Mike stopped his texting and waited patiently while I fussed with the map. “There’s something wrong with this map,” I said.
“Wrong? I don’t think so.” A pause, then he continued, “What makes you think that?”
“The landmarks don’t line up,” I said. “North is that way, so those distant mountains should be off to our left, but the map shows them as straight ahead. It has to be wrong.”
“No, it’s right. It’s a local map; that’s why it looks wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
Mike reached over and turned the map in my lap so that the compass rose was now pointed west. “Maps printed in the Arabic world always use Mecca as a reference point.” At my puzzled look, he continued, “The top of any locally printed map will always point towards Mecca. It makes it easier for praying.”
Mike pointed to a tiny arrow on the side of the map. “That’s true north. Spin the map around to point that at north and it lines up.”
I was a bit embarrassed I hadn’t figured it out instantly. What other unconscious assumptions did I have that would get me into trouble here?
“Thanks, Mike,” I said. I pointed to where he had penciled an X onto the map. “This is our location?”
“Yes.”
“We need to go that way.” I pointed toward where my instincts said Logan was located.
“Yeah, that’s Riyadh. There’s no way we could survive a trip overland to get there. We’ll have to go west from here to hit the highway and get a ride.”
I read the map again. “The highway is thirty miles in the wrong direction. Then we’d have to wait for a ride. Hell, does this country even have Uber?”
“Let’s stick to kilometers while we’re here.”
“Fine, fifty kilometers then,” I said. “However you want to measure it, it’s still the wrong direction.” I shook my head. “I could make it to Riyadh overland in the time it would take to flag down some random vehicle and convince the driver to help.”
“You know they shave the heads of female prisoners here?”
“What the hell does that mean?” Then my inner wolf sent a duplicate of her previous image—me in a straitjacket, bare ass hanging out—but with a smoothly shaven head. Sometimes, she gets the point quicker than I do.
Mike waved at his phone. “We don’t need an Uber. I have someone coming to meet us on the highway. He should be there by midnight.”
“Midnight? We can get there a lot sooner if we leave now. I bet we could cover fifty kilometers in five or six hours, even over sand.”
Mike waved around. “Can you do this air-conditioning trick while we’re moving?”
“No,” I conceded. “I could do it for me, but juggling spells to cover us both would exhaust me.”
“So we need to stay here and wait for the late afternoon or early evening to start moving.”
“Okay,” I said. “Easy-peasy.” I took a long drink from my canteen, finishing it off.
Mike grimaced and said, “We still might not make it. We don’t really have enough water to last all day out here.”
I instantly regretted finishing off the water. I could survive without any for much longer than Mike. I pulled out my spare water bottle and handed it to him. “Here, you take this. I once went days with only a sip of water.”
“No. We’ll share equally. Just because you survived once doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to dehydrate yourself.”
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll share it.”
“Too bad you can’t magic up some water like you did with the cool air here.”
Ten minutes later, Mike shook me. “Luna, are you all right? You’ve been staring at nothing for a long time.”
“I think I have a way to get us more water.”
“How can I help?”
“Keep quiet and let me work through this spell. This will take a lot of magic.”
After another thirty minutes of meditation, I moved out of the shade and stood in the morning sun. Despite the heat, it felt good to stretch. The rock was about fifty feet—okay, thirty meters—around, with irregular gouges and depressions marking its surface. I circled it once, looking for the perfect spot.
After two circuits, I stopped at one broken section near our awning. A mini-cave, about shoulder height and one meter deep, had formed, perhaps from erosion by the sand-blasting winds. However it had come to be, it was perfect for my spell.
Using my studies with Mason, as well as the magical formula revealed by the genie, I rehearsed the spell.
“Mike, I need some water and the silver knife.”
Thoughtful as always, Mike handed me my gloves before offering the silver knife. I slipped on the right glove, took the dagger, and cupped my empty left hand.
“Pour water from your canteen into my palm,” I said.
“Are you sure this will work? We can’t really afford to waste any water.”
“Have faith, Mike.” I paused for a moment, then said, “I’m going to pronounce a spell in Fae. It might hurt your ears.”
“Okay.”
“Whatever you do, don’t try to remember the words. If spoken with the wrong inflection, they could be dangerous.”
Under a burning sun, using borrowed tools, the last of our water, and knowledge stolen from a mischievous genie, I started the spell.
“Like calls to like; life calls to life; let the earth release the water of life; let this stone weep with joy.”
The earth beneath our feet seemed to drop away and I almost stopped. No, it had instead become transparent to my vision. Layers of sand, rock, and sediment disappeared, revealing the aquifer hundreds of feet below us.
I repeated the spell, feeling how the water below yearned to join us here on the surface. All it would take would be—
I struck the magically hardened silver dagger into the rear of the mini-cave. The stone parted with a shriek. The
