Fires of the Desert (Children of the Desert Book 4)

by Leona Wisoker

  She blinked. The grey stayed, blocking her vision.

  “To work with water needs an entirely different approach,” Deiq’s voice went on, placid and even. “As does air, and earth, and spirit. And each one takes a different toll on you.”

  “Bastard,” she managed to croak.

  “Don’t waste your time with being angry at me,” he said, tone mildly amused. “Pay attention.” A snapping noise in front of her; then he asked, “Can you see me?”

  Abrupt terror washed through her. “No!”

  He grunted. “Give it some time. You did the hells’ own job on that room. I doubt we’ll find anything left besides melted slag once we open the door. That took a huge effort on your part, and it had to come from somewhere. You’re paying that price I mentioned.”

  “You tricked me!”

  “I taught you something important.”

  Sensations resolved: the feel of the thick bed-mat beneath her, her clothes hot and scratchy, muscles from wrist to shoulder quivering as though just released from an incredible strain. Air currents chilled one side, warmth radiated on her other. Deiq had to be the source of the warmth.

  She punched out to the left, hard. He caught her hand in his own and laughed.

  “You’re wasting your energy,” he said, moving her hand to rest on her chest. “There’s no point being angry at me, Alyea. What emotion do you think you need to work with water? What’s opposite from anger and hate?”

  She drew in a long breath, squeezing her eyes shut, and made herself be calm and still. “Grief,” she said at last.

  “No.”

  She considered a while longer; at last said, tentatively, “Love?”

  He hummed to himself for a moment, then, “Not exactly. But that’s a mistake most humans make. Do you know what hatred is? You know what it feels like. But what is it, really?”

  She opened her eyes; the grey haze blocked vision, so she shut them again and lay still, thinking about that. Anger still simmered through her, a desire to shout and scold Deiq until he understood that he’d been wrong—

  “Think about what you’re thinking,” Deiq said. “That’s your answer.”

  “I’m not thinking that—”

  She stopped, considering, and finally abandoned her initial protest of I’m not thinking that I hate you; that was too obvious an interpretation, and Deiq rarely did that. So he meant her to see something else. She thought about her anger, her desire to argue with him, and slowly sorted through to what he had more probably meant her to see.

  “I don’t—have the words,” she said at last. “Something about...not wanting to understand the other point of view. Shutting out anything but your own belief.”

  “Good.” Deiq hitched around to sit directly behind her. He leaned forward, his breath warm on her forehead; worked his fingers into her hair, rubbing Alyea’s scalp lightly. His hands slid around to just behind her ears, then he hooked his fingers gently under the base of her skull, to either side of her spine, and tensed into a slight pull.

  Alyea moaned as knots of tension dissolved, and relaxed into his hands without hesitation.

  Deiq released his hold, massaged her scalp again briefly, then splayed his hands along her cheeks and said, “You’re doing very well, Alyea. I mean that. Most desert lord trainees are already aware of what I’m teaching you before they ever reach the trials. I’m doing things the hard way because we’re having to skip over years of training in a hurry.”

  She listened to the thudding pulse working through his hands and said, “Is that an apology?”

  His hands tightened a little, then pulled away.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t have anything to apologize for.”

  Annoyance flared tension back into her body. “I’m blind! You could have warned me.”

  “It’s temporary, and it’s only one of several possible consequences. You’re in a safe place to experience any of them. Stand up.” He shifted position again. His hands tucked under her shoulders, urging her up, then wrapped around her arms, steadying her as she stumbled to her feet. The grey haze remained unrelenting, and terror chilled her again as Deiq let her go and stepped away.

  “Don’t—” she said involuntarily, taking a cautious step forward; one arm out ahead, the other to the side, fingers spread wide.

  “I’m right here,” he said. “Stand still. Shut your eyes. Where am I?”

  She caught control of bubbling panic and forced herself to look without her eyes, as he’d taught her. His presence was a dark bulk, more sensed than seen, to her right.

  He said, “Focus. I’m reaching out to touch—”

  “Right side,” she said immediately, and put her hand out without hesitation, grasping his fingers tightly.

  “Good. See, blindness isn’t important.” He tugged his hand free. She could feel him moving another step away and to her left; she turned, eyes still shut, to find him in his new location. “It won’t last long, in any case. Less than a day, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “Mm. Stay there.”

  She stood still, eyes shut, and listened carefully to the small sounds he made over the next few moments; at last she said, “You’re—undressing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not?” The laughter had returned to his voice. He returned to stand in front of her.

  She blinked, unable to find an answer to that. His fingertips stroked the sides of her face, then continued down the sides of her neck, shoulders; down her arms to her wrists, which he took in a gentle grip and lifted upwards, over her head.

  “Reach up,” he said. “Stretch.” His hands trailed down her arms, along her sides, lifted the bottom edge of her shirt; she sucked in a breath and arched her back as he set his mouth against her stomach, sending hot chills through her entire body.

  “Is this another lesson?” she rasped, bringing her hands down to rest on his head.

  “You could call it that,” he said. “Or a way to pass the time until the next one. Whichever you prefer.” He stood, tugging her shirt over her head as he moved.

  “We have got to get you some kathain,” she said, grinning into the grey haze.

  “No,” he said, voice suddenly rough, “we don’t. Not while you’re around—”

  His hands caught into her hair, then moved to other areas. Surprise at that comment faded fast, and soon even the comment was forgotten completely.

  Chapter Two

  The Northern Church Tower seemed almost to glow with vitality around Deiq, as though it had absorbed the tremendous energies thrown forth over the days of his seclusion with Alyea. The last trace of the evil that had once lingered within the stone walls had been comprehensively washed away, leaving only an entirely unexpected sense of wholeness, of healing, of release in the air. Deiq couldn’t bring himself to leave any more than a child in a comfortable, loving womb could bear to expel itself prematurely.

  Once her eyesight returned, Alyea had gone out twice, to bring back food. She hadn’t gone far, and returned quickly, clearly feeling the same reluctance to face the outside world. He knew that wouldn’t last. Her human nature meant that she sensed every day as part of her life escaping, at a level far below consciousness. Ironically, many desert lords, with their extended life-spans, felt that urgency more, rather than less, strongly: Deiq suspected that tied into their higher sex drive.

  He saw her restlessness beginning to grow as she recovered from the strain of incinerating the cellar contents. Only time would tell if the release of her anger had eased the internal pressure of what Kippin and Tevin had done to her. He might have to set her loose on something else, to burn off the rest of it. He was back on familiar ground now, with the time and privacy to handle her training as he liked; and she wasn’t fighting him any longer.

  The restlessness growing inside himself was a surprise, though. So when a shivering, nervous messenger tapped at the door with a request for Lord Alyea to meet with the king, Deiq didn’t a
rgue—much—her insistence on going alone. After what she’d been through, and after what they’d shared, she’d easily flatten any human to lay a hand on her, and know ill intent before it came within two blocks.

  Oruen still wouldn’t want to see Deiq, much less at Alyea’s side. The man was sharp enough to pick up on the changed relationship between them, and it would make him surly as a bear woken too early from its winter rest. Better she handle this meeting alone. She had the control now to avoid hurting Oruen if he pressed her temper. And if things went really sour, Deiq would know, and could step to her side easily enough.

  He hadn’t been this strong in a very long time. It felt as though some strange sludge had been blasted clean from his veins and muscles, freeing him of all restrictions.

  Deiq stretched out on the floor, listening to the rain patter down outside, and basked in an inner warmth that left him feeling generally half-drunk; and that turned out to be a damn good thing.

  His memories were returning, in great searing sheets and gobbets. If not for the cocoon of contentment, he might have spent days screaming at the horror of revelation; might have taken the stibik-esthit oil still sitting, untouched, on the table in the highest room of the tower, and slit his arms from wrist to shoulder.

  As it was, he thought about ending himself, more than once, as the memories pierced his soul with agonized, helpless fury at his own stupidity. He’d made so many mistakes...and either blocked the memories or buried them under the cascade of pain he’d endured over the last fifty years. He couldn’t believe, looking back, that he’d ever been so immature and foolish.

  For a thousand year old ha’ra’ha, Eredion had said once, you occasionally do a remarkable imitation of a fifteen-year-old human.

  Remembering, Deiq thought: Eredion, you have no damn idea....

  The suicidal urge passed swiftly each time, fading into the cooler realization that done was done, and as the future could—finally—be different, killing himself over the past would be stupid and wasteful. And now there was Alyea: finally, finally, he had found a companion who wouldn’t flinch. It was enough, short though it would be; and with a desert lord, there were ways to extend that time, if she proved worthy of that gift.

  So he shut his eyes, drifted from contentment to nightmare and back without making a single external sign of the change, and let himself really rest for the first time in decades.

  He even allowed himself to brood—lightly—over the question of why feeding from Alyea caused her no discomfort. He hadn’t yet found a sensible explanation for it, and that frightened him more than he wanted to admit. It wasn’t possible, and yet, and yet....

  A hard rattling knock at the door, far below, finally roused him from semi-sleep. Grumbling, he raked a hand through his hair, yanking it back into a tie; pulled on clothes reluctantly, and padded barefoot down the several sets of stairs to the lowest floor.

  He half-hoped the visitor would have lost patience and gone by the time he opened the door. No such luck: a stolid, lean man in News-Rider garb stood in the shelter of the recessed doorway, water dribbling down a handspan behind him. He didn’t back up when the door opened.

  “S’e Deiq?” he said, lifting an unconcerned glance, and proffered a thin, oilskin-wrapped packet.

  “Thank you,” Deiq said, and took the packet without asking any questions as to how the man had found him. News-Riders had their ways. He also didn’t bother offering any gratuity. The News-Rider turned with no change in expression and plodded away through the rain, apparently indifferent to the wet, chill weather.

  Returning to the highest room of the tower, Deiq lit several lamps with a careless flick of one hand, a trick he hadn’t been able to use so easily for more years than Alyea had been alive. He grinned, watching the wicks flare into life, almost childlike in his sudden joy over such a simple thing.

  The packet proved to be a letter, four sheets in all, in a still-awkward hand, front and back. He knew Idisio had written them before he read the first word. He sat down at the table, moving the bottle of stibik oil aside absently, and laid the pages down, frowning and rubbing his hands against each other. He sensed no hint of the taint that Idisio had carried when controlled by his mother, but there was instead a strange otherness to the energy in the pages that worried him and made him hesitant to touch them again.

  At last, blinking hard against sudden tension, he lowered his head and began to read.

  Chapter Three

  Tank liked tangling his fingers in hair, a holdover from being shaven nearly bald for most of his early life; and Dasin, for reasons he hadn’t explained and Tank didn’t ask about, liked kneeling.

  It worked out well enough.

  They sprawled on the bed afterwards, both breathing hard, Dasin’s bony back and shoulders hot and knobbly against Tank’s chest.

  “That merc,” Tank said when he caught his breath, continuing the conversation they’d interrupted some time earlier. “You have to go meet him, Dasin.”

  Dasin let out a soft, annoyed grunt, pushing one shoulder back hard. “Can this wait?”

  “No.” He worked his fingers into thin, damp blond hair and tugged lightly at the shorter, curly hairs near the base of Dasin’s skull. “You can’t keep avoiding it.”

  “Hhhhh. Bastard. Taking advantage of the moment.”

  “Yep.”

  Dasin grunted again and rolled up to a sitting position, his back to Tank. “No way out of it, is there?”

  “No.”

  The thin shoulders tucked forward in a hunch, then out again, determination replacing despair. Dasin stood and reached for clothes. He began to dress, not looking at Tank.

  “Don’t agree to pay him more than you’re paying me,” Tank said, propping himself up onto one elbow.

  “I’ll pay him what Yuer damn well told me to pay him,” Dasin retorted. He stomped into his boots with unnecessary violence and shot a pale-eyed glare at Tank. “Which is what it is, and not your damn business to ask after.”

  “So it is more,” Tank said, grinning without any humor at all. “Figured that.”

  He rolled onto his back and laced his hands behind his head, resisting the urge to get up and plant a fist in Dasin’s face. From passion to poison: that had already settled into a routine, and only his understanding of what lay behind the brittle insults kept him from striking—or walking—out.

  Tank had held Dasin more than once as the blond shuddered from residual childhood nightmares. That touch, no less than his recent encounter with Lord Alyea, had shown him more than he cared to know about another living person; Dasin’s memories were entirely too similar to his own. But then, Dasin had been there in turn when Tank’s own recently stirred-up memories of horrors past seared him, screaming, from his rest.

  They understood each other. It worked out well enough, in the end.

  Not a good idea to let Dasin stomp off angry, though. Tank shut his eyes and said, flatly, “Dasin.”

  Hostile: “Yeah?” Followed by quiet, then the tick of boots on board, coming closer. A thin hand pressed around Tank’s elbow: the apology Dasin couldn’t voice. “You coming along?”

  “You want me to?”

  Dasin exhaled hard. “You think I can handle this alone, or do I need you holding my hand?”

  “Go ahead and try it,” Tank said, not opening his eyes. Nothing Dasin said or did would shift the basic outcome to any great degree regardless of whether Tank went along; but he didn’t bother pushing that reality into view. Dasin knew.

  “Bastard,” Dasin muttered, with considerably less heat this time. He released Tank’s elbow and rattled the few steps to the door, slamming it behind him.

  “Yeah,” Tank said under his breath. He let out a long sigh of his own, then reached for his clothes. He had business of his own to take care of, while Dasin was safely elsewhere.

  Bright Bay didn’t seem quite so alien, or as frightening, as it once had. Still, he stayed alert while walking the streets, knowing perfectly well that the
street thieves had only increased in number since Ninnic’s fall. And while he hated the fact, Tank was known by more than one dangerous person; not that he’d ever asked for the attention, but he had it, and staying safe meant always staying aware of his surroundings.

  A toddler, filthy and bawling, wandered out directly in front of him: a distraction. Without pausing, Tank shot a hand down and caught the skinny wrist of an older boy coming up from behind. Without any particular emphasis or kindness, he bent the hand back sharply, twisting. The would-be thief screeched outrage.

  Tank turned then, and glared down into a dirt streaked, thin face under a mop of grimy blond hair. He bent the trapped hand over a little more, until the boy went down to his knees, squalling in earnest now.

  “Next time any thief tries for me,” Tank said, leaning in close, “I’ll snap every fucking bone in both hands. Pass it on.”

  He let go and turned on his heel, coming face to face with a taller, older boy who’d been moving up behind. Sharp metal glinted in one gnaw-nailed hand. Tank set his feet square and glared ferociously. The boy faltered, paused, and reversed a few steps.

  A seagull grackled, sharp and sudden, somewhere nearby. The knife disappeared, and the boy took to his heels. A scrabbling sound behind him told Tank that the other thief had fled as well.

  Tank let out a long breath and stood still for a few moments, listening with care; a heavily-laden cart trundled past on the next street over. A flute played somewhere nearby. Ordinary people walked by without even glancing towards Tank, busy discussing or thinking about their own lives.

  Had that thief-warning come from Tank’s own actions, or had someone else—someone powerful—seen the situation and passed the word to leave him alone? The latter possibility set a strong shiver up his shoulders. He blinked hard and started walking again, trying to look more confident than he felt, and hoped that the next part of the plan would go better.

  “Hah!” Sticks clashed together; someone swore. Thuckwhap—Tank winced at that sound even as he stepped through the arched exit. The smell of sweat, metal, and oil laced the air; in the training ring a stone’s throw away, a thickly built young man lay on one side, curled into a tightly defensive pose, one arm thrown up to shield his face.