An Authorized Excerpt
Shahzar sat beside
the driver shrouded in the forest green her husband
preferred. She watched the thick trees’ shadows on either
side of the road thin and eventually vanish. The passage to
the desert appeared well trodden, which made the smooth road
an easy journey. When they crossed into the sands, she felt
the change come over her body. The cold returned stronger
than ever. It made her fingers tingle, her body quake.
At that same moment,
Roderick cried out.
“Stop!” Shahzar
screamed.
The driver pulled
the reins to the side and the carriage parted from the
others in line. It halted by the mound of sand flanking the
road. The entire caravan started to slow because the six
drivers refused to leave behind one of their own.
Shahzar jumped down,
her boots sending a cloud of sand into the air around her
ankles. The sky had taken on the eerie blue of midnight,
casting the sister moons’ glow across the dunes. She could
hear Roderick talking within the confines of the carriage,
his high-pitched voice racing over words in Shan-Sei and
Edchir. She grasped the handle and wrenched the door open.
Darkness rushed out, ghostly wraiths swirling about,
touching her with outstretched fingers. She climbed the
ladder, and went inside, ignoring them.
Roderick sat on the
floor, his eyes fixed on one of the dark spirits. She knew
by the intensity of her husband’s gaze that he could see the
ghost. Worse, he spoke to it.
“Roderick?”
The sorcerer
finished his sentence and turned to regard his wife. “What
have you done, Shah? Why did you call them? The grave won’t
take them back now.”
Her eyes narrowed,
and she backed away from the carriage.
He moved to follow
her. “I told you the ways of Shan-Sei were dark.”
“You wanted
to come here,” she countered.
The couple faced
each other on the trampled road. The oxen and draft horses
in the caravan pawed at the ground, anxious to move again.
The still air seemed to make them nervous.
Roderick looked
around, seeing the wastelands for the first time. “This is
an unnatural place,” he said. “It makes no sense that the
tallest trees give way to a vast sand-covered emptiness.
Where is the in-between where trees have tried to root
within the desert, or sand has seeped onto the forest
floor?” He eyed the forestlands behind them, the dark wall
of foliage and trees.
“I know. I want to
go home,” she said, glancing at the road behind them. “Are
you sure you must see Kaladia? Let’s go home, back to the
hold.”
Roderick reached
down to grasp a handful of sand. He closed his eyes and let
it drizzle through his fingers. “What have they done here?”
he said to himself. “The earth is weeping and no one has
heard it for so long. No one has tried to comfort it. And
yet, if I will it, it will move for me. I can see how to do
this. It will obey me. It knows me.”
“You say things that
make no sense,” Shahzar cried. “You’re frightening me.”
His brows furrowed,
and he shrugged. “Don’t you feel it?”
She shook her head.
“Let me show you.”
Again he knelt and took up a fistful of sand. Roderick
closed his eyes and opened his palm. The particles rose up,
swirled in a small whirlwind above his hand and floated
there. “See?” He opened his eyes and smiled at her look of
shock. He let his hand fall back to his side and the sand
continued to float as he willed it. “The old ones changed
the land, made it malleable. But they went too far and it
killed everything.” The sand curled in on itself until it
formed a sphere.
Shahzar frowned.
Behind Roderick the spirits waited, gathering in the
carriage to speak with him again. “Go!” she ordered, waving
her hand at them.
Roderick turned and
sighed as the dark ones obeyed and fled back into the
shadows. “They listen to you.” His statement reflected his
surprise. Her own magic was not nearly as developed as his
and yet they obeyed her as if she were a great sorceress.
“Of course they do,”
she murmured. “They’re Shan-Sei, and I am their queen.”
Roderick willed the
ball higher in the air until it hovered in front of his
face. “But can you raise the sand?” he asked, a hint of
challenge in his voice.
She smirked at him.
He chuckled and the
ball fell apart and crashed back onto the road. For a
moment, the white light flashed in his eyes.
Shahzar shook her
head. “Let’s go home,” she breathed. “I just want to go back
home.”
The light faded, and
he frowned. “I want to see the city of my father. I want to
touch the icon on the altar in the Shan-Sei temple, and pray
in the circle room where he prayed as a boy.”
She pursed her lips
and looked away. There is no use arguing with him,
she knew. She surveyed the carts and men waiting for her to
start the caravan again. The longer they stood there, the
longer it would be to get to Kaladia. And the longer it
would be before she could convince her husband to go back
home.
“If it’s not what
you imagined…” She turned her back on him so he wouldn’t be
able to tell how tense she’d become. “Promise me we’ll
return to the forestlands. Your father didn’t want you to go
to Kaladia. Before you found me, you didn’t want it, but now
I see its darkness all around you, calling you there.”
“I’m too strong for
it,” Roderick assured her. He placed a hand on her shoulder,
and she could feel the cold of his skin through her cloak.
“The dark power cannot corrupt me. I only wish to feel it,
to know its strength.”
“Promise me,” she
repeated.
He clapped his hands
together and she felt the flutter of wings by her face. A
raven sped past, its inky feathers grazing her skin, but the
smell of the bird was all wrong. Shahzar looked over her
shoulder as he clapped another incarnation into being. The
second one flew up and landed on the top of the carriage.
“Stop that. You
promise me now, or I’m turning and going back to the forest
alone!”
A third rose,
different than the first two. “Look,” he chortled, excited
over his new trick. “A rook.”
Her hand found the
hilt of her dagger. “Promise me now!”
