25. Chapter 25
Chapter twenty-five
Erix
Keera walked at my side toward the camp set up by the men from Doran.
I kept glancing at her out of the corner of my eye.
Perhaps we should have done something more to show that we had established ourselves as leaders of the clans—some marking or symbol.
My mother had always harped on about the importance of being seen as a poised leader.
But the Clans were different from the city. The traces of blood still crusted on Keera’s lip were a stronger mark of leadership than any crown she could wear out here among the sands. Strength was the true mark of leadership, and she had shown that today.
I hoped it was a language General Warrick understood as well.
Curious glances trailed us as we walked through the camp, the men from Doran seemingly unsure of our presence, even as they had been brought to our shores under the pretense of an alliance. I saw several hands reach for weapons, but I clenched my fists to keep myself from reaching for mine.
We were here to persuade them to set sail without bloodshed.
Besides, if one of them drew their weapon, I could call on the magic of the desert before they could reach me.
Its threads were always tangled in my fingers these days, even though her voices seemed less insistent since I had spoken with Kelvar.
I spotted General Warrick near one of the boats that had been pulled up onto the beach. He was directing some men who appeared to be doing some work on it. Despite the tension in my muscles at the thought of a potential confrontation, I couldn’t help the way my curious gaze roved over the vessel.
It was long and narrow, crafted from long thick planks of wood that were notched together seamlessly.
I tried—and failed—to imagine the type of trees that would produce such sturdy planks.
The date palms that grew in scattered groves in the Ballan Desert were sparse enough that it would be difficult to harvest enough of them to build one of the large ships, let alone a fleet.
A tall pole extended from the middle, carrying a square sail that had been full of wind when they first arrived, but was now rolled up to avoid blowing.
The front corner of the vessel bore a tall stem, and at its top was a wolf’s head.
It looked similar enough to the red wolf sigil of Clan Ratan, but it was not snarling as their crest was so often depicted.
Instead, it seemed to calmly stare into my soul. I shivered despite the heat.
“Warrick,” Keera called from beside me, wrenching me from my contemplation.
He turned, a frown pulling on the scars across his cheek. “Have you resolved your petty squabbling?”
“If you find our fighting petty, then perhaps you should see how you fare at the end of a lord’s saber,” I retorted.
“I don’t doubt your people’s skill.” Warrick held up his hands. “Just their wisdom in turning their blades on each other when the true enemy is elsewhere.”
“True.” Keera put her fists on her hip. “Perhaps the real adversary is camped next to us, pretending to be our ally when really they wait for us to sleep before they slit our throats.”
“If my plan was to kill you, then I would have attacked while divisions still ran through the Clans. But I waited,” Warrick pointed out.
“And now your waiting is over. We speak for the Clans, and we demand you leave. You are not welcome in the Ballan Desert.”
Warrick seemed to ignore the last part of my sentence, his brows rising. “So, my gambit paid off. You are the true king after all?”
I sucked in a breath. “We are High Lords of the Desert. And to undermine Keera again would be to undermine me. I still kneel before her, and you would do well to fear her as well.”
The tether at the base of my skull sparked with Keera’s reaction—satisfaction and pride mixed with an edge of surprise. Even after everything, she seemed almost shocked that she was worthy of leadership, and that I would state it so openly. Still, she did not shy away from it as she had once.
Warrick’s face spasmed. “It seems there is much I don’t understand about leadership in the clans.”
“Why do you hate me?” Keera asked outright. “We danced around the topic in the politics of Kelvadan, but here in the desert, we have not time for such things. So just tell me, and be done with it.”
“I don’t hate you,” Warrick admitted, scrubbing a hand over his chin and the beginnings of a copper beard. “But I don’t understand you. And I’d rather not deal with people and situations that I can’t predict. I prefer to win battles by anticipating my opponents.”
“Even more reason to leave,” I said. “The desert is not an opponent you can simply outwit, and there is much you don’t understand about her.”
Warrick’s face twisted in distaste. Indeed, it seemed the desert did not suit him.
His pale skin was already reddened with sunburn, and sweat poured down his chest, darkening the green shirt he wore to almost black.
The lack of a hood to protect him and his men from the sun seemed almost cruel.
“There is much that is strange about this land, but I also have much information you do not—information that could cost you dearly in battle.”
“We know how to fight. And none can stand against the horses of the Ballan Desert,” Keera snapped. “You know it well, as did Calix. It’s why you have thirsted after our friendship. I don’t doubt that it is why you are here now.”
Warrick shook his head. “I do not deny that I seek an advantage over our enemies in Viltov, but I would rather neither of us have cavalry. It will only extend the war that has already raged for a century. And that is why I am here. You do not know how we wage war, and you will be slaughtered if you ride against Kelvadan. Calix will fortify it.”
Keera and I exchanged a sidelong glance. Doubt panged through my chest, and I knew she could feel it too. I squared my shoulders, though. Just because Calix had been the first to make a move on Kelvadan didn’t mean that Warrick would not have taken the opportunity had it presented itself.
The clans were united now, and it would be enough. We did not need Warrick and his men. They could not be trusted.
“The riders of the clans are more skilled than you give them credit for,” I said, letting my hand drift to the hilt of my sword. “You will find out just how skilled if you and your men do not leave these shores.”
Warrick’s face twitched but then smoothed into the neutral visage of the political bargainer I remembered. He may present himself as a man of action, but he too was duplicitous.
“If you wish to die throwing yourself against Viltov’s defenses, then I will not deny your wishes,” he conceded. “But the journey here is long, and my ships need tending after a long voyage. Will you allow us to camp here a few days longer while we make the necessary repairs?”
Keera folded her arms. “You have delayed before when you had no intentions of granting my requests.”
Warrick scoffed. “I have no desire to stay in this cursed wasteland longer than I have to. But you rest your horses at the end of a long journey, do you not?”
“A boat isn’t a horse.”
“Like I said, there is much you do not know,” Warrick responded cryptically.
“Two days,” I conceded. “You can remain for two days, and then you and your men must leave these shores.”
Warrick sighed. “I do not wish for Viltov to gain control of all the desert, but neither do I wish my men to fight and die where their sacrifice is not appreciated. We will leave when our boats are ready.”
Keera and I turned to go, but a heavy weight settled in my stomach. I could not decide if it was from suspicion that he would actually leave without bloodshed or doubt that we should be sending him away at all.
War brought with it strange allies. While I didn’t trust Warrick, I wondered if trust was a luxury we could afford.
I jolted when I opened my eyes to see Kelvar, silhouetted in moonlight and looking out at the ocean, but I was not as afraid of his presence as I had once been. I was simply surprised. I had thought—perhaps hoped—that he would leave me in peace now that he had given me his message.
He lingered though, and I got to my feet to join him.
Despite Kelvar’s presence, Keera remained sleeping peacefully.
She and I had fallen asleep next to a small fire we had built beside the ocean, too taken by its beauty to walk back to the tent Izumi had found and erected for us in the very center of the encampment—the prominent position befitting of high lords.
Kelvar too seemed mesmerized by the ocean, not looking away as I approached. Perhaps he would have more guidance—anything more than the vague instruction that I had to save Alyx from the prison trapping her between life and death.
“I wish Alyx could see the ocean,” he said as I stopped next to him.
“She never made the journey?”
Kelvar shook his head. Some of his long hair had slipped out of his knot and brushed across his face.
Something about its unkemptness continued to dispel doubts that he was a conjuring of my imagination.
In the statue in Kelvadan, his appearance was perfect—every hair in place, skin smooth.
That is how I had always pictured him, but in reality, crinkles at the corners of his eyes gave away how often he had smiled during the long years of his life.
He seemed strangely human for one who had died decades ago.
My mind would not have conjured him this way. To me, he would have been a giant, both great and terrible in his power and legacy. But here he stood, a man speaking of missing his wife.
“We talked about it, but there was always something to do in Kelvadan. She was a great queen and would not leave her people. It suited her, and so we never left. I never left, until she fell ill,” he continued.
“And then you traveled to the ocean, to take the Heart,” I observed, reciting the story that Lord Alasdar had told me on these very shores when I first saw the temple.
“Yes,” he admitted. “I could tell I was not aging the way Alyx was, and I spent many decades fearing the eventuality of her death. But many clans passed through the city, and I bargained for every scroll and tidbit of history I could glean from them, eventually able to put together the true legend of the Heart. I knew it held my answers.”
I sucked on my teeth. I had spent so many years of my life angry at his choices, but just like when I faced down my mother and the tragedy of her death, ready to rage at her for what she had done, I found my anger defanged.
Kelvar had spent just as much time—even more—trying to tell me how to fix it, helpless to do anything but watch my floundering.
If I had the chance to speak to him before I found Keera at her oasis, perhaps I would have shouted at him for his failure. I might have even drawn my blade against him. But now, I feared how much I understood his choices.
“Alyx wouldn’t have wanted me to do it,” Kelvar admitted.
“She was always wiser than me. But I had promised her eternity together once. Of course, the great irony of it is that, in my efforts to give it to her, I doomed us to an eternity apart. I could not give her life, only stop death from taking hold. So, she is trapped, somewhere in between where I cannot reach her.”
“Do you know how we might free her?” I asked.
Kelvar shook his head. “I just know that I broke the balance between life and death. I should have known better. The desert gives and it takes, after all. She is equal parts the life that persists despite the harsh environment, and the death that takes the weak.”
“We will try,” I promised Kelvar. It seemed nearly impossible—to lead all the clans across the desert as one to free the city, fight our way all the way to the top of the tower, and then reshape the fabric of the desert itself to heal the Heart.
But now Keera and I were high lords together—we were stronger together, and we had done the impossible before.
“I miss her,” Kelvar admitted. “I even miss the way she is sure to be furious at me for risking everything for her.”
“Never before has a man so loved his wife,” I observed.
Kelvar let out a breath like a laugh and looked down. His eyes caught on the packs at his feet, and he frowned.
“Is that my sword?”
I followed his gaze to the handle, sticking from a scabbard, curved quillons gleaming in the starlight. Picking it up, I pulled the top half of the blade out of its sheath to show him what had happened. My heart clenched at the shape of the jagged edge where it had broken in two.
He huffed. “It was always too long.”
I stared at him over the gleaming blade. It was still deathly sharp from endless years of my compulsive care.
“It made it deadly, but at the cost of ever being fully balanced,” he pointed out, before pursing his lips at the irony of the statement.
“It’s almost as long as a normal blade now.” I observed before tipping the scabbard to pour the bottom half of the blade into my hand. It was a bit longer than a dirk, almost like a side sword. We both stared at it.
“You could repair it,” Kelvar pointed out. “With enough heat and effort, a skilled craftsman could reforge the blade.”
I frowned down at the broken weapon. In the weeks we spent in the encampment before leaving for the ocean, I had considered asking one of the swordsmiths to do just that but had always hesitated.
It seemed like the broken blade was trying to tell me something.
Perhaps it was meant to be a reminder of how I had shattered after too many years of ruthless sharpening.
A rushing sound began to build and I looked up, only to find Kelvar gone. Instead, I stared out at the ocean, which seemed to be retreating away from me. My brows drew together as I wondered if that was something it often did—I had only been here twice, and the first time I was nearly delirious.
I drifted down the beach curiously, standing where there once had been water, but now was only bare sand. The smell of salt grew strong on the air, carried by a strong wind. My feet sank into the wet ground as I stared out into the darkness.
Then shouting began in the camp from Doran, and General Warrick’s voice split the night air. “Up! Retreat! Get away from the water!”