Sixteen
I opened my eyes with a gasp.
Hot air flooded my throat, and searing light burned my gaze. I bent over, coughing violently and raising a hand to shield
my face from the light of the suns. When I could breathe again, I straightened, squinting against the light, and looked around
for the others.
I was alone. The desert stretched out before me, endless and barren in every direction. I couldn’t see Raithe, Halek, Kysa, or the rock
beetles. I couldn’t spot their silhouettes on the horizon or against the empty sky. I couldn’t see anything but sand, dust,
and Namaia, halfway sunk into the western horizon.
For a moment, I panicked, but then a shadow fell over me as Rhyne materialized at my back. One second the sand was empty,
the next, a huffing, snorting rock beetle popped into empty air. On his back, Halek completed a yelp that he’d started in
the city, and Kysa peered around warily. A moment later, Ratuk and Raithe appeared on my other side.
“Sparrow.” The kahjai leaped off Ratuk, catching me as I threw myself into him. Beneath his tunic, his heart was pounding,
too. “Are you all right?” he asked, bending his head close to mine.
I nodded, taking in a quick breath of relief before pulling back. “I guess we all made it.”
“Just in time, too,” Halek said. He hopped out of Rhyne’s saddle, landed in the dust with a thump and straightened, stretching
his arms over his head. “Goddess, it’s good to see the suns again. Was I the only one who was sure that dome was going to
shatter? Buried alive with a colony of talking rats isn’t the glorious death I would’ve hoped for, but I guess it would have
been an interesting one. At the very least, I’m certain no Fatechaser has ever done it before.”
I swallowed hard, remembering the terror sweeping through the city as the monstrous abomination coiled around the glass dome
overhead. If Vahn had broke through . . . “We should’ve left sooner,” I whispered. A poisonous lump settled in my stomach,
and I clenched my fists. All those lives, an entire colony of innocent creatures, drowning under sand and beetles . . . I
felt sick thinking about it.
“We can’t know anything, Fateless.” As usual, Kysa’s voice was brutally pragmatic. “We don’t know what happened after we were
teleported away. The abomination might not have broken through. Perhaps it no longer sensed our presence in the city and left
to pursue. But there is nothing we can do to change the situation. You warned the Rememberers of the danger, and they accepted
the risk when they chose to help us. We can only accept their sacrifice and move on.”
“I wouldn’t agonize too much over it, Sparrow.
” Halek gave me a sympathetic look and a half smile.
“Take it from someone who’s spent lots of nights in cheap, rat-infested rooms. Small furry creatures are extraordinarily hard to get rid of, and they’re survivors.
Even if that thing did break through, it wouldn’t be able to kill all of them.
They’ll scatter into their tunnels and hidey-holes, and reemerge as soon as it’s gone. ”
I nodded. Halek was probably right, but that didn’t make me feel any better. I remembered the pile of jair’oa kits squirming
against me, their wide-eyed innocence as they watched the world around them. “I hope Meeka’s family is all right,” I said.
“I didn’t see what happened to him when we teleported away; I wish I could have told him thank you.”
“No need to thank Meeka. Meeka didn’t do anything.”
I started. The jair’oa poked his head over Ratuk’s saddle, ears twitching, as he peered down at me. “Meeka!” I exclaimed,
as Rhyne snorted indignantly and made a tossing motion with his horn. Ratuk stood quietly with his usual stoicism, not even
seeming to notice his tiny passenger. “What are you doing here?” I continued, and the jair’oa tilted his head, his long tail
waving. “Did you get teleported with us by mistake?”
“Not mistake.” Meeka leaped off Ratuk and landed soundlessly in the sand. “Rememberers sent Meeka with human Fateless,” he
said. “Said that Meeka must go. Meeka is here on their order.”
“Why?”
“To help human Fateless get goddess loom.”
I blinked in surprise. “The Rememberers sent you with me just to make sure I retrieve Maederyss’s loom?
“No.” Meeka rubbed both paws over his nose. “Also here to remind human Fateless of what was promised.”
“Promised?” I glanced at Raithe, who also looked slightly perplexed. “We didn’t promise anything.”
“Not you. Promise that creator king gave to jair’oa.” Meeka raised a hind leg and scratched his ear rapidly before looking
up at me again. “Meeka will not remember. Meeka will forget. But human Fateless will remember. Human Fateless can make Meeka
remember why he is here—to bring creator king back by helping destroy other king.”
Halek rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Okay, just so I’m following along. You’re saying that the Rememberers sent you with us
to do two things. One . . .” He held up a single finger. “Help us get the loom. That’s pretty easy to understand. Two . . .”
The second finger joined the first. “You’re here to remind Sparrow to remind you of your creator king’s promise to the jair’oa, because if we stop the Deathless King, the Rememberers believe that the creator
king will be able to rise again.”
Meeka cocked his head the other way and blinked. “Why does human creature repeat what Meeka already knows?”
“But what about your family?” I asked. “Didn’t they have anything to say about you leaving? Do they know you’ve gone?”
“Meeka not know,” the jair’oa said simply. “Rememberers not say. But Meeka has many siblings.” He sniffed and made a motion
that was almost a shrug. “They not miss Meeka.”
He didn’t appear concerned about the abomination that had been threatening the entire jair’oa population moments ago. Perhaps, now that we were far away from the underground city, he had already forgotten.
“All right.” Raithe sounded weary. “Then we need to get moving. Namaia is sinking, and the desert is going to get cold. Meeka . . .”
He paused, as if hesitant to ask the jair’oa a question. “The Rememberers said they would transport us as close to the World
Scar as they could. Do you know how far away we still are?”
“Meeka not Rememberer,” the jair’oa said, making Raithe nod with a barely audible sigh. “Meeka not seen World Scar, so how
would Meeka know?”
“Then we need to move,” Kysa said, and turned her gaze toward the horizon. “We were heading east toward the World Scar before
all this—I assume that is the direction we need to resume.”
We mounted the rock beetles, Raithe sliding in behind me once more. Meeka peered up at us, then gave a magnificent leap from
the ground, his tiny body sailing effortlessly through the air, and landed on Ratuk’s head. Ratuk gave a snort, and Rhyne
let out an indignant bellow and even stamped a foot, but the jair’oa settled onto his haunches, ears and tail held high as
he faced forward. He didn’t seem saddened about leaving his nest and family behind, or worried about the abomination threatening
his city, or hesitant about joining a group of complete strangers on an impossible quest to defeat a god. He had already moved
on, his attention on the horizon instead of the past.
For a moment, I envied him.
Despite what the Rememberers said about “blinking” us close to the edge of their territory, we still hadn’t finished crossing the desert by the end of the day. Only when Namaia had sunk fully behind the horizon, tinting the skies red, did I see the outline of something different ahead of us.
“There’s the edge of the World Scar,” Raithe murmured as I gazed at the distant line of jagged peaks fading into the sunset.
“We’re closer than I thought.”
“It will still take us a couple of days to get there,” Kysa said, observing the peaks from atop Rhyne’s back. “If those mountains
are as large as I think they are.” She glanced at Raithe and narrowed her eyes. “Your queen said that the Deathless scoured
the land clean of all life and made the terrain as inhospitable as they could to prevent anyone from venturing within. What
does that mean, kahjai? What will we find beyond those mountains?”
“Nothing good.” Raithe sighed. “The legends of the World Scar say that the ground is made of liquid fire, the air is poisonous
to breathe, and that nightmare creatures beyond the imagination roam freely through the land. How much of this is real, I
don’t know. But I don’t think we’ll be in for a pleasant experience.”
“Aw,” Halek said. “And I was having such a good time with the endless barren desert and horrific abomination chasing us down.”
We set up camp with the outline of the World Scar mountains silhouetted against the eastern sky.
As Kysa and I took care of the rock beetles, Halek and Raithe set up our only tent.
Kysa, in her pragmatic way, had thought to bring a spare, and that was fortunate, as our last tent had been chewed to pieces by beetles and buried beneath the sand.
This new tent was a little smaller, but it would provide adequate shelter from the elements, and it was certainly better than nothing when we had to face Demon Hour.
The desert sand wasn’t the easiest place to build a firepit, but we scraped out a shallow hole and lit a small fire, which
flickered cheerfully and kept away a bit of the chill.
“Brr,” Halek said, wrapping a blanket around himself as he sat down. “I forgot how cold the desert can get at night. Wish
I had a bottle of Tahveena brandy to warm me up, but I guess I’ll have to be happy with . . .” He peered into the small clay
pot bubbling in the firepit, wrinkling his nose. “Dried stonebeak soup and gritbread. Again.”
“If you would like to go hunting for something different,” Kysa said with just a touch of annoyance in her voice, “feel free
to do so. But I doubt you’ll find any herds of Tahveena brandy roaming the desert.”
“Hey, I’m not complaining.” Halek held up both hands. “I certainly couldn’t hunt down a pair of stonebeaks by myself. I’m