Erascius.The last time she’d seen him, they’d been plummeting to the ground from atop a cliff—a sure death for both of them, had Zen not come and saved her. Erascius should have died.
She shifted her grip on That Which Cuts Stars and stepped forward to confront that distant figure—
And then he was gone. Between one blink and the next, so suddenly that Lan wondered whether she had imagined it.
She stared at the dunes cresting the skyline for a few moments more, breathing fast, before a cough behind her drew her attention.
On the ground, Dilaya was stirring. She’d cracked open her eye, which was beginning to bruise. “Little fox spirit,” she croaked.
Lan knelt by the other girl’s side. “Horse-face,” she said, relieved. “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad you’re alive.”
Dilaya looked blearily at Lan for a moment. Then her gaze hardened. “You used it.”
There was no doubt what she referred to: the power of the Demon God within her. That which Lan had sworn not to use. And she hadn’t; the Silver Dragon had unleashed its own power in order to protect her life.
But Lan understood the fear and reproach in Dilaya’s eyes. They had all been there to witness Zen’s downfall, how he had lost control over his Demon God. Had led the Elantians to Skies’ End.
“The Demon God has the obligation to save my life. That and nothing more,” Lan reassured Dilaya. “I have never called upon it willingly, and I will not easily do so. I remember what happened at Skies’ End. You have my word.”
Dilaya’s eye darted from one of Lan’s to the other, as though searching. Then she let loose a breath. She shifted her arm and cursed as she winced in pain. “Help me up.”
Together, Lan and Tai pulled Dilaya to her feet. The girl swayed slightly, her face pale and shining with sweat. For a moment, she looked as though she might faint again, but sheclenched her teeth and, perhaps through sheer stubbornness, remained standing.
“You need a healer,” Lan said. “We have to get to Nakkar.”
“Nakkar,” Tai agreed. “We go.”
Even Dilaya recognized the state of her wounds enough not to argue.
Lan hesitated. A few dozen steps away, the caravan traders who had survived the sand demon had begun to pick themselves up. “We should help them,” she said.
“No,” Dilaya said flatly. “We already have. We can’t risk one of them recognizing us and turning us in for the pretty price the Elantians have put on our heads.”
She was right, yet Lan couldn’t help but feel that they had failed. A mother had begun wailing for her child; a man sobbed as he held his wife’s prone body in his arms. In the dim light, none of them would see a small group of three stealing away.
Lan glanced at the skyline again. Nothing but a clear night of stars. She could have sworn she’d sensed that Elantian presence somewhere out there in the shadows of the dunes.
Perhaps one day, they would live in a land where they no longer needed to run.
The remainder of the journey to Nakkar might have taken only a bell or more, but time seemed to stretch as far as the unending desert before them. It was laborious work: the sand was soft and the night grew cold, and soon Dilaya’s breathing became labored and her entire páo was soaked through with sweat. Just when Lan thought the girl might collapse, she spotted a change in the undulating landscape.
Nakkar.
Unlike those of other desert towns, Nakkar’s walls were eggshell white and free of crenellations. The tops were crusted with blue jewels that glimmered like ocean waves inthe moonlight. Beyond the walls rose rammed-earth houses, their roofs studded with gold and lapis lazuli. And towering inthe distance were the shadows of snowcapped mountains that plunged into the clouds. A great waterfall cleaved them like a sheet of pale silk.
“Finally,” Dilaya croaked, but Lan could tell she was impressed. “The City of Immortals.”
Their awe was short-lived as they approached the city gates and the familiar press of metal weighed upon the qì—Elantian magic. They joined a throng of merchants and travelers from all along the Jade Trail awaiting entry. In the flickering torchlight that illuminated the gates, camels huffed, donkeys brayed, horses whickered, and their owners murmured to hush them.
“Veil down,” Lan reminded Dilaya as they approached. “We should split up. I’ll try to get in with one of the caravans. Tai, you take Dilaya as your wife. Tell them she suffers from a bout of sun sickness and the runs.”
It was difficult to discern whether Dilaya or Tai was more disgusted at the prospect of being joined by marriage, but the disguise worked. The Royal Magicians might have Lan and her companions at the top of their Most Wanted list, but that served as low motivation to the foot soldiers stationed outside one of the largest trading cities, checking thousands of travelers entering and leaving through the gates each day. The patrol cast a cursory glance at Dilaya and Tai before quickly waving them in (covering his nose as he did so, as though afraid of catching whatever mysterious affliction Dilaya had).
And then it was Lan’s turn. She squinted as a torch was shoved before her face, its light searingly bright after bells of darkness. There was a moment when she looked into the patrol’s green eyes and thought of a different Elantian soldier from Haak’gong in a lifetime past—and she could have swornthis soldier would see the fear in her eyes, sense the way her body seized up.
But he only yawned and waved her through, the torchlight shifting away from her face to the next merchant.
Lan caught up to Dilaya and Tai where they awaited her, by the side of the road. The three had gotten into Nakkar, one of the busiest trading posts of the Jade Trail—and one of the most heavily patrolled in the west of the Last Kingdom. Now they had to locate the fabled library guarded by the Yuè clan and find out whether it would reveal the location of Shaklahira, the Forgotten City of the West.
