Chapter Four
Chapter
Four
Heat
Toward the end of the day, after Isaac’s mind had long grown
numb with exhaustion, Zaria suggested they take cover in the shade of a dune.
He turned in her direction and slid down the sand as
carefully as he could, managing to get only a modest amount stuck in his boots.
By now, his makeshift shawl was soaking with sweat, most of the skin beneath
burned a bright, painful red. The shade here was only slightly cooler than the
scorching heat of the sun, but any amount of coolness was more than welcome.
Once he had fully slid to the bottom, Isaac ripped off his
pack as fast as his tied hands could manage, digging through and tossing out
everything in the way. He wanted his rations. The pirate grub. It was the same
sort of nuts and dried meat and hardtack that he had been subsisting on for
most of his journey, but it was now present in much higher quantities, and he
was eager to indulge. He clawed his hands around a hunk of meat and gnawed it
with his teeth— it was pork, probably, and it tasted about as good as his
boots, but he continued to gnash at the colorless flesh until it was soggy and
torn enough to swallow.
“Xotra’s cunt,” Zaria said, sliding down next to him. “Never
thought I’d beat a lord for table manner.”
“Hungry,” Isaac managed to say.
“I gathered that, love.”
Isaac licked his lips, scooping up the obscene amounts of
salt, and began to smash a piece of hardtack with his fist. “Calories. A
calorie is a unit of energy, given by food. Magic requires energy. I casted
spells without catalysts. It depleted me.”
Zaria looked between him and the brick-like cracking of the
hardtack.
“You don’t know what those words mean,” he said.
“I mean, I got most of ‘em.”
Isaac felt a chunk of hardtack break between his teeth. “A
catalyst is a facilitator of energy transfer. It allows for exceptional
efficiency in spellcasting. Otherwise, I’m forced to use more of my own bodily
energy for less return, and the mnemonics can easily diminish my core reserves,
leading to respiratory spasms and the failure of organs.”
“Right,” Zaria said.
He looked at her. “You still don’t understand.”
“Well, don’t stop on my account.”
“It’s very simple,” he said, starting to work on the nuts.
“The scrolls I use—”
He stopped, feeling a surge of realization.
His scrolls.
During the battle with the pirate skimmer, he had dumped all
the scrolls in the sand, purely as an act of desperation. The ship had burned,
and he had fought through the rest of the pirates, and he had been completely
distracted by Zaria and her interrogations from then until now. When they had
left the ship behind. . . .
“Ivtarr preserve,” Isaac said, lurching to his feet. Several
nuts fell to the sand. “My scrolls.”
“What’s that, now?” Zaria asked.
“I left my scrolls at the ship.”
She tilted her head.
“You don’t understand,” Isaac said, beginning to trudge
through the sand. “I need those catalysts. Without the enhancement of my
anti-necrotic—”
A furry hand grabbed his wrist.
“I understand plenty,” Zaria said. “Sit down.”
“Without those scrolls—”
“You gonna walk all the way back? Now? In the dark?” She
gave a hard tug on his arm. “When I told you several times there’s pirates
lookin’ for us?”
Isaac blinked. “I—”
“Sit the fuck down.”
She pulled, and Isaac was flung back into the sand, landing
with a cough of sediment. He realized, all at once, that he had managed to
forget how strong she truly was. When she released his arm, he was only able to
blink up at the reddening sky.
“Sorry,” Zaria said. “But you shoulda told me so. We ain’t
gonna spend two full days walkin’ there and back. You’ll do without.”
Isaac grimaced, wanting to say more.
“Eat your food, squire.”
With a sigh, he returned to his rations, still ravenously
hungry. Beside him, Zaria unsheathed her poleaxe, shoving the spear tip deep
into the slope of sand. When it was firmly buried, she leaned back against the
haft and wiped her mohawk away from her eyes. Isaac focused on chewing another
strip of salt meat, washing it down with a gulp of hot water.
He could manage without the scrolls. It would not be easy,
of course, but, at the same time, he had already exhausted most of his supply,
anyway. The wyrms had seen to that. For now, he would
have to hope that he had enough rations to make up for the added exertion.
He would just have to be careful.
As he continued to eat, he could feel Zaria watching him
from the side. He almost didn’t care. In fact, as he chewed through another
strip of meat, Isaac’s thoughts drifted away from his present circumstances
entirely. He thought of food. Namely, he thought of the food he no longer had.
He remembered meals taken in the library. He pictured warm bread, hearty stews,
chicken and fish, garlic and cloves and butter. He remembered how, sometimes,
his uncle would join him in breaking his fast, bringing fresh milk and eggs
from the college larder. It was one of the few times Isaac had ever felt like a
nephew, rather than a disciple.
He stopped his chewing when he noticed movement.
Zaria was unwrapping her shawl, pulling it straight over her
head. For a moment, her face was obscured, and he could see her chest. Her
sleeveless vest was crossed by the few straps of her leather armor. Her spotted
fur poked up through the collar’s laces. Her arms were corded with muscle. She
filled out the undershirt with a widely curving back, likely attained from a
life spent swabbing decks, slinging rope, and hauling crates.
There was blood on her chest. It was fresh. He could track
the spots where they had tortured her, just by the weeping. They must be
painful.
As he looked, he saw plenty of scars.
Her breasts—
“Does my squire wish something of his knight?”
Isaac jerked his head, like he was dodging a cane.
Slowly, Zaria adjusted the piece of torn cloth acting as her
brassiere, her eyes never leaving him. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed your
peeks, young lad.”
“Just . . . curious about your scars.”
“Got a funny way of showin’ it.”
“I don’t mean to pry.”
She leaned back against her poleaxe. “I’m an open book,
Isaac. Don’t you like to read?”
He ignored the remark. “How long should we rest?”
There was a pause behind him. He kept his gaze averted. He
wasn’t entirely sure how much of the heat on his face was blush or sunburn.
“Actually,” she said, “I think we should make camp.” The
area around them was a roughly square courtyard of dunes, like a natural
caldera of sand. The walls were high and tall. “We’re fairly sheltered. I
reckon it’s close enough to the tomb to scare any but the bravest sort from
pursuit, and that’s if they find our tracks at all.” There was another pause,
as if the idea was gaining traction. “It’s like to be twilight soon. What do
you say we slumber now, awake before dawn, and march to danger and fortune by
moonlight?”
Isaac made himself look at her. “Are you actually asking my
opinion?”
“If it agrees with mine, sure.”
“Well, it does. But I’ll try not to do it again.”
With his hunger mostly sated, Isaac reached into his pack
and pulled out a few phylacteries, along with a mortar and pestle. He mixed a
few ingredients—chamomile, rosehips, yarrow—and ground them together until the
poultice was a pale, even yellow. After adding a tiny amount of water, he
allowed the liniment to settle, and shortly after began to rub the solution
onto his burns and scrapes.
Through it all, he could feel Zaria watching him. She had
started on her own rations, which involved loudly
ripping into a hunk of salt meat. The sound was very distracting. As Isaac
nursed his reddened skin, facts from his encyclopedias rose into his mind.
Hyenas had one of the strongest bites of all zoanthropes. They could easily
shatter bone. The large carnassials at the back of their jaw provided leverage,
while the front canines both gored and crushed. Most
of all, he could remember the killing power he had felt as they clamped around
his throat—
“Squire,” Zaria said.
Isaac nearly dropped his mortar.
“Entertain your knight. She grows weary from travel.”
Isaac continued to rub his burns, focusing on the welt above
his brow. “Well, if she’s feeling troubled, maybe she should change her
direction? Perhaps she should turn away? March from the tomb? Seek lighter
burdens?”
She continued to chew her meat. “Is that cowardice I’m
hearing?”
“Clearly, it’s only concern for you.”
“Well,” Zaria said, “don’t you fret about me, good lad. I’ve
won more battles than a dwarf climbing stairs. I’ll keep my squire safe.”
“Of course,” Isaac said. “Surely that’s the way it’ll work.”
He sealed the remains of his poultice in an empty phial and
stuffed it in his pack. He doubted that he could assemble his tent on the loose
sand, so he leaned back into the slope of the dune, sinking in just enough to
be comfortable, and closed his eyes. For a moment, all he heard was a gentle
desert breeze. His aching muscles began to rest.
“Squire.”
His eyes shot open. “I am not your squire!”
She grinned around a pull of her waterskin. “You going to
list your titles again? Best fire-blowin’ wizard this
side of the continent?”
“Untie me, and I’ll give you a demonstration.”
“Oh, I bet you would.” She tossed the empty skin over her
shoulder. “Tell me about yourself, Isaac. Consider me curious.”
He wished greatly for sleep. “Why?”
“Well, maybe I consider fireballs flying from your hand to
be an interesting topic of discussion.” He heard the folding of her leather
armor, as if she were shifting position. It sounded as if she had moved closer.
“And you like to bluster much, even when tied and helpless, but I know there’s
a certain—what’s the word—timidness about you, which belies a lack of
experience. Like you’ve been shut up in a mage tower all your life, mistaking
book-learning for true knowledge.”
Isaac stared up at the sky, watching the sky grow so red it
was nearly black.