Page 61 of Blood of the Sands

In truth though, my magic curled like a hunting dog happily around its master’s feet as I began to carry Keera along. Letting her die would be a waste, just as Lord Einil’s and Oren’s deaths had been foolish. Magic filled Keera’s being to the brim, and even if she could not control it yet she could make a fearsome weapon.

If only I could convince her to help Lord Alasdar and me heal the desert, instead of blindly following Kelvadan’s folly.

I bit my tongue as my knee hit the ground with a painful thud. It wasn’t the first time I had stumbled in the past hour. The bolstering of my magic with pain seemed to have lost its effectiveness, my power more interested in the woman draped across my back than the ache of my muscles.

With a sigh of defeat, I lowered her to the ground, sitting heavily beside her. We hadn’t been lucky enough to happen upon another water source since we left the poison spring in our wake. I rubbed at the tunic where it stuck to my shoulders and my fingers came away wet with crimson.

Looking at Keera I found that the rivulets of blood dripping from her mouth and nose came faster now. Peering even closer, I spied the red shadow of blood in her ears as well. She wouldn’t make it much farther without the antidote, and neither of us would survive long without water.

I glanced around, but no signs of salvation lay in sight.

Then again, nobody was around to see me use my last resort. I chewed the inside of my cheek as I stared at my unconscious charge. As she inched closer to death, I doubted she would remember many of my actions when she woke. Still, I had decided to save her to ensure that my record in the Trials was spotless as it could be, considering I had already thrown Keera and myself into a pit of quicksand. Then again, she couldn’t very well say anything about that without admitting she had been attempting to sabotage her own team as well.

Despite all this, doubt gnawed at me at using my magic so dramatically in the Trials. I was supposed to overcome these challenges using the strength of my body alone.

If I didn’t though, I might fail, and the desert would continue to shred at the seams. And Keera would die.

Slowly, I pushed to my feet, letting my bare hands play through the sand as I levered myself up. For once, I was glad to be without my gloves, the unfettered connection to the earth helping awaken my connection to the desert around me. Standing now, I turned my face up to the sky and began unspooling the knot of power at the base of my skull.

The whispers of the desert in my mind, quiet as I had carried Keera, grew in volume until I could see them—taste their mad power. I grit my teeth to not get lost in the mad tangle of life and death intermingled in the desert around me, instead grasping on to the fabric of nature.

Holding my arms out before me, I clenched my fists and ripped, rending through the stillness of the air around me.

A crack of thunder. A flash of light behind closed eyelids.

I snapped my eyes open, not even realizing I had closed them, just as the first drops of rain began to fall. They pinged off my mask and were quickly soaked up by the dry sand at my feet. Within moments, fragile green tendrils pushed through the baked earth, long dead roots of plants awakening in sudden rearrangement of the universe.

But I stood frozen in place. The power still coursed through me, my sense of self having tangled in the loose fibers of the fabric I tore. The sound in my skull was not voices but a long, unending shriek, and I was helpless to fight against it.

I screamed along with them, staring up at the sky, paralyzed by the same storms that had taken hold of me as a child. If I just had my knife, I could stab it into my thigh to give myself a sensation to ground on to, but I had nothing.

I buckled to my knees and pitched forward dangerously. Then, my palms landed, and the world tipped sideways. The screaming was gone, although the rain still pattered around me. Whatever madness had held me hostage though had released me from its clutches.

Staring down at my hands, I jolted at the sight that greeted me. My left had unknowingly landed on Keera’s bare arm, her flesh fevered and soft under my fingers. Just as when I had tightened my hand at her throat, my magic zeroed in on the point of contact, shivering in still anticipation.

I stared for a long moment before coming back to myself. When the light rainfall began to soak through my hood to my hair, I yanked my hands away, reminded of my purpose.

Casting around me, I looked for a way to collect the water gently pattering from the sky, but I did not have a skin or a basin. There was only one thing on either of our persons that was not made of fabric.

I turned away from Keera and raised my trembling fingers to my face. With slow, even motions, I pulled the mask off and turned the metal contraption up to the sky. It could only hold a small amount of rain before the water began leaking out the eye and mouth holes, but it was enough.

Again and again, I let it fill with a few mouthfuls of water before gulping them down. Once my throat no longer felt glued shut and my lips stopped threatening to crack with dryness, I hesitated.

Keera needed to drink too, and she needed the antidote to the poison.

I shifted on my knees, turning toward her, and reminding myself that she could not see me, unconscious as she was. Shuffling forward, I tipped a few drops of water from my mask into her open lips. Her tongue darted out to lap at them eagerly, despite her blindness to all else around her.

The light rain had rinsed away some of the blood clinging to her, but the odd red rash and the rasping of her breath remained. Already, the rain began to slow, even the magically induced storm as short as the ephemeral showers of the rainy season.

Quickly, I raised my mask to the sky one last time, letting as much water as I could pool in the recesses. Setting it carefully on the ground, I cast around for the plants I had felt shivering life beneath my feet minutes earlier.

Sure enough, one of them was adenium, one of the few flowering plants that dotted the occasional green area of the desert. I plucked the petals, rubbing them between my fingers before dropping them into the small amount of water.

While the pit viper poison destroyed the essence of your blood that allowed it to scab a cut and prevent bleeding, the petals of this flower could restore it.

With as steady a hand as I could manage, I tipped the paste of crushed flowers and water into Keera’s parted lips. I watched her throat work as she struggled to swallow the antidote, but as thirsty as her body was, it complied. Even her tongue darted out to lick at the last drops clinging to her bloody lips.

Normally, the antidote was to eat a whole flower, but I doubted I could persuade Keera to chew in her current state. This would have to do. I would find out in a few hours whether the antidote had taken hold. For now, I hoisted Keera onto my back again and continued to march on.