Page 84 of Blood of the Sands

I turned my head away, breaking the contact, and the spell was broken. I groped around on the ground next to me, and Keera handed me my discarded mask without my asking. I slipped it back on, feeling equal parts like I was replacing an integral part of myself and that I was losing something valuable.

“Your head,” she started.

I waved her off. “It’s fine. Just stunned me more than anything.”

In all honestly, a dull throb had settled in my skull, but I could barely focus on that when I still felt her hand on my face, hotter than any brand Lord Alasdar had ever burned into my back.

“The Sichat?” I asked, looking around for the creature that attacked us.

“A Sichat? But those are just myths.”

“Just like the lava wyrm we are on our way to fight and the bone spider I encountered a few months back,” I pointed out. “What happened to it?”

“I threw a rock,” Keera admitted sheepishly.

“With your sling?”

“With magic.”

I looked around curiously and found a boulder lying on the opposite side of our horses. She hadn’t been able to move the smallest pebble in our hours of practice, but in the moment I fell from Alza, her magic had cooperated. The earthy smell of unleashed power still lingered on the air. I distracted myself from the train of thought that might lead me down.

“So, I am a good teacher,” I said instead.

Keera’s lips quirked in the slightest smile, and she stood. She reached her hand out to me to help me to my feet, and I took it, letting her haul me up, once again marveling at how strong she had grown in such a short amount of time.

I had spent the last several months feeling as if I had been training double, and here she was halfway a warrior when I had found her frail and feral at that oasis. I shoved that information away with the rest of the thoughts that I didn’t want to dwell on right now.

Keera walked over to the fallen Sichat and stared down at it. Just like the last one, the creature was large and vaguely feline, all black but for the patch of silky white fur on its chest in the shape of a star. Dull purple eyes stared lifelessly up at the sky.

“I’d say we had a successful hunt, but…”

I knew what she meant. Waves of distinctly unfriendly magic came off the corpse, a distinctly visceral reaction rolling through me at the thought of eating the creature.

“Leave it. We will see if Zephyr found some smaller game.”

Back at camp, Zephyr had indeed been successful at catching two black tailed jackrabbits. I let him tear into one, while Keera picked up and efficiently began skinning and cleaning the other with a practiced hand.

She was quiet as she did so, which wasn’t unusual for her, but I sensed a turmoil in her silence that distinguished it from what we had established as our normal companionable cooperation.

I observed her out of the corner of my eye as I built the fire on which to cook our meat. Eventually she paused, bloody knife hovering above the skinned carcass.

“Why are the sichats and lava wyrms returning? They disappeared after the desert was conquered.”

I hesitated, not sure how much to divulge to somebody that might still be an adversary. But my own words, partially in jest before, played back to me with a ring of truth. Perhaps she would no longer be my enemy if I taught her what I knew.

“The desert is angry and rises against us. Kelvadan is an insult toward the way the clans have lived since the first rider crossed from the mountain to the ocean and won the right to call the Ballan Desert home.

“The desert values strength and survival above all else, and the clans embody that. The strong rise to power, and the weak fall. Their warring ways offer the desert death and blood in exchange for the life she gifts us. But Kelvadan… the peace brought by the city is just weakness by another name. Even worse, the city looks beyond the borders of the Ballan Desert, welcoming those to our home who don’t respect or even believe in her power.”

I started with the part that Lord Alasdar told the clans to win them to our side. But there was another layer to the story he did not share.

Keera frowned. “Kelvadan is my home.” She said it almost too firmly, as if it was something she was telling herself as much as me.

“My great-grandfather’s legacy is one of failure as much as victory.” I couldn’t help the bitterness in my tone as I thought of the burden I had been yoked with, both from his successes and his sins.

Keera stared at me, tilting her head in curiosity as she waited for me to continue.

“Kelvar was the Champion of the Desert, more powerful than any could remember. He carried within him the power to shape the desert to his will, and he did. That type of magic comes with a cost though.”