The Mage Heir

by Kathryn Sommerlot

  The desert around them slowly began to change. Tatsu was beginning to think that he and Yudai had chosen the wrong section of the sands to move through—judging by the stars, they were heading northwest, and as they crossed the space, the dunes began to even out into a rockier, jagged landscape. Rather than pool atop itself in waving crests and lines, the sand grew heavier and clumped more along the ground, which was dotted with small stones and tough, mangy-looking weeds. Mingled with the wide swatches of flat, packed sand were desert cacti that grew big and tall, covered with spindles. Jotin pierced one with a sharp metal spigot and refilled their water skins with a liquid that carried a sweet aftertaste.

  It was much easier to walk without constantly fighting against the tumbling sands. On the far horizon line to their right, Tatsu could finally see the peaks of a large mountain range. The air, while still uncomfortably and exhaustingly hot, stopped rubbing his cheeks raw as the atmosphere around them shifted.

  Two nights of walking later, as dawn turned the sky pink, they came across a splash of bright color against the endless backdrop of beige: a small pond of sparkling, crystal clear water and several large palms. Tatsu blinked several times to make sure he wasn’t imagining the whole thing in the wavering heat of the early morning.

  “This is the An-ny Oasis,” Jotin told them, leading them right to the water’s edge. “A good place to stop if we keep a lookout for the enlusk scorpions.”

  Just the warning was enough to make Tatsu’s skin crawl. As if on cue, his left shoulder started throbbing, though the painful sensation ended around his elbow. The last thing he wanted was another encounter with the insects, so he crept slowly to the edge of the blue pond and made sure the sand was clear of everything before he knelt forward to scoop water into his mouth with his working hand. It was blissfully cool and something of a shock against his parched tongue.

  He wiped the back of his mouth with his sleeve as Jotin set down his pack and began to unload it.

  “We’re staying here?” Yudai asked, mouth twisting down at the corners.

  “The palms provide shade, which will help our tent stay cooler, and we will not have to worry about rationing our water until we leave.” Jotin didn’t look at Yudai but continued to pull out the tent and the carved wooden poles to tie the rope around.

  Tatsu watched Yudai give the area a once over, all the way up to the wide fronds of the trees that waved overhead. “We can’t stay here.”

  Jotin’s brow furrowed, and he paused. “If you are worried about the enlusk, I was mostly joking. They keep to caves more than the oasis, but I can stand watch if you wish.”

  “No, we can’t sleep here,” Yudai said with both hands out, fingers splayed. “We have to move away from the trees.”

  “Why would we move away from the shade?” It almost sounded as if Jotin were laughing at the absurdity of it.

  “Because I’m going to kill it,” Yudai said in a low hiss, “and as this is probably the only oasis like it for quite some time…”

  “A few days in each direction, yes.”

  “Then unless you want all of these palms completely destroyed,” Yudai continued, “you will set up our tent away from the trees.”

  Jotin had stilled with one hand inside his pack. He straightened slowly, keeping his gaze on Yudai, and didn’t respond immediately. His face betrayed nothing, but his fingers on the leather twitched. Overhead, his hawk turned lopsided circles in the sky.

  “There is much you did not share with us,” he said.

  “I told you that I was damaged,” Yudai replied through clenched teeth. “It was enough.”

  Jotin’s expression hardened. “As the person willingly guiding you through lands that are not your own, I believe that I should be the judge of what is ‘enough’.”

  “You’re not in charge,” Yudai shot back. “Nys—”

  “My aunt.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m not required to divulge personal facts to someone beneath my position—”

  Jotin dropped the wooden stake he’d been holding. “Beneath?”

  “As a foreign ruler, I’m worthy of the all respect and distance that comes with the position!”

  “You’re not a ruler yet,” Jotin pointed out again, and Tatsu cringed, fighting the urge to bury his head in his hands. “And you are in my sands.”

  “Move us away from the trees!” Yudai cried. He threw his arms wide and then almost immediately pulled them back in, wrapping them around himself. Without looking at either of them again, he stormed to the opposite side of the pond, where he almost disappeared in the shadows.

  Tatsu started to follow him but was stopped by Jotin’s hand against his chest.

  “You,” Jotin said. “You are Chaydese. You are aware of our countries’ long-standing animosity.”

  “What are you talking about?” Tatsu asked. He swallowed, throat dry despite the drink he’d just had.

  “Unless you want more of your countrymen’s blood spilt, I suggest you explain the situation. It is by courtesy alone that you are both being allowed to move through Joesar, and I am demanding all the information now.”

  With his eyes on Yudai’s figure across the oasis pond, Tatsu tried his best to explain things—the siphon, Chayd’s involvement with its sudden resurgence, and his own presence in the mess. He left out his connection to Nota, and he told himself it was only because it didn’t seem necessary. Telling the story felt surreal; it was easier to keep the entire thing at arm’s reach when he was not actively thinking about it and dredging through the memories once more seemed to loosen all the bitterness. It sang through his blood until he wanted to be sick just to rid himself of it.

  Jotin remained quiet until Tatsu finished.

  “What manner of hell did they create,” he murmured, eyes on Yudai across the water. “What monster did they unleash while our gaze was turned away?”

  “They would have succeeded had we not been sent to steal him,” Tatsu said. Then, feeling oddly bashful, he dropped his head down to his useless, bandaged arm. “Even if the queen just wanted him for herself, in the end.”

  “Not him,” Jotin corrected. “What sort of monster allows his own son to be abused and cornered like a beast?”

  Tatsu started, looking up. Jotin looked more sad than angry when he sighed.

  “That is why he fights so,” he said. “He clings to that birthright, because it is the only remnant of his blood that does not pain him. It is the only thing that has not betrayed him.”

  Shame expanded like a slow-pooling puddle of spilled fire through his chest. Tatsu had been so wrapped up in his own grief and regret that he’d failed to identify the most basic of Yudai’s. To have a stranger point it out after so short a time made him feel like he was no better than Yudai’s father.

  Tatsu was no better than his mother and her magical shackles.

  Jotin seemed to sense some of the turmoil rolling through Tatsu’s mind. He put a hand on Tatsu’s good shoulder. “We will move the camp away from the trees.”

  “Thank you,” Tatsu murmured.

  “I do it for both of you. You worry so much about him that his struggle is reflected in your face.”

  Jotin began to erect the camp far enough away that Tatsu was sure the wild night drain would be kept away from anything unprotected. Jotin didn’t ask if they were safe sharing the tent space with the siphon swirling beneath them, and Tatsu was glad, because he didn’t have an answer.

  He decided to sleep in the middle, just in case.

  Yudai didn’t say anything after the argument with Jotin, and once the tent was ready, he lay down on the animal pelts without looking at either of them. Jotin seemed to slip into sleep as soon as his head fell, but Tatsu couldn’t follow suit. He stared up at the leather above them, illuminated on the other side by the sun, and counted rivulets of sweat that rolled across his forehead to his ears.

  After some time, Yudai shifted beside him with a sigh that could have been a muffled set of tears, and without rea
lly thinking, Tatsu reached down with his good hand to find Yudai’s. He laced his fingers through the other man’s and squeezed hard.

  There was a sharp intake of breath, a steadying gasp, and then Yudai’s grip tightened in response. Even when his fingers threatened to cramp hours later, Tatsu kept their palms pressed together, pouring his unspoken apology between their skin with every hitching beat of his heart.

  As they journeyed on the next night, the dunes beneath them fell away completely and the acrid sting of the air was replaced with something softer, with less sand to whip above the ground. The land beneath their boots still rose and fell like gentle waves on the sea, but the sand was packed down harder and they made much better time without having to fight it. The desert plants—cacti and withered brush—stood tall, creating sharp outlines against the sky when it slowly colored and brightened each morning above their heads.

  The three of them didn’t speak much as they walked, giving Tatsu too much time to slip inside his own thoughts. There was darkness there, and grief, and when he had nothing else to focus on, he feared he would get lost in it. Sometimes his memories jumbled up behind his eyes, replaying in the shadows that haunted the desert night, and sometimes it was a vision of the future: a future where he saw himself useless, unable to hunt or even clothe himself. When the silence between them stretched longer, punctuated only by the scuffling sound of their boots dragging across loose sand, it became impossible to ignore the call of his own fears.

  The image of his father rose unbidden to his mind, but not the father he had grown up knowing. Instead, it was his father during his last days, when he was little more than a withered shell of what he had once been, plague rattling in his lungs and fever scorching his skin. His solid, resourceful father had been helpless, and furious in his last lucid moments at his own ineptitude. Tatsu finally understood that feeling every time he shifted and his shoulder within the linen sling ached. All his sensations ended at his elbow.

  It was in the darkest hour of the night, the time just before the dawn when the shadows crowded together to fight against the light that would inevitably banish them, that he lost himself completely to his own terrified imagination. It was the same time that his vision was the weakest, which was how he missed the ridges of solidified sand in front of him.

  When the odd formation crunched beneath his heel, he stopped, mostly out of surprise. He thought he’d stepped on another scorpion, and he stumbled back when the twisting in his gut nearly stole his breath away.

  A closer look showed no sign of any insects. There was a ripple in the round-edged bumps, each circle larger than the last and radiating out like the sun’s halo behind clouds.

  “Tatsu?” Yudai asked from several paces away.

  Tatsu leaned forward and squinted, trying to make out the epicenter of the rings in the darkness, and the ground shifted beneath him. It tilted forward, falling away where the middle of the sand circles were, the sand skipping beneath him like a rockslide tumbling down a mountain. Tatsu threw his good arm out instinctively, but there was nothing to grab on to, and when he lost balance, he couldn’t find a section of ground that wasn’t falling towards the center.

  “Tatsu!” Yudai cried, and he might have been running towards the avalanche, only Tatsu couldn’t hear anything in the clamor of the shifting sand.

  And then the epicenter of the rings opened up with a groan and a tarantula-like hiss, with four large pincers erupting out of the packed sand, curved around a gaping maw.

  Tatsu grappled to find something, anything, to grab, and his fingers came away with only bits of sand and dirt. The sudden incline of the sand sent him flying backwards towards the pincer-lined mouth of the sand beast, and he tumbled over, smacking his forehead against the ground in the roll. As stars exploded in front of his vision, he heard more of the ground cave in as the creature’s jaw opened wider in preparation of its meal.

  He threw his good hand out and hard clumps of the ground cut stinging lines into his palm.

  “Sayld!” Jotin yelled, and across the chasm created, Tatsu could see the outline of Jotin’s form as he skated down the scattering sands towards the pincers themselves. He swiped at the nearest one with two daggers. Tatsu never would have expected a direct assault to work, but the sand creature bellowed in pain and all four of the mandibles curled in on themselves.

  Then Yudai’s hand was reaching for Tatsu’s good one, trying to pull him back up the slope.

  “Come on!” Yudai shouted over the rumble of the ground and the trumpeting of the creature. “Tatsu, climb!”

  It was hard to get any traction against the sand, but Tatsu tried his best anyway, running in place against the ground in a mostly vain effort to get himself back up. Over his shoulder, he could hear a cry from Jotin that sounded more angry than pained and another roar from the sand creature. The force of it reverberated through the ground and up Tatsu’s legs, causing him to slide back down the small bit he’d managed to climb.

  The mandibles of the sand monster unfolded again. Either Tatsu’s eyes were getting better in the dark or his imagination was running wilder in panic, for they seemed even larger the second time they reached out for him. Yudai still had a hold of his arm, but the exertion of putting all his weight on one limb summoned a dangerous ache in his shoulder.

  Tatsu kicked, succeeding only in pushing himself backwards as they all slid forward closer to the creature’s waiting mouth.

  “Come on!” Yudai cried.

  The valley down towards the mouth began to fall away further, widening, and Tatsu’s hip banged against the wall with such impact that it shook his bones all the way up to his neck and knocked his teeth together. There was a whirl of movement, and then Jotin’s hands closed over his elbow, just below Yudai’s hold.

  “Now would be a good time to use that magic of yours!” Jotin shouted.

  “I can’t!” Yudai exclaimed, half-growl and half-yell. “I can’t control it!”

  There was so much shaking and noise that Tatsu didn’t notice the hawk soaring down until the bird was nearly upon him. The hawk’s talons sank into his useless arm and pulled in a move that surely would have been excruciating if he’d felt it. The sudden lift propelled him up enough to allow both Yudai and Jotin to grab on to his shoulders and haul him the rest of the way, with his boots flailing against the sand in an attempt to help.

  As soon as he was back on stable ground, Jotin jerked him upright and forward, and they sprinted away from the sand creature as fast as their legs could carry them. Tatsu didn’t know how long they ran, but he finally had to stop, lungs burning and body aching. The panicked fire in his blood was fading into an overwhelming exhaustion. He doubled over, heaving and struggling to catch his breath.

  “What was that?” Yudai demanded.

  “Sayld,” Jotin said, and Tatsu recognized the word from earlier, when the sand had first fallen away. “They are worm-like monsters that burrow beneath the sand to wait for prey. But I’ve never seen one out this far. There is little for them to devour in this part of the desert. They usually cluster near the settlements and hope for strays to fall into their trap.”

  Yudai was staring at him, features twisted. “That’s normal here? That thing?”

  “What did you mean, you can’t control your magic?” Jotin asked, ignoring the question.

  “It’s part of what they did to me.” Yudai shrugged as his gaze fell down to the ground. “I can’t really use it.”

  “Why did you not just go to your temple and get help?”

  Yudai looked startled. “Temple? We don’t have anything like that.”

  “Then where do your mages go?”

  “They’re there to serve the crown,” Yudai said. “They do the king—or queen’s—bidding. They aid the country and its people.”

  Jotin shook his head. Part of his hair had come loose from the tie holding it back, and clumps of it were falling over the shaved side of his head.

  “That makes no sense. Mages in Joesar usu
ally elect to join the temple, where they can learn and practice their craft. A few choose to remain out with the walkers and protect the desert, but it is not required. If they cannot train together, how are they to learn to use their gifts?”

  Yudai didn’t seem to have an answer to that. He looked to Tatsu, perhaps hoping for support, and Tatsu rotated his left shoulder up to try and readjust the bag on his back. The action dragged his shirt sleeve across the puncture wounds left by Jotin’s hawk, and he winced at the sting.

  Then he froze.

  He’d felt that.

  “It hurts,” he gasped. Warmth bubbled up in his lungs, bursting free from his throat in a barking sort of laugh, and he stared down at his arm and the spots of sticky blood that had soaked through both the sling and his shirt fabric. “It hurts!”

  Jotin reached for his arm, poking at it. Tatsu couldn’t feel all of the pressure, though tiny pinpricks of pain shot up through his elbow when Jotin’s fingers pressed down on the injuries.

  “The toxins have numbed your nerves,” Jotin said, “but they are fading. I expect you will get full feeling back in your arm within a week’s time. This is good news.”

  The word good didn’t seem enough to cover the light-headed feeling making Tatsu’s head swim. He swayed a bit, overcome with dizzying gratitude, and had to put his good hand to his forehead to try and steady himself. For a long moment, it was almost hard to breathe around the heady, intoxicating pull.

  The bloom of heat rocked him right down to the core, and the visions of his useless future began to fade away.

  “Thank the gods,” Yudai murmured.

  “Indeed,” Jotin said, and he sounded much more sincere. “But it is nearly dawn, and we should get away from this place unless there are other sayld from the colony nearby.”

  By the next night, the atmosphere around them had settled into something far more comfortable. Jotin no longer felt aloof, and instead radiated the calm sort of security of an ally, though Tatsu’s chest hammered out a few staccato beats of warning that he might yet be wrong.