by Holly Taylor
The air felt like it had been cooked, so dry she could feel her skin cracking every time she moved. It was like the inside of the bakery, back home, when she was standing next to the oven and feeling the waves of heat it threw off; except here the oven was the whole world, and she couldn’t duck outside the hut for a quick break. Everything Veil wore—her new boots, her flimsy shirt—was soaked in sweat.
Her burden felt heavy, so heavy. Taking the sword had been a mistake. Just carrying the water was hard enough; the sword flapped against her back at every step, as though chastising her for her errors. She couldn’t summon the energy to reach back and get rid of the damn thing, either. It would have meant putting everything down to rearrange the straps, and if she stopped walking, Veil was certain she wouldn’t start again.
The dunes went on forever. At the crest of each one, she felt as though she could see to the end of the world—the desert receded eternally to the blue-hazed horizon. Only on her right, in the east, was anything else visible: the dim shapes of the Cloudripper range rode like ghosts on the edge of vision.
By chance, she crested a dune at the same moment he did. A tiny black ant, ten or twenty dunes ahead, crawling across the boiling sands. Veil stopped and shouted herself hoarse, trying to get his attention, but if the ant shifted in its progress she couldn’t see it. She spent the next hour damning him in every way she could think of, coming up with creative torments the spirits of the Aether could subject his soul to before devouring it utterly. She saw him again a couple of hours later, a bit closer than she remembered—this time, when she shouted, the distant speck definitely paused for a moment to look back at her. Then he continued on his way, unconcerned. Veil rasped her tongue over cracked lips, took a swallow of precious water, and started down the dune.
ISBN#1932815147
Silver
Price $14.99
Fantasy
September 2005
www.bloodgod.com