Mellis rested her head on his shoulder. “It will be all right, Ais,” she promised. “Have you ever wondered if, perhaps, this is what the Sand Lord wants for you?”
He wants me to be a slobbering idiot, an imbecile with no control?
Ais shook his head. “I want you to leave Kezare,” he whispered. “It isn’t safe for you here.”
“Ais I … is that really necessary?”
Ais nodded. “Sharezan is too powerful, Mellis. I can’t protect you. Our raid on the boat races went wrong—he knew we were coming. He pulled out all of his money, and left a note for me. Tain delivered it.”
Mellis’s grip grew tighter.
“Take Melly and go,” he urged. “Use our savings and buy passage on a ship to the south. Pick a town—don’t tell me which one—go to the Hall of Judgement and tell them who you are. Request sanctuary, and stay there until you get word from the Hall Judge that Sharezan has been captured.”
Mellis inhaled sharply. “Ais, that could take months!”
Ais shook his head. “We’re close now, Mellis,” he promised. “This is the first time Sharezan has run from us. We’ve got half of his advisors in prison. His organization is close to falling apart—someone will get to him soon. If not us, then a rival.”
Mellis said nothing. He took her silence as assent.
He opened his eyes, leaning over to kiss her on the forehead. “I don’t know what the Sand Lord has planned for us,” he admitted. “But I will see Sharezan captured, no matter what other duties I have been given. I think I know who he is. But … if you hear word that I have died, do not come back to Kezare unless the Hall Judge assures you they found my body.”
#
“You’re doing the right thing,” Eric approved.
Eric ignored the comment, continuing to pack his things.
“You’re not abandoning him,” Eric continued. “He doesn’t even need you, really.”
Eric continued to pack, stuffing the rest of his clothing in the bag. He paused, however, shooting a look over his shoulder. A look toward Kenton’s rooms.
“Aren’t you listening to me?” Eric demanded.
Eric turned, looking at himself in the mirror. He looked very indignant.
“You have no purpose here. You’re useless. What do you do? Eat Kenton’s food and make the occasional sarcastic comment? He doesn’t need you.”
Eric looked over the rooms that had been his for the last six days. Only six days. It hadn’t been very long.
“You spoke with your father,” Eric continued. “You did what you came here to do. Now, it’s time to get moving again. You know what happens when you don’t keep moving.”
Eric nodded solemnly.
“Good, I’m glad we agree. Now keep packing.”
Eric moved to comply, stuffing his remaining possessions into his darkside canvas bag. He paused on the last one, however, a polished carapace scabbard. It was a simple thing, inscribed with the crossed spears that were the symbol of the Tower. Chipped with age, the scabbard was hardly the finest possession he had ever owned. It was, however, one of the most precious.
“You think he won’t to it again?” Eric warned with a spiteful whisper.
Eric didn’t know why he had kept the scabbard all these years—Kenton probably didn’t even remember giving it to him. Yet, he could still hear the youthful Kenton’s voice in his mind. You’ll be Lord General, and I’ll be Lord Mastrell. Think of what we’ll do!
“All these years, he still thinks it was your father who drove you away,” Eric continued. “He doesn’t have any clue. You think he has changed, but he hasn’t. He will still find a way to use you in his plans, in his schemes. He cares nothing for others—he is selfish. All he cares about is his fight, his success, his arguments. He doesn’t even pay attention to what he does to those around him.”
This time, however, Eric’s cajoling failed. Eric knew better. If Kenton hadn’t offered himself as a sacrifice, if he hadn’t, for once in his life, done something noble, Eric could have believed him the same person—no matter how solemn he had become. The offer to fight Drile, however, changed things.
He’s going to need me, Eric thought, slowly beginning to unpack his bag.
“You are an idiot,” Eric warned.
Eric continued to unpack.
“He’ll use you,” Eric warned. “Before this week is out, all you have striven to become will be lost. You’ll return to the way you were before—an automaton, ordered around by the will of others.
Eric continued to unpack.
“And that won’t be the end,” Eric warned. “Then it will happen. What you always feared. You’ll not only follow them, you’ll become like them. You will take control of the lives of others. You’ll give the orders, and they will follow you. They will die for you. Can you handle that, Eric? The responsibility. The pain … .”
This gave Eric pause. His eyes shot over toward the scabbard, sitting on one of the room’s chairs. He had thrown the sword away long ago. He should have done the same with the scabbard.
With a sigh, he finished his unpacking.
“You’re a fool,” Eric warned.
“I know,” Eric agreed.
#
Khriss’s rooms had undergone a massive transformation over the last twelve hours. Her beauty products lay in a jumble on the floor, and the table which had held them now sat next to the far wall. Beside it stood her night stand and the bench-like table from Baon’s room.
Upon this extended group of tables sat a jumble of instruments, ledgers, and glass containers of all sizes. Khriss’s scientific equipment, packed carefully before her departure and nearly forgotten in all that had happened, had finally been remembered.
On her walls she had pinned charts of the moon’s turnings, as seen from darkside. She intended to make similar charts from dayside, measuring the moon’s distance from the horizon during different times of day, a method that would eventually let her test Dovendel’s postulated circumference of the planet.
Beside the mooncharts she had pinned several maps of dayside she had sent N’Teese to purchase for her. On one of these she had marked the route her expedition had taken, as closely as she could estimate. Another chart listed the days she had been on dayside, along with columns for measured windspeed, temperature, and barometer. She couldn’t, of course, make such measurements for the days that had passed, but starting now was better than never.
At the far end of the table lay a series of drawings, detailing every sandling she could remember seeing. They were on large sheets of black dayside paper—she had found the oily writing utensils of the continent very easy to draw with. The pictures were waiting for N’Teese to return with a hotplate to bind the ink to the paper.
Several glass jars contained smaller sandlings, ranging from as small as Khriss’s thumbnail to one as big as her fist. Some of the city boys had gladly caught them for her earlier in the day, especially when she promised them a half-lak coin for each one they brought her.
In the direct center of the conglomeration of beakers, charts, books, and instruments, sat Khriss, her eye pressed to the eyepiece of a microscope. A small oil-burning lamp provided light to be focused and reflected against or above the bottom plate, by which she was able to make her discovery.
“Look at this!” she said energetically.
There was, of course, no one to hear her. So, she repeated her exclamation louder. A few moments Baon appeared at the doorway.
“Baon, look at this!” she urged, pulling her chair away from the microscope.
He approached with a raised eyebrow.
“Look in the top of the microscope,” Khriss urged. “Like it was a spyglass.”
Baon did so, squinting as he bent down to look through the microscope.
“All right,” Khriss said. “Now look at this.” She reached over, changing the glass plate at the bottom of the microscope. “See?” she asked.
“No,” Baon informed, standing up.
“Didn’t they lo
ok the same to you?” Khriss asked.
Baon shrugged. “Similar.”
“Only similar?” Khriss asked.
“They were different shapes,” Baon explained.
Khriss sighed. “Why am I talking to you? Where’s Cynder?”
“Right here, My Lady,” Cynder said, entering the room. “I heard you all the way from downstairs.”
Khriss pushed Baon away, urging Cynder to approach. “Here,” she said, pointing at the microscope. “What do you see?”
Cynder bent over, squinting into the microscope. “I would say a piece of carapace,” he guessed.
“Right,” Khriss said, switching plates again. “Now look at this.”
“The same, My Lady.”
“No,” Khriss said with a smile. “That is sand.”
“Sand?” Cynder asked with interest. “Surely not.”
“Here,” Khriss said, “look at this.” She gestured him over to three piles of sand. One was white, one black, and the final one a crystalline brownish color. “What do you see?”
“The first is regular dayside sand,” Cynder answered. “The second is dayside sand that has had water poured on it, and the third is darkside sand.”
“Right except for one,” Khriss corrected. “The last one is dayside sand too. That is sand that has been eaten by a sandling and excreted.”
“Sandling feces?” Cynder asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Kind of,” Khriss admitted. “The point is, Cynder, that the sand which has passed through a sandling’s gullet looks just like darkside sand. Don’t you see? There is nothing odd about dayside sand—it has the same silicate structure as what we have on darkside. The difference in color doesn’t come from composition, but from something that covers it.”
“Covers it… ?” Cynder said, frowning.
“A kind of film,” Khriss explained enthusiastically. “Very thin, but very resilient. Apparently it grows or accumulates on the surface of the sand. If you pour water on it, it turns black. If a sandling eats the sand, however …”
“The film gets digested,” Cynder said with a nod, stepping aside as Baon peered into the microscope again. “I had wondered how all these sandlings survived by eating sand.”
“What you were looking at in the microscope was some of this film that I scraped off of black sand,” Khriss explained. “I’ve got some white scrapings too—they seem identical except for the color. What we have to do now is figure out what it is.”
“It looks like carapace,” Baon mumbled.
Khriss paused. “What?” she asked.
“Carapace,” Baon said, standing up straight. “Those flecks look like little bits of carapace.”
Khriss frowned, leaning over to look again. He did have a point—the black scrapings did look a little bit like carapace.
“Lichen grows all over the place back on darkside,” Baon theorized. “Maybe its the same sort of thing, only a dayside version.”
“That would make it a living creature, dear Baon,” Cynder said with a chuckle. “Besides, lichen needs water to survive. I hardly think that—”
“No, Cynder,” Khriss said, still looking through the microscope. Perhaps Baon wasn’t has hopeless scientifically as she had presumed. “He might be right. Sandlings don’t seem to need water to live, so maybe this lichen doesn’t either. We might be looking at the ultimate ancestor of all life on dayside!”
“Well, perhaps,” Cynder admitted. “A lichen that adheres to silicate surfaces… . It would grow very slowly, but with enough time, and with so much sand . …”
“It isn’t exactly the same as carapace,” Khriss said, moving to put out the oil lamp. “For instance, it doesn’t melt when you pour water on it—I already tried. There is, however, something of a reaction. Here, watch this. Baon, would you please cover the grundlefish?”
Baon complied, placing the covering cloths over the fish globes. In the darkness, Khriss picked up a vial of water and moved over next to one of her piles of white sand.
“Watch closely,” she said, and poured the water on the sand.
As she did so, there was a slight flash of light. It was weak, but in the room’s blackness it was easily perceptible.
“The lights, Baon,” Khriss requested.
He complied, revealing a very interested Cynder.
“The sand releases light when water touches it,” he mused.
“Yes,” Khriss agreed with an energetic smile. “But, there’s something more. What color was the light you saw?”
Cynder frowned. “I don’t really know. It passed quickly.”
“Was it white?” Khriss prodded.
“No,” Baon said suddenly.
Khriss looked up with surprise. The warrior stood with an interested look on his face.
“It was … shifting,” Baon continued. “Radiant, like shimmering water or …”
“Mother of pearl?” Khriss asked.
“I suppose you could call it that,” Baon agreed. “A kind of soft rainbow, scaled toward lighter colors. I’ve seen its color before.”
Khriss nodded. “It is the exact color—or combination thereof—given off by sand that a sand master is controlling. What’s more, when a sand master is done using sand, it turns black, just like this.”
“But what does it mean?” Cynder asked.
“I don’t know,” Khriss said, still enthusiastic. “But it is encouraging. Don’t you see? We can take this sand back to darkside with us! We can grow the lichen on our own sand, and use it like the sand masters do.”
Cynder was rubbing a bit of the wet sand between his fingers, regarding it with a critical eye. “So, what makes the sand white again?”
Khriss paused. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I’ve only been working on it for one day. I intend to find out how this works, Cynder, and when I bring it back to Elis with me, we’ll have a weapon Scythe has never even heard of!”
“A worthy goal, duchess,” Cynder approved. “It was Prince Gevalden’s dream, was it not?”
“Yes, it was,” Khriss said. “No one believed him … not even me. I intend to make up for that.”
Cynder nodded with a smile. “May the Divine watch over you, My Lady,” he said, turning to go. Baon moved to join him.
“Baon, please wait a moment,” Khriss requested.
Baon paused, turning with a question on his face. Outside she could hear Cynder speaking with Acron, who had apparently been coming up to see what everyone was doing.
“Baon, you’re from Iiaria, correct?” Khriss asked.
The large warrior nodded.
“Have you ever seen Scythe himself?” she asked.
“Occasionally,” Baon said.
“What does he look like?” Khriss asked.
“An Iiarian, like myself,” Baon explained. “Tall, with very dark skin. He is a powerful man, duchess. Very powerful—and not just because of what he controls. He bears himself like a warrior, with a firm stance and commanding presence. And, of course, his Skycolor is violet—the color of nobility.”
Khriss sat back in her chair, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. She had always assumed the tales of Scythe’s power were superstitions, but she had assumed the same about the sand masters.
“Is it true what they say about him, Baon?” she asked. “About his … abilities?”
“His magic?” Baon asked. “Yes.”
Khriss felt herself grow cold. She had always known Elis stood against a monster and a despot, but she had taken comfort in the fact that their enemy was a man, just like every other man. A man capable of being defeated.
“Are you … certain?” she asked.
“Duchess,” Baon explained. “When I was a young boy, Scythe looked like a man in his mid-twenties. He looked exactly the same the day I left Iiaria. The histories say he is hundreds of years old, and I believe them. I have seen him do things impossible of any normal man.”
“You always believed we would find the sand mages, didn’t you?” Khriss asked c
uriously.
Baon nodded.
“But you didn’t argue with me? Correct me when I assumed they were a myth?”
“You wouldn’t have listened to me,” Baon said simply.
“No,” Khriss said with a sigh. “I probably wouldn’t have. Thank you, Baon.”
The warrior nodded, turning to leave the room. Khriss watched him go with a slight frown. What else aren’t you telling me, Baon? What else do you keep hidden because you assume I wouldn’t believe you?
Suddenly, Acron’s concerns from before resurfaced. She couldn’t suspect Baon of wishing her harm—he had proven his loyalty too much for that. But, she couldn’t help wondering how much of the truth he was telling her.
She didn’t know what she sensed—somehow she knew he was hiding something. It came from the way he held himself, the way he answered questions. The odd thing was, most of her suspicions came because of his teachings. If he hadn’t trained her to be more observant …
What are you hiding, Baon?
#
You’ve realized what you did wrong, now you just have to realize what you did right. Somewhere in the middle is who you really are.
Eric’s words, spoken almost absently, continued to pick at Kenton’s mind. Who was Kenton really? Was he the rebel who had been Praxton’s nemesis all those years? He hoped not—he had discovered recently how many problems that person had. But, was he the Lord Mastrell? Was he a man who was bound by tradition and Laws, a mysterious force that watched Lossand with a manipulative eye? He didn’t like that idea either. Laws were important, true, but so was change.
So what was he? Was he the martyr, like Eric claimed? A man determined to see himself killed, even if such extreme measures weren’t required? He didn’t think so. Drile would probably kill him, that was true, but he wasn’t going to blindly walk to the sacrifice without a fight.
Who am I?
He leaned against his balcony—repaired now, even though he couldn’t remember asking anyone to take care of it for him. Across the way he could see Drile lounging on his own balcony, surrounded by a group of attendants. The former mastrell waved toward Kenton with a flippant gesture, poking one of his comrades and inciting a laugh with some unheard comment.
Kenton’s plan had worked, at least. Since the challenge a few days ago, Drile had stopped his paranoid ravings and his attempts to undermine Kenton’s power. The former mastrell acted happy whenever he saw Kenton, obeying any commands with overdone bows. Occasionally, Drile spoke of things he would do once he became Lord Mastrell—he even had the gall to ask Kenton his opinion on some of the ideas.