It had been relatively smooth sailing across the sand dunesof the Emaran Desert. The sandsong had remained silent each night, and this far north and west, towns and caravanserai grew sparse—meaning Elantian presence had also become a seemingly distant threat.
Lan knew, though, that they were never far away.
Erascius had seen the star maps; she’d made the choice to yield them rather than the lives of thousands of people—herpeople. She and the Royal Magician were in a bizarre stalemate: he could not harm her so long as she had a Demon God bound to her, and she refused to use the power of the Silver Dragon to kill him.
The race was on. In the end, even if he tracked down the Azure Tiger and the Crimson Phoenix, she would destroy them with the Godslayer.
Now, she simply had to find it. And she was getting closer.
Each step in the sand felt like time trickling out beneath her feet—not only on the Elantian front. Without much to keep her mind occupied besides trekking through the desert by means of the Light Arts, Lan’s thoughts inevitably drifted to Zen.
She’d left him wounded and fighting the Demon God bound inside him for control of his life.
Kneeling over him with her dagger pointed at his chest, she had weighed her choices. Trying to kill him would have been futile with his life and soul guarded by a Demon God. Yet she’d wondered, as she contemplated sliding her blade into his heart, whether she could have done it even knowing he’d live.
Lan landed on the next sand dune, a stitch in her side and an ache deep in her throat.I wish for you not to go anywhere without me. In this world and the next.
She blinked back the sting of tears. “Liar,” she whispered. Her breath misted before her, turning the clear sky and brightmoon into a haze of cold silver. She swiped a hand across her face. The night came into focus again, and that was when she noticed something strange.
“Dilaya,” Lan called to the blur that shot forward with stubborn persistence ahead of her. “Dilaya. Dilaya!HORSE-FACE!”
Several dunes away, the silhouette skidded to a halt and turned to face Lan with a raised eyebrow.
“We don’t have time for another break, weak-lunged little fox spirit,” Dilaya called. “If that Spirit Summoner who hovers between life and death each day can travel for leagues, thenyoucan certainly keep going.”
“I don’t. I don’thover.” Tai alighted on the dune next to Lan with a frown. “Ilisten.To the souls and spirits between life and—”
“It’s just an expression, Ghost Boy,” Dilaya interrupted, exasperated.
Lan pointed at the sky. “Look at the stars.”
Dilaya rounded on Lan. “You aredead meatif you made us stop for some stargazing when we’re only a fewliaway from—”
“Same. They are the same,” Tai breathed. “They are the same as…as a while ago.”
“Dilaya,” Lan said slowly. “For how long have we been ‘a fewliaway’ from Crescent Spring?”
The Jorshen Steel clan matriarch’s head tipped to the sky, her eye narrowed, as she made out the patterns in the constellations.
And then she swore and stamped her foot so hard, part of the sand dune she stood on collapsed.
Tai reached into his storage pouch, its white spirit bell flashing in the moonlight. From within, he withdrew a glass vial. It was filled with clear water. A single section of a willow branch drifted within it.
Lan eyed the vial with interest. In her time at the school,she had read of the Water of Purity that was blessed by the Goddess of Mercy. Practitioners used it to reveal hidden Seals.
Tai unstoppered the bottle and poured a single drop onto the sand. It lingered for a moment, shimmering like a pearl, and then dissipated.
Smoke—or what resembled smoke—poured out of the spot where the droplet had vanished. It grew into ghostly willow branches, leaves unfurling and climbing into the air. Soon, there was a glimmering net of misty willow branches reaching into the sky.
Tai put a hand on his hip and shielded his eyes, gazing to the bright moon and translucent net that stretched as far as he could see. It seemed to encompass an area the size of a city. “A Seal,” he muttered, tucking the vial back into his storage pouch. “All this time. We have been going in circles beneath an Illusion Seal.”
Athumpbehind Lan: Dilaya had landed on her sand dune. “That’s a huge area the Seal covers,” she said, sounding doubtful. “It’ll be difficult to conjure the Counterseal.”
Lan waved a hand. “Can’t we just walk through Tai’s ghostly willow things?”
“No.No,” Tai emphasized forcefully, frowning at her.
“Clearly someone didn’t pay much attention in Seals class,” Dilaya snorted, but she began to explain, not unkindly. “The purpose of an Illusion Seal is to beguile, and in this case, it worked. We’ve been walking in circles around it for the past bell or so without even realizing it. Some practitioners who walk into Illusion Seals never realize, and die lost and alone.” She gnashed her teeth, glaring at the dunes as though they were to blame.
