Page 16 of Crown of the Dunes

“I’m surprised so much grows here,” Calix commented as he clambered off Stump’s back to the ground, where he twisted this way and that, clearly stiff from his ride, short as it had been. “Everything in the desert looks… dead.”

“Oh, the desert is very much alive,” I said, also dismounting and giving Cail a pat on the nose. “You just have to know where to look. Admittedly, crops like this can only be grown near the city, where they can be irrigated by the mountain springs.”

I’d learned as much in a stilted conversation with the city’s Archon of Agriculture when he greeted me in the hall one day, and I’d tried to focus on his explanations, even as they made my brain ache. Still, most of the details slipped out of my brain like it was a water skin with holes poked in it.

“Then what do the clans eat?” Calix asked, squinting over a large stretch of crops and shading his eyes.

“They hunt. And they harvest from the date palms at the oases.” That was something I knew far more about. “They used to trade with Kelvadan for grain on occasion but…”

I trailed off, not knowing what to say about the current enmity between the clans and the city.

I stepped forward into the neat row of knee-high grass, letting my fingers brush over it as I admired the grain in the distance. After years of unseasoned meat and sickly-sweet dates, bread was one of the pleasures of life in Kelvadan. Every time I received my meal from the palace kitchens, I would tear into the fragrant, steaming loaf first. Even thinking about it now, my mouth watered.

Sands, I loved bread.

The soft swish of the grasses signaled Calix joining me. I expected to tense at his proximity, but I found him a pleasant companion. The thought raised my mental hackles, and I stepped away from him, further into the waist-height plants. I couldn’t lower my defenses—especially around someone who might yet become an enemy.

Figures milled through the field, tending the crops that kept everybody in Kelvadan fed, keeping at bay the starvation of the desert I knew far too intimately. Of course, I also knew that with the increasingly violent storms making farming difficult, food in Kelvadan would also not be guaranteed for much longer.

A few of the workers paused to look in our direction. I couldn’t see their faces from this distance, but I wondered if their expressions were curious or judgmental.

The man closest to me—a dark-skinned figure, no more than a boy really—suddenly toppled forward, falling to his hands and knees. I could barely make out his hunched shoulders over the tall grass. I frowned, already striding toward him in concern when I felt it.

A vibration traveled from the soles of my boots to the top of my head, growing in strength until I had to throw my arms out to either side to keep my balance. My footing slipped as the ground began to roll. A solid form hit my side as Calix staggered into me. I managed to grab him by the shoulders, barely keeping us both upright. I gasped as pain shot up my leg, my still-healing injury protesting the jostling.

By now, the earth shook so hard that a deep rumbling filled the air, rattling my teeth in my skull as the earth pitched. It was as if the desert were heaving, trying to expel something toxic.

Even as the booming threatened to drown out my racing thoughts, a scream cut through the cacophony. I spun around as best I could, nearly taking us to the ground in the process.

Through the chaotic haze of rising panic, it took me a second to discern what was happening. For a moment, I had the crazy thought that the mountains were racing toward me, until I realized that the jagged side of one had begun to collapse.

Gray rocks raced down the mountainside, gaining speed and numbers as they went, looking like a stampeding herd of wild horses. From this distance, they seemed to be no more than pebbles, but my churning stomach dropped like a stone at the realization that many of them would likely be boulders as large as horses themselves.

The screams grew in pitch and number as the workers in the field spotted the incoming rockslide. The figures in the distance fled toward the city, but the growing avalanche was too fast.

I began to run. My steps were uneven, and my weakened muscles protested, but I couldn’t stop. My heart leaped into my throat, and Calix shouted after me, voice carried away on the crescendoed chaos of the air, but I didn’t stop. I flung my arms out, tearing through the crops, trying to get to the farmers at the base of the mountain as the ground tossed me side to side. Tears gathered in my eyes at the lancing pain shooting through my injured side, but I blinked them away.

A cloud of gray dust raced down the mountainside, like a dirty sandstorm, but I knew it concealed something even more devastating.

Retreating farmers ran past me, some of them screaming and shouting at me to get out of the way, but I couldn’t. All I could see was the figures closest to the mountain—those who wouldn’t be able to run fast enough to escape even if the ground wasn’t trying to knock them down with every step.

My eyes caught on one figure, crumpled on the ground almost one hundred yards away. A mass of curly hair obscured their face until they looked up, revealing a woman not much older than myself. Terror was etched in every line of her face as she tried to stand, but her leg gave out under her, ankle clearly broken from taking a bad step on the heaving ground.

She would be buried in stone—a fate worse than starvation or death at the end of a sword. A fate I feared more than nearly anything else.

The rumbling sound stopped, and I thought for a moment that the earthquake had subsided, until I recognized the ground still shaking under me. Next, my vision blurred, turning the sight before me into a swirl of golden crops and gray dust.

The current of magic washed through me and over me, even more powerful than the rockslide racing toward us. A scream tore its way out of me, burning my throat like fire, but I didn’t hear it as I lashed out blindly.

Breath exploded out of me as I took what felt like a punch to the gut. I thought I clenched my fists, but I couldn’t be sure. All I could be sure of was the roar of magic through and around me in a never-ending wave. My entire existence was an uninterrupted scream, as every boulder and pebble and speck of dust that came crashing down the mountain fought against me.

But I held the avalanche back.

I had to hold it.

The mountain shook, and I shook with it, as I let myself become a conduit for the desert’s magic. My vision was gone, my consciousness scattered from my skull and into a million tiny pieces across the desert. I couldn’t tell how long it had been or see if the farmers had gotten out of the way of the oncoming rockslide, so I just kept pushing with every fiber of my being.

I wasn’t entirely sure I knew how to stop.