Chap seethed at being trapped in this small camp, and it troubled him more than ever that he could not dip one rising memory in either Ghassan or Brot’an.
Amid the second day, when the heat built again, he grew desperate. Through Leesil, he ordered that cloth of any kind, along with water, be brought for Magiere.
He had Leesil strip her down and cover her in soaked cloths.
When Ghassan later warned they were dangerously low on water, Chap lunged and snapped at the domin. Eventually, that next night, Leesil succumbed to exhaustion. Chap forced his oldest friend to crawl aside and sleep, but he remained lying with his head near Magiere’s ... trying again and again to find some surfacing memory inside her mind.
Sometime in the night, Chap lost consciousness.
When he started awake and realized what he had done, he panicked. Then he grew angry with himself for having fallen asleep. Listening in the dark, he heard her shallow breaths. Had he not awakened, he might not have heard ...
“Leesil.”
At Magiere’s whisper, Chap pressed his muzzle against her face. He did not wait for her to try to touch him and lunged across the small tent, ramming his forepaws into Leesil’s side. Before Leesil thrashed awake, gained his wits, and grabbed the cold-lamp crystal, Chap was back to Magiere.
Her eyes were still closed, but when he dipped into her mind, this time he caught fleeting fragments of memories. This was enough to calm Leesil once Chap told him.
By late afternoon the next day, Magiere’s dark eyes fluttered and stayed open.
“Leesil?” she repeated in a hoarse whisper.
Leesil sagged in such relief that Chap feared he might fall ill. Ghassan, now sitting inside the tent, reached back to push the flap open and called out, “She is awake.”
Chap wrinkled a jowl and waited.
Brot’an crouched in the opening. “Is she well?”
Ghassan shook his head. “I do not know.”
Magiere croaked something and tried to sit up. Before Leesil could, Chap pinned her shoulder with a paw. Then Leesil held her head and carefully gave her a sip of water from a small cup made of carved horn.
“The orb,” she whispered. “Where ... where is it?”
“It’s here,” Leesil said. “Don’t worry.”
He said nothing more and made her drink again. The instant he withdrew the cup, Magiere began to sob, shudder, and thrash weakly.
“I saw her burn!” she whimpered. “I didn’t know ... but she was there! I tried to stop it ... but I ... didn’t ...”
Alarmed, Leesil grabbed Magiere’s face and tried to hold her still as he looked to Chap.
They had both seen her enraged, wild, out of control. Chap had never seen her like this.
“Hush, that’s enough,” Leesil murmured to her. “Everything is all right.”
Chap did not believe so.
Leesil again grabbed the small cup and put it to Magiere’s mouth. She drained it and then lay in incoherent fits, whispering words too garbled to understand. Even the flickers of rising memories that Chap caught in Magiere’s mind were scattered and broken and told him nothing of use. After a little while, Ghassan brought dried figs and brittle flatbread. She ate as if starving. Though this was another good sign, Chap watched her with growing rather than diminishing concern.
Brot’an remained in the tent’s opening as Leesil and Ghassan continued to care for Magiere. When it grew dark outside, Ghassan set the cold-lamp crystal inside a real lamp to amplify it. Partway into the night, Magiere rolled her head and looked up at Chap. She seemed calm and more aware.
“You found the orb,” Brot’an said.
Magiere’s eyes shifted toward him, but she only stared.
Chap wanted to take Brot’an’s face off for bringing that up again.
“Was there a guardian?” he asked.
Chap snarled, bearing his teeth, and did not stop until Leesil nudged him. Magiere rolled her head away, and Leesil twisted where he sat to face the shadow-gripper.
“Get out!”
“Different,” Magiere whispered. “Different ... from anything ... before.”
Chap swung back around as Leesil looked at her. “Not now. It can wait.”
Magiere shook her head. “You have to know. I have to tell you.”
That was unlike the Magiere that Chap knew. She never needed—wanted—to talk about anything. He did not try to reach for what rose in her mind for fear it might shake her even more. Magiere kept her eyes only on Leesil as she began to speak ...
The first night’s trek wasn’t difficult. The sky was clear, and the stars and full moon offered some light. Magiere had heard that deserts were hot during the day and cold at night. That wasn’t exactly what she found. She’d grown up in the dank, wet cold of Droevinka on the eastern continent. The temperature dropped but still felt warm to her.
Even after the sea voyage to this land, and her time here, the arid air of the Suman region was still so ... foreign.
All through that first night, she gripped the tracking device, feeling its pull. It led her farther and farther northeast.
From Ghassan’s best guess, she had perhaps three days’ travel to reach the crater that had once been a salt lake. When she’d complained about being weighed down with two full waterskins, he’d told her, “You will not have that weight when coming back.”
Before she knew it, dawn arrived.
As the sun crested, it was not yet unbearably hot, so she continued for as long as possible, and the first hint of something glittering in the cracked ground caught her eye.
Magiere stopped and looked down at countless crystalline shards around her boots. Each one reflected the rising sun like tiny precious gems. She’d hoped she wouldn’t see them so soon, for they marked the fringe of the worst to come.
The light from above and below began to burn her eyes as she went on. Tears started to run down from her seared eyes, wasting precious water. Still, she followed the pull of Wynn’s device. By midmorning, the heat on her pale skin grew unbearable, and then the pain in her eyes worsened as the world brightened, became white.
Suffering broke her will, and she felt the burning in her stomach rise into her dry throat as her teeth began to elongate. Her dhampir half came to the defense of her body, and clear thought grew more difficult with every step. Even the device strapped to her left hand began to make her palm sting.
She had to stop and wait out the sun before she lost all control.
Magiere dropped, pulled off her cloak, and used the walking staff to hook the cloak’s hood so that the back of it faced the sun. She weighted its hem with whatever chips she could scrape off the ground with the Chein’âs dagger, and then curled up in the tiny shelter, holding the staff upright by locking its base in her folded knees.
The water she sipped from one skin was nearly hot enough to make tea. The figs inside her small pack had almost baked together, and the flatbread crumbled apart in dried bits.
She and Leesil had often longed for privacy in their travels. But now she was so alone without him. No Leesil complaining about, well, everything; no Chap digging through the packs looking for any leftover jerked beef.
Nothing but silence ... And the heat grew.
She stopped thinking of anything as the sun rose overhead and the cloak shelter couldn’t shadow her boots anymore.
Again, the burning began rising from her gut into her throat, and that was the last thing she remembered.
Awareness came back slowly. When she cracked open her eyes, the cloak tent had fallen to cover her body, and she pushed the fabric off her head to find the sky darkened by night.
Everything rushed back to Magiere.
She cursed and grew frantic wondering how much time she’d lost lying there. Her eyes and teeth felt normal, and her head was beginning to clear. She lifted a waterskin. Though still warm—hot—the water gave her some relief, but when she stopped gulping, the first skin felt so much lighter.