Bound by Blood and Sand (22 page)

She broke back through the surface and caught her breath, then said, “This is it, the middle of the Well's magic.”

Tal looked out at the expanse of water and said, “That makes sense.”

“I think I can learn more,” Jae said. “I need to go under. I could practically hear it when I was under the surface.”

“Anything you can learn will help,” Elan said.

Jae thrashed her way out a little farther, until she could barely scrape her feet against the bottom and keep her face above the waves, not quite willing to go deeper. The magic might have been easier to sense if she had, but she'd never been underwater before. Even just ducking under had been disorienting, and the thought of moving past where she could stand made her heart beat a little faster and her chest tighten. This would have to be deep enough.

She could feel Elan and Tal watching her as she stared out at the endless waves, bracing herself. If she was going to help Aredann, she had to know more about the Well, and she'd felt magic when she'd gone under. So she would do it again.

She took a deep breath, then plugged her nose and picked up both of her feet. She curled her knees up to her chest and sank, reaching out with her senses, groping for the Well's magic—for its binding. There had to be one, something to keep the magic working all these generations after it had been crafted.

Power glowed all around her. She reached for it, and pain exploded in her head, shocking and familiar—

The knife's blade glowed dark red, unnatural and angry. Saize dropped it into the fire, and flames consumed it, sparking high in reaction. Then he stood back and waved, and felt the air rush in, too. The whole room vibrated; then everything went white hot as the binding took, sealing the air and fire that made up the Curse to the knife Aredann had so kindly handed the Highest. Saize winced and waited, and the stinging heat passed.

“That's it? The binding is done?”

“Oh, yes.” Saize could feel it now, angry tendrils of magic bound to the knife, seeking out blood. Their Curse, settling across the world.

“And you're sure it worked?”

Saize didn't have much patience for questions, even from his allies—but he had no doubt that it had worked. The other Highest mages were waiting outside, though this was hardly a proper room. With open walls and a view of the reservoirs on all sides, it was more of a pavilion. And with no walls to muffle sound, he could hear it when Aredann screamed.

“It definitely worked.” Aredann had been their ally, but he was a traitor to his people—he'd killed his own brother. Maybe the other Highest mages trusted him, but Saize never would. And now he'd never have to. Aredann had come from the Wellspring Bloodlines, after all. He'd known what they were doing here, but hadn't realized he'd end up as cursed as the rest of them.

The flames died down, and Saize reached for the knife, already cool enough to touch safely, and regarded its blade. It was ancient, made of a material he'd never seen before. “As long as we have this and our vows, the Curse will be bound forever.”

Jae's eyes flew open, and she clawed at the water around her. She was disoriented and all too aware at the same time. She twisted, trying to shove the magic away, force the Curse's pounding out of her mind. The pain receded, but that didn't matter—she couldn't find up, couldn't see anything at all. A scream built in her chest as she tore at the water, her limbs moving slowly despite her chaotic motions.

Light began to shine around her in tiny pinpricks, energy suspended in the water. She could feel the faint presence of the Wellspring Bloodlines and reached for them, but she was too weak and totally lost. She needed to breathe but couldn't, with blood pounding in her ears as she thrashed against the water.

Her feet brushed something. Horribly dizzy, her head throbbing and her eyes unable to make sense of anything through the distortion of the water, she pushed off feebly, barely able to straighten her legs—

She broke through the surface, and a moment later strong hands grabbed her, hauled her toward the shore. She couldn't stop coughing and couldn't resist, so anxious that even having someone else drag her around while she was helpless couldn't make it worse.

It felt as if she'd spat out half the Well by the time she got a deep breath. She was hunched over on her hands and knees, her throat raw and her head spinning. But at least the Curse was fading. After that one burst, it was gone; the ache in her lungs was all from her near drowning.

Elan was the one who'd pulled her in, and he still crouched next to her in the shallows. Tal came to kneel in front of her. He touched her elbow, and when she didn't pull away, he helped her sit up on her knees, and straightening up made it easier to breathe.

“Jae, what happened? Are you all right?” Elan asked, looking ready to catch her if she collapsed again.

She shook her head, drawing away from both of them, grateful the Curse couldn't force her to answer anymore. She just wanted to sit until her chest and throat stopped aching, and she didn't understand what had happened.

It should have been the Well's binding in the water. She'd sensed it there, those tiny pinpricks of energy, but they were almost gone. Instead there had been the Curse, somehow tied to the Well's energy, overwhelming it. But as she thought about that, it made a twisted, horrible sort of sense. The Bloodlines had somehow bound the Well—and the Curse worked its horrible magic on the Bloodlines. Now the two were linked together, the Curse and Bloodlines tangled with one another, and where the Bloodlines' magic should have ruled, the Curse did instead.

Finally Jae found the strength to push to her feet. She staggered to the shore and collapsed onto her back. Sand prickled, sticking to her, sun-heated and uncomfortable, but at least she could breathe.

“Jae,” Tal murmured, tentative, not quite a question. He sat near her—not too near, thankfully. Elan hung back even farther, eyeing them unsurely.

“I think I know what happened to the Well,” Jae said when she could finally speak again without her lungs hurting. “I don't know
how,
but…but the Well's binding is almost gone. The Curse has eaten the whole binding away.”

Jae only had to tell Elan and Tal once that she needed to rest before she could explain more. Neither of them seemed too happy about waiting, but they didn't argue with her. Instead Tal dragged Elan back to the edge of the water and showed him how to begin scrubbing the sand and sweat out of their clothes. They didn't have anything to wash the clothes with, but rubbing layers of fabric against one another would get the worst of the dirt and sweat out.

When they finished, Tal was the one who brought Jae her damp travel robe. She spread the robe over the sand so she could sit on it instead of the damp ground. Tal found an outcropping of rock at the cliff's base, and he and Elan spread the rest of the clothes over it to finish drying.

Finally they filled the canteens and came over to sit with her. Jae gave Tal a grateful look, and he smiled back at her, understanding. Then she glanced over at Elan.

Elan was still wearing only his underclothes. Unlike Tal, who was lithe and wiry the way she was, Elan was larger and broader. Even stripped of his title and family, he still looked powerful and strong. There were whiskers on his chin now, long enough to be a proper beard, if an unkempt one, and his hair fell in loose curls down to his chin. But the scar on his chest was what drew her eye. His skin was already a lighter, more golden brown than hers, but around the scar it was paler still, shiny and pulled tight. The center was still too scabbed for her to make out the design of the brand.

Jae's cheeks heated up, and she looked away from him.

“Can you— It would be nice to talk now,” Elan said eventually, catching himself. Of course. He was less used to silence than she and Tal were.

She nodded. “The Well's magic
is
centered there, bound somehow. I could sense the Wellspring Bloodlines—the Closest who crafted the Well. Their magic
is
still there. But so is the Curse, and the Curse has been…feeding on the binding. That was what I found instead. The Curse, where the Well's binding should be.”

“I don't understand,” Elan said.

Jae gestured around. “The Well is going dry, just like Aredann's reservoir, because its binding is eroding, and the binding…somehow it's linked to the Curse's binding. So I was looking for the Well's magic, and I saw the Curse's instead. I
saw
it, like I was watching. Some mage, one of the Highest. Saize.”

Elan nodded. “Saize Pallara—the grandson of one of the four mages who originally crafted the Well. Or…” He shook his head. “Or that's what I've always been told. He, well…he's remembered for casting the Curse.”

“He did this to us,” Jae said, one hand clenching a fist. Elthis was cruel, vicious—but Jae doubted even his evil could compare to dreaming up the Curse. “I saw him bind it. The Curse is made of fire and air, the magic bound to a knife. But somehow
that
binding is tied to the binding of the Well.”

“The Curse makes the Well's binding weaker,” Elan said, reasoning it through out loud. “So to restore the Well, we need to restore its binding.”

“Yes,” Jae said, but Tal shook his head.

“No. Or, not only that. Jae, tell me if I'm wrong, but…even if we restore the binding, the Curse will just eat it away again. Fixing the binding would buy time, but to truly restore the Well—to make sure its magic stays bound forever—we need to break the Curse.”

Jae nodded, letting Tal's words resonate in her mind.
Break the Curse.
She'd thought it before, when she'd first discovered her magic, before Elan had stopped her experimenting. That had been the goal: to save Aredann, then to break the Curse and free the Closest for good. It had actually seemed possible, just for a couple of days, before Elan had sought to control her. Before Rannith, before Elthis.

But now here she was. Free. She still didn't know much about magic, but the elemental energies were so much easier to use now that she was unfettered by the Curse. With Tal here, safely away from Elthis and his threats, there was nothing to stop her. She
would
break the Curse. She remembered unraveling the barrier in the desert, and she even knew how.

“I saw its binding—that knife,” she said. “If we can find it, destroy it, the Curse will break.”

Tal's face lit like the sun. “We can really do it. Save Aredann, save the Well, break the Curse.”

“But if you do, there will be war,” Elan said. “The Highest will never allow it. They'll fight to the last to stop you.”

Just like that, Tal sobered. But Jae's resolve was like a stone inside her, cold and unyielding. “Breaking the Curse saves the Well—and we Closest deserve our freedom. If there is war, so be it. I will fight. And I will win.”

“It won't do any good to free the Closest if they all get killed,” Tal said softly. “Freedom won't help Gali if she's dead.”

Jae started to answer that she'd protect Gali, but stopped, falling silent. Because of course she could. She'd protect Tal, Gali, all the Closest at Aredann. But she wouldn't be able to protect
everyone,
the rest of the Closest across the world. Even with magic, she was still only one person, and the Closest would be untrained against the Highest and the Avowed, with their weapons and guards. There would be war, and even if the Closest won, people would die on both sides.

But maybe it was worth it. Before her magic, if she'd had the choice to risk death for a chance at freedom, she would have taken it. She'd have risked anything for that chance, and as terrifying as it was, she thought Gali would, too. Tal was right, the cost of freedom would be high. But that didn't mean it wasn't worth paying.

Besides, without breaking the Curse, the Well would be lost. Maybe not now—if she could find what remained of the binding, she might be able to restore it—but eventually. The Curse had ruined the binding once, and the same thing would happen again.

“We'll do what we can to be careful,” Jae decided. “But we'll do what we have to.”

“Not careful,” Tal said. “Merciful.”

“The Highest have never shown
us
mercy,” Jae said.

“I know,” Tal said. “And when we have power—when
you
have power, Jae, you'll need to decide what to do with it. What kind of person you want to be. If you want to be like them.”

Jae glanced at Elan, who had gone silent and was staring into the distance, across the Well. Not looking at either one of them as they talked about the fate of the people he'd grown up with, his parents and his sister, his friends. The family he'd loved, who'd lied to him, and now that he was disavowed, who would never forgive him or speak to him again.

She looked back at Tal, who was simply waiting for her answer. She thought about their mother, about Gali and Firran, about the generations before them who'd endured and survived. And Rannith and Shirrad, Elthis's disdain, his cruelty and his lies.

She met Tal's eyes and said, “We'll win our freedom first. Then we'll see.”

It was late afternoon by the time Jae had discovered the Curse's binding lurking in the Well, and after fighting the Curse and nearly drowning, she was tired enough that she didn't want to try any more magic without resting. In the morning, she'd try again to find and restore the Well's binding—she'd be prepared to be hit with the Curse this time—but one night of sleep wouldn't be the difference between saving Aredann and dooming it.

They had carried food with them from the orchard on the cliff top, so they decided to camp on the shore rather than climb back up. Not that there was much to their camp—they had no sleeping mats, no tent, almost no supplies. But they had flint, and a handful of branches and sticks had been deposited at the cliff base, stripped clean of bark by the water and rocks. They'd dug a pit in the sand and piled in the wood, but so far, none of them had had any luck getting a spark to grow into anything more. The wood was too damp.

Finally, tired though she was, Jae waved Elan and Tal aside and sat in front of the makeshift fire pit. “Let me,” she said, sliding into other-vision. Seeing things that way came to her easily now, and it was getting easier the more often she did it.

But sensing and manipulating fire was not. She struck the flint and forced herself to reach for the spark's energy, but it was blindingly hot—and after a moment, it was gone. She couldn't catch and hold it at all.

She struck the flint again, more cautious and aware of what to expect, already bracing herself for the pain. The energy burned once again, but she'd lived with pain every day of her life. She gritted her teeth, braced her mind against the pain, and held on to the energy, clinging desperately to keep it from fizzling out again. But she couldn't call the energy to her like she could with land, and even holding out against the pain, she couldn't direct it like she had with the wind. The fire's energy didn't just burn; it refused to obey her, and a moment later, despite her effort, it was gone again.

So much for that experiment. At least now she knew that she couldn't use all four elements, though from what Elan had said, few mages could—and being able to use three was better than most. With the night's chill setting in as the sun sank, not being able to light a fire was more frustrating than not being able to use the fourth element. If only the wood wasn't so damp, they wouldn't need magic to light the fire at all.

When she realized what she'd just thought, she almost laughed. She'd done this before, after all, when she'd first experimented with magic. She studied the wood itself in other-vision, finding the traces of energy in it. Like all things, the wood was a mixture of elements and the strange energy of life, left over from before it had fallen off its tree.

She held her hands out over the tinder and pulled
.
A moment later, water condensed onto her hands, cool against her palms. She kept tugging until the sticks were drained and brittle, then brought her cupped palms to her mouth to drink. The water tasted brighter, somehow, not quite like what they'd drunk from the Well.

“Did you just pull water out of the air?” Tal and Elan were both staring at her—it was Tal who'd asked the question, his voice awed.

She shook her head and wiped her palms on her thighs. “Not quite. I pulled it out of the tinder. And now…” She picked the flint back up and struck it. This time, the spark caught. She leaned down and breathed on it, and a minute later, small flames lapped at the sticks they'd piled up.

“Incredible,” Elan murmured.

Jae smiled, her cheeks warming a little.

Tal was the one who attempted cooking over the fire, placing fruit and roots on stones tucked up against the flames. Cooking brought out the flavors and made the food more tender, so as the sun sank, they were able to have another fully satisfying meal.

They took turns keeping the fire burning through the evening, a ring of rocks in place to keep it from getting out of hand as they settled in for the night. Even during the day, the temperature was cooler by the Well than it had been in the open desert, and at night without any bedding, they definitely needed fire for warmth. As the temperature dropped, Jae leaned against Tal, sharing their body heat, while Elan sat against the cliff's base only a few hand spans away.

The stars came out, twinkling to life above them, beautiful and bright in the endless sky. If she hadn't been terrified for Aredann, the night would have been perfect. She'd been able to eat and drink her fill, without worrying about rations or begging for scraps left after others had eaten. There was no shortage of food or water out here, and she'd had time to rest and recover from the ordeal in the desert. She was truly clean for the first time in years, having scrubbed the sand and sweat from her body and her clothes both. Even her hair, which she'd kept cropped as close to her scalp as possible for years, had started to grow out, and she didn't mind.

And there was no fear. Out here, removed from civilization entirely, no one could try to steal her hard-won freedom, and no one could threaten Tal. He was still cursed, but it barely seemed like it, with no one giving him any orders. There was only the three of them, as if no one else existed.