Amaskan's Blood, Raven Oak [read me a book .TXT] 📗

“Let me go.”

Ancient shoulders that had carried her as a child trembled beneath her stare, and he stepped aside. As she passed, he might have mumbled “I love you,” but she couldn’t be sure.

When she spun around to answer, he was already gone.

Sadain Desert; 255 Agaen 27th

Blowing sand whipped at Adelei’s face and left a thin layer of dust behind in the process. Even her desert bred horse nickered in protest at the sand spinning around them in varying shades of tan. Night brought neither of them relief as she spent several hours shaking sand out of her bedrolls, her hair, and her ears as it burrowed into the tiniest of crevices.

Not even the Order’s desert tents could block out the sand, so she slept with her scarf around her face. Even then, she awoke the past four mornings with a dried-out nose. Why couldn’t the country be across a body of water? Or a forest? Anything had to be better than crossing the damned desert.

It would have been easier to take the simple trade route through the mountains, but too many questions would be asked. Too many people to notice the cut across her jaw and her bald head. She supposed she’d have to let her hair grow out now.

Pulling her hood closer to her face, she slowed her horse and glanced at the map through the grit. Two days at the most would put her at the border. As Adelei urged her caravan of horse and camel forward, her horse exhaled a muffled sigh. A battle steed like hers was built for rough terrain: muscles all over and a lack of fear required in battle. But his hooves struggled in the shifting sand.

Days of travel wore on the body. Though they had sworn the sandstorms were done for the season, they persisted, and Adelei was grateful for the protective gear. She leaned over the pommel and patted Midnight between the ears.

The wind picked up, and her tunic shifted, chafing the skin beneath. Each night Adelei treated her horse’s skin and hers with a thickened aloe paste in hopes of staving off infection in any wind burned areas, and so far they’d made it through with only a few wounds from the grit.

“Can’t have you lamed, now can we? Who knows if we’ll get back home again,” she whispered to Midnight. But between the scarf’s thickness across her face, the ear nets Midnight wore, and the blowing wind, her words were lost, snatched from her mouth before she’d done much more than inhale. The direct sun bore down on her hooded neck, and her flesh burned beneath the white fabric.

Boredom had set in two days before, and Adelei sighed. No need to practice her Alexandrian. Now she knew why Bredych had encouraged her to keep fluent. He knew all along he’d be sending her back, back to a family she didn’t even remember. Still, it passed the time.

By midday, she’d run through a variety of grammar rules and verb conjugations before dozing in the saddle, weary of the sand and thoughts of her master. She wondered if he’d burned the plaque, too. When he’d formally adopted her, she’d carved a plaque out of a piece of driftwood as long as her arm. The wood bore the shape of a sword, and she’d used hot pokers to carve the words Motzecha Amaskan into its flesh. One in the Blood.

She’d never thought he’d adopt her. King Adir of Sadai had declared it in writing while Master Bredych had declared it in blood. The flesh of his palm cut, he’d allowed the droplets of his blood and then hers to mix across the soil of the Order. He told her she was gaining more than a Way of life—she was gaining a family.

Another gust of wind scattered sand across her vision, and she blinked until the stinging of her eyes ceased. And now she’d lost another family. The hollowness in her chest ripped the air from her lungs. Tears stung the micro cuts sprinkled across her face where sand had crept around the head scarf, chafing on its journey through the wind whipped desert.

The sun almost dipped below the horizon. She’d been in the saddle longer than she’d wanted and scanned the skyline for any hills suitable for an evening campsite. Trees, a cave, a hill, somewhere protected from the wind, and yet nothing presented itself but sand and more sand.

With a weary sigh, she nudged Midnight and the camel up a sand dune. “This will have to do. Nothing else around, but at least the bank should protect us from getting buried in this sandstorm that’s brewing,” she said, and Midnight’s ears flicked beneath their hoods.

Adelei eased herself from the saddle and stripped Midnight of the thickly woven tent. The camel could wait. Sweat clung to her brow as she drove wooden stakes deep into the desert sand with a horizontal slant. She removed several rolled up bags and scooped the warm sand inside until they were full, then she pushed their heavy bulk over the tent stakes to weigh them down. Once secured, she crawled inside the opaque tent, using the flexible bamboo rods to expand it as she moved. Soon she and Midnight would fit inside its interior.

“The wind is too wicked for you to be out in,” she said to her horse as she retrieved a bowl from one of her bags on the camel. She’d left any trace of easily obtainable water behind this morning. According to the map, it would be noon tomorrow at the earliest before she reached another major source.

Water could be retrieved from the desert’s small and stark plants, but certainly not enough to thoroughly water her horse. As it was, Adelei used the last of her own water canteens on Midnight, dumping all four into the bowl for him to drink. Adelei’s mouth watered at the sight of it, but her