Bound by Blood and Sand (21 page)

Shuddering, she slipped away, back to her own body. “I can find it now, but there's something else….” She shook her head. The mountains didn't matter. She didn't want to go near them, but the Well sat near their base, so they had no choice. They had to reach the Well—not just to save Aredann, but also to save themselves from the desert. “Another two days, maybe three.”

“Then unless you can find our supplies, we're in trouble,” Tal said.

Jae barely had to glance in other-vision to find the camel. There was so little life in the desert that it stood out in sharp relief, bright and shining, remarkably still alive, and heading back to Aredann on its own. It was making good time, though it wasn't fast enough that they couldn't have caught it—but there was no reason to. There was no glow of water attached to its back. The jugs must have come loose and shattered somewhere in the storm.

“We're in trouble,” Jae confirmed.

“We could head back, get more supplies,” Elan said hesitantly, then shook his head. “No, never mind. If we tried, my father…It's too far, anyway.”

“Then we should go,” Tal said. “There's no point in putting it off. We'll ration the water, get as far as we can….We can make it. We have no choice.”

Jae nodded grimly and helped him gather what remained of their things. Everything was so much lighter now. It would be easier to move, but wandering through the desert with no reprieve…

It was like Tal had said: they had no choice.

Crawling up the sand wall Jae had accidentally built was no easy task, but they made it out and back to the desert floor. There was no sign that they'd passed this way before, no sign that anyone had, ever. Nothing but endless sand in front of them, and silver-specked black overhead.

Any sense of renewed energy Jae had felt evaporated with her sweat. The desert itself was cold at night, but the travel robes were heavy, and marching forward kept the three of them from cooling down. Jae kept moving because she had no choice, the cursed boots weighing her feet down with every step, but staying still was worse. She couldn't stop picturing their bodies, lost forever in the desert. The wind and sand would beat against them. Their bones would be bleached white by the sun, then lie buried in the sand forever, or dry entirely and turn to dust.

“I can't,” Tal finally panted as the sun came up. “We have to stop. I can't…”

Stopping was almost as frightening as continuing, especially when Tal opened his water skin with shaky hands. He drank for a moment, no more than a few swallows, and passed it on. She did the same, and Elan finished what little water it held. Now they were down to just the satchel. Meant for one person, to last one day, now it would have to serve all three of them for at least another day, if not more.

It wouldn't last. They wouldn't make it.

Their tent was gone, and the desert was an endless expanse of dunes. They settled at the base of one slope, which at least would be shadowed during the worst of the sun, and huddled together. Jae shut her eyes and in other-vision tried to imagine a solid stone behind them and hanging over them, providing shelter. She could feel the energy of the earth building and building around her, and released it slowly.

There was a scraping, rumbling sound, and solid stone appeared, growing out of the sand around them, giving them shade and shelter. She smiled, exhausted but pleased, and found Tal and Elan staring at her.

“That…that's really something,” Elan murmured, pressing a hand to the smooth stone.

It wasn't exactly comfortable to sleep in the small shelter. It was still too hot, with only the hard rock floor beneath them, and there was no water. As the sun rose, it spilled in far enough that Jae had to hide her face in the crook of her elbow to avoid it, but the shelter she'd built was still better than nothing.

When the sun finally sank, they resumed their walk. The moon was high and bright by the time Tal said, “Maybe…maybe we should stop. I'm so tired, Jae.”

Jae frowned, then reached for him, pushed his robe aside, and pressed a hand to his neck. It burned against her skin, but there was no dampness there, no sign of sweat. Which meant he didn't have enough water in him
to
sweat, which meant sunsickness—even at night, from heat and exhaustion alone. She shook her head. “Drink now, just a little. We'll have more before we camp in the morning.”

So they did, and then went back to walking. When the sun finally started to come up, they found another dune and drank, then lay down, all three pressed together. Jae reached for the energy of the earth again, but she was so tired that she was dizzy, and she couldn't quite force it to take shape around them. The ground rumbled, but nothing else happened, and she sagged in place, shaking her head. Too tired to do magic, but still not quite able to sleep through the worst of the sun.

Jae started them walking before dusk, squinting at the horizon. By midnight, Tal was dazed, stumbling and staring aimlessly around them. He fell to his knees and dry heaved. “Drink something,” Jae urged him, but he shook his head.

“Later,” he promised. “When we rest.”

After that, Jae kept their hands linked together, pulling Tal along with her. Otherwise, he trailed behind, his gaze vacant.

They gave in and drank at dawn, but this time, they didn't stop walking. Jae tore a strip from her ragged travel robe and tied it loosely over her eyes. Once she'd blinked the sand out of them, not even able to form real tears to wash the sand away, it wasn't bad. She couldn't see much, but there wasn't much
to
see, and the strip of fabric helped keep the glare of the sun from hurting her eyes.

Elan held his hand out to Jae to help guide her, and she pulled Tal with them. Her stomach churned with guilt, bile burning at her throat, because she knew the sun would just make Tal worse. She wanted to rest, to wait, but the Well was somewhere ahead, and their supplies wouldn't last. The Well was their only hope. Moving was hard, but they had to reach the Well. They
had
to.

Jae focused on the magic in the distance to make sure they were heading in the right direction. Tal vomited and was too dazed to resist when she handed him the water skin. Elan was starting to stumble now, too, and worse, to mumble to himself. She could only make out a little of his quiet rambling, but it sounded as if he didn't really understand where he was anymore, as he said something about his sister, Erra.

Later, as the sun set the sky on fire with late afternoon orange, Elan all but yelled, “I don't doubt you. I only…If there's another way, shouldn't we…But I
don't
doubt you!”

It was a conversation he'd already had, Jae realized. Something he'd said to his father, trying to convince himself as much as anyone else that he believed what he was told. But he didn't, not anymore. Or else he wouldn't be here, now. Maybe none of them would.

“Jae,” Elan said abruptly, loudly.

She stumbled to a halt, and he turned around to look at her. He frowned.

“Jae?”

“I'm here,” she said. “Tal and I both are.”

“I don't know where we…Where are we? What happened to Shirrad?”

He sounded so confused that she couldn't even resent the question. “We left her behind—”

“She's so strange.” He began wandering again. “So backward. I feel bad for her. My father will never understand Aredann. The people there are too odd. Even the Closest.”

“Elan,” she tried again.

“
You
are odd,” he told her. “You're strange, and strong. I've never seen anyone so strong.”

She tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry. He wasn't really talking to her anyway. He was talking to someone else, far away.

“I think there's magic at Aredann,” he said. “It sounds mad, but there must be.”

He repeated it over and over, and eventually Jae didn't even hear it anymore.

It was well after dark when Jae finally paused to rest. She'd taken the water skin from Tal, just to be safe, and there was barely anything sloshing inside it now. All she wanted was to lie down and sleep, but she didn't dare. She could
feel
how close the Well was. If they stopped, they might never manage to move again, but if they just kept going…

She pressed the skin into Elan's hands, guilt flaring up when she had to tear it away after a moment to give it to Tal, and again when she took it from him. She finished the few precious mouthfuls left in it.

“We have to keep going,” she said out loud, even though neither Elan nor Tal was really listening to her. Forcing herself to start walking again was hard, and dragging the others forward, step after weary step, was harder. But this was their final push. Either they would make it to the Well or they would collapse.

The magic felt closer and closer, and the very air around them seemed different. Heavier. Thicker. She'd almost never felt air like that before, but something deep inside her
remembered.
She couldn't truly call the air damp, but the air was no longer so dry that it ached to inhale, and there were bushes around them now, clawing their way up through the sand and rocks.

“We're close,” she said, stumbling, then dragging herself back to her feet. “We have to be close. We have to be.”

It was Tal who finally fell and couldn't climb back up. Jae reached for him, tried to drag him to his feet, but he just shook his head and wouldn't move. She knelt on the ground next to him, shoulders shaking even though she didn't have enough left in her to cry. She felt far too brittle, her body ready to give out, her limbs like clay dried too fast.

But they had to keep moving, or they'd die here. So close to the Well.

Looking at Tal, thinking of him lost in the desert forever, drove her back to her feet. It took all her strength to haul him up, get him moving again. Tal had risked everything for her—Tal and Elan both—and she couldn't stop now. She
couldn't.

We have to be close, we have to be….
Her steps echoed with the mantra, repeating over and over in her mind even when she could no longer speak.

Dawn found them. Jae wanted to sob, to curl up and let the heat take her and turn her to dust, but the magic was so near now. She didn't even need other-vision to feel it; she just had to look around. She just had to keep moving, to keep dragging Tal and Elan, and hoping.

She fell again, and this time she couldn't get up. She only managed to rise to her knees, to crawl forward—

The world fell open in front of her, revealing the edge of a cliff. And beneath it, down at its base, sheltered by cliffs as far as she could see, was the glittering blue jewel of the Well.

Something in the three of them changed with the sight of the Well. Jae could sense it in the way Elan went quiet, the way Tal went still. All of them just stared.

She had never seen so much water. The only scale she had to judge by was Aredann's reservoir. If that was a brick, then this was a wall, dozens of bricks high and hundreds of bricks long. She couldn't even see across it as she scanned the horizon and tried to follow its shore with her eyes. If there were mountains on the far side, she couldn't see them from here.

But she
could
see that there was a problem. The deep, glittering blue of the water nearest them, at the base of the cliff, met the pale shoreline almost cleanly, but farther away Jae could see shore that had turned to gray, chalkier tones. It was mud that should have been underwater but wasn't. Judging from just how much dried mud she could spot, the problem wasn't just that reservoirs at small, outlying estates were going dry. The Well itself was shrinking. There used to be much, much more water here, and something had happened to it.

Which meant it wasn't just Aredann and other estates like it that were in danger. It had nothing to do with population. Water was missing, and if this kept up and the Well continued to shrink the way Jae thought it would, eventually the central cities and
their
reservoirs would be dry, too.

“We can reach it,” Elan said. “There has to be a way down.”

“I'll find one,” Jae said. She looked over at Elan, saw that his hair was now too long and tangled, and that he had the beginnings of a beard on his jaw. His gaze was fixed on the Well in front of them, and his voice was more alert than when he'd rambled to himself. Then she looked over at Tal and said, “I can barely believe it.”

“Me either,” Tal answered, soft and honest, and coherent. It was the first time he'd spoken in a day. They still needed water badly, but the sight of the Well had brought them back from the brink, at least for a moment.

She kept her grip on Tal's hand as she slid into other-vision. Using magic ached like her sore muscles, but after a moment she was able to look around.

The Well dominated everything, though she could still sense the mountains at the far shore, out of sight. Once she got a feel for the Well's magic, separating out different kinds of energy was easy enough. She let the Well's power draw her vision to bright points, important places—

A spot along the top of the cliff, far off to their right, glowed brightly, though distantly. It was tied to the Well, but not the same magic. Built by the same people, drawing slightly from the Well's power, the magic created…

The image struck her hard, and her mouth watered. It was magic that grew
food.
The mages who'd crafted the Well had spent weeks out here, maybe months. They'd needed to eat, so they'd made it easy for themselves. Jae fixed her mind on the place—an hour's march around the top of the cliff. Before they'd spotted the Well, she wouldn't have thought they could make it another hour. Now, more alert and motivated, they just might.

“Follow me,” she said, tugging Tal with her as she made her body start moving. Elan followed them, looking over at the Well every few seconds as he walked.

Euphoria at the Well's existence could only last so long, and they had been marching with no supplies for two days. Jae sagged as she moved, staring down at her feet, trudging forward by sheer force of will.

Soon they could see it: an ancient, overgrown forest that had once been an orchard. Enormous trees had been grown by magic and fed by the Well, and every one had ripe fruit hanging from its branches. Gnarled, wild bushes grew thick between them, but Jae recognized those, too, once she saw them up close. The roots were edible—with water and a fire, they'd taste delicious. But the fruit was easier to grab and eat.

Elan, taller than she was, plucked several and handed them to her and Tal. They had thick skins that she needed her jagged, broken nails to tear through, and then scent exploded into the air. Fresh and wet and like nothing she'd ever smelled before, and when she brought the first section to her mouth, she couldn't help moaning. The fruit soothed her parched throat and grumbling stomach. She ate a second and a third before she felt even a little bit sated, and then felt sick—it was too much too quickly. She was still hungry and thirsty, her stomach unsure what to do with the food she'd eaten, but at least she no longer felt so desperate.

After they finished their frenzied meal, Jae couldn't bear the thought of getting up again. Instead they rested, sheltered from the sun by the thick canopy of trees, waiting for their stomachs to settle.

That evening, after they woke, Tal said, “We made it. We actually found it. Jae,
you
found it. And all this!”

“There used to be all kinds of plants, I think,” Jae said. “Enough varieties that the mages didn't need to send for supplies constantly. If those all survived…They
should
all have survived. They're magic. And if they truly did, then we could stay out here for a very long time. As long as we wanted.”

“We'll have to get water, though,” Elan said. “And the Well is so close.”

“But it's not going anywhere,” Tal said. “Let's just relax for a while. I could sleep for a week.”

Jae nodded and settled back down on the ground, in the shade of one of the enormous trees. Even after resting all day, she was still exhausted from the desert, and with food and juice surrounding them, there was no need to push on until they were recovered.

Tal joined her. Elan hesitated, then pulled down a few more of the brightly colored fruits and sat with Jae and Tal. Jae curled up with her head resting on the kind of soft grass she'd never been able to grow at Aredann. For the first time she could remember, she slept—neither unconscious nor afraid, with no duties demanding her attention—until she woke naturally.

When she did finally wake up, feeling refreshed after almost a full day and night of sleep, Elan was still asleep but Tal was up. He was pulling at the roots of the nearest bush as birds sang from deeper in the trees. Jae helped him, and they walked together, picking and shoving their way between the rich variety of trees and bushes. The farther they got, the more different fruit she could spot, and the bushes gave way to lower, weedier plants, with different roots and vegetables. Jae and Tal gathered armfuls, all they could carry, and it didn't matter what they dropped on their way back to Elan. There was so much more—enough to feed all of Aredann and then some, for a whole season. Maybe two. Maybe ten. They hadn't found the other side of the orchard yet.

Breakfast was even better than their previous meal, heartier and with more variety. When Elan finally woke up, he thanked them sheepishly, and they shared plenty of what they'd gathered.

After they ate, Jae used her other-vision again while Tal and Elan packed as much as they could. This time, she didn't need to look far: the mages had wanted their supplies close to where they worked. She suspected they'd camped up here, too, though probably not exactly where her group had collapsed. Either way, the mages had carved a staircase out of the stone. It was close enough that by early afternoon, she, Tal, and Elan made their way down to what had once been the edge of the Well.

It must have been a relatively deep section of the Well, since there wasn't much dried-out shore between the base of the cliff and the water. The mud felt different under her boots than walking across the sand had. Curious, she reached down to touch it, and though it was warm, it wasn't blazing hot like the sand. Jae stripped off her boots at last, exposing her scabbed, blistered feet to the air, and walked barefoot like she always had before. The smooth ground and slight breeze soothed her feet, after days of every step making them worse.

The ground grew tackier with each step, the mud thicker and damp, and that felt even better but didn't compare at all to the feeling as they reached the edge of the water. Jae paused, glancing at the others, then dropped her bags right on the mud and ran, rushing into the gentle waves. She had never in her life felt anything as amazing as this: sun-warm water, pleasant against her skin as it swallowed her. She dropped to her knees and scooped water up to her mouth to drink until she was sated at last, her stomach heavy with it. Then she ducked all the way under, came up for air, and laughed.

“Amazing,” Tal breathed when he broke the surface not far away. “This is the best day of my life. It's
amazing.
”

“Clean at last,” Elan chimed in, stripping off his water-logged robe. He headed back toward the shore, half walking and half using ungainly, awkward strokes to propel himself forward. He stripped off his shirt and boots and deposited them on the ground. The bandages wrapped around his torso were ragged, caked with sand and blood, and after a second he unwrapped them, revealing an ugly mess on the skin underneath.

Tal was shrugging out of his clothes, too. “It'll be easier to get the sand out of them like this,” he said to Jae. “They're disgusting. Yours, too.”

He had a point. Jae ducked under again, and the heavy travel clothes pulled her down. It wasn't dangerous out here, where the water was shallow, but if she drifted any farther…It wasn't as if she knew how to swim. Even Elan, who'd probably been allowed to swim in the enormous reservoirs at the central cities, barely seemed to know what he was doing. Best to be safe, then, and it really
was
a relief when she pulled the soggy cloth over her head and off. Then her pants, still out in the shallows, more modest than Tal or Elan, who had already stripped down to his underclothes. It wasn't until she'd tossed them toward shore that she realized that now she would be standing there nearly naked in front of Elan, the son of the Highest—

But Elan had been disowned, the burns on his chest a testament to how much power he'd lost. Jae looked over at him, and found him glancing back at her. Not staring or gaping, just glancing to see where she was. He ducked his head, looking away embarrassedly, and for a moment her heartbeat sped up, blood pulsing with—something. Pride that for once she hadn't looked away first, or hunched down in fear. No, she didn't want him staring at her, but what did it matter? His power was gone, but it was more than that. She had power now, but it wasn't that, either.

Elan had never hurt her, back when she'd been helpless. He'd been disgusted with Rannith and the others. He understood why she'd killed Rannith—he seemed to understand that better than Tal, who'd been shocked and squeamish. She'd thought he was a liar, cruel like the rest of his caste, but he'd listened to her, and eventually believed her, and cared about the truth enough to break his vows. He could have obeyed his father and kept his position, his title, his family. Instead he'd given all of that up, and he'd followed her.

Elan didn't frighten her because she trusted him.

“Look, look,” Tal called, and she turned her attention to him. “If you lie on your back, just gently, like…” He leaned back in the water and floated for a few moments before he shook a little, flailed to get his balance back, and sank under the surface.

Elan laughed and followed suit more successfully. Jae didn't bother to try, just made her way out a little farther, to where the water was up past her waist, and sank under it. She held her breath, shut her eyes.

The water was gentle around her. Warm, calming, and—

Familiar.

Sinking through the water was strange, the press of it all around her unlike anything she'd experienced before. She couldn't quite feel up or down, and when she unwrapped her arms from her torso, they moved slowly, awkwardly. Even so, the water sang to her, like a melody she'd heard years ago but had forgotten until now. If the barrier had been her element, but infused with alien magic, then this was the opposite. Water wasn't her strongest element, but the magic in it was the same as the magic in the fountain, the magic that made sense to her. It was magic crafted by her ancestors, the original Closest—the Wellspring Bloodlines.