rescue your deities.”
The chief glowered at Liyana. “You abandoned your clan to perpetuate this trick? I believed better of Sendar’s beloved than to keep our god from us. You have fallen low.”
“I’m not Sendar’s beloved! I’m a vessel! And I didn’t abandon anyone. My clan left me to die in the desert because Bayla never came.” She pulled forward, straining against the hands that were clasped hard around her forearms. They squeezed, and tears sprang into her eyes.
“If you are human, then prove it.” The chief strode toward Liyana.
For the first time, she heard worry in Korbyn’s voice. “Let’s not be hasty. Sendar would not want harm —”
The chief drew his sword.
Liyana’s eyes fixed on the blade, but her mind couldn’t understand what it meant. Surely he didn’t intend to —
He plunged his sword into her stomach. “Heal yourself, goddess.”
Chapter Nine
Liyana felt stillness for one endless moment. Everything seemed hushed. She saw faces twist and mouths stretch as if they were shouting, but she heard only the whoosh of wind. Her body felt light. She knew that two men held her arms, but she couldn’t feel their grip. She looked down at her stomach. The sword hilt protruded. Red blossomed around it and spread through her sash, soaking the fabric.
The chief yanked the hilt, and the sword pulled out of her with a sucking sound that reverberated in her head—the only sound she heard. She felt as if all the air had been pulled out of her with the sword. She covered her stomach with her hands. Wetness poured over her fingers. She tried to hold the liquid back, but her wet fingers slid over one another.
Her stomach started to throb, a dull pulse of pain that intensified with each second. It spread like a fire eating the grasslands, overwhelming the feel of her arms and legs until the only sensation she felt was fire. She was burning inside and out. Hands lowered her down as she slumped into the sand. Blackness crawled into her eyes, and her vision narrowed to only the sand by her cheek.
And then she was cradled against a chest. She focused on a face. Korbyn.
She wanted to say she was sorry she’d failed to finish their quest. But her throat felt full of liquid. She coughed, and red spattered Korbyn. His face stilled, as if it had hardened into stone, while his eyes focused on her with a gaze as searing as the sun. Her vision contracted until all she saw was his eyes. And then even they were gone. She floated in a sea of darkness.
Colors came and went. Warmth. Coldness. Softness. Shooting, searing pain.
And then nothing.
Eventually she noticed cushions. Pillows were nestled all around her, and she was swaddled in blankets. She fluttered her eyes open, but she saw only shadows that swayed above her. She closed her eyes and drifted away again.
The next time she woke, she heard voices. They were hushed, and the words ran together like poured water. She listened to the trickle for a while, and it lulled her back to sleep.
She dreamed about Jidali.
“Liyana, am I going to die?” her little brother asked.
“Not for a long time,” she said.
“But someday?”
“Why don’t you ask Father about this?”
“He said to ask you.”
She remembered this conversation. It wasn’t a dream; it was a memory. She’d tried to change the topic. She’d tried to distract him with games. She’d even offered up a sugared date as a bribe. But in the end, she had told Jidali yes, and he’d cried.
The next day, Mother had let them shirk their chores. Liyana remembered that she had taken Jidali to visit Talu’s mother, a woman so old that she had resembled a tortoise.
“You’re seeking wisdom, little man?”
“I want to know about death,” he’d said in his tiny, birdlike voice.
“Ah, and I look like I have seen death.” She’d sounded amused.
“Everyone says not to be scared or sad because we go to the Dreaming and it doesn’t hurt there and all my wishes can come true there.”
The old woman nodded. “But you’re still scared and sad.”
He nodded, and a tear spilled out of one eye. He wiped it away with the back of his chubby fist. Liyana wanted to wrap her arms around him, but she stayed in the shadows. This visit was for him.
“And I am supposed to tell you that they’re right, and death is a time to celebrate a life well lived.” The old woman beckoned him closer. “But I will tell you the truth: Death scares me. And it makes me sad. And it makes me angry. And this is the way it should be!”
Jidali’s eyes widened.
“Oh yes, I have lived more than my fair share of a full life,” she said. “Enough for two or three lives. But breathing every day . . . You are right to want to hold on to it, and you’re right to mourn it when it ends.”
The old woman had died before Liyana was named the clan’s vessel. Liyana wondered what she would have said if she’d known that Liyana was destined to die young.
At the force of her thought, her eyes popped open.
Sunlight cut in slices through the tent, illuminating the red and gold pillows and blankets that surrounded her. Beside her, she saw a gold basin perched on a three-legged stool. A damp cloth was draped over its rim. Beyond it, she saw a fire pit with a silver tea urn. Everything in the tent reeked of wealth and opulence. She inhaled incense.
She should have woken in a healing tent. Or not woken at all.
She touched her stomach and felt soft cotton. She looked down at a burgundy blouse with silver embroidery. She didn’t recognize the weave or cut. Someone had dressed her in clothes that weren’t her own. Tentatively she lifted the hem to see her stomach.
No blood. No wound. But she had a scar.
She traced the lump of hard skin. She’d had no scars before this. It looked like a star just below her sternum. “Korbyn,” she whispered. He had done this. And then what? What had happened to him? “Korbyn?”
Liyana pushed herself up, trying to sit. Her head swam, and she collapsed backward into the pile of pillows. A woman leaned over her, and Liyana bit back a shriek at how suddenly she’d appeared.
“Try again slowly,” the woman said. She braced Liyana with a hand under her back. Liyana eased up to sitting, and the woman tucked pillows behind her to prop her up. Liyana stared at her, mentally flogging herself both for failing to notice the woman was there and for showing alarm. Already the woman had her at a disadvantage.
The woman had leathery skin, and her hair was streaked with white and silver. She wore a necklace of silver tassels that matched the chief’s belt—this was the chieftess of the Horse Clan, Liyana guessed. The chieftess pressed a waterskin to Liyana’s lips. “Drink. Sips only.” She tilted the waterskin, and water poured between Liyana’s lips. Liyana swallowed automatically. It tasted like silt, and it felt like a flame in her throat. She coughed, and pain shot through her body. She blacked out.
Liyana opened her eyes again. She was lying down, and the chieftess sat cross-legged beside her. She had a crescent-shaped knife in her lap that she was polishing with a grayed rag. Liyana’s eyes fixed on the blade.
“Where’s Korbyn?” Liyana asked. Her voice sounded like a rasp, and the words raked over her throat. She licked her lips and swallowed, which caused her body to shudder.
“He speaks with the elders. Last I heard, he was being quite vivid in his description of what he planned to do to prove that my husband isn’t a god. I do not know if the discussion has progressed any further.”
