Chapter One
To the Grave
In the distance, through the haze of the desert, a shapebegan to appear.
At first, Isaac thought it was a sandwyrm surfacing throughthe dunes.He started to panic again.His mind grasped for his books, all thebestiaries lying heavily in his pack, trying to remember every detail he hadever learned about the eyeless dragons.They were colossal, easily the size ofa city road.They were territorial.They were vicious when disturbed.Theirglass-like scales were impervious to arrows and blades.Most importantly, ifIsaac could see the wyrm now, it had already long ago sensed his presence, andit was only breaching the earth to close in for the kill.
He stopped, feeling the heat of the sand through the thinsoles of his boots.Out in the distance, the shape only grew larger.For thelife of him, Isaac could not spot the vestigial wings, the glittering hide ofscales, or any other key identifying anatomy.The lessons from his textbooksslipped from his mind like mist.
He blinked, standing tall at the peak of a dune.Down below,in a valley of sand, the shape crawled through a shimmering haze of heat.
It was not a mirage.Something massive was there.
He licked his lips.
When he tried to focus his eyes, the sand and sky began toswirl around him, like a rug pulled beneath his feet.He lost his balance,stumbling briefly, cursing himself for making even more vibrations for thecreature to sense.
He was dizzy.
He was utterly, desperately thirsty.
He was growing certain that he was going to die.
He knew he shouldn’t have been out during the day.Whilepressing the scrolls and phylacteries into his pack, his uncle had instructedhim to travel by night, emphasizing that Isaac should never, under anycircumstances, choose to brave the sun’s light, as this was the time when the wyrms would vent their sediments into the alluvial watersbeneath the earth, which brought them dangerously near to the surface.
Of course, the heat was also a concern.
He licked his lips again.
For a time, Isaac had followed his uncle’s advice, makingcamp inside dry gulches during the day and travelling around the deeper pocketsof sand during the night.Unfortunately, by his fourth day in the desert, hehad exhausted his waterskins, and he had been forced to scavenge in the morninglight for what little vegetation existed in this desolate area of the world,ripping the plants from the scraggly dirt and sucking the moisture from theirroots.His rations of salt meat and hardtack had only worsened his thirst.Now,on the dawn of the sixth day, he was stumbling through a valley of dunes,searching for an oasis his map told him was only a half-day’s journey away.Heknew that, if he didn’t reach it soon, he would certainly die.
His mission was in grave danger.
He was thirsty.
Gods above, he was thirsty.
Right now, all he could see was a large shape heading in hisdirection.Isaac was no longer certain it was not a mirage.It seemed to floaton the edge of the sand like a blade of grass on still water, curling withinthe hazes of heat.
Isaac attempted to steel himself.
He wiped the sweat from his brow and reached down into thequiver at his hip, pulling out a rolled sheet of vellum, which began to glowupon contact with his skin.He unfurled the page and held the faintly limnedsigil in the direction of the approaching shape.With his other hand, heperformed the necessary mnemonics, the motions that would bring about themagical transmutation of energy.A familiar draining sensation sucked throughhis inner being, channeling into the scroll.Isaac had to force himself not tostumble again.
For all their might and ferocity, the sandwyrms were notmindless creatures.A single warning was capable of scaring them away.Thespell would be exhausting to perform, in a time where he needed to conserve allthe strength he had left—at the same time, anything less than a catalyzed blastwould not intimidate the beast.He had to seem like a threat.
Isaac aimed.His breath steadied.
In the distance, the shape seemed to become—
A fireball erupted from the scroll, arcing across the duneslike a second sun blazing through the sky.Isaac wobbled on his feet, thesudden transfer of energy nearly buckling his legs.He watched with dizziedeyes as the fireball completed its downward trajectory, exploding into a nearbydune, searing the sand into glass, the edges of the flames raining across thebody of the wyrm.Isaac expected the beast to quicklyflee into the clay and rock below the dunes.He had encountered more than adozen wyrms in his trek across the desert, and all of them had decided toretreat rather than risk a determined battle.
Instead, as he watched, the shape began to change.
Suddenly, Isaac could make out more details.He saw theangled spire of a prow.He saw a top deck festooned with lines of netting andrope.He saw cannon portholes stitched in rows across a wooden broadside.Finally, he saw twin masts sporting a single large sail, which glowed with thelarge, circular sigil of wind propulsion magic.
The shape had not been a sandwyrm.
It was a sandship.
