The Healer and the Warlord (The Ballan Desert)

Chapter 1

Chapter one

Kelvar

The night was quiet, but my mind was not. The warm air was disturbed only by the gentle snort of my horse behind me and the vibrating strings of magic attaching me to every living thing in the Ballan desert.

Dileas gently bumped her head against my back, as if the mare was asking what I was waiting for. After all, the sooner I fulfilled the wishes of Lord Deryn, the sooner we could gallop across the moonlit sands again.

I closed my eyes, homing in on the warmth of my horse’s breath puffing through my light linen tunic, grounding my focus.

When we were riding together, sometimes I imagined my consciousness fracturing out to cover the entire desert, the magic within me stretching my awareness impossibly far from the mountains in the east to the ocean in the west. Now though, I needed to focus.

The desert’s magic could help me achieve my task if I could but master it.

And master it I would.

Flickering flames of life, all concentrated in a patch not far away, appeared in my mind’s eye. I wasn’t far from Clan Padra’s encampment.

With a gentle pat on Dileas’s nose telling her to stay put, I started off across the dunes. The soft leather soles of my boots swished against the sands, indistinguishable from the wind to those who weren’t listening closely.

Ahead, the shadows of a city of tents rose out of the darkness. Small structures, big enough for just a single rider, formed concentric circles around larger and larger dwellings, with a tall peak at the center adorned with a dark banner, swaying lazily in the breeze.

Tonight was a new moon, making it dark enough that I couldn’t make out the symbol on the banner, but I knew it to be the maroon scorpion of Clan Padra. It marked the tent where the Lord slept.

And where I would find his daughter.

I reached the edge of the encampment, slipping by an enclosed paddock where horses snorted sleepily.

I pulled my power around myself like a cloak, letting it shield me from the eyes of any clansmen who might be wandering about at night, but the horses still saw me.

The desert’s magic was strong enough in the beasts that they would not be fooled by such a simple trick.

Still, they did not see me as a threat, as I projected calm and admiration in their direction. They let me slip by with no commotion.

I padded through the camp like a wraith, quickly making my way from the small tents of single riders to the larger dwellings that would hold families.

I hadn’t been to this encampment before, but they were all laid out the same.

My own small shelter was always on the fringes of Clan Katal’s encampment, as close to the pasture where Dileas slept as possible.

I was often called to the Lord’s tent at the very center to advise him on battle plans or to be sent on some mission, though.

The only noises that drifted out from behind tent flaps were gentle snores and the occasional whisper of a couple who thought they were unobserved, murmuring promises to each other in the privacy of a moonless night.

My lip curled in distaste. I didn’t enjoy missions like this, creeping through the shadows unseen.

I wished for a horse between my thighs and the thrill of bloodlust to drive the whispers of the desert’s magic from my mind.

My power was better suited to calling down storms than stealth.

But this was what Lord Deryn had demanded of me, and I always did as he ordered.

He was the only family I had, after all.

As I reached the largest tent in the encampment, I paused. My palms hovered an inch from the canvas wall at the rear of the structure, not touching it yet as I took a deep, steadying breath. The air tasted of sunbaked earth, undercut by something metallic and familiar: Magic.

A shudder climbed up my spine, and I frowned at the reaction.

Magic was not foreign to me, often pouring off my own skin in inexorable waves that unnerved those around me. It wasn’t uncommon for clan lords to also carry significant power, as the nine clans of the Ballan desert only suffered to be ruled by the strong.

The taste coating my tongue as I breathed, though, was strange—not what I would expect of a warrior who had gained the respect of Clan Padra’s riders. It was less metallic—sweeter—as if it called out to me through the thin barrier before me.

Its pull grew in my mind until I couldn’t help but rest my palms on the tent wall in front of me. I leaned in to rest my cheek on the coarse canvas as well, subconsciously listening for signs of life inside.

Instead of the heavy texture of roughspun I expected, the fabric gave way, like the lightest of linens, woven by the finest craftsmen of the desert.

It was as if the call of magic inside the dwelling had grown so inexorable, physical barriers had become ephemeral and inconsequential in the face of its strength.

I raised my eyebrows and my lips quirked. Slowly, I pushed my hands forward. They sank through the canvas as if it were water, only a sensation like sand on the breeze signaling that I passed through a formerly solid object.

I stepped through the canvas and exhaled quietly through my nose in surprise, as I found myself standing in the quiet dark of the Lord’s tent.

I had never been able to walk through solid objects before, and a thrill ran from the top of my head to the soles of my boots at the thought.

The desert had her own agenda and occasionally seemed to bestow me with new abilities depending on her whims. What her goals were, though, I had never been able to decipher.

I squeezed my eyes shut in the quiet tent, waiting for a wave of chattering voices to pass through my consciousness, as they so often did when I pulled on my magic in such a dramatic fashion. The cacophony never came though, and instead, only the soft breaths of a sleeping family met my ears.

Curiously, I opened my eyes, letting them adjust for a moment as I oriented myself to the dim tent, a smoldering brasier in the center offering a warm glow that allowed me to just make out colorless shapes.

Off to one side was a large sleeping mat, occupied by two bodies, one large and one small—Lord Avis and his wife.

I turned and padded silently around to the other side of the brasier, heading toward a lumpy pile of rugs and cushions. The light, fluttery breaths coming from that corner indicated the nest of pillows served as the Lord’s daughter’s sleeping place.

When Lord Deryn had given my mission, I had only thought about it in the most abstract of concepts—steal the girl, ransom her back, and claim glory for the Lord who had seen potential in my power.

As the moonlight seeping in through the gaps in the tent flap gleamed across a splash of silver hair, the reality of my task hit me with the force of a stampeding horse.

Lord Avis’s daughter was beautiful in a way I’d rarely encountered among the barren landscapes of the desert—the bloom of a larrea flower that had forced its way upward through dry, cracked earth.

Long silvery lashes brushed her high cheekbones, nearly translucent as they matched her silvery-white hair—a color I had never seen on another in the Ballan Desert. She lay with her cheek pillowed on a hand, her expression soft, as if she dreamed of something pleasant.

I swallowed thickly as I stepped closer, dropping to my knees before her.

Carefully, I passed my hand over her forehead, not quite touching her, but sending a trickle of magic into her mind to persuade her to stay asleep.

I had the strange and fleeting hope that it wouldn’t disturb whatever dream she had been enjoying.

Before her parents could wake and discover me, I slid my arms beneath her, lifting her easily from the nest of blankets.

She murmured in her sleep, and her head turned, falling sideways until her face pressed into the side of my neck.

Her body was remarkably soft and warm in my arms, and I swallowed thickly again.

I had broken bones and torn flesh for Lord Deryn. Pulled lightning from a cloudless sky and water from dry earth. But this task—keeping my wits with this beautiful woman so close—would pose a challenge unlike any I had faced for my clan.