Page 46 of Blood of the Sands

“By the sands, I pledge to test my blood against all others in the Ballan Desert, using only the strength of my body and the iron of my will.”

As I repeated the same words as all those who had knelt before me, a sharp intake of breath came from the queen. While my mask limited my peripheral vision, I saw the shadow of movement from the woman beside her, most likely an instinctual grab for a weapon.

I finished my pledge and raised my head, meeting the eyes of my mother for the first time in ten years.

Sounds of boisterous conversations and revelry drifted through my tent flap. I sat cross-legged on my sleeping mat, sharpening my saber. I wouldn’t be able to use it in the combat event’s coming Trials, instead switching it out for a blunted version, but my hands moved through the motion out of habit. Just as my forms brought me some semblance of peace in their familiarity, caring for my weapons soothed the whispers of magic in my mind.

I needed all the peace I could find tonight. My magic surprised me by continuing to test my control. I focused on the stinging of the blistered lines on my back to ground myself, but it was almost healed, only paining me when the sheath of my saber rubbed over it. Perhaps I should have let Lord Alasdar burn another line into my skin before I left for the Trials, but I hadn’t thought the occasion would test my control. My confidence in my skills left me without fear I could accomplish my goals, and even my confrontation with my mother had passed without incident.

While her face had paled, and she’d paused for a moment before accepting my entrance into the tournament, she had not treated me any differently than the other competitors. From the spy, Oren, she would have known to expect the Viper’s entry to the competition, and my goals in coming here. She would have come to terms with her inability to deny me entry without turning the clans further against her and had schooled herself into neutrality toward me—until she’d heard my voice. No doubt she remained unsure if it was really me. With my face covered and my voice deeper than it had been when I left—barely a man and still growing into myself—I would be difficult to recognize. I had even left my sword with Alza, on the off chance she would recognize it and change her mind about denying me entry to the Trials. Considering she had thought me dead, she likely questioned herself, though she clearly found me familiar.

Footsteps stirred the sand outside my tent, and I lifted my head just in time for the tent flap to open. A woman pushed in without invitation, glaring at me with her arms folded. I met her dark gaze from behind my mask and cocked my head at the familiar aggression in her stance, trying to place her.

Aderyn.

Her eyes darted back and forth between my mask and the saber in my lap, and I tensed. She would recognize it as having belonged to my great-grandfather, gifted to me on my sixteenth birthday, and the only thing I had taken with me when I left Kelvadan in the dead of night. Longer than any other I had ever seen, with curved quillons decorating the cross-guard hilt, there would be no mistaking it.

She looked harder than she had when I left, not that she had ever been soft. Her hair had been shaved off to show a tattooed stripe across her head. It gave me pause, as such a style was a mark of the clans from when the desert had first been crossed, and I wouldn’t expect it on somebody dedicated to Kelvadan as she was.

“Erix.” She made the one word sound like a question and an accusation at the same time. I didn’t respond, although my eye twitched. Even Lord Alasdar never called me by my name, and he was one of the few people who knew it.

“I knew it was you. You can take off the stupid mask. It won’t hide your identity,” she continued.

I ignored her comment. “Why have you come?”

“Why? Why—why did you let Ginevra think you were dead for ten years? Let her–us– think we failed you for so long?”

I slid my saber back into its sheath with snap.

“You did fail me. And you continue to fail this desert.”

Aderyn’s eyes flamed in her stony face. The familiarity of that expression stirred something within me, but I stood firm.

“You can’t do this to her.” Her voice was a murmur, but still carried clearly over the noise of the opening celebration outside. “We know what will happen if you win.”

“Are you saying you won’t let me compete in the Trials?”

Aderyn shook her head. “Queen Ginevra won’t change her mind about that.”

“Then we have nothing more to say. I will be named Champion of the Desert, and then I will leave Kelvadan again.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” she argued, but backed toward the exit anyway.

I shrugged. Even if she herself competed, and she had been the closest to beating me in training before I left the city, I had improved tenfold since then under Lord Alasdar’s training. I could best her.

Grabbing my dirk to sharpen it as well, I waited for her to leave.

“Erix.” She looked over her shoulder with her hand resting on the tent flap. “If you violate the peace of the Trials, I won’t hesitate to stop you. By any means necessary.”

“You have nothing to fear in that regard,” I promised with actual sincerity and without doubt that Aderyn would do everything in her power to end me if I engaged in foul play. “I cannot cheat for the same reason you can’t. The people must believe in their Champion for the desert to be saved.”

“And the people will believe in Kelvadan’s Champion.” She disappeared into the night, and I paused, wondering who she’d laid her faith in. Perhaps if we had been able to question Oren, I might have known who my fiercest competitors would be. It hardly mattered now though. I was here, and I would do what I had to.

I finished sharpening my dirk before laying down on my mat to rest. I pulled my mask off, setting it just off to the side next to my saber, both within easy reach. The Trials would start in the morning, and I would emerge victorious.

The line of competitors, mounted on their horses and standing shoulder to shoulder, stretched farther than I could see. Not that I bothered searching the faces of my adversaries. We stood with our backs to the towering city, watching the sky turn from black to gray to pale orange as the sun prepared to crest the horizon.

Alza pawed the ground and flicked her ears back toward me, as if asking what we were waiting for. I patted her neck, having very little patience of my own to share. I itched to get through the first event, announced as we gathered here before dawn. It was a hunt. We each had to return with a clean kill by midday or be eliminated from the Trials. I was impatient to move on to something more difficult. Even more than that though, I itched to ride out into the open sands and away from the shadow of Kelvadan. Something about the densely packed crush of life, intensified by all those drawn in by the Trials, turned the whispers of the desert in my mind from an insistent nuisance to an inexorable demand that I do… something. I wanted to peel off my skin, but I was unsure what it was my magic wanted from me in exchange for a moment of stillness. The only battles to be had for the next weeks would not end in bloodshed, making the opportunity of a reprieve from my madness seem slim.