“Good for you, goat girl.” He grinned at her. “Go on and impress me.”
Liyana regarded the mass of writhing black clouds. “It’s said that once, the god of the Tortoise Clan spent an entire century inside a sandstorm. The weathering of the sand and wind is what gave the tortoise its distinctive shell pattern.”
“Oh yes, we teased him about that for days.”
She studied him, trying to determine if he was serious or not. “If I make a mistake, will we be stuck in a sandstorm for a century?”
“I hope not,” he said cheerfully.
She drew her sky serpent knife out of her sash. “This seems to work on the wolves. It sliced through the one that attacked me before I met you.” She handed him the blade.
Korbyn examined it. “Beautifully made.” She watched his fingers caress the carved handle. The bone had been worn down to fit smoothly in one’s hand. The blade was lashed to the handle with goat sinew in an elaborate array of knots.
“It’s been in my family for generations,” Liyana said. “Don’t lose it.”
“Your lack of trust wounds me.” He slashed the air with it. “I assume there’s a story about how a sky serpent scale came to be the blade in your knife?”
“It’s a family story,” Liyana said. She watched him cut designs in the air, and her fingers itched to take the knife back. She didn’t know what had possessed her to share it with him. It had never been wielded by anyone outside the family before. She felt as if he were holding a piece of herself.
“You can tell me. I’m like family.”
She snorted like Raan. “You are nothing like family.”
He mimed a stab to the heart with the hand that did not hold the knife. “After all we have been through together . . . you wound my heart.”
“Tell me one of your family secrets, and I’ll tell you mine.” She didn’t know what possessed her to offer that bargain. She simply . . . wanted him to share something of his as he held her knife.
“I don’t have a family,” Korbyn said. “Gods were never born. We simply . . . are.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Tell me a secret of the gods.”
He leaned close to her. She felt his breath on her neck, warm and soft. She shivered as if his breath touched all of her skin. In a mock whisper he said, “Sendar has horribly bad breath.”
She heard Pia giggle from within the tent.
Also in a mock whisper Liyana said, “Tell me one of
“You want to play confession?” Korbyn’s eyes glittered, and a smile played over his lips. She felt as if she were playing with a flame. She didn’t back away.
“One thing,” Liyana said, “and I’ll tell you about the knife.”
Korbyn was quiet for a while. Liyana watched the sandstorm build in front of them, a wall of blackness. Not far away now, it obliterated the line between land and sky. “I can’t dance,” Korbyn said at last.
Liyana laughed.
“Bayla doesn’t know,” he said mournfully. “So far I have hid my inadequacy by always serving as audience. But she loves to dance. One day she’ll discover my secret and flee from me in horror.”
Liyana patted his knee. “I’ll teach you. Before you’re reunited with Bayla, you’ll be a master of dance. She’ll never need to know about this horrible flaw in your character.”
“I accept your offer,” Korbyn said solemnly. “Now, the knife?”
“My great-great-great-great-grandmother was in love with the chief’s son. But he said that he would only marry her if she was the bravest woman in the clan. She asked how she could prove her bravery, and he said that she had to walk into the forbidden mountains and return with proof that she had been there.”
Liyana heard a gasp, and then Pia stuck her head out of the tent to hear better. “She did that? But no one has ever entered the forbidden mountains!”
“According to the chief’s son, she did it, and he married the bravest woman in the clan. But according to my mother and my mother’s mother and my mother’s mother’s mother . . . she stole it off a sky serpent only a few miles from home while the serpent was distracted with . . . um, mating.”
Korbyn roared with laughter.
“I think that still qualifies as the bravest,” Pia said, after consideration.
After he wiped the tears from his eyes, Korbyn pointed at the storm. “Almost here. Concentrate on the feel of your body. Think of the lake.” Behind them, Pia retreated into the tent, and the flap was sealed shut.
Liyana rested her palms on her knees and straightened her back. She tried not to think about how exposed they were outside the tent. Around them, the horses snorted and stamped their feet as the wind tossed sand. Liyana breathed. In and out. In and out. Keeping herself firmly tethered to her body, she imagined her lake.
In her mind, she saw her lake. But the surface bubbled and frothed as if the wind stirred it, too. The cliffs roared with the sound of the sandstorm. She plunged into the churning waters, and she felt the magic fill her.
“You are the desert,” Korbyn said in her ear. The piece of her still in her body heard his words and felt his breath on her neck. “You are the wind.”
She poured herself into the air around their tent and felt her soul overflow. She rushed over the sands to meet the oncoming storm, and she slammed into it.
Wind crashed into her, and she felt as if she were splintering. Sand swirled around her and into her, and she was caught and twisted. The world spun with her, blackening as the sand blotted out the sun. She heard howls within the wind.
“Liyana!”
She heard her name from far away, as if the speaker were at the base of a well. She tried to draw closer to it, but she was whipped in circles. She felt herself rip from the center and shred within the storm.
“Do not lose yourself! Remember you!”
She was wind. She was desert.
She ran with the wolves.
She felt her own jaws made of rock and her own flesh made of sand. Her wolf body shed sand, dissolving and reforming as the storm spiraled. She howled and felt sand pour down her throat. She swallowed the sand as if it were air. She breathed sand.
The name sounded like mere syllables. She was more than a name. Releasing her wolf form, she spun into a cyclone of wind and sand. Faster and faster. She felt herself race over the desert floor.
She felt hands on her shoulders, her human shoulders, and for an instant she was yanked back fully into her body. She lost the feel of the wind inside her, and instead she felt the sand pelt her skin, stinging where it hit, but then her spirit stretched. She was more than a body! She was pure spirit merged with the storm—
Liyana felt warmth, a soft pressure, on her lips. She was aware of hands on the nape of her neck and fingers entwined in her hair. She breathed in and tasted Korbyn’s sweet breath. She kissed Korbyn as he kissed her.
He released her. “Change of plans!” he shouted over the storm. He pressed the handle of the sky serpent blade into her hands. “I’ll turn the storm. You watch for wolves.”
Lips tingling, Liyana clutched the knife. Beside her, Korbyn faced the storm. After a moment, she felt the wind spin faster and faster.
Through the furious circle of wind, Liyana saw shapes move, blurs at first but then more distinct. She caught a glimpse of a muzzle and then a thigh. She stared hard at the dark swirl of sand. The silhouette of a wolf appeared. It vanished into the storm.
Suddenly a wolf burst through the wall of wind and sand. It leaped at Korbyn. Springing toward it, Liyana sliced with the sky serpent blade. It hit the wolf’s torso, and the wolf dissolved into a spray of sand that spattered her and Korbyn.
His concentration broke, and his cyclone collapsed.
Wind and sand knocked Liyana backward against the tent. She clung to the tarp and to her knife. Wolves howled around her. She saw their shapes as shadows rushing in circles around them. Sand stung her eyes.
She tried to yell, “Korbyn!” but sand poured into her mouth. She coughed and gasped for air. She felt arms
