The air finally started to cool late in the evening when the sun began to slip behind the cliffs to the west. They walked a little while longer in the gray dusk as stars flickered into view overhead. As the night grew deeper, little glowing lights sprang to life in the surrounding desert. They were coming from some of the plants, and Kesari bent to examine one closer as they passed.
The plant itself was some kind of bush, with long, blade-like leaves extending from a central mass. A spray of flowers rose up from the middle on a long stem, and it was from the center of these flowers that the plant gave off a soft, blue glow.
Kesari gently lifted one of the blooms. The altma within her swirled up like a sudden gust of wind. She dropped the flower and skittered away from the plant with a short yelp.
The others stopped and turned to look at her with concern. Lucian hovered in front of her. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
She eyed the plant warily. “What is that thing?”
“Mesala,” Saya replied. “It means torch.”
“Sularan torches!” Kesari said. The sudden stirring she’d felt when she touched the plan made sense now. “I’ve heard of those. They’re full of altma.”
“Aren’t all living things full of altma?” Mitul asked.
“Yes,” Lucian replied. “Though usually only in small quantities. Tarja and some plant and animal species have unique adaptations that allow them to draw in additional altma and channel it for their own purposes. In the case of this plant, that means glowing flowers.”
Saya nodded. “The glow attracts ghayat and other animals, which eat the flowers and spread their seeds.”
“Ghayat?” Kesari asked.
“A type of antelope that lives here. Perhaps we’ll see some during our travels.” She looked up at the stars for a moment, then back at the surrounding landscape. “This is as good a spot as any to make camp for the night. We’ll leave early, so get some rest.”
They set out the next morning well before dawn. Kesari was still yawning and trying to wake herself up as she followed Saya through the brush and over rocky terrain. Lucian had enlarged himself and now hovered overhead to light their path, but Kesari’s tired feet still stumbled a few times. The sun began its ascent over the horizon, and the chill that had set in during the night steadily began to dissipate, replaced by the same dry, oppressive heat as the day before. Saya encouraged them all to drink plenty of water, even the donkey, and Kesari purposely let some of it drip down her chin and neck.
They stopped before noon under the shade of some tall, jutting rocks. At Saya’s suggestion to them all, Mitul scooped away the top layer of brush and sand, then flopped down on the cooler dirt beneath with a satisfied sigh. Kesari removed her boots and dumped what must have been entire handfuls of sand from them. Saya forced Amar to drink a little more water despite his protests that he wasn’t thirsty. They ate a quick meal and lay down to sleep in the shade while Lucian watched over the donkey and their belongings. He woke them up before sunset to continue their journey, and they didn’t stop again until well after dark.
The next day passed much the same as the day before, as did the following. They travelled during the cooler parts of the day and rested when the sun was hottest, but still, Kesari was certain she’d melt into a puddle before they reached Atrea. The vegetation grew sparser as they walked across cracked, hard-packed ground, and by the evening of the fourth day, they’d come upon an expanse of sandy dunes that slipped and shifted under their every step. They would slide down one only to have to trek all the way up another, and with every three steps Kesari took, she was certain she was slipping back two more.
“Are you sure this was the best way to come?” Amar grumbled as they labored up the rise of a particularly high dune. “Why didn’t we head down that washed out riverbed we saw this morning?”
Kesari had been wondering the same thing. Instead, Saya had taken them on what seemed like a detour, heading farther west than a straight path to Atrea should have taken them.
“The storm,” Saya replied, pointing to the overcast sky that now stretched behind them. The occasional burst of distant lightning flared against heavy clouds. “That wash goes into a canyon. There are flash floods when it rains.”
“And you’re sure that wouldn’t have been easier than this?” Amar asked.
“I’m sure. That’s exactly why I took charge of this little expedition. You’d have gotten yourself killed five times by now without me.”
“Probably true,” Mitul wheezed, trying to coax Berna a few more steps up the slope.
Kesari forced her legs to push her to the top of the dune. Upon reaching it, she gasped at the view on the other side. A few more small sand dunes rose from the expanse of open land in front of them, which was illuminated by the blue glow of mesala flowers. There were hundreds of them, far more than they’d seen anywhere else. It was as if the light of the stars above was being reflected off the sand below. Kesari’s first instinct was to stand and admire the view for a few minutes, but something else drew her attention.
At the bottom of the slope, a group of shadowy figures bent over several of the mesala plants. Moonlight glinted off their blades as they cut the long, flowering stems and stuffed them into pouches at their sides. When one of the stems was cut, the flowers’ glow faded away in seconds.
“What are they doing?” she asked Saya, pointing.
Saya’s face twisted with rage, and she tore down the slope at a run, shouting as she went. “Hey! Stop that right now!”
Two of the figures ran, clutching their bags tight as their feet kicked up sand. The other three turned, brandishing knives and pistols.
On their way to Saya’s aid, Lucian, Amar, and Mitul went rushing past Kesari and down the slope. She stood frozen, heart pounding, torn between following them and running away. She didn’t want to run, but what else was she supposed to do? She had no weapon. She wasn’t a fighter.
Neither was Mitul, but Saya was his friend, and she was Kesari’s, too. Before she could talk herself out of it, she hurried after them.
A gunshot sounded. The sand near Amar’s feet sprayed up from where the projectile had struck, but he didn’t flinch. A warning shot, or an accidental miss? It was impossible to say, but Kesari’s heartbeat raced even faster as she continued on.
Saya reached the man who’d taken the shot as he fumbled to reload. She had him on the ground with her knee against his chest and a knife at his throat before Kesari could so much as blink.
His companions lowered their weapons and began to plead with Saya, their voices mingling so that it was difficult to distinguish one from the other. She didn’t make a move to hurt the man, but she didn’t release him either.
Amar and Mitul skidded to a stop on either side of her, and Kesari stood behind with Lucian hovering overhead at an impressively intimidating size. His orange glow illuminated the terror in the strangers’ faces as they glanced at each other and then back to their friend on the ground. All of them had the deep brown skin and black hair that was typical of Kavorans.
“What are you doing here?” Saya hissed, shifting her knife so the tip pressed against the soft skin under her captive’s jaw.
“N-nothing,” he stammered. “Only passing through. I swear.”
“What are those, then?” She nodded to the dropped bag lying beside him.
“Please, we’re simple traders. We didn’t mean any harm.”
“That’s the same excuse you people always make.” Saya’s voice was a hiss, low and dangerous.
Maybe she was going to hurt him after all. Kesari’s stomach churned.
“We’re only trying to make a living. We all have families to take care of. Surely you can understand that.”
“At the expense of my family?” Saya shouted. “You have no right to be here taking what doesn’t belong to you. Do you have any idea the damage you’ve done?”
“Let me go,” the man said, his voice trembling. “I swear I’ll never set foot here again.”<
br />
“I’ve heard promises like that before.”
“Saya,” Mitul said quietly. “Please, you’re better than this.”
She stayed there a few seconds longer, her body as tense as a drawn bowstring. Then, almost as quickly as she’d pinned the man down, she pulled her knife back and stepped away from him. “Leave this place,” she growled. “Now.”
The man scrambled up. He left his bag lying in the sand and retreated to a safe distance with his friends. They backed away quickly, keeping wary eyes on Saya as they returned to their mounts and the two other men standing several paces off. Then they rode away into the night.
Saya muttered something under her breath as she watched them go. She hiked back up the dune to where Berna stood waiting. The donkey laid her ears back and brayed in protest, but Saya eventually coaxed her into coming down. She asked Lucian to follow the Kavoran traders to ensure they cleared off like they’d promised but said nothing more about the encounter.
A stifled silence settled over the group as they made camp and ate their supper. Amar, Mitul, and Kesari had all chosen spots next to each other on a slab of rock facing the fire. Saya sat cross-legged in the sand on the other side. The flickering light made her frown seem deeper and fiercer than it really was.
Amar was the first to break the silence. He gave Mitul and Kesari a sidelong glance, then fixed his gaze on Saya. “Do you want to explain what all that was about?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she replied flatly.
Amar raised an eyebrow. “You looked like you were ready to kill that man, so I’d say it does matter.”
She sighed and kicked one leg out in front of her. “Turn around.”
“What?”
“All three of you. Turn around.” She nodded pointedly to something behind them.
Kesari turned to face the sea of glowing blue that stretched out behind them. She held in a gasp, not wanting to startle the trio of animals that stood a few dozen paces away. “Are those—?” she whispered to Saya, but her words faltered on the name she couldn’t remember.
“Ghayat, yes.”
Kesari craned her neck to get a better look at the creatures. One of them, the largest, stared at her with big, dark eyes. Two long, ridged horns rose over its head and curved around to its back, where they gleamed in the blue glow of the mesala flowers. In the night, it was hard to tell exactly what color it might have been, but most of its body was covered in sleek, dark fur. The underside of its belly and the inner parts of its legs were considerably lighter, and that same lighter color ran in four vertical stripes down its face. The chin and cheeks were also light, with a single dark line running from its lower lip to the bottom of its chin. In a way, the lines reminded Kesari of the haseph markings painted on Saya’s face.
“They’re pretty, I guess,” Amar said hesitantly. “But you’re not answering my question.”
Saya was quiet for a few more seconds, watching the ghayat. “Every year,” she said, “Kavoran traders come through here to harvest as much mesala as they can possibly carry. It’s the ghayat’s primary food source, and most of the mesala that grows here comes from seeds that have been digested by the ghayat. It’s a cycle. They need each other to survive. Just as my people need the ghayat to survive.”
“What do you mean?” Amar asked.
“They’re an essential part of our lives. We eat their meat. We use their hides for tents, blankets, beds, shoes, and clothing. We make tools and weapons from their bones and antlers. But with so many Kavorans harvesting the mesala, there hasn’t been enough regrowth for the ghayat to thrive. Herds are dwindling, and if nothing changes, it will be only a matter of time before my people begin to dwindle away with them.”
“But what do the Kavorans want with so much mesala?” Kesari asked.
“You felt something when you touched one yesterday, right?” Saya asked. “The flowers can enhance a Tarja’s magic. Our own healers have used them for centuries to strengthen their abilities and perform feats that would have otherwise been impossible. It’s only natural that a nation with so many Tarja would want such a resource.”
“Why now, though?” Amar asked. “Kavora has always been full of Tarja. Why are they suddenly so interested in the mesala?”
“For a long time, outsiders avoided the desert, and my people had very little interaction with other nations. We kept our way of life secret. When the Kavorans did learn of the mesala and its unique properties, our leaders were able to negotiate a suitable trade agreement.” Saya took out one of her knives and began sharpening the blade against a rock. “For centuries, we’ve carefully cultivated the mesala and watched ghayat herds to ensure stability even as we traded with the Kavorans. And that arrangement worked well for a long time. But things have gotten worse since Empress Dashiva took the throne.”
“How so?” Kesari asked.
“The military,” Mitul said, and Saya nodded. He turned to Kesari to explain. “Empress Dashiva has been enlisting more and more Tarja in the imperial army. She’s used that power to bring Kavora’s provinces more securely under her control, as well as to absorb more territory. Like Vis, and the borders of the desert. Sharmok was an independent colony ten years ago. The military threatened to take it by force, but the people opted to surrender instead.”
“They’ve been encroaching on the desert more and more,” Saya said. “We’ve kept them at bay through careful negotiations, which often involve giving them more and more mesala for the promise that they won’t invade our lands. But poachers come in to take more than they’re allowed, and the Empress does nothing to stop them. With the ghayat herds dwindling, we can’t afford to give them any more than we already are. Especially when it’s only making their armies stronger.” She stared darkly into the fire, her jaw tight. “My people are outnumbered and outmatched. If the Kavorans wanted to march in and take our lands away from us right now, they could. We’d fight back, but in the end, we would still be overrun.”
Kesari recalled Saya’s words to her in Valmandi. If our warriors were immortal…
“That’s why we have to help Saya with her haseph,” Mitul said, looking at Amar. “What our nation is doing to her people is wrong, and your immortality might be the key to stopping it.”
“How?” Amar asked, frowning.
“Imagine an army of immortal warriors,” Saya said in a low voice. “No one would dare take advantage of us then.”
Beside Kesari, Amar tensed. He stared into the fire without speaking, but the muscles in his jaw worked like he was grinding his teeth.
“I know you don’t understand,” Saya said. “We argued about it a few times, before you died.”
“You’re right,” he replied. “I don’t understand. I’m doing everything I can to find out what happened to me so I can get rid of this curse, and you want to inflict it on your own people?”
“I don’t want to. If there was a more effective option, of course I’d do that instead. But as far as I can tell, there isn’t. And immortality is a far better alternative to annihilation.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Amar growled, his fingers tightening around the edge of the rock he sat on.
“And you do?” The pitch of Saya’s voice rose. “How can you say that living forever is really so terrible when you don’t even remember most of your life?”
“Exactly. I don’t remember. So how is it you think this is going to work out? What happens to your friends when they die in battle and come back with no memory of who they were before? Is that really the kind of fate you would condemn them to?”
“I’m not condemning anyone. I’m giving them a choice. A choice to fight for their families and their way of life instead of watching it all be stripped away from them one piece at a time. And you do not get to judge me for that, Kavoran.”
Amar glared at her through the flickering firelight. He shook his head, stood up, and began to walk away.
Mitul rose and took a step to follow him. “Amar, where
are you going?”
“I need to take a piss,” he said flatly, “if that’s all right with you.”
Mitul sat back down without a word and shifted his gaze to the fire.
Saya poked at the coals with her knife, its sharpened edge reflecting the orange glow of the firelight. “He was almost starting to come around to the idea before,” she muttered, glancing at Mitul. “I really wish that woman hadn’t killed him.”
“So do I,” Mitul said, “but there’s no changing it now.” He lifted his saraj into his lap and began to play, and Kesari let the music lull her into a welcome sense of contentment as she watched the flames die down.
21
Kesari
Kesari’s days ran together more and more the longer she and her companions travelled through the Sular Desert, until she was no longer certain how long ago they’d started this journey. Eight days, maybe, or nine. She’d stopped wondering whether they would ever make it out and had simply accepted the fact that this was now her life—sand and sun and walking until the sand filled her shoes and the sun rose to its highest point, when they would stop a few hours before walking some more. Only Saya, Lucian, and the donkey seemed unaffected by the stifling heat and the vast emptiness all around them.
One morning—ten days into their journey, or maybe eleven—Saya began to hum as she passed out their breakfast. A smile lingered in the corners of her mouth, even when Amar began to grumble again about the heat.
Lucian bobbed along beside her. “You’re in a good mood today.”
Tethered Spirits Page 17