Wit''ch Gate (v5)

  Joach’s hands formed tight fists. That must not happen.

  Joach was tugged to a stop. His eyes refocused back to the dream desert.

  “We’ve returned,” the shaman said, folding his legs and sitting. He indicated for Joach to do the same.

  Joach settled to the sand, too shocked to resist, and asked the question foremost in his mind. “Why did you show me this?”

  The shaman closed his eyes and raised his hands, holding two fistfuls of sand. He tossed the glowing grains high into the air, sweeping it over both men. As the sand fell, it drew back the real world, like drawing down a curtain. Trees and tents reappeared around them. Over the shoulder of the shaman, the waters of Oo’shal again reflected the starlight.

  Parthus opened his eyes. In them, Joach recognized the glow of the dream desert. After a lifetime of communing on the dream plane, the shaman now shone outwardly with its magick.

  “Why did I reveal this to you?” the elder repeated. “Why you?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Because you are strong, yet do not know your full strength.”

  Joach frowned.

  “You are no ordinary dreamweaver, a mere prophet of dreams. Has no one mentioned how infinitely deep your dreaming power runs?”

  Joach remembered Brother Flint’s statement of long ago: how the old mage had claimed Joach was one of the strongest elementals in dream magick. He shook his head. “I still don’t understand the significance.”

  “Most dreamweavers are just passive bystanders, reading the writing on the wall, watching things happen from a distance. But you, Joach, have the ability to do so much more. The dream plane is your canvas. Rather than be a passive player, you can be a participant. You can be a dream sculptor, someone with the ability to craft elements from the land of dreams and bring them into the real world.”

  Joach made a scoffing noise. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “Because you’re the first sculptor to appear in countless generations. It was an art thought forever lost. But we sand shamans have never forgotten. It is seared into our most secret histories.”

  “I don’t understand. What histories?”

  Parthus sighed. “The histories of Tular.”

  Joach blinked with shock. The image of the black vortex flashed across his vision. “Tular?”

  “Long ago, when the Southwall was new, the Land drew certain desert people to its sandstone walls. It grew the castle of Tular to house these special guardians and gifted them with a part of the desert’s dreaming magick. They ruled the Southern Wastes with honor and justice. During this time, the desert flourished, and the tribes grew in number. It was a wonderful age.”

  “So what happened?”

  The shaman’s face darkened. “Slowly the power began to corrupt the leaders of Tular. Guardians became ghouls. They learned to bring demons and beasts from the dreamscape to terrorize the Wastes. One of their most fearsome was the great basilisk, a feathered serpent with an undying thirst for blood. For centuries, the ghouls of Tular ruled with an iron fist. Until one day, the Wit’ch of Spirit and Stone came to our aid.”

  “Sisa’kofa?”

  Parthus nodded. “She rallied our people and used her own blood to create weapons that could slay the dream beasts. The ghouls were torn from their roosts and the misshapen beasts destroyed. Tular was left empty and abandoned. And the magick of dream sculpting died with it.” The shaman eyed Joach. “That is, until now.”

  Joach licked his lips nervously. “How can you be so sure I have this power?”

  The shaman studied Joach hard and long. “I don’t know if you’re ready for that answer. Can you simply trust that I know?”

  Joach’s eyes narrowed. “Tell me why you suspect such a thing.”

  “I do not just suspect—I know.”

  “How can you be so certain?”

  “Because Kesla found you and brought you here.”

  Joach waved away his answer. “She found me because she needed to prime the nightglass dagger with my sister’s blood. Nothing more.”

  Parthus frowned. He took out a small pouch, opened it, and poured tiny white bones into his palm. “I use these to study the unseen paths in life. But not all roads are clearly marked. Kesla was sent with the dagger, but was it solely to wet its blade in wit’ch blood—or was there another reason? A path to another end?” Parthus glanced up at Joach.

  “What? To find me? To bring me here?”

  He slowly nodded, rolling the bones from one hand to the other. “Many paths twine and wind. It is often hard to say which is the truest path.”

  Joach sighed. “I still don’t see the significance. So I came here. So I’m strongly gifted in dream magicks. How does any of this make me one of these dream sculptors?”

  The shaman closed his eyes, his face pained. “Because as soon as the two of you walked into the oasis, I could read your hearts, see the ties that bound you two together. She loves you like she has loved no other.” The shaman opened his eyes. “And I suspect the same could be said of you toward her.”

  Joach’s cheeks grew warm with a fierce blush. He attempted to rebut the shaman’s words, but all that came out was a nonsensical stammer.

  “Do not deny your heart, boy,” Parthus spat angrily. “I will hear no lies spoken in Oo’shal.”

  Joach swallowed back any further protest. Cowed, he nodded for the shaman to continue.

  With a grumble, Parthus calmed his voice. “Before Kesla left on the journey to A’loa Glen, her blood was dribbled over these bones. It is a trick shamans use to keep track of a person from afar.” He rattled the bits in his fist. “But on the first tossing, I learned much more. The bones spoke Kesla’s true name and from where she had come.”

  Joach crinkled his brow. Kesla had claimed she had been found wandering in the desert by the head of the Assassins’ Guild, then fostered at Alcazar and trained in the guild’s ways. Was there more she hadn’t revealed? “What did you learn?”

  “It is difficult to speak aloud. I have told no one, not even Guildmaster Belgan.” The shaman dropped the bones into the sand and stood.

  Joach stared at the spread of the fallen bones, then up at the thin shaman. “What did they reveal about Kesla?”

  “It is late,” Parthus said, partially turning away. “We have a hard trek to reach Alcazar tomorrow.”

  Joach stood up quickly, kicking sand over the bones. He grabbed for the shaman’s elbow, but the man moved beyond his reach.

  Parthus turned. “One last time—do you truly want the truth? About Kesla, about her connection to you? Why she marks you as a sculptor?”

  Joach felt a momentary twinge of doubt, fearful of the answer. But a part of him had to know this secret, could not be satisfied with mere faith. Not trusting his voice, Joach nodded.

  “No,” Parthus said. “I want to hear it in your own voice.”

  Joach cleared his throat with great difficulty. “Tell me,” he croaked out.

  “You must swear to tell no others. Not your friends, not even Kesla.”

  “I swear.”

  Parthus sighed, his body sagging. “The girl you love, Kesla—she is not what she appears.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Parthus turned away. “Kesla is a dream, a figment sculpted by the desert and given form and substance to walk this world. As she has chosen you, so the desert has also chosen. It has drawn a sculptor back to the sands of the Wastes, to call you back to guardianship, marking you as the one to rid the deserts of the pestilence that festers in Tular.” The shaman moved away, leaving Joach standing stunned. “But Kesla, the girl—she is not real.”

  Joach stood in the clearing, frozen. The shaman’s words bound him in place as surely as any ropes. Trembling, Joach pictured Kesla’s tawny hair, her crooked smile, the way she tilted on a hip when joking, how her hand fit so snugly into his palm. As he stood, a thick tear rolled down his cheek—while deep inside, something shattered into a thousand sharp and brittle p
ieces.

  His pained voice whispered over the waters of Oo’shal. “Kesla . . .”

  11

  WITH THE SUN directly overhead, Kesla climbed the ridge ahead of the slower caravan. She wanted to be the first to glimpse Alcazar, to share a moment of private homecoming. She cast off her sweep of silk scarf from her face and shook loose the hood of her desert cloak.

  Half a league away, the red sandstone cliff of Alcazar thrust sheer from the desert, a solitary behemoth, a great ship in the sand. Its sweeping bluffs glowed in the sunlight, its dense silicate crystals sparkling like jewels. It took a keen eye to discern that this mountain of wind-sculpted rock harbored a castle in its heart. But Kesla knew the hulking rock as well as her own face. Alcazar was the only home she had ever known, and to her, its secrets could never be hidden in shadow and stone. From the dune’s ridge, she spotted small crevices and cracks high up the cliffs that masked windows and spy holes. She imagined eyes staring back at her, sentries alert to the approach of others.

  She lifted an arm to these unseen watchers, a salute of welcome.

  As she waited, no acknowledgment came, not even the customary flash of a signal mirror. Kesla lowered her arm with a frown. At dawn, Shaman Parthus had sent ahead two sand runners to carry advance word to Master Belgan. Surely they had arrived a quarter of a day ahead of them.

  Kesla sighed and glanced over a shoulder. Her companions worked up the last of the switchbacks toward her position. She shifted her feet, impatient to continue ahead. With Alcazar in sight, she could hardly constrain herself. It had been so many moons since she had last seen her friends and caretakers: Shargyll, the rotund matron who had trained Kesla in her scullion’s skills; Humph, the long-eared stablemaster and his herd of ornery malluks; and Crannus, the master of poisons who told the most vile jokes. But most of all she missed Master Belgan—her teacher, her counselor, her confessor. In many ways, he was the father she had never known.

  This last thought made her melancholy. She stared at the great spread of the Wastes. Where had she come from? Where in this sand-blown landscape was her true home? Her gaze settled back on the great rock of Alcazar. She knew the answer: there stood her home.

  Sighing, she turned again as the caravan of desert tribesmen and her fellow companions worked their way up to the ridge. Joach was the first to join her. His eyes were instantly drawn to the cliffs and sandy ledges of Alcazar.

  “It’s so large,” he said, craning for a better view.

  She nodded with a shy smile. “It houses over four hundred apprentices, journeymen, and masters of the guild.”

  “You can’t even tell anyone resides there.”

  “That was done purposefully. Five centuries ago, when the keep of Alcazar was first carved from the rock, the guild was fleeing from the sinking of Castle Drakk in southern Alasea. They wanted privacy, a secure place away from prying eyes and their Gul’gothal pursuers, a strong citadel in which to regroup and rebuild the Assassins’ Guild.”

  “I see,” Joach mumbled.

  Kesla moved a step closer, but Joach shifted away from her. She noticed how he seemed to sink deeper into his cloak. From the corner of her eye, she watched him. All day he had been distant like this: refusing to meet her gaze, communicating with terse words, always seeming to be too busy to talk. Though his attitude was not as rude and distrustful as it had been on the journey from A’loa Glen, it was markedly more cold than the warmth they had shared under the desert stars.

  “Joach . . .” she began softly, gently trying to coax some answers.

  But he twisted away as the litter bearing Richald neared. “I should help them.” He hurried to lend his shoulder with the elv’in in lifting their captain up and over the ridge. Behind them, Hunt trudged up the last slope with Sheeshon riding his shoulders.

  “Lookie, Kesla!” Sheeshon called to her. “Hunt’s a malluk.”

  Kesla smiled. “He certainly is.” The girl had been enchanted by the desert’s beasts of burden, plaguing the drovers as they loaded and prepared the shaggy creatures for the journey.

  Hunt rolled his eyes as he moved past Kesla’s post. “After trekking here, I must smell like a malluk, too.” The large Bloodrider continued over the ridge, following after the litter.

  Slowly the rest of the caravan trundled past. Sy-wen and Kast climbed over the ridge, only pausing to share a sip from a waterskin. From the way Kast had to squeeze the leathery malluk bladder, it was the last of their share. As he drank, Kesla noted that the wide-shouldered man’s singed arm was slathered in yellowish serpent tongue oil, a potent healing balm. Already Kast’s arm looked much less red, the blistering subsiding. If there was one thing desert healers knew how to mend, it was skin burns; the sun of the Southern Wastes was merciless.

  As the two lovers moved down the slope toward Alcazar, the desert tribesmen with their drovers and laden malluks swept past. The malluks, as usual, were unfazed by the trek, shambling along with their riders half dozing in their saddles. The beasts towered twice the height of an ordinary man and had a thick insulating coat of sandy-red hair that blended almost perfectly with the desert. Their wide, flat-splayed feet padded across the loose sand, and their large brown eyes studied Kesla as they passed. One of the beasts leaned toward her and snuffled at her, checking to see if she had something good to eat. She gently but firmly nudged him away.

  Soon the caravan was past, and Kesla stood with Shaman Parthus at the ridgeline.

  The leathery elder leaned on a length of sandalwood. “Are you glad to be almost home, child?”

  “I will be happy to see Master Belgan again.”

  He offered his elbow to her. “Then let’s not keep him waiting.”

  Together the pair worked down the slope.

  “I talked to the young man with the red hair last night.” The shaman’s words were spoken casually, but it was clearly forced. Parthus wanted to tell her something. His feet also moved slower as he feigned disability, leaning on her arm and on his staff. The rest of the caravan moved farther and farther ahead.

  “You spoke to Joach?”

  “Yes. We shared the fruit of the gre’nesh.”

  Kesla now slowed their pace even more, surprise hobbling her feet. She had never heard of any shaman sharing the magick of the desert fruit with someone uninitiated into their brotherhood. “What happened?”

  He shrugged. “The man is quite rich in the dreaming magicks. He will be a strong ally in the coming assault against the ghouls of Tular.”

  Kesla touched the hilt of her sheathed weapon. “All I need is the nightglass dagger. If its blade is sharp enough to kill the basilisk, I will not fail. I can be in and out of Tular before any of their minions grow wise.”

  “I do not doubt your skill, Kesla. But I believe the true battle against Tular will prove more of a challenge.”

  “You tossed the bones?”

  “I did.” Frowning, he eyed the windblown heights of Alcazar. “But it does not always take prophecy to see the future. One simply has to open one’s eyes and look.”

  Kesla found her gaze following the shaman’s. The heights remained as empty as when she had been atop the ridge. By now, the front of the caravan was winding into the black crack that led into the rock’s interior. She listened but heard no horn announcing their return. No one moved on the sentry ledges. She squinted her eyes, trying to spot the camouflaged guards at their high rocky posts. Either they were well hidden, or no one was there.

  Twinges of unease skittered across her skin like the tickle of spiders in the dark, but ahead, the last of the caravan was swallowed into the narrow canyon with no signs of distress.

  Kesla glanced over at the shaman. He continued to amble after the others, apparently unconcerned, but why then had he spoken to her? Why hint at something wrong but not voice it?

  “A test,” he mumbled, seeming to read her heart. “A rite of passage.”

  “For me?”

  He shrugged. “The young man must learn the depths of his own pow
er and strength.”

  “Joach?”

  Again the shrug.

  Panic welled up inside her. Wide-eyed, she stared at the towering rock. The sun cast its cliffs in shadows and flows of reds, like blood running down its flanks.

  “I must help him!” She moved to race ahead but found her arm locked in the shaman’s hold.

  “It is his test, Kesla. You cannot take it for him.”

  Wild with fear and concern, Kesla used her skills to break the shaman’s grip and raced forward. But even as her feet flew across the sands, she did not need the shaman’s prophetic words to know she would be too late.

  JOACH WAS THE first through the iron gates of Alcazar. The litter bearing Richald followed behind. Two things struck him immediately.

  First was the castle’s beauty. As he stepped under the gates and into the central yard, the keep of the assassins opened before him. He craned his neck. Impossibly thin towers, twisting spires, and slender statues climbed the cliff faces, carved from the very heart of this great block. It was a small city encased in sandstone.

  But as the others joined him in the yard, his second impression overwhelmed his wonder of this place. Hunt voiced it aloud, settling Sheeshon to her feet. “Where is everyone?”

  The keep was deserted. No one manned the gate. No one greeted them. Joach was unaware of the custom here, but it seemed strange to leave the gates unguarded.

  Kast stepped to Joach’s other side, Sy-wen in his shadow. “I don’t like this,” the tall Bloodrider grumbled.

  To punctuate his statement, the gates to Alcazar fell closed behind them. The spiked portcullis crashed into place with a clang of finality.

  Joach spun around. Iron bars now separated them from the desert tribesmen, who through the bars looked just as confused as Joach was. Only Innsu, the tall bronzed assassin, stood trapped on this side of the gate, along with two of his men.