see. Cradling the sword rather than setting it down, she put a shoulder against one door and shoved.

It grated inward across a stone floor.

Magiere stepped in, and before she even looked about, she heard the door closing on its own. She tried to grab its edge but was too late, for it moved faster than when she had pushed it open. Everything went dark as the searing light was shut out.

She couldn’t see anything, even as her hunger increased to widen her sight. With the device lashed to free her hand, she again cradled the sword with that same arm long enough to get the cold crystal out and ignite it. The entrance was at the head of an empty corridor that stank of dust and age.

Magiere knew better. It couldn’t be deserted for what she felt. Her fingernails hardened and her teeth shifted as canines lengthened. They always did when an undead was near enough.

Maybe exhaustion kept her in control or maybe it was something else.

In finding the orbs of Water and Fire, getting near one had somewhat kept her hunger in check and kept her mind clearer. She lifted her left hand, holding the cold-lamp crystal between her thumb and forefinger, and let the device lead her down the corridor.

She passed rooms glimpsed through doorless openings on both sides with little or nothing in any of them. None of those pulled at the device. At the corridor’s end were stone stairs leading downward, and she hesitated, raising the crystal high.

Its light couldn’t reveal the bottom, as if the steps descended forever into the dark.

Who had built this place and excavated so far beneath it? Where were they? They had to be here, at least one of them.

Magiere stepped through onto the first stair and descended quickly, step by step, and she noticed the walls of the stairwell were no longer straight. They curved to the right. She continued down that subtle spiral, moving faster, anxious and eager to know what awaited her at the bottom.

The crystal’s light exposed an opening below, and she slowed to a stop a half dozen steps above. Beyond the exit was a wide space of darkness. She paused again at the last step and peered into a large, plain room.

As she took in the sight of the few objects awaiting her, she became only more confused.

The first thing she saw was an orb like all the others, with its tapered spike intact, but this one rested inside a hole cut into the top of a simple, flat wooden table. With no battle and no blood spilled, she stood within sight of her final goal.

It felt wrong. Nothing here was like the last resting places of the other two orbs she’d recovered. No tripod pedestal, as if it were an object of worship. No preserved bodies of ancient dead creatures as slaves. No chasm or vast cavern with narrow bridges of stone over fire or ice in the depths.

A simple old table supported an orb in silent darkness within a bare room.

Magiere stepped in, looking left and right along the room’s front. At first there was nothing to see, but closer to the table she spotted something on the floor beyond its far side. An orb key lay with a curved sword atop faded but carefully folded cloth, perhaps clothing.

Stepping around the table’s left side, she became almost certain the decayed cloth was one if not two separate pieces of attire, perhaps robes or something similar. For as old as this place had to be, the decayed cloth wasn’t that old. And even standing so close to an orb ...

Her jaws still ached under elongated teeth, her fingernails still felt as hard as talons, and she knew her irises were still black. There was at least one undead here—somewhere—and yet her thoughts were clear.

Why had she been allowed to get this far without being attacked or even engaged?

Magiere wasn’t going to try for the orb until she found whatever was here. She realized that she needn’t worry about the device or reactivating it, so she slit its lashing with the base edge of her falchion. As the lashings fell away, she closed her hand and shoved the device into her belt. In these depths, even her eyes needed light, so she brushed the dimming crystal once down her vestment. As it brightened, something more at the room’s rear caught her eye.

A number of paintings on unframed canvases hung in a row down the far wall, and she stepped closer.

Now faded, the paintings might’ve once been brightly colored. They appeared to be a sequence, from right to left, like a story. Each one was about half her height and their bottoms were at waist level.

The first depicted a collection of small dwellings, possibly a village.

Magiere sniffed it, touched one of the dwellings, and licked her finger. In the six-towered castle of the Pock Peaks, she and Leesil had found some walls covered in words and symbols written in the fluids of an undead. The tip of her tongue tasted nothing like that.

The next painting was of a long oval in various shades of tan that showed sand blowing in the wind: the desert.

The image after that was clearly a painting of the sandstone dwelling she now stood beneath, but there were flowers and palm trees around the exterior. On the far side of this, she made out a group of small people, on their knees, bowing down.

Next came a painting of two tall pale figures, a man and a woman with long black hair, wearing muslin robes. They stood beside a small boat.

The final painting was a large blue oval with gentle waves: a sea or a great lake.

Magiere knew nothing of such things, but the paintings looked rather crude to her. And like the robes on the floor, though old and decaying, they couldn’t have lasted since whenever this place had been built. They might be old, but were far newer than the dwelling. She shifted left again to look at the image of the two pale figures.

“Baseem’a!”

Magiere twisted around with the falchion raised.

In the opening to the stairs stood a slender girl about eleven or twelve years old. Her perfect skin was dusky. Silky dark brown hair fell over the shoulders of her undyed muslin dress. Her almond-shaped eyes were wide, almost eager and longing. She did not look at the sword and only stared at Magiere.

“Na Baseem’a?”

Magiere lost some of her hunger in confusion. This girl couldn’t have survived in this place if she was alive, but she didn’t look ancient. In the long search for the orbs, Magiere had faced two of the Children, and this girl didn’t feel like one of them.

The girl didn’t charge or flee. She didn’t display elongated teeth, nor did her irises lose color and turn crystalline. There was only a longing hope in her small face where there should’ve been rage, fear, or hunger.

“Na Baseem’a,” she said, this time with a frantic edge and a shake of her head.

More of Magiere’s own burning, hunger, and fury faded. What was happening?

The girl inched closer, still not afraid. Instead, her eyes held disbelief that matched Magiere’s.

“Min’a illy?” she said.

Magiere should’ve taken off the girl’s head, but the thought somehow revolted her. She back-stepped when the girl tried to come even closer, until only the space of the table’s width remained between them.

Was this undead child all that remained here, the only one to know how this place had come to be and why the orb was still here? Those answers might hold more that could help understand the dangers of the orbs ... and the purpose they’d served.

“I don’t ...” Magiere began, only then realizing her teeth had receded to normal. “I don’t understand you.”

“Numan?” the girl asked.

Magiere wasn’t Numan, but she’d tried that language first as it was the closest other culture to this region.

“Yes,” she lied. “You ... speak it?”

The girl held her index finger and thumb parted slightly and then pointed to her ear as she nodded. Finally, she pointed to her mouth and shook her head.

“You understand,” Magiere ventured, pointing to her ear, “better than you speak it?” And she pointed to her own mouth.

“Na’am! Iy ayaw,” the girl exclaimed with a nod and a broad smile.

Magiere grew slightly ill. This felt too much like talking with an abandoned child, but this girl wasn’t living. There was only one way any undead could survive alone without feeding. Magiere glanced at the orb. It had sustained her.

“Ghazel!”

Magiere’s eyes shifted back.

“Ghazel,” she repeated softly, pointing at her chest.

“Your name is ... Ghazel?”

The girl nodded again. Magiere turned halfway and tipped the falchion’s point toward the picture.

“You?” Magiere asked. “Are those yours?”

Ghazel’s browed wrinkled, and clearly she didn’t understand. When she stepped forward, Magiere backed around the table. The girl hesitated and then continued on to the back wall. She slowly swiped her hand up and down one painting after another and then pointed to herself. At the last painting toward the far corner, she crouched to pick up a small clay jar that Magiere hadn’t noticed before.

Ghazel turned the jar upside down and shook her head.

Magiere understood. The child had had paint at one time. When it ran out, there’d been no way to get or make more.

What Magiere didn’t understand was how the girl had ended up here.

Stepping cautiously to the painting of the two pale figures, she pointed and asked, “Who?”

Ghazel came closer along the wall, as if eager to please. She pointed to the male, and her smile vanished as she whispered, “Mas’ud.” She shuddered. Then she pointed to the female, and her voice filled with sadness. “Baseem’a.”

She looked up at Magiere with hope and mouthed the name again, not blinking.

It took another instant before that sank in.

Magiere realized the girl mistook her for the woman in the painting. This only confirmed her suspicion that the two figures portrayed were likely the ancient guardians of the orb. Where were they now?

“What happened?” she asked, pointing to the painting. “Where?”

Ghazel looked back and forth between Magiere and the painting with a slight frown.

Magiere pointed to the orb. “How did that ... get here?” And she waved her left hand, with the crystal, all around the room.

Ghazel’s slight frown vanished. She pointed first to Mas’ud, but instead of pointing to Baseem’a next, she pointed to Magiere. The girl motioned to the orb and acted out carrying something heavy around the room.

She stopped at the painting of the desert and waved her hand across it. First, she patted the painting with the small group of kneeling figures. Then she pointed to the image of the sandstone dwelling. Briefly, she stepped away to act out pounding with hammers and lifting objects in the shapes of large squares.

Ghazel put her finger back on the image of Mas’ud, pointed at Magiere again, and then to the boat. She paused but soon continued, moving her finger to the painting of the lake, sliding it to the center of the waters. She returned to acting out carrying something heavy and heaved it toward the water in the picture.

Again, Magiere understood. Two ancients had carried the orb across the desert, had this large dwelling constructed by slaves, and then took the orb out to sink it in the lake.

What more secure place to hide it? It all matched what Wynn had found in the scroll’s poem.

But where had the boat come from? More than that, how had the orb ended up back in this room?

Ghazel held up both hands, churned them around each other, and said, “Ahyaan.”

This was one of the few Sumanese words Magiere had picked up in their travels. It meant “time,” and she assumed the girl was telling her that time had passed.

Ghazel pointed to the lake, turned her palm downward, and lowered it halfway to the floor.

“The lake began to dry up,” Magiere said, more to herself than to the girl. And how many centuries had that taken? If Ghazel knew about it, had she been here since then?

The girl appeared to grow frantic, and her face suddenly filled with fright. She pointed to Mas’ud, grabbed her head with her small hands, and began rocking wildly around. When she stopped, she seemed at a loss for what to say, do, or show next. She pointed at Baseem’a with one hand; with the other she pointed to Magiere.

Ghazel then ran trickling fingers down both of her cheeks, and her eyes filled with sadness.

Again, Magiere wasn’t certain what this meant at first. She looked to the painting of two pale figures and back at the girl, and she understood.

Mas’ud had begun to go mad, and Baseem’a had fallen into sorrow.

Ghazel pointed to Mas’ud again and slid her hand across the painting of the desert all the way to the painting of the village. Without warning, she grabbed the front of her dress and acted out being dragged. She slid her finger back across the desert and then pointed to the painting of the stone dwelling. Touching two fingers to her throat, she snapped her teeth.

Magiere went cold inside. “He stole you from your village, brought you here, and turned you. Why?”

Ghazel pointed to Baseem’a and hugged herself with a wistful expression.

Magiere did not fully follow, but she guessed that as the female had grown sad, perhaps the male had attempted to provide her with company ... a little girl. Somehow Ghazel had come to care deeply for Baseem’a. It also struck Magiere as possible that Ghazel had never once fed on a human being. The slaves would have been gone long before her arrival, and the orb would have sustained her all these years.

But if the girl had not come here until the lake began to dry, how did she know what had happened before then?

Magiere shook her head and pointed to the boat. “How did you know ... ?” She pointed to Ghazel as well and tapped the side of her own head.

Ghazel pointed back at Magiere. When Magiere didn’t respond, she pointed to the image of Baseem’a and then to Magiere again. She gestured from her mouth to her ear.

Magiere nodded, ignoring the girl’s confusion about who she was. Baseem’a had told Ghazel everything.

Ghazel churned her hands, one around the other, and again: “Ahyaan.”

More time had slipped by. She pointed to the blue lake and again pressed her palm downward, this time all the way to the floor.

The lake had dried completely.

Magiere could imagine other changes that had followed. The heat would’ve grown unbearable, and all trees and flowers would have died.

First pointing to Mas’ud, Ghazel then slid her finger along the lake, curled her fingers as if taking something from it, and again acted out carrying something heavy. She took it to the table and dropped it with both hands, as if setting the orb where it rested.

When the lake or sea had dried up, the ancients had brought it back. By then, no one could’ve reached them in the searing heat—at least nothing living could have—but what had become of the guardians?

Magiere pointed to their picture. “Where?”

Ghazel’s small face twisted with sorrow. She put her finger on Mas’ud, and then once again put her hands to her head. Only this time she turned her head back and forth violently. Mas’ud had fallen further into madness.

Turning from the wall, she ran across the room, pointed down to the curved sword on the floor, and made a harsh slicing motion.

Magiere stood frozen as the girl knelt beside the robe nearest the thôrhk.

“Baseem’a.”

And Magiere understood. The robes were not merely clothing lying on the floor. They were the only remnants of where the ancients had fallen. Mas’ud had murdered his companion.

Ghazel grew visibly frustrated as she attempted to relate the rest. She struggled for Numanese words. “Mas’ud ... make ... me.” Again, she pointed to the sword and repeated the slashing motion.

Magiere exhaled quietly.

If Mas’ud had been the one to turn Ghazel, she would not have been able to refuse any order he gave her. Wynn had explained this once. The child of the creator was physically compelled to obey any order.

Mas’ud had ordered Ghazel to kill him.

Both ancients were dead, and the only one who knew the orb’s current location was a small, undead girl.

Then Magiere remembered something else.

Even the undead needed moisture, fluids to stay functional. How had Ghazel done so after the lake had dried out? As the girl’s mouth opened, as if to say something, Magiere waved her off.

“Water?” she demanded.

Her mouth still open, Ghazel tilted her head with a frown. She hurried to the painting of the lake. Instead of pointing, she gripped its bottom, pushed up, and pulled it off the wall.

Behind it was a crude opening in the stone.

Ghazel looked back as if this should mean something, but again Magiere shook her head. The girl stood there an instant longer and then grabbed the lip of the opening to pull herself up and in.

Magiere sheathed the falchion and followed to peer into a rough tunnel angling steeply downward. The girl waved her in and led the way as they crawled. In only moments, Magiere caught a taint in the air both humid and unpleasant. They kept on for far too long until Ghazel sat up, but her head didn’t hit the tunnel’s top.

Magiere crawled closer, and the knees of her pants were instantly soaked as a smell choked her. By the crystal’s light, water filled a small, jagged fracture in the earth in which they knelt. Even before Magiere raised a wet hand to lick it, she knew it wouldn’t help. The water was beyond briny, as if a shovel of salt filled her mouth. This might be all that was left of the lake that sunk deep into the earth. Perhaps it was even part of the source that had once created that body of water.

It was no good to Magiere, though an undead could’ve consumed it without harm.

She turned to crawl back up the tunnel, hearing Ghazel following behind her.

Once back in the room, the girl rushed past her to kneel by the robes. She grabbed one robe and the orb key and held both out to Magiere.

“You ... stay ... me?”

Magiere had never before looked at any undead as a victim. To her own disgust, she couldn’t help it now. Yet that didn’t alter what the girl was or that Magiere was here to take the orb.

Once the orb was gone, what would happen to Ghazel?

Magiere gripped the sheathed falchion’s hilt with her right hand.

The kindest thing she could do would be to take the girl’s head at the neck, quickly. She’d encountered vampires turned against their will before, and dispatching them had never made her pause.

What was wrong with her now?

She’d seen ancients—the Children—like Qahhar walk in sunlight. Though she’d never seen Li’kän do so, that frail-looking but powerful, feral woman had been awake during daylight in the six-towered castle where the first orb was found. But Magiere had also seen “offspring” of theirs perish and burn under the rising sun.

Taking Ghazel across the desert seemed unlikely. And later, what would happen to the girl once she was separated from the orb? Magiere had locked Li’kän away below that castle for fear of what might happen once she was separated from the orb of Water.

If the girl grew hungry, she’d eventually be driven to feed and kill, even if she didn’t understand what was happening to her.

Magiere couldn’t stand it anymore. She couldn’t bring herself to kill the girl, but the only safety for everyone else was to leave Ghazel behind. Steeling herself, Magiere stepped in and took the orb key out of the girl’s hands.

The sudden hope in Ghazel’s eyes made Magiere look away. She looped the key around her neck and then tucked her hand holding the crystal under one side of the orb.

Ghazel cried out in fright, but Magiere ignored the girl.

Grabbing the spike’s top with her free hand, she hefted it off the table and headed for the stairs. She heard Ghazel following with a stream of sobbing cries in Sumanese. Even if Magiere had understood any of it, she didn’t dare listen as she climbed upward.

Emerging into the main passage, she didn’t slow, but small hands latched on her lower arm beneath the orb.

“Stay ... you stay!” the girl cried. “Baseem’a ... stay!”

Magiere stalled, almost looked down, and then jerked free of that grip. With greater speed, she hurried for the doors out of that place, even as the child’s scream tore at her ears. The sooner this was over, the better.

Ghazel wouldn’t follow into daylight if she’d spent ages alone in this place ... knowing she couldn’t.

The sound of sobs followed Magiere all the way to the door. When Magiere rolled the heavy orb into one arm and grabbed a door handle to pull, Ghazel threw herself against the door with a cry that carried no words.

Magiere shoved the girl aside and wrenched the door open. She ducked out, choked in the sudden heat, and stumbled away from the building.

In the blinding sun, hunger came burning up her throat as the dhampir inside of her rose up to defend her flesh. Her thoughts clouded as she clung to one purpose only: the orb in her arms.

After perhaps fifty paces, she stopped, gagging for air under a wave of guilt and indecision.

Should she go back?

What if she waited until dark and tried to get the child across the desert by traveling only at night and keeping her sheltered under the cloak by day? Might there be something Wynn could do? Wynn had claimed Chane was feeding only on livestock. Magiere didn’t believe that, but was it possible?

No! She was a fool to think of taking an undead into a city.

Still, she stood there, suffering at the thought of walking away and condemning a child to face the slow death of starvation. Her hand clenched on the top of the orb’s spike.

“Baseem’a!”

At that anguished cry, she whirled. It was too clear to have come from within the building, and Magiere dropped the orb. Hunger failed and heat won out as she screamed at what she saw.

Ghazel’s body caught fire as the girl raced out under the burning sun.

Magiere charged back. “No!”

The girl kept screaming the name of the one she thought had returned to her ... until she fell. On impact, ash rose from her in a cloud amid the smoke and stench of burning flesh. When Magiere reached her, there was nothing left but smoldering, blackened bones that began cracking and falling apart amid the ashes.

Magiere stared down, growing dizzy and sick.

Heat made everything in her sight begin to waver. There wasn’t even a wind to scatter the remains and wipe the sight away. When the climbing sun crushed her to her knees, she looked over and saw the staff she had dropped upon her arrival. Somehow, she crawled over and picked it up and then rose to stagger back to the orb. She barely managed to push up the cloak tent to shield herself. But she refused to go back inside the dwelling. She couldn’t bring herself to do it.

Magiere lay there, barely shaded, and the sight of a burning child wouldn’t leave her mind.

Magiere lay silent, staring up into Leesil’s amber eyes looking for ... something.

What did she want from him? Understanding? Absolution?

She didn’t dare look to Chap for that.

She’d done what she had to, and she still heard Ghazel screaming ... even in the tent’s silence as Leesil said nothing. Or did he want to know the rest after that? Did anything else matter, considering she was here and had brought the last orb?

The girl had died long before on the night that Mas’ud had taken her. Magiere had never felt that she killed any undead. She only finished something that shouldn’t have become what it was. So why should Ghazel have been any different?

Shifting her gaze, Magiere looked to Chap.

—It is done ... either way— ... —And you ... came back ... to us— ... —Think of only ... only ... this— ... —Nothing ... else—

Magiere glanced away. It wasn’t that simple. And then she felt Leesil stroke her hair.

“Rest another day,” he whispered. “We’ll leave when you’re ready.”

She knew Brot’an and Ghassan were in the tent as well, but she didn’t look for either of them. She had no idea what the aging assassin thought, and likely the fallen domin’s eyes and thoughts missed little.

But they’d understand even less about this than either Leesil or even Chap.

To all of them, only the orb mattered, for better or worse and in different ways.

Once, she’d thought so too.