by Kim Wedlock
And each of them knew it was only going to get worse as the days dragged on.
"What I wouldn't give for a wind," Anthis muttered grimly to himself as he drew his near-empty waterskin from his hip. "A breeze, a lick, even just a whisper..."
"Are you sure this heat isn't magic-related?" Petra asked Rathen once again, but he only nodded the same tired response.
Frustrations mounted further when Eyila shortly drew them to a stop.
"What are we doing?" Garon growled as Eyila shrugged off her pack. He seemed not to have even tried to fight back the bite in his voice.
"It will be midday before long," she informed them. "We should stop and rest now, through the hottest part of the day, and then continue when the sun begins to set."
"That seems like a serious waste of time."
But Rathen and Aria had already followed her lead, and Petra behind them. Garon's jaw tightened in irritation, but he didn't argue. He was actually silently grateful to finally loosen his shoulder. His left was still swollen and sore and its movement was heavily limited, but now his right was stiff and aching from carrying the full weight of his share of the supplies - though that had at least lessened in light of his injury.
So, with a firm glower of disapproval, he lowered his burden as the others set up tents for shade and Aria scuttled about with food for the first bite they'd had in hours, after which they all fled for what little protection they had from the assaulting sun.
"You should all try to sleep," Eyila advised, settling down on a woven blanket herself, but she received only startled stares.
"But it's daytime," Aria reminded her.
"I know, but we only had five hours of sleep."
"This is how it's going to be, is it?" Rathen asked aridly as he ushered Aria to her bedroll despite her protests and attempts to wriggle out from under his grip. "Six hours on, six hours off?"
"You'll get used to it."
Petra followed Garon as he strode away from their apparent camp, though she could tell he was feigning the energy in his purposeful steps, and he began to pitch his own tent away from the others', as had become the norm.
"You must be as hot and tired as the rest of us," she said quietly as she stopped beside him, "why don't you rest this time around?"
He didn't look up at her. "And then who will watch for harpies and marauding tribals?" He asked flatly.
"I will."
"No." He made a short, sharp gesture back to where her own canvasses had been raised. "Just go away."
Her eyes narrowed, but she turned and did as he'd asked. She was growing quite tired of his temper, but the further shortening of his patience and no doubt her own could easily have been down to the heat, and that equally put her in no mood to argue with him. Stubborn though he may be, if sleep was going to find him, he wouldn't be able to fight it off forever - and at the rate he seemed to avoid it, it would certainly impose itself soon. That would just have to do.
As Petra passed and disappeared into her tent, Eyila peered out from her own to the lonely pitch beyond, frowning thoughtfully at the foolishly black-clad man who sat in front of it, staring out across the sands they had just traversed.
Though she barely knew him, she doubted very much that he would welcome her consideration, but as it was the grim-faced mage who seemed to lead the group, she equally doubted that her efforts would alarm anyone.
She cocked her head. That probably wasn't entirely true, but it was clear at least that they welcomed magic more than other cityfolk did. Of course, whether they would welcome her help or not didn't really matter at all. Given the land that lay ahead of them, she would have no choice but to step in at some point, and it would be far better for all of them if it was sooner rather than later...
She turned her eyes down to the shadow her tent cast and nodded to herself, then slipped back inside and tied the doorway shut.
The hours dragged by, and though they'd all genuinely given their best efforts to try to fall asleep, few managed more than a handful of scattered and sweat-drenched bouts. But they all stayed put, knowing it was surely hotter outside than it was within, and tried to go about their own studies and research in the mean time. But once again, the heat made that nigh impossible.
It was only Garon who had managed a stretch longer than half an hour despite sitting slumped against his tent's support, and when he opened his eyes, roused by a tingling sensation in his shoulder, the first he noticed was a red-haired female standing several feet ahead of him, looking vigilantly out over the bright, golden sands.
It took him a long moment as he stared at her to get his thoughts in order, and as the fog of sleep began to clear and purpose returned to his mind, he muttered a sudden curse at his slip of concentration and moved to push himself frantically back to his feet and shoo Petra away.
"Stay there."
The firm yet lilting voice beside his ear startled him before he could even shift his weight. His head snapped to the left where Eyila knelt beside him, her hands hovering over his injured and prickling shoulder, and Rathen stood peering over hers, his face twisted in both interest and confusion - a detail which only startled him further.
Garon tore himself away from her certain but intangible grip and jumped to his feet, his eyes wide in feverish if lethargic panic as he clutched and shielded his arm. "What are you doing?!"
She sighed tediously and followed him up. "Healing you." But, rather than wait for any questions, she simply turned and walked away, and the manner Rathen's intrigued eyes followed her suggested that he couldn't answer them in her place.
His gaze then shifted onto Garon as he tentatively rolled his shoulder with a bewildered look on his face, his thoughts clearly moving faster than he could keep up with, and though Rathen opened his mouth to speak, he quickly changed his mind. The mage turned and walked away, redirecting his ponderings onto what he had just witnessed.
"Thank you."
Eyila looked around as Petra hurried up beside her, and though she found the same lack of comprehension in her eyes as she had in Rathen's, there was also more than a touch of gratitude. She smiled to herself, but didn't voice her assumptions as she glanced back towards the inquisitor. "You're welcome," she replied instead.
"If you don't mind me asking...why didn't you do that sooner?"
"Because you trusted me as little as I trusted you," she replied bluntly, "so why would I risk healing someone who could attack me or my people? And would my help have even been welcome?"
Petra bobbed her head in concedence. "Fair enough - so does this mean that that's changed?"
She pursed her dark lips. "I don't know - but other circumstances have. Even a mild injury out here puts too much strain on the body and he was already slowing us down. Not to mention that it's inhumane to withhold help if it can be provided, and as a healer, it's my job to help people where I can."
"Well, thank you."
"You've said that," she grinned. They stepped back into the camp where Anthis and Aria were sat, peering into books, but Eyila missed the young man's ever-curious eyes flick away as hers passed over him. "It's time to move," she announced, making for her own tent which she began to disassemble. "Pack up and we'll set out. We'll stop again in six hours. It'll be cooler and darker then - you should find it easier to sleep."
"Thank goodness," Aria sighed dramatically, "because that was just impossible. I was sweating so much I kept waking up thinking I was in the bath!"
Anthis chuckled as he rose to see to his own.
Rathen shortly joined them and helped Aria with the task, despite her insistence that she could do it herself, but regardless of her comical struggles, he was unable to shed the crease of puzzlement from his brow.
"Rathen," Petra whispered, sidling up to him a moment later with a similar if slightly more astounded expression, "did you know she could do that?"
"No, of course not. I didn't think anyone could do that - except Kienza." His pensive frown deepened. "But Eyila wove signs...I've never s
een them before, but given the separation between us and them, I suppose that's not surprising..."
"Well, however she did it, after everything we've been through lately, I certainly welcome such a skill."
"The village healer...if all their mages can do that, it's no wonder they're respected..."
Petra considered him. "You're suspicious."
His eyebrows rose. "Not at all. I'm just curious. The elves could heal, it's said, but no mage I've ever heard of has been able to do it..." his gaze shifted back towards the tribal as he began rolling up the canvas, and the creases swiftly returned to his brow. "I just wonder how this skill came to them..."
The afternoon was spent struggling through the grainy ocean, lumbering beneath the vast, cloudless sky with no mark of progress and nothing to break the horizon but distant dunes rising like sea swells and the shimmer of heat to complete the illusion. But none were fooled - not even Aria, despite her ongoing awe at the sight of such colossal emptiness, though her reluctance to suggest that it could be real was almost certainly brought about by the fact that no one else acknowledged it at all.
Anthis escaped the doldrums by burying himself in his work, and while Rathen dearly wished he could have done the same, he knew he wouldn't manage without tripping. He couldn't fathom how Anthis could juggle several loose papers and a notebook while managing to write and walk all at the same time, and the group were subjected to his little grunts of thought and indecision until the light finally began to fade.
But, once again, they didn't stop to rest until night had well and truly set in, and though the temperature had taken another surprising turn, the afternoon's heat had exhausted them all and eradicated any desire for social interaction. Each kept firmly to themselves.
Except Garon, who watched Eyila surreptitiously while she meditated nearby, absently yet tentatively rolling his shoulder in its socket. He grunted quietly as he narrowed his eyes across at her, his tent finally standing straight.
He was grateful for her help, though he begrudged admitting it even to himself, and he couldn't deny that her abilities were remarkable. He would have doubted it was even possible had he not seen Rathen's curious lady friend achieve the same thing, and despite this girl's boorish culture, he also couldn't deny that it would be useful where they were heading. After all, little had gone smoothly for them so far...
His pondering frown hardened in irritation. Of course none of that changed the fact that they'd picked up yet another unwanted tag-along. Cultural respect or not, hers was not company they needed or wanted. What could she offer them but misinformed ideas warped by her feeble culture? She would be nothing more than a distraction, an oddity to drag both Anthis and Rathen's attention.
He would have to watch them, and if the need arose, step in to refocus their tasks. The potential threat to Turunda was too great to let a young, scantily-clad misfit lead its only hope astray, and they had to remember that.
His eyes fell then upon Petra, drawn by the moonlight dancing over her blade as she practised some kind of shadow play a safe distance from the camp, perhaps to maintain her agility, or perhaps just to loosen her tensions.
She, at least, had proven useful. He doubted he could have stopped Rathen's rampage if not for her, and she could certainly protect herself. She wasn't hapless luggage - though she was relentlessly intrusive. First it was just nosy questions about his work, but now she imposed herself into his space. It had come as no surprise at all that she had been the one to take up his watch when he'd fallen asleep.
But at least someone...
At least someone was keeping watch.
He watched her blade catch the light of the stars and the sliver of the moon as she made her quick strikes at the unseen opponent, her long red hair sweeping out around her as she turned in a tidy, well-balanced pirouette, and the sand kicked up about her feet as she pivoted into a fade. Her movements were fluid and precise, executed with great care but little conscious attention, and were almost silent but for perfectly synchronised breath and the falling of disturbed sand.
Such a high level of swordsmanship had to be taught, studied and practised, but she was so young that at least some of it had to be natural. Given who she was, however, that wasn't entirely surprising. No, she hadn't said anything to lead him to such a conclusion, not even indirectly, but he had pieced it together easily enough.
She spun perfectly again, leading her rotation by blade point, and for a moment her skin seemed silver, glittering as moonlight reflected from her sweat.
Garon pulled his eyes away and turned his back to her, shrugging his wandering thoughts away and replacing them instead with vigilance as he looked firmly back over the dark sands and blackened sky.
And in that moment, as if waiting for his attention to return, the small shape he'd been waiting for fluttered towards him, visible through the night only for its movement and the light shining back from its eyes. He was sure he was imagining it, but that same vigilance encouraged him to extend his hand anyway, and as soon as it was near enough, it alighted on his fingers.
He was not pleased to feel its tangible weight. Dread filled his stomach as he removed the white-ribbon message from its back, but though he suppressed it just as swiftly and unrolled the paper before it could creep back up and stay his hand, he quickly discovered that the sensation had been well-founded - not that anyone would have guessed anything was amiss by his eternally-stoic expression.
He thought initially that he'd been delivered what he'd expected, but as he neared the end of the message, it was the extra and quite unanticipated information which truly froze his heart beat - above all else, that the Order had finally thrown Turunda into chaos.
His mind turned the statement over countless times, wondering to what extent, by what means, to what end and whether Rathen had been right at all when he'd scoffed at the idea of an uprising. The message had been painfully vague in every sense. But though his imagination was spiralling into ever worsening scenarios, he knew there was nothing he could do about it. Turunda and the Order were behind them and his superiors knew that well enough; this was not an order but a warning, as this development would no doubt hinder most of the Hall's activities as well as that of the other authorities. Fortunately, however, his own would be unaffected - at least for the time being. That counted one detail in their favour.
As he regained control over his thoughts, his mind quickly filed everything into order and his reeling guts settled, he took up his waterskin and poured a small puddle into his palm to refresh his parched messenger, whose frantic and exhausted heartbeat he could feel against his skin. He wondered for a moment how a creature so small and fragile could have made it so far into the desert by itself, but wings, even ones so small, could travel farther and faster than feet.
He sighed to himself at the new weight he felt upon his shoulders and the sudden and unwelcome increase of urgency to recover the artefact. But the fact that the whole report would have to be shared with the others ladened him with another anxiety, one that grew with the knowledge that he couldn't do so yet. It would do nothing but provide another distraction, and they were burdened with enough of those already. He would have to pick his moment.
He hoped this 'Ut'hala' would provide it.
As he sighed deeply once again and looked out over the sand, extending endlessly in all directions, he absently envied the ability to fly.
Garon got very little sleep that night.
Chapter 38
Ridiculous sleeping patterns rendered the passing of days a pointless, phantom occurrence. The sun presumably continued to rise and set at the time and frequency it should have, but without the certainty of its dictation, time spiralled away, stretching the already taut and brittle moods under the confusion.
There was no escape from the sweltering heat, nor from one another, and no such thing as privacy beyond the reaches of their tents - which seemed to get smaller and more claustrophobic with every pitch - or fleeing over the top of the now plentif
ul and towering dunes. And nothing to redirect or ease their tensions that was not staring across those smothering sands or at the equally consuming pages of old notebooks. Garon had been sour to begin with and yet somehow he'd managed to grow worse. Anthis also snapped from time to time, and though he was clearly growing frustrated with his books, he only dug himself deeper into them, too stubborn to admit defeat over some minor translation, which only frustrated him more. Petra, on the other hand, bit her tongue rather than take her irritation out on the others, but it was clear even through the thick darkness that she channelled it into her swordplay instead, which she'd taken to doing almost every night now. Aria simply grew sulky under the bleak spirits.
And so it was curious that, aside from Eyila, who was surely used to such a setting and its trials, Rathen didn't share in the atmosphere. Instead he walked with little complaint and turned his mind within himself to pick apart the vague but certain sense of yearning that hung in the background. If he was to describe it, he would call it a very, very slight discomfort - a niggling...impulse. But one he couldn't decipher. Nothing and no one seemed to be connected to it and nothing seemed to have prompted it, and yet it was quite persistent, and stranger still was that, over the past few days, it had put him into a quiet and pondering mood rather than any kind of distressed. In the end, the only conclusion he could draw was that it was a result of the familiar and forested dreams of somewhere that felt like home. He'd had them each of the last three nights and they seemed to have eased his journey. Their images remained fresh in his mind far longer than usual, providing him with a welcome change of scenery whenever he closed his eyes, even if there truly were no dense trees to break the brutal stare of the sun.