“There are too many!” he shouted.
She cocked her gun, but even she seemed to recognize their situation. Slowly, she tucked the pulse gun into her skirts, placed her hands on the ground, and closed her eyes.
“What are you doing?” he asked as the forest groaned.
He heard a low rustle, a low, slithering sound that traveled up his spine. Though he could not see it, Yassen felt it in his bones. Its prickling heat. Its deep hunger. The fire came at once, rushing from behind them in a red wave of destruction. It tore through the forest, snapping leaves and stones, but skirted their tree.
Elena stood. The ground rumbled again, but she did not lose her footing. She darted forward with her arm outstretched, and the flames followed. He yelled at her to stop, but his voice caught in his throat. Heat pressed around him. Elena raised her hands above her head and then slashed down, the inferno ripping through the trees like a stampede. The assassins screamed, their voices piercing the air.
“Come on!” She sliced her hand down again, and the flames bowed to create a path. “Let’s go!”
He lurched to his feet as the fire tumbled forward, eager and unchained. Elena ran in front, guiding the blaze. The smell of burning men sickened him, but Yassen forced himself to shut it out as he sprinted after her.
They finally came into a clearing, and Elena doubled over, hands on her knees. Her shoulders shook. The flames coiled, burning along the edges of the clearing to create a protective perimeter.
Yassen panted, his chest tight. He could see the rolling dunes in the distance, free of fire. Elena shuddered. He took off his belt sash and offered it to her.
“Here. Wrap it around your mouth.”
Her fingers brushed his soot-covered palm. She swayed, the sash limp in her hand, and he held out his arm to steady her.
“I—I burned them,” she said, her voice hollow. But there was a look in her eyes, the same look Leo and Samson had worn at the Ashanta ceremony—reverent, with the unconscious stir of desire. It was a look of the powerful, and it made him shiver to think what else she could do with fire.
“Yassen,” she said, “why are you still here?”
“Because I have nowhere else to go,” he said.
Her face twisted, and her voice broke. “Neither do I.”
They slipped farther into the forest, leaving the past behind. The sky was a deep, boiling red, as if the sun had burst. The inferno crept with them, shielding them from harm and delivering them from the crumbling mountain to the quiet desert. Sand began to line their boots. The dunes awaited, stoic and still as if nothing had changed.
When they reached the desert edge, Yassen raised his eyes to the smoke-filled heavens.
The litany came unprompted to his lips.
“Ash begets ash. Heavens burn to reveal the truth. May the sinners be forgiven, and the pretenders see their doom.”
It was a chant recited at the end of the Fire Festival, but here there was no big parade, no city bursting with color. Here, there was only the dry, barren land.
“And thus justice shall bloom,” she whispered.
THE DAWN OF THE KINGDOM OF RAVENCE
—as told in the diaries of Priestess Nomu
Alabore Ravence was a small man. He barely reached the shoulder of a horse, but he walked as if he knew how to ride one. He had a weather-beaten face and pockmarks down his cheeks, but his eyes were dark and sharp, older than they seemed, as if he knew all along that his meager hut and rusty sword were beneath his destined social station.
He had a conviction about him, so deep and true that it gathered newcomers and travelers like moths to a flame. In that sleepy, unknown village, Alabore Ravence gathered a following of men and women who heard his impassioned sermons of a better life, of a greater future. They all sighed in agreement. Among them were his family: his wife, taller than him, and two daughters.
Alabore Ravence’s two daughters, Jodhaa and Sandhana, named under the traditions of their maternal family, bore the effortless, elegant grace of their mother and the hard, ruthless stance of their father. They were quick-witted and sharp of tongue. They could dance circles around a trained swordsman while they followed the beat of dhols. They could shoot arrows with their eyes closed and open them to find a poor lark spasming on the ground. They were their father’s fiercest warriors.
One night, Alabore Ravence had a vision that told him his time had come. It showed him an unforgiving land and an ancient flame; the blood of men soaking into the sand while the sky was afire; and him, standing within it all.
He knew then of his destiny.
He took his daughters and they traveled at night from their sleepy, unknown village deep within the Parvata Mountains, though that name has been lost in history now. They rode on the backs of garuds, giant birds with golden beaks and feathers of steel (sadly, the last one was killed in the First Desert War when Jodhaa’s great-granddaughter was shot down by an enemy cannon). They rode for fifty nights until they reached the edge of the monstrous desert. It had once been a forest, but fire and belief had burned it to the arid landscape before them. Even in the cold light of the twin moons, they could see that the immovable dunes were giant, stoic mountains.
Alabore Ravence stood before them, his dark eyes taking in all the curves and ridges and valleys of the silent space. After a long moment, he turned back to his daughters, who knew immediately that something about the endless terrain of sand had changed him.
