Kalenek

Kal’s party reached Jhorn’s camp by what he guessed was sometime after midday, though the sky was charcoal gray with no horizon in sight. While Kal had been in the city, Jhorn had purchased two tents, a poured-stone wagon with two mules, and a great deal of food. He had also refilled their water jugs. What would they have done without him?

While Jhorn saw them all fed, Kal tried to study Lâhaten through his grow lens, but the curve of the land blocked his view of the mountain and what was left of the once indestructible city.

Ulrik came to stand beside him. “May I?” Kal handed over the lens, and the young prince held it to his eye. “Unbelievable. Oh, there’s a bird.”

“Indeed, carrion birds will eat well this night.”

“The flesh of my people,” Ulrik said. “Of my father.”

The words nipped at Kal’s conscience. “The emperor might have escaped.”

“No. She killed him. And I’m glad.” Ulrik scowled, as if anger might erase any love he once held for his father. He looked through the grow lens again and shouted, “It’s her! Priestess Jazlyn comes!”

What? Kal snatched back the lens and looked through it. “The road is empty.”

Ulrik laughed, beaming into the sky. “Because she flies.”

Kal looked up and located a bird—not a bird. Two people. Riding what looked like a massive bat. It was easily bigger than the camel and mules combined.

Inolah came to stand beside him. “The priestess?”

“She rides her shadir,” Ulrik said.

The words sent a tremor of heat through Kal. Only great shadir were powerful enough to fly, to carry passengers, to appear so long in this realm.

“How can she ride it?” Inolah asked.

“Shadir can take any form they wish,” Ulrik said. “But only the magic of their wielder can make them visible.”

Ulrik had that last part backward, but Kal saw no point in correcting someone so smitten. “You seem fond of the mantic.”

“She’s a most impressive woman,” Ulrik said. “And gloriously beautiful.”

“Tennish women are dangerous, Your Highness,” Kal warned.

The young prince winked. “All women are dangerous.”

“Ulrik,” Inolah said. “She tried to kill you.”

“She wouldn’t have done it,” Ulrik said, squinting at the approaching creature. “She is coming to join us as she said. She’ll be tired, like before. We should prepare a bed. In your tent, Mother?” Inolah nodded, and Ulrik hurried back to the camp.

“What is he, seventeen?” Kal asked.

“Nearly. Stubborn like me and fearless like his father. But I believe in him.”

“Good,” Kal said. “Because he’s about to gain a thousand burdens. An obsession with a mantic witch should not be one of them.”

“Never fear, Kal. She hates him,” Inolah said.

“That will not keep her from making use of his affection.” Kal and Inolah stood side by side and watched the approaching beast. Perhaps the woman would die from her haze and Kal would be free of the burden and danger she and her shadir would bring upon them.

“Your scars,” Inolah said. “That happened in the war?”

“A few weeks after I left here. I was captured in Magonia.”

“I am sorry. When you came to Lâhaten that day,” Inolah said, “I thought it was to save me. But you were only here to negotiate with my monster of a husband. You left me here. A letter from my mother years later told me you were married and expecting a child. Later another letter informed me you lost them.”

Kal glanced at Inolah’s pregnant belly. “The last time I saw Livy, she was as far along as you are now.”

“Oh, Kal. Do you still mourn them?”

He nodded. He would always mourn them.

The creature circled the camp and landed in the sand, sending a great dust cloud over them. Kal pulled his tunic up over his nose and walked slowly toward the shadir. Inolah followed.

A Tennish man slid off the side and reached back for the priestess. He carried her limp body toward Kal. The massive, bat-like shadir stood on its hind legs and began to shift and change. It vanished slowly, fading, its dark eyes fixed on Kal until they disappeared last.

Good riddance.

“We are here, Great Lady,” the Tennish man told the unaware mantic. This was the voice of the invisible man who had given Prince Ferro to Kal. His cropped hair and slit earlobes marked him a eunuch. He wore a long white kasah skirt. His chest was bare.

The mantic looked dead. She was rail thin with sunken cheeks and skin like a moldy prune. She wore a dirty white gown and the diadem of a Tennish priestess. Only her eyes, shifting and gazing around the camp, let Kal know she still lived.

This Prince Ulrik had called gloriously beautiful? But then, she was a mantic. Who knew what she truly looked like.

“Can we help, Qoatch?” Inolah asked.

“She is in a haze,” the eunuch said. “She must purge the poison.”

“She may use my tent.” Inolah led him to it and held open the drape.

“Do not disturb us,” the eunuch ordered, carrying the priestess inside.

Kal drew Inolah away from the tent. “Why would you help someone so dangerous?”

“She concerns me too,” Inolah said, “but she helped us escape. I owe her.”

Prince Ulrik pushed out of the tent, scowling. “The eunuch demanded I leave. I wanted to see her return to normal.”

“She likely prefers no one see her that way,” Inolah said, embracing her son.

Kal seized that moment to escape. He walked to the campfire, where Jhorn was sitting alone. “Where is everyone?” he asked.

“In the other tent, where they’ll be safe.”

Safe from what? “The mantic is near death. She couldn’t harm us even if she wished to.”

“Her shadir will not be far away,” Jhorn said. “It’s unwise to let either of them near Onika or Grayson. They can’t come with us, Sir Kalenek.”

“I don’t want them with us either, but it’s not my decision,” Kal said. “I’m taking the empress and her children to Nindera. If Inolah invites her Tennish friends, I won’t and can’t deny them. Keep Onika and Grayson away when the mantic is near. For their own safety.”

When Grayson and Burk ignored Kal’s orders to rise the next morning, Kal collapsed the tent on their heads. The fallen fabric bubbled as the boys sought out the exit. Kal left them to it and carried his pack to the wagon, where Onika stood waiting.

“Good dawning, Onika,” he said.

“The air smells of death,” she said. “We must hurry if we are to escape Gâzar’s reach.”

Kal’s chest throbbed from her words, but it no longer gave him the scare it once had. “We’ll go as quickly as possible,” he promised, moving toward the horses. He saddled all three and the camel, feeling all the while like Onika was watching him.

Ulrik approached one of the horses. “Remarkable, isn’t it?”

Kal wouldn’t call the horse that. “We would’ve died without the animals, that is certain.”

“Not the horse, Sir Kalenek. The way the priestess changes. She amazes me.”

Kal followed the prince’s gaze. The eunuch was carrying the mantic in his arms, and though she was awake and looking around, Kal guessed she was far from herself. He could see the potential for great beauty in her features. Some of the wrinkles and cracks had faded from her burnished red skin.

“She looks younger already,” Ulrik said.

“Overdoses of evenroot don’t age a person so much as suck out all the bodily fluids.”

“Oh, I know,” Ulrik said. “I’m just pleased she’ll be herself again soon.”

“With a mantic, how can you ever be certain what her true self looks like?” Kal asked. “She could be two hundred years old wearing a mask of youth.”

Ulrik shrugged. “I care not, so long as she takes on the form I am familiar with.”

Foolish prince. Kal would again caution Inolah about her son’s obsession with the priestess. It would not do to have the new Rurekan emperor a puppet of Tenma.

Jhorn vaulted through the sand to Kal’s side. “A storm is coming.”

Kal regarded the thick, gray clouds overhead. “It’s only smoke from the volcano.”

“No,” Jhorn said, pointing behind Kal. “The wind has carried that to the north. This is coming toward us.”

Kal considered this as he studied the sky. Indeed, there were two very different groups of clouds. “Rain in the desert?”

“Desert torrents fall hard and long,” Jhorn said. “A hand’s depth of water can rush along the sand and sweep everything away.”

Twice more Jhorn remarked on the clouds, and sure enough, some five leagues into their journey, it started to rain. The patter of water into sand soothed Kal’s nerves. He couldn’t imagine it would become a hazard.

“Should we make camp?” Burk asked.

“No,” both Jhorn and Kal said at once.

“We must find high ground,” Qoatch said.

“There is none,” Kal said. “Not in these parts.”

“Can you help us, Priestess?” Prince Ulrik asked, but the woman was asleep.

“How far is Nindera, Empress?” Kal asked.

“Some ten leagues more,” Inolah said.

The storm would surely catch them before then, but Nindera was the only plan they had. The rain grew heavier. Water rushed along the ground. The camel moaned as her feet began to slip in the mud. Kal’s clothing hung heavy, and he shivered. It was against his instincts and training to travel through a rainstorm with women and children, but he kept up a soldier’s pace.

“It’s getting worse,” Jhorn said.

Kal wished Novan was with them. He could use one of the boy’s brilliant observations right now. He glanced at his bedraggled entourage and tried to think of what Novan might say. They had horses, tents, mules, a poured-stone wagon. The wooden wheels spun, searching for traction. It would not roll much longer.

“Jhorn? Does a poured-stone wagon float like a poured-stone boat?” Kal asked.

“They’re made to,” Jhorn said. “Most traders in these parts pull their loads on land, then take off the wheels and sail north on the ream.”

Then Kal’s plan should work perfectly. “Let’s remove the wheels to protect them from collision, and we can hole up inside the wagon. If the water gets high, we’d be safe enough, wouldn’t we?”

“Yes,” Jhorn said, grinning. “I believe we would.”

Removing wheels in a rainstorm was no easy task for any man, but with Qoatch and Ulrik’s help, Kal and Jhorn managed. By the time they were helping everyone back into the wagon, a thin layer of moving water had covered the ground.

“It’s wet in here,” Burk said.

“It’s wet everywhere,” Jhorn said.

“Let me see.” Grayson jumped over the side, making a huge splash. Inside, the water was already two hands deep.

“Start bailing,” Kal told the boys.

Kal and Ulrik gathered the saddlebags, the harnesses off the mules, and all the tack, and loaded it in the makeshift boat. The road had become a muddy river, carrying along the occasional tumbleweed. The animals lifted their feet over and over, searching for dry ground. Kal and Ulrik finally got inside and hunkered down under the length of folded tent everyone was holding over their heads. A few fingers of water still covered the bottom, soaking Kal’s backside and legs.

The rain came down hard, drumming on the top of the canvas. Kal peeked out and could no longer see the animals or where the road had—

The wagon shifted.

“It’s happening,” Jhorn said.

The wagon lurched again, sliding several paces. On the ground outside, brown water surged around them as if the desert had suddenly become a dirty, turbulent sea. The water reacted to the terrain beneath, rushing here and pooling there. The wagon jerked along until it was picked up by a gush of water and carried a distance of several paces before dropping again.

Ferro began to cry. Kal didn’t like feeling helpless. He held tight and waited for the rain to stop, but it did not. Endless apprehension brought fatigue, and Kal’s fingers, cold and stiff, ached from gripping the tent edge for so long. Beside him, Grayson’s teeth began to chatter. A violent gush sent them shooting over the ground. Water cracked against the outside of the wagon. They slammed against something, twisted around. The gods continued to drop water on their heads, so there was nothing to do but hold on.