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The sorceress laughed as Almandis fell. Her laughter sounded like the raucous celebration of crows. Then she bent and buried her fingers in his neck, using his blood to fuel her next spell.
Anger flooded Inkeri. She jumped to her feet in one breath; in the next, she clapped her hands together.
Blue light sparked, soared into the clouds—and rain gushed down over the sorceress.
The spark faded. The rain ebbed. It had washed the blood from the sorceress’ hands. No blood meant no life force to feed her spell. She shrieked her rage and reached again to dip fingers into Almandis’ wound.
The pouring downfall had diluted his blood too much.
The woman stood. She pointed a finger at Inkeri.
Rhodren towed her behind the boulder as a bolt of energy shot through the air. The bolt flew into the desert.
“Stop,” she snapped. His hands fell from her.
“We need you. Don’t be rash.”
A sharp clap of an explosion, and another tree shattered. A man shouted. Others shouted back.
“I hope she wastes her power away,” he ground.
So did she, but “Not as long as she can find a source of blood.”
As she spoke, the woman dragged a sharp nail along her arm, opening her own skin again.
Several men shouted, then arrows rained down on the sorceress.
They missed her, every one of the bolts. Laughing, she faded into the rocks where she had hidden from Almandis.
Inkeri caught her breath, for a waiting game didn’t favor them.
The rain became a mist. They were all soaked through. She shivered and tried to think of her next move.
To lure the sorceress from cover, that was important. Hunting her in the rocks wouldn’t work. Poor Almandis had proved that.
Almandis.
She stared at his fallen body. For a few hours his corpse would be a temptation to a sorceress who depended on blood magic. Already his blood had stopped pumping. It would slow and thicken and sink. The sorceress must use it before then. How can I turn his body into a trap?
How can blood become a trap?
“Next time the arrows won’t miss,” Rhodren murmured. “The rain’s stopping. No rain means the fletching won’t be wet. Wet feathers can ruin an archer’s aim.”
The words were meant to reassure her, but Inkeri gave them scant attention. She had an idea, a wild idea that she wasn’t certain would work. Water was the connection, not just the power. Water could transform. Fluid became vapor. Liquid became ice. Can I work a different kind of transformation?
The sands were mineral-rich, minerals so diffused into miniature grains that it couldn’t be mined. Elemental Fire had transformed the Ahdreide sands into metal. As a child she’d seen it, a transformation worked by a master Fae. She wasn’t certain she remembered the Fae’s instructions. The transformation to glass had been relatively easy. Young Fae her age had worked that transformation. Into metal, though—.
She knelt and dug her fingers into the puddled sand. She dug deeper, until her hands were buried.
Water still stood on the top of the soil. Soon it would seep in. It would drain away. Then it would be too late to work any transformation.
Inkeri closed her eyes and sent her senses into the wet sand. Rhodren remained silent. His stare felt intense, but he didn’t talk, he didn’t distract her.
Little insects lived in the sand. They scurried away as they encountered her power.
Caterpillars tunneled beneath the surface, waiting for the end of summer to mutate into moths, to dig out and dry their wings in the last desert heat then fly to mate, hatch eggs, and die.
Spiders dug traps beneath the surface.
Little tunnels burrowed by voles had filled with water. She passed a drowned vole. Inkeri shuddered for its death.
She slid across a snake, not venomous, not a constrictor. It had sheltered in a vole burrow from the chisoone and from the men. It waited for the night to hunt.
She encountered the stiff and deep roots of the bitterbrush.
Then she sensed iron in the water, and she knew she’d reached Almandis.
What to do? What to do?
The mudpots of memory called to her. Their waters were the sickly color of sorcery.
She eased to the surface.
Rain still soaked Almandis’ clothes. She tried to avoid the blood as she followed the rainwater to the killing wound. Too soon the rain mixed with the blood, and she couldn’t separate them, just iron water rich with a fading life force.
The sorceress wouldn’t want this strong source of blood magic to escape her.
Mudpots were dangerous because they were acidic.
Changing the water in the blood to acid was not as difficult as Inkeri had anticipated. The child she was hadn’t understood the rich minerals that infused blood and sand, water and soil. The adult Inkeri understood too well. The sand had the requisite minerals. Almandis’ body was covered with it. The chisoone had imbedded sand into his clothes, his hair. It covered parts of his skin. Yellow sulphur, white niter, blue copper: she used them all.
When she melted the sulphur, it turned blood-red.
Inkeri drew back from the sand. Retreating across that expanse was easier than tunneling through the first time. She pulled her hands from the sand and shook them off, tried to scrape the grains from her skin. Then she turned to Rhodren.
He flicked a small speckled lizard from his knife into a scraggy bush of bitterbrush.
She shuddered.
He cocked an eyebrow. “What next?”
“We wait.”
“While she sends more lizards? We should move, at least.”
“She sends more—. How many have you killed?”
“That one’s four. I reckon they’re coming to your power.” He had claimed to know little of power, but he constantly surprised her with what he figured out. “So we wait and keep an eye for the things. How long do you reckon?”
Inkeri knew little of sorcerers. Too well, though, she’d heard people with similar manic laughs, with similar obsessions that drove their greedy needs. “I don’t believe she will wait much longer.”
“We wait then. Have a knife ready.” He rolled to his toes then leaned out and gestured. No one who looked over the boulders would see Rhodren peeking around the side of a boulder.
Across at a curve of boulders, Inkeri saw a spike of white hair. Then it vanished. Gaulter. She peered around the boulders behind the waterhole, guessing where the next man would be located. From behind a bush came the wave of a hand. Then it vanished. Her gaze traveled along the line and caught another gesture, this time low to the ground. The message passed on to his men.
He killed another lizard just as the mist stopped. To the west the sky had cleared. The sun hung at its farthest arc before descent.
“Late afternoon,” she murmured.
The wait stretched longer. The men stayed in cover. Occasionally a few shouts came, then dead lizards were flicked into the open. Taunts to the sorceress.
Jackals barked.
Rhodren shifted then touched her arm. He pointed to the sky.
Birds flew overhead. Black birds.
They crowed and croaked and shrieked as they landed in the pines. Then they fell silent. Also waiting.
One flew down and ate a dead lizard. Others flew down, squabbled over the reptiles, then pecked them apart, sharing the flesh.
The sorceress appeared at the edge of a boulder. A shadow that wasn’t there then was, leaning on the mottled rock. She stood only a few feet from Almandis’ corpse.
From Rhodren’s sharp inhalation, Inkeri knew he had also spotted her.
The black birds ignored her. They avoided the corpse.
Inkeri bit her lip, hoping the birds weren’t wise to her trap.
The sorceress stepped away from the boulder.
Two birds fluttered away from her, picking up their dead prizes and returning to the pines.
No one moved. They waited.
The woman stepped quickly, but she stopped before she reached Almandis. She plucked an arrow from the ground. Magic sparked and flowed along the shaft, burning the feathers. Then she lifted it high. More magic flashed, then the arrow was gone, replaced by a smoky cylinder. She tossed that into the air.
And it flew, arrow-straight, back to its bow.
They heard a clatter as the archer batted the cinder arrow from the air. A puff of sooty smoke dissipated.
The sorceress seized another arrow from the ground. She was a step closer to the corpse.
“Come on,” Inkeri whispered. “You waste your magic. You need blood to fuel it. Go to him. Go to him.”
She prayed that the sorceress wouldn’t sense what she had done.
The woman turned the arrow into another sooty cylinder. She flung it high. Again it soared back to its bow. Again, the archer knocked it from the air. More smoke ascended to the blue sky.
The sorceress took another step and reached Almandis’ corpse. She knelt. Her hand hovered over his chest. Then her fingers dug into his gaping wound, seeking blood, absorbing the life force.
She screamed a breath after.
Two arrows struck her breast.
She toppled over.
Inkeri leaped up. Rhodren came a step behind her. They reached the sorceress at the same time. Gaulter came three steps behind then more men, their swords drawn.
