Chapter 1 #3
She led us past three smaller tents until we were nearly to the entrance of our camp.
The other sons and daughters—mostly all healers of various strengths like my mother—surrounded the injured warrior brought in on a travois.
The Queen of All Queens’ camp was intentionally kept small, so we only numbered twenty-two, but with everyone shouting and talking in concern, it seemed like many more.
No one was actively trying to heal the warrior right now, which meant that it was beyond their capabilities.
Earth Mother willing, it wouldn’t be beyond Ama’s.
Someone had already hammered long poles into the ground beside the injured warrior to erect a temporary tent. Bright blue silken cloth soon soared over the injured daughter’s head, shielding her from the harsh sun. We moved closer, and the crowd parted for us.
“It’s Mya!” I said in a rush when I got a good look at her face twisted in pain. Mya was one of my second cousins and usually acted as a messenger between our camp and my aunt’s in the Mid-Plains. Her chestnut mare Farah was small and sleek and fast. How had an eagle even caught her?
I knelt beside her and grabbed hold of her hand, but she only moaned in response.
Ama knelt on the other side and put her hand gently on Mya’s forehead.
We both looked down at Mya’s wounds. She bled heavily from a gaping gash in her abdomen that she tried unsuccessfully to hold closed with her hands.
Her skin looked ashen, and her eyes had taken on the glossy look of the near dead.
Shazeera made a low, worried sound, and I glanced over at Farah. Her coat hair had turned nearly black with sweat. Foamy lather covered her chest, and her nostrils flared red. She had run herself nearly to death to bring her bonded sister here.
“You did well,” Ama told her. “You got her to me in time. I can still heal her.”
Farah closed her eyes in relief as Nafalla and Shazeera moved closer to her to help hold the smaller mare up.
Ama turned her attention back to Mya and moved her hands over the terrible wound. Immediately, the rich scent of freshly turned earth, bright herbs, and sweet grass filled the air.
Dani, another healer, came to her side and leaned down. “How can I assist you, my queen?”
“A spear tore through the muscles of her abdomen and pierced her intestines,” Ama said quietly. “I must first push out all the blood that’s pooled inside. Once I have healed her internally, she will need continued mending. You may take over at that point.”
“Yes, my queen,” she said with a bow of her head.
I watched Ama carefully, worrying the inside of my cheek.
Her ability allowed her to channel her power into another person in order to heal them, but it took a tremendous amount of strength to keep the magic under control.
Sending your own life force into another person when they’re seriously injured was always a risk, because it formed a connection between the healer and the injured.
If Ama didn’t break the connection when she still had plenty of strength left, the other person could end up draining Ama’s life force away.
With the wards already draining her, Ama had to use her magic judiciously.
Her solution was to use only as much magic as was required to heal the person until another healer could take over.
That was if she still had enough strength to end the channeling at the exact moment she chose.
Ama’s expression tightened with concentration as she worked on knitting the inner parts of Mya that had been torn.
It wasn’t long before my mother’s chest was heaving with effort.
Her hands shook, and a rope of worry cinched tightly around my heart.
It happened more and more lately—the physical toll on Ama when she tried to maintain the protective wards and heal anyone brought to her in danger of dying.
There were healers on the front lines, too, but none of them could knit someone back together from the inside out.
Suddenly, the pleasant earthy smell of my mother’s power began to fade. In its place, coppery blood scented the air. Ama’s expression contorted like she was in pain, too. Sweat tracked down her face.
Mya became frighteningly still as her skin blazed hot with fever. Behind us, Farah let out a whinny that sounded like a cry.
“Ama?” I said, searching my mother’s face.
“The magic is taking too much from me,” Ama said, her voice strained. “I’m losing control of it.”
I felt Dani’s eyes on me. This is where the First Daughter should have been able to lend her own strength, allowing my mother to safely withdraw her magic. The other healers couldn’t do it; only the queen or First Daughter had that type of power.
“The magic is draining your mother,” Dani said to me, barely hiding the reproach in her eyes.
“Ama, I can’t—”
“You must,” she said with a hint of fear to her tone I’d never heard before.
My fingers trembled. I closed my eyes and willed myself to be able to feel something.
I thought about all the things Ama said I should look for: the sound of a person’s blood rushing through them like a river, the bright feeling of their life force like the sun, pain and sickness in various shades of black and gray.
But there was nothing. Only her skin beneath my hand.
I reached deep inside me like I did just moments ago in the pavilion.
I thought of the way Ama’s power felt, like warm sun on soft grass.
I heard the beat of my heart and my steady breaths. I could feel my link to Shazeera like an unbreakable chain.
But there was no sunshine. No earthy sensations at all.
Only the cold, blowing wind.
Frustration surged through me so fast I felt dizzy with it.
I couldn’t do it. My ancestral power was completely inaccessible to me, and I feared in my churning gut that it always would be.
I opened my eyes to find that in the short time I had searched fruitlessly for my nonexistent earth magic, Ama had come to look almost worse than Mya.
Her face, normally glowing with vitality, appeared dry and haggard.
She shook from her effort, and all the color had drained from her skin.
When I met her gaze, her eyes had an edge of panic within them.
“I can’t call it back to me,” Ama said through gritted teeth.
The powerful scent of the earth intensified in the air around us, only this time, it couldn’t blot out the scent of blood.
Not long after that, Ama began shaking violently.
Not for the first time, I feared what would happen if Ama pushed herself too far.
Dread knotted low in my belly, sharp and sudden.
Ama’s entire body vibrated with tension, and the effort she made on Mya’s behalf could be seen in every trembling muscle.
And then suddenly, Mya’s eyes flew open. Mya groaned and thrashed her head. The healing process hurt like being burned, but there had been no time to offer her medicine to numb the pain.
At the same time, my mother collapsed beside her in a heap.
“Ama!” I shouted as others rushed to help. I felt for my mother’s pulse, but it was so faint. My throat swelled as my eyes pricked with tears while Dani examined Ama.
Nafalla came immediately to my mother’s side, watching anxiously as Dani checked Ama over.
“She’s alive, but her power has been drained,” Dani announced. “Let’s move her to her bed.”
A son named Kai—another one of my cousins, who worked as our blacksmith and was consequently lean and strong—gently lifted Ama into his arms.
The wards, Shazeera said, and at that moment, a cry went out across the camp. My mouth went dry as my blood turned to ice water in my veins. Without the wards, the Eagle Riders finding us became more than possible.
It became inevitable.
As Dani and I flanked Kai, who was carrying Ama, Naomi strode toward us from Ama’s pavilion. “The queen’s wards have failed! We must leave immediately.” To another guard, she said, “Summon General Isa. Her battalion is closest, and she will want to personally escort the queen and First Daughter.”
“The queen will need time to recover,” Dani said, brows furrowed. “We can’t ask her to travel yet.”
“Can you heal her enough for travel?” Naomi asked.
“Possibly, but—”
“Then we must leave as soon as General Isa arrives,” Naomi said with a tone that brooked no argument. “We’ll leave the breaking down of the queen’s pavilion for last. Heal her as much as you can in that time.”
Before Dani could even agree, Naomi strode away, barking orders at the other sons and daughters in our camp that we had to leave immediately.
“Will she be okay?” I asked Dani, reaching out and touching Shazeera’s neck when she stood next to me.
Dani looked like she was having to bite back what she really wanted to say.
“Her pulse is steady, but there’s no way to know how long she’ll stay unconscious.
My power is limited, so I’ll have to call on the other healers for help.
And even then, we might not be strong enough to replenish even the smallest percentage of her magic stores. ”
I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat. That meant Ama wouldn’t be able to resume the wards anytime soon.
“Unless you think you can connect with your royal abilities and help the queen?” she asked with one eyebrow arched.
A bitter taste coated my tongue, like ash. “I would if I could.”
“Then I’ll have to do what I can,” she said before turning back to follow Kai and my unconscious mother back into the pavilion.
I clenched my fists at my sides as tears stung my eyes. Guilt threatened to drag me under like quicksand. This was all my fault. If I had been able to connect with my power, I could have given Ama the strength she needed to maintain the wards. Now she lay unconscious, and we were all vulnerable.
Without my mother’s earth magic for protection, the Eagle Riders would slaughter us all.