by Kim Wedlock
Of course, while all this was going on, he had no intention of letting his magic hang just out of his reach like a carrot on a stick. He was no donkey. The magic - his magic - was there, and he would grasp it. He just had to work out how to break the stick.
He may have been swamped only with frustration and unreachable expectations in that dank, dark place, sitting, floating and falling into the stone, but when he was away from the intolerable man's instruction he found himself simply desperate to get back to it.
Even at that moment his mind was bent fervently in that direction, and he'd been gone for just five minutes and hadn't even reached his office yet.
He understood Teagan's concern over the time he was dedicating to it, especially when the visits yielded no results at all, but he knew with a certainty deep within himself that it was no trick on the mage's part - no spell could feel that real - and he simply needed to take a hold of it. He'd been assaulted with seductive thoughts of what he could achieve since the mage had first mentioned it, even though he'd thought it a trick at the time, a means to distract him, and though he knew he was getting ahead of himself as those same thoughts coaxed him even now, he also knew that his magic was the key to Turunda's safety.
He was the key.
If he could just grasp it...
Chapter 40
Grains of sand struck the skin as sharply as tiny blades of steel upon the assaulting wind, hammering with the weight of dry hail five times its size to sting the eyes and choke the throat of anyone it engulfed. Braced arms could only do so much against its smothering onslaught, for it whipped around from the left the moment they protected their right, waiting to slip in with every desperate inhale and the briefest peek of the eye. Smothering, golden clouds of dust billowed overhead in place of thick blue-grey cumulonimbus, and the desert seemed even drier in the sadistic mimicry.
Over the howling of the lacerating gale, Eyila's musical and incredulous voice rose, muffled by her arm whose bare skin already bore a number of shallow cuts. "This is ridiculous!" She yelled, though it was clear her disbelief was aimed just as much at herself as the situation. "We should be waiting this out! Why do you insist on moving through this?!"
"It will take too long!" Garon yelled back through his dusty black sleeve. Rathen's words had rung true sooner than he'd expected, for that afternoon the inquisitor had quite suddenly snatched the reins and demanded in his usual manner that they brave the sandstorm that had surged in from nowhere. He'd been so adamant that Eyila had been given little choice but to lead them through for fear that he might charge in on his own. "We're an hour away from the ruin, you said!"
"Yes - unless we get turned around in this!" It seemed almost a certainty, each weaving around as they walked, trying to escape the assault of the besieging sands.
But though Rathen had little experience under such harsh conditions, he couldn't help the feeling that something wasn't right - and it extended beyond the apparent sentience of each grain as they navigated their way into his mouth, even when he was sure he had it tightly shut. "This isn't natural, is it?" He dared.
"Not entirely." Eyila seemed not to suffer the same problem, and neither was her skin drenched with sweat and covered in clinging sand. "The wind that carries it is, but the heat that caused it isn't."
"This is magic?" Petra managed, but as Rathen tried to respond, he received another mouthful of sand for his trouble. He growled in mounting resentment and finally contorted his fingers while simultaneously shielding his face, and an instant later the flurry ceased its offence. His relief was fleeting, however, as fire gripped his arm, stronger and hotter than it ever had been before, and the spell began to crumble as his stomach lurched in shock.
He grasped at its ends and hastily repaired it as everyone paused and peered warily about themselves, watching the sandstorm continue to rage though it now pummelled the unseen barrier rather than their bodies. But while relief passed over them like a welcome breath of cool breeze, Eyila stared back in horror. "What are you doing?!"
"Would you rather just keep ploughing through it?"
He was surprised to find that her expression suggested she actually might, but as she bit her lip, she made no attempt to step out of its reach and back into the onslaught. She seemed to settle instead for a quick series of gestures and mutterings - somehow he caught 'Aya'u' over the muffled roar of the wind - but she cast no spell.
"You remembered your magic, then," Anthis said drily from behind him, his voice immediately grating. "Couldn't have done that sooner?"
"Careful. With this much gratitude I might get distracted and forget how many the shield is supposed to protect."
"I think 'protection' is something you forgot about a long time ago."
His lip curled venomously, but it twitched into a smile when he heard the foul young man suddenly grunt, cough and splutter.
"Stop it," Garon and Petra commanded even as the shield reconstructed and Anthis was again safe from the sandstorm, but though they both sneered, neither he nor Rathen responded, turning their attention pointedly away from each other once more.
It was an eerie sensation to move through the sandstorm in a bubble, hearing the howl of the wind but feeling neither it nor its burden. It was as if they weren't even there. Petra found it unbearably haunting. "Do these happen often?" She asked in a bid to distract herself, but as Eyila's eyes continued their nervous search of the surrounding cloud, her agitation only intensified.
"Late summer, usually... Two or three a year, but they rarely reach our village..." She looked back to her a moment later, attempting to shake away her bother. "But there have been three out here already in the past month alone." Her gaze was pulled away again. "If we're going to keep moving through this, we should hurry up..."
"At least the sand is blocking out the sun..."
Aria coughed for the eighteenth time and sighed finally in annoyance. "Daddy, I have sand in my mouth."
"We all do, little one, we all do."
They continued untouched for half an hour until the sandstorm ended as abruptly as it had began, spitting them back out into the calm of the baking desert, and it was only as they cast a curious look behind them that they realised just how fast the colossal, thundering wall of sand had been moving. But though Rathen's spell dropped in its unstoppable passing, the disconnection from their surroundings lingered.
But that alien stillness held none of their attention for long. While Rathen frowned to himself at the familiar sensation of disembodied elven magic, the others gawped off into the distance.
"Clouds!" Aria cried in disbelief, snapping his eyes towards the incredible sight of three small, slight, puffy wisps floating in the vast and otherwise empty blue sky.
"Clouds?"
Eyila simply smiled. "Ut'hala."
Aria was given no chance to ask her excited questions. Instead her words were loosed as an abrupt and panicked scream, her feet sucked suddenly into the hungry depths of the sand, and though Rathen reached out in an instant to grasp her hand and pull her free, he was already sinking himself.
"What is this?!" Petra cried as she attempted to scramble away, though each shift of her weight only took her deeper. "Quick sand?!"
"No..." Rathen spared a single moment to watch the desert drain away along a near-straight line, running like an hourglass into its own depths, and even in his panic he recognised the strength of the magic behind it. Realisation threw him into horror.
But before he could form any kind of signs to save them, a sudden breeze gathered. It was only just strong enough to tousle hair, and yet it encircled and plucked them all as easily from their fate as if they had been paper dolls.
Rathen twisted around in swelling confusion even before his feet touched the ground a short yet secure distance away, but no one else seemed to have noticed the oddity. But then, of course they wouldn't. They expected magic to be their saviour. Only Rathen was aware that their deliverance lacked any such arcane presence.
His eyes fli
cked towards Eyila, but she seemed only relieved. "What did you do?" He stepped towards her as she stiffened. "That wasn't magic," he declared suspiciously. "What was it?"
She straightened as she turned her head to meet his probing gaze, standing taller and raising her chin almost defiantly. "A prayer."
"A prayer?"
"To Aya'u," she clarified tartly. "Fortunately she didn't seem to be insulted by your barrier against her winds and answered my call for help."
"That was really the hand of a god?" Despite his recent brusqueness and short, sparky temper, Anthis voiced his scepticism with a little more tact, and perhaps even with the slightest hint of belief.
But she ignored him, remaining braced for Rathen's response instead. She had quickly learned of his bitter position towards any kind of faith, though the subject hadn't truly come up; the lines etched into his face revealed his intolerance as clearly as a sign around his neck. "We don't use magic like you people do," she informed him before he could challenge her. "We don't know how to do the things you do, only to heal or as a basic form of defence."
"But all mages can summon the power of a god?"
She pursed her lips at his virulent scepticism. He wouldn't believe her if she lied, but she doubted he'd believe her if she told the truth. "It isn't magic. Magic plays no part in it - it is faith. And it's also enough to say that it's as beyond your understanding as your skills are to me."
Rathen, who had felt no trace of magic from her before, during or after the wind had formed, found himself unable to disagree, and as his tongue had escaped and left him unable to present even the weakest of ripostes, Eyila turned away in dismissal.
She cast a look of desperate concern towards the still-falling sand, but as there was nothing she nor anyone else could do about the twenty five foot crack that had formed in the rock deep beneath the desert, she looked back to the clouds and took the lead once more, her steps determined, if far less certain.
The presence of magic grew clearer the closer they approached, and after a sandstorm and a chasm, there was no debate in Rathen's mind as to whether this site was more powerful than the others. But there was no sign yet of the 'rains that never fell'.
Until they crested the tallest dune.
Nestled between the smaller slopes, a golden-azure lake a quarter-mile across glistened in the sands, its surface still and more inviting than any water should ever have been. Its edges were dotted by small, green sproutlings that had already taken advantage of its unnatural presence, and towering over them, lapping at the water, were a countless variety of animals, all of whom shared the desert's neutral, sun-scorched palette.
Suddenly aware of the parched dryness of their mouths, they stared dumbstruck at the absurd sight, and not even Rathen could decide if magic was responsible for its entrancing beauty or not. But, he forcibly reminded himself, more important than its impossible allure was where the water had come from. Had it been a meagre puddle emphasised like the winds in Stonton, drawn up from deep underground? Or had it been conjured out of thin air? And had these animals been invoked along with it, or had they wandered the sands until stumbling upon this haven?
Dragging him from his considerations, Eyila breathed a sigh torn between tranquillity and heartbreak, and began to descend the dune.
But Anthis cursed as he followed, finally recognising what he and the others had taken to be large rocks protruding through the surface. "The ruin - it's beneath the water, isn't it?"
Eyila nodded silently.
Animals watched them closely as they approached the lake's edge, most unakin to any beasts they'd ever seen, the large eyes of predators and prey alike tracking them warily and unblinking, waiting for the slightest sign of danger. But none would dare move from their spot to flee for safety until that sign came. The water was just too precious.
"It's bigger than I thought," Anthis mused as they stopped. "Grander than that in the Wildlands, for certain." A smile brushed his face for the first time in days. "And we're the first beyond the tribes to see it for two centuries."
"Aside from those who should not have," Eyila added drily. She considered the lake and the angled stone pillars that broke its surface while keeping one wary eye on the beasts. "Before the ground opened or the water came, Ut'hala was already swallowed by the sand, but when the ground cracked ten moons ago and drained some of it away, it revealed new reaches. No priestess entered them before the water came two weeks later. We have no idea what lies within it."
The peak of the structure was wind-scoured and sand-worn, and though to the others what little could be seen looked identical to the shrine of Feira in the Wildlands, Anthis's keen eye picked out the subtle differences. Though the visible pillars arched at the same angle and curved inwards to meet at the centre, there were a few opposing hooks that reached out and downwards in reverse half way along the outer-face of two, and broken evidence of the same on three of the others. There was also another break in the water some fifteen feet to the left, the slightest dome that could be mistaken for a water swell had the rest of the lake not been so flat.
"What do we do?" Petra asked dubiously, as though she already knew the answer. "Swim?"
"No," Rathen replied. "I can feel the magic clearly from here."
"No, we have to go in!"
All eyes fell impatiently upon Anthis, Rathen's more so than the others. "We're not endangering ourselves just so you can satisfy your need to be the first to set foot in it," he growled. "This isn't some delightful afternoon jaunt along the coast where we'll 'ooh' and 'ahh' and be home in time for dinner."
Anthis's lip barely twitched, but that slight, meagre movement revealed for a moment a deep fount of contempt. "This is the most sacred site we've visited," he spat, "and according to your girlfriend, sorely affected by magic. I would think, with what little success you've had, that you'd take every chance you were given to get closer to it."
Dark flames erupted in his eyes. "'Little success'?! I pushed that magic, which--"
"Oh, well done, you've pushed it. Do you intend to round it all up and tear a hole in Turunda?"
"You--"
Rathen lunged for him, but Petra dove between them before his hands could wrap around his throat and shoved them sharply apart. She looked between them in utter bafflement. "What is wrong with you two?!"
Rathen's acrid, unblinking eyes didn't graze her, staring needles into Anthis instead, and it took some time before he whirled away with a snarl to stare, seething, back over the water.
"Anyway," Anthis continued fractionally calmer, his eyes still burning into the back of the mage's head, "that's not all. Remember what we found in the Wildlands - what if more is hiding in here? Can we really take that risk?"
Petra looked out across the water. "Can we really take that risk? Anthis, it's flooded. Anything in there is already lost."
"Actually," Eyila said quite timidly, "bubbles have been seen rising from the depths around the dome. There are certainly air pockets within it..."
He gave Eyila a grateful nod and looked imploringly to the others. "We can't afford to write it off. If anything, the very state of this place is proof enough of that."
They shared uncertain glances, but no one was inclined to say otherwise. They had no way of knowing - but then, neither did he.
But as Petra sighed, shrugged off her luggage and began purposefully unbuckling her weapons, Garon strode straight past her and waded into the water without a second thought.
"What the hell are you doing?!" She cried while the others watched him continue waist-deep and beyond in disbelief.
"Finding out." And with a deep breath, the inquisitor dove, vanishing beneath the glittering surface.
"Wait!" But of course he didn't hear her. She looked incredulously towards Rathen, expecting him to do something, but instead he simply removed his own burdens and sat in the sand under the gazes of them and countless wild animals', many of whom had finally scattered following the clash. His expression revealed no intention of
going to his rescue, though there did appear to be a begrudging respect.
Flustered, Petra turned to Eyila instead, and though the concern on her young face seemed to stretch beyond her responsibility for their safety in this dangerous place - she had said 'dangerous' - she made no attempt to change the situation, either.
Aria meanwhile stepped closer to her father, her eyes alight with wonder as she stared at the remaining beasts, their bodies knotted and ready to flee though their furry lips lingered always mere inches from the water. "Are they going to hurt us?" She asked quietly, but even though her father shook his head and she seemed to have made up her own mind even as she asked it, Petra turned her attention onto that more immediate threat. Even the docile, stripe-necked oryx, each with those five immense, black horns, could do them serious harm if they felt threatened. Her body tensed in preparation just as much as the beasts'.
Almost a full minute passed before Garon returned to the surface, half way between the edge and the arches, but he didn't pause even to assure them he was all right or that he'd even found anything before taking another deep breath and disappearing once again. And so they continued to wait.
Thirty seconds later he surfaced again, a little further to the right, and repeated the silent dive. Another thirty seconds passed, but this time he didn't reappear. Then a full minute, and still the lake surface remained still but for expanding ripples from the beasts' thirsty tongues. Two minutes; four minutes and nothing.