Барб Хенди - First and Last Sorcerer

Ghassan said nothing for longer than she liked and then glanced away. “Ah, Wynn. What a sage you would have made. I am banished from my guild branch, hunted in my own homeland, and after this I fear you will end up the same.”

True enough, yet she didn’t have time to worry about it now. “Ghassan! Have you—or anyone—ever read of a recorded body of water in this region?”

Magiere stepped closer and looked less friendly in waiting for the answer.

Slowly, Ghassan nodded. “There was once ... a shallow salt lake, perhaps large enough to count as a small sea.” Then he hesitated. “But that does not help us now.”

“Why not?” Magiere demanded.

“Because the ‘sand’ in the reference covering the lake’s bottom was saturated with salt. As the lake dried out, crystals hardened and formed a vast reflective surface. With more heat over time, and wind, it fractured, broke down, and blew for leagues in all directions. Then there is also the distance to reach the dead lake bed.”

Wynn frowned. “I don’t see the problem.”

“Not only is it too far to travel in a single night,” he continued, “in the worst heat of the whole nation, but salt crystals in the sand catch and reflect the sun. Anything there in the daylight will die—be cooked—by the sheer heat. Some have tried, and their bones might still be found in the crater ... if anyone could go there and live to leave again.”

Ghassan turned to Magiere. “No one can survive the crossing.”

“I could,” Magiere said and looked to Wynn’s robe pocket. “And that thing can lead me.”

“No!” Leesil snapped.

Wayfarer slipped away into the bedchamber. She could not bear to listen any longer. Both beds were still unmade, and she thought to at least straighten the blankets for something to do. Instead, she stood staring down at the chest containing the orb.

“Are you unwell?”

Turning, she found Osha peeking in around one side of the sheet curtain.

His long white-blond hair hung loose, and where it fell down the sides of his head, it divided around his ears, exposing their elongated tips. He was so tall he had to hunch or his head would have banged the opening’s top as he stepped inside.

Of any male among Wayfarer’s people that she had met, only Brot’ân’duivé was slightly taller than Osha.

“Yes ... I am well,” she answered and looked away.

“You do not wish to hear the discussion?”

“They will argue until exhausted, and then Magiere will do as she wants. I have no say in this or whether I go with them or not. They have not even noticed me gone.”

When she glanced back, he was studying her, as he had done too often of late.

Osha stepped closer. “They have not noticed I am gone either.”

No, probably not. Magiere, Leesil, and Chap—and Osha’s beloved Wynn—had their “purpose,” as Brot’ân’duivé would say. The greimasg’äh would also follow wherever they went, as would Chane and Shade ... in their devotion to Wynn. The strange domin had his secrets too, and he would follow after Wynn or Magiere.

Wayfarer knew she was merely an extra responsibility to them. Osha at least had his bow and his skills.

What good was she to anyone?

She had been marked by her people’s ancestral spirits, driven out to wander beyond her people’s lands and be forgotten. This was proven by the name she had taken—the name she had been led to take—upon visiting the ancestors.

Sheli’câlhad ... “To a Lost Way.”

Osha was also a wanderer, for being caught in Brot’ân’duivé’s war with his caste, but instead of turning to her in shared loss, his heart had turned to someone else.

The shouting in the outer room grew louder, and Wayfarer could not shut it out. She even heard Chap snarl and then bark, and those sounds made her look for anything to take her thoughts elsewhere.

In the room’s far corner, at the foot of the bed she slept in with Chap, was the pile of Osha’s belongings. Among those was his long, narrow cloth-wrapped bundle.

He hated that bundle perhaps as much as she hated her true name. He never opened it unless someone forced him to do so, but a thought—a memory, a little thing she could not quite catch—nagged at her now.

“I want to see the sword again,” Wayfarer said without thinking.

Osha did not answer.

She turned, seeing pain and shock in his eyes, as if she had asked for something offensive. Stiffening, she shrank away half a step and dropped her gaze. How would she feel if he ever slipped and called her by that hated name again?

“Please,” she began, hesitantly. “Could I see it?”

“You have already seen it.”

His tone warned her not to ask again, but now that she had started, she could not ... would not stop.

“Only for a moment on the ship leaving Bela, and I was not myself then ... still mourning a lost family and home ... a lost life.” She paused and strengthened her voice. “I did not truly look at it, and I wish to now.”

When he did not answer, she again added, “Please,” as she raised her eyes.

Osha’s mouth tightened. He crossed the room in three long strides and snatched up the long, narrow bundle. Grabbing the cord holding the cloth closed, he opened it in one wrench.

The cloth unrolled in his grip and the blade fell on the bedcover without his having to touch it.

Wayfarer stepped closer, studying the long, sweeping white metal sword. The nearly straight blade was as broad as three of Osha’s fingers. The last third swept slightly back from the forward edge in a shallow arc to the point, and even the back of that last third was sharpened. Where the top third joined the blade’s lower part, a back barb swept forward toward the tip.

The hilt strut had been fitted with tawny, shimmering wood like that of the living ships of their people, though it was not covered in a weave of cured hide strips. The strut had been bare when Osha first received it, and he had not seen to having it finished. Brot’ân’duivé had done that in the fashion of anmaglâhk stilettos.

When the greimasg’äh had returned to their cabin, having seen to the hilt being finished, it was the only other time Wayfarer had seen the blade. She had not paid attention, for her own suffering had been too great.

The hilt might be twice as long as the width of Osha’s hand. Like the blade curved slightly back, that hilt’s end swept slightly forward. Two protrusions extended where the hilt met the blade’s base. The top curved forward while the bottom one swept slightly back.

Wayfarer then remembered where she had seen such a weapon, though she had never seen such elsewhere the first time she saw it. The other time had come after Osha had left her and stayed behind for Wynn.

“I have seen this ... or a drawing of it in a book.”

When she looked, the revulsion on his face shifted to confusion. “Where?”

“In the library of a guild annex in Chathburh,” she answered. “I was looking through a book written by a people akin to us on this continent, the Lhoin’na. This is the weapon carried by their protectors—their Anmaglâhk—called the Shé’ith, only they ride horses and carry large weapons openly for all to see.”

Osha slowly shook his head as his expression darkened again.

Wayfarer’s thoughts tripped one over another.

“You never told me where the sword came from, only that it was forced on you. Who did this?”

His head dropped as he growled back at her. “Who else works in the white metal?”

She had guessed the Chein’âs—the Burning Ones—must have made it. They were a race that lived in the fiery depths of the world and created all weapons for the Anmaglâhk.