Vessel

With Fennik’s assistance, Pia mounted a new horse, the more placid mare, Plum. Still no one came to say good-bye to her. No one was willing to break tradition to give her a single embrace. Liyana was grateful for her own clan—at least she knew they cared about her before they left her to die.

Liyana mounted Gray Luck and urged her horse into a walk. Guiding the other two horses, Korbyn rode after her on his favorite mount. Ahead, Fennik kept close to Pia as she started across the sands.

Because Pia couldn’t, Liyana looked back at the Silk Clan as they rode away. Emerging from every tent, silent men, women, and children watched them leave.

* * *

Leaving the salt flats behind them, they rode west across the cracked earth toward the rocky hills, the territory of the Scorpion Clan. Liyana and Korbyn led. Behind them, Fennik regaled Pia with horse tales in a voice not quite loud enough for Liyana to hear. Every few moments, Pia’s laugh would ring out like a bell or Fennik’s chuckle would boom.

“Once again, vessels surprise me,” Korbyn said.

“How so?” Liyana asked.

“Based on initial impressions, I was not aware that either of them had a sense of humor.”

“Believing you have a sense of humor and actually having one are two different things,” Liyana pointed out.

“Indeed,” he said. He winced as Fennik let out a loud cackle. “At least they are enjoying themselves.”

Liyana studied Korbyn for a moment. Worn by travel, he looked very different from the boy who had walked out of a sandstorm, unrumpled and untouched by the gritty air. Now his soft hair was matted and his cheeks were sunken in. Dark shadows highlighted his eyes. “Are you?”

“Not so much,” he admitted.

At midday they halted. Pia slid off her horse and promptly crumpled to the ground. She tried to rise, but her legs buckled under her again. Fennik leaped from his horse to assist her. He offered her water, lifting the waterskin to her lips so that she could drink more easily. “She needs healing,” Fennik said.

Pia moaned. “I do not wish to slow us.”

“You need to heal her,” Fennik said. “She’s a new rider. Her flesh is tender.” He patted Pia’s hand. “Continue to be brave,” he said to her. “All will be well.”

Korbyn sighed, but he dropped into a trance to heal her blisters and sores.

Massaging her own sores, Liyana pitched the tent. Once she had it ready, she laid her hand on Korbyn’s shoulder. After a moment, he opened his eyes. “The Silk Clan did not replenish our supplies. We need water for the horses,” she said gently. He heaved a sigh as he lurched onto his feet.

“Come inside and rest,” Fennik said to Pia.

He led her toward the tent while she favored him and the world with her beautiful smile.

Staying outside, Liyana checked the horses’ hooves. She left their hides matted with caked-on dirt and dust— it would protect them from the worst of the sun, plus Fennik preferred to curry them himself, or at least he did when he wasn’t doting on Pia.

Liyana kicked a barrel cactus and wondered why Pia’s frailty bothered her so much. The cactus broke at its stem. Carrying it into the shade of the tent, Liyana sliced it open with her sky serpent blade and scraped the insides out. She held a clump over her mouth and squeezed. Liquid dribbled onto her tongue. It tasted sweet.

“Fennik and Pia, are you thirsty?” She thrust the remainder of the scrapings into the tent. She listened as he offered it all to Pia. She refused, insisting he share. Liyana prevented herself from rolling her eyes at them by checking on Korbyn.

He was squatting next to a half-dead plant, and he was deep in a trance. His face looked too thin, as if he’d aged a year over the past week. This is why it bothers me, she thought. Pia’s needs on top of their survival needs were exhausting him. Keeping an eye on him, she started a cooking fire with a chunk of flint. She patted the dried cactus innards into cakes and baked them while she waited for Korbyn to finish. At last his eyes rolled back. She lunged forward past the fire and caught him before he slumped into it.

In front of him, the plant was covered with berries.

She dragged him by the armpits into the tent and laid him next to Pia, who was sleeping curled up like a cat with her head on Fennik’s thigh. Without a word, Liyana went back outside to pick the berries before the sun withered them. She then rescued the cactus cakes from the fire.

Tasks complete, she sat alone in the sand, looking out across the desert. Heat waved over the desiccated soil. The forbidden mountains rippled in the distance. She wished Korbyn were awake to sit with her. She would have told him a story to make him laugh. Gray Luck nipped her shoulder, and Liyana shared her portion of the berries with her favorite mare. She was beginning to hate the rest times. There were two vessels left to find, and Korbyn still would not share any details about their final destination. The lost deities could be on the other side of the sands. She was acutely aware of the vastness of the desert around them, and with every delay, the distances seemed to stretch. But she could think of no alternative or anything she could do to lessen the shadows under Korbyn’s eyes.

Late in the afternoon, after Korbyn and Pia woke, they continued on. But only a few hours later, they had to stop to camp for the night. Again Korbyn placed himself in a trance—he healed Pia’s new blisters, he sealed a wound in one of the horse’s hooves, he summoned water from the roots of nearby plants, and he flushed out desert rats from the rocks for Fennik to shoot. He finished after the moon was high, and then he collapsed. Liyana lay next to him in the tent, listening for the sound of his nightmares and waking him as needed. He woke three times. She didn’t ask what he had dreamed.

The next day was more of the same.

While Fennik catered to Pia, Liyana continued to watch Korbyn. His eyes began to look like hollowed-out rocks, and he shuffled when he walked. He’s getting worse, she thought. God or not, he had limits. He could only focus his magic on one task at a time, and there were simply too many tasks that needed to be done. As their only magician, he had no time to recuperate between trances, and with each additional task, they lost travel time. She found herself wanting to take him into her arms, like a mother with a child, and stroke his hair and say, “Stop. Stop before you hurt yourself.” But she didn’t.

On the fifth day, Liyana squatted beside Korbyn as he prepared to summon more water for the horses from a seemingly dead plant. “I was wrong,” she said. “Pia isn’t the problem.”

He nodded as if satisfied with her. “As I told you—”

“The problem is you.”

“Excuse me?”

“You told me that only people with reincarnated souls could become vessels,” Liyana said. “And you said ‘or magicians.’ ” She touched one of the brittle branches of the desert bush. It didn’t snap. Its inner core was still alive.

“I may have said that. I say a lot of things.”

She tried to imagine leaves bursting out on these branches—and what it would feel like to make that happen. “So can a vessel become a magician?”

Behind them, Pia gasped. “You cannot! Vessels do not work magic!”

“Can’t or don’t?” Liyana countered.

“Banish such thoughts from your head!” Pia said. “We must preserve these bodies and protect them from unnecessary harm. Working magic is too dangerous!”

“Starvation and dehydration are also dangerous,” Liyana said, eyes still on Korbyn. “You know you need the help.”

“Training a vessel—it’s forbidden,” Korbyn said.

“Like the mountains of the sky serpent were when you stole flint for the clans? What’s more important: tradition or success?” Liyana asked him. “You want the deities back. So do I.”

Pia’s voice rose to a squeak. “Fennik, tell her no! Expediency does not triumph over right. She risks too much!”

Korbyn studied Liyana’s face as if he were trying to read her thoughts. “It has never been done.”

She leaned closer to him, so close that she could feel his breath. “Once, the raven and the horse had three races. . . . You bent reality to win. And that was merely a race. This involves the fate of your beloved and five entire clans.”