Bound by Blood and Sand (24 page)

“It's hard to believe we traveled all that way,” Tal said, examining the distance. The gap between Aredann and the Well was much wider than between any other blue or green spaces.

Elan traced his route from Danardae out to Aredann, then frowned. He worked his way back and looked at the other cities, found the outlying estates that had been abandoned like Aredann. There were only a few, and they were all also on the outskirts. But there were others, even farther out.

“I've never seen some of these,” he said, mentally reciting the names of estates and reservoirs he was sure of, to make certain he was right. But he was. Out beyond even the small, now-abandoned estates, there were others.

“I wonder if this
isn't
the first time estates have been abandoned,” Tal said. “There have been droughts before, I think.”

It took Elan a moment to realize it was another of his non-questions. “Yes, there've been plenty—but only a few were even close to this bad. The last was four generations ago.” He pressed his hand to one of the strange, unknown estates up north. “If the Highest have abandoned estates before, they've made sure they were never mentioned again.”

“They'd have had to redraw every map,” Tal said. “And forbid people to speak of the lost estates.”

Elan could imagine his father doing that. He'd have a lie to explain it—a pretty speech about looking forward instead of back, about leaving the past where it belonged. People would be happy enough to do it, since it would make it easier to forget the Closest who'd been left to die on those abandoned estates.

“They'd have had to destroy every book,” Tal added.

“They may have,” Elan said. “There's so little writing left from before the War, and what there is, is hard to follow. My sister—that is, Lady Erra—she found some and sent it to Aredann with me, but half of it was indecipherable. I knew the letters, but I swear I've never seen any of those words before.”

“Like this, I'd think,” Tal said, with a slight lilt in his voice that once again reminded Elan that it was a question. Tal pointed at another wall, one where lines of green text covered yellow tiles. The text wasn't painted on them; it was somehow seared right into the tiles themselves.

Elan had to tilt his head. The text had been written sideways, wrapping from the top to the bottom instead of from side to side, but he could read it well enough. For a moment, he was surprised Tal couldn't—but of course not. Tal was Closest, and none of them knew how to read. Not even all of the Twill did.

Elan cleared his throat and read aloud,
“Here we founded the Well and declared ourselves Wellspring; here our blood was bound together; here we crafted the magic that will protect our descendants. Here our duty to protect our world was sealed with her life. Let us never forget.”

“Well, they've certainly been forgotten,” Tal said, wry.

Elan gave a little laugh, even though it wasn't exactly funny.

“There's more,” Tal said, and Elan followed him to another wall, but the twisting lines down it were like nothing Elan had ever seen before. He wasn't even sure they were letters. These were white lines against a blue background, still sharp after all these generations, but if they held any secrets, Elan wouldn't be the one to guess them.

“I have no idea,” Elan confessed.

“There's more still,” Tal said.

This was the last wall he hadn't examined yet. The text here was gold letters over red tiles, and it
did
look like the strange text from the papers and books Elan had examined. He could read most of the individual letters, but they didn't spell out anything at all. It was just nonsense, most of it not even pronounceable. There weren't any vowels, and at the ends of some lines were symbols he'd never seen before. Those looked more like the other wall.

“More history the Highest have stolen from the world,” Elan said. He pressed his hand to the wall, as if that would somehow open his mind to its secrets, and the tiles were cool and smooth under his hand.

“Maybe it's magic,” Tal said. “Maybe Jae will be able to understand it. This whole place feels important—hidden and protected like this. It must mean something.”

“Let's go get Jae,” Elan agreed, and he followed as Tal scrambled out. He cast one look back at the vine-covered opening as they left, certain Tal was right. Whatever those other walls said, it was part of the history the Highest had tried so hard to destroy. There had to be a way to figure it out.

Jae sat alone in front of the Well, legs crossed, back straight. She opened her mind to other-vision and plunged her senses into the Well. She could feel the magic, suspended in the glistening energy of the water, and when the Curse closed in around her, she braced herself and pushed it away.

It was easier from here on the shore, where she could work and breathe at the same time, concentrate on making the energy do what she wanted. But she was also farther removed, which made it harder to find the faint traces of the Bloodlines' magic that were mostly overwhelmed by the Curse.

She sweated in the sunlight as she worked, carefully sifting through the energies. Separating out Curse from water, cringing from the Curse's painful touch, and then finding the tiny glowing pinpricks that remained of the binding crafted by the Wellspring Bloodlines.

She gathered the glowing specks together, reached out with her mind to get a feel for them, and sensed not only the familiar, easy presence of what she knew was magic crafted by her own ancestors—it felt the same as the fountain had—but also, oddly, the steady and solid feeling of earth.

Curious, she tugged a little on the earth energy around her. Yes, the Well's binding definitely called on that, too. Earth and water and magic, all bound together by the Bloodlines—

There was a reason they'd called themselves that. Certainty hit her, but she looked within herself anyway. The mages who'd crafted the Well hadn't just meant that their bloodlines would be their families, their descendants through the generations. They'd meant bloodlines more literally—their
blood.
Which would be passed down from parent to child. Blood wasn't as solid as the rocks that had bound the barrier in the desert, but would do the trick—and as long as the Wellspring mages' descendants lived, the binding would hold, and the magic would continue to work.

But the Curse placed on the mages' descendants had somehow supplanted the binding, weakening the magic. The more Closest who died, the weaker the magic would get, until it was gone entirely, leaving the Well dry and the world in chaos.

Jae reached out for the remnants of the binding, and could sense, very faintly, the presence of the Closest within them. The binding hadn't yet eroded entirely—there was still hope for it. She just had to reenergize it, figure out how it had lost its connection to the thousands of Closest who still lived, and rebuild that connection.

She reached out with her mind, remembering the feeling she'd had when she'd broken the Curse. For a moment, she'd had contact with every Closest in the world. All of the Wellspring Bloodlines, bundled together. She was too far away to reach them now. She could feel herself and Tal, but she had only a vague sense of connection to the others.

That would have to be enough. She touched that connection carefully, not fighting or pulling like when she'd battled the Curse, just bringing the essence of the other Closest toward her. Then she reached for what remained of the Well's binding, pulled that toward herself, too, and tried to mesh the Closest and the binding back together.

For a moment, the lines of energy lit up, tremulous and hesitant. It was working—barely, but the connection was there, joining everything together—

The connection sputtered and faded. Jae grasped desperately for the Closest's essence again, yanking even though the Closest might feel it physically, and pushed them toward the binding again, harder this time. But her effort still wasn't enough. The Well was too vast, needed too much to sustain itself. The Well's magic needed the power of the Bloodlines to keep itself running, but it needed something else, something even more vast, to
build
that binding.

Jae opened her eyes to find sunlight dazzling across the surface of the Well. Everything was calm, unchanged, beautiful, and peaceful. Something faint pulled on her mind, something from the vision she'd had of Janna and her son, but she couldn't figure out what it was. So she sat back and enjoyed the soothing mud on her scabbed feet, the cool breeze against her face.

They'd come this far. She was just missing one last piece. Then she'd be able to restore the Well and save Aredann—and return to the world, and find a way to break the Curse.

Jae stared in awe at the mosaic portrait of the woman. “That's her. Her name is Janna, and she was the one who first conceived of the Well.”

Tal and Elan had been sweaty and tired from hiking back down to the Well, but after a quick lunch had insisted on climbing back to the cliff top to show Jae this strange little room. Its mosaic wall was an incredible likeness of the woman Jae had seen in her vision, Taesann and Aredann's grandmother. In other-vision, the mosaic, the map, and the whole room still had faint traces of magic clinging to them. The room had been built and decorated by mages, and sustained by magic through the years. There must have been a binding somewhere.

Jae didn't think the room had been a shelter. It was too small to have housed the number of mages who had made up the Wellspring Bloodlines. Instead, staring up at the magic-crafted picture of Janna, Jae was sure the room was a memorial.

“We hoped you'd be able to read the inscriptions,” Elan said, and pointed at one of the small walls that was covered in spidery, twisting lines.

“I can't read anything,” she reminded him, and glanced at Tal.

“We were hoping you could with magic,” Tal explained. “Elan read that one.” He pointed. “But the other two…they aren't the same, are they? I can see that. But I don't know what they say.”

She examined the lettered walls in other-vision. Like everything else, they glowed faintly with magic. But that was all; the magic didn't resolve into anything she could understand. Nothing spoke to her, nothing explained itself. She shook her head. “I'd like to know what that one says, though.”

Elan read it to her:
“Here we founded the Well and declared ourselves Wellspring; here our blood was bound together; here we crafted the magic that will protect our descendants. Here our duty to protect our world was sealed with her life. Let us never forget.”
Then he raised his eyebrows. “Does that mean anything to you? That is—I'd like to know if that means anything to you.”

“Some of it,” she murmured, and gazed again at Janna's likeness. “They bound their blood together—that's the binding of the Well, the magic that is supposed to make it work forever. And her life…” It tugged on her mind again, the very first magical vision she'd had. Janna had crafted the fountain—so her children and grandchildren would remember her. “I think she must have passed away during the crafting of the Well.”

But that wasn't quite right. Janna had built the fountain because she'd
known
she'd need to leave a legacy behind—she'd known she was going to die.

“There's the map, too,” Tal said. “Elan and I think maybe the Highest have abandoned other estates before. But that would only make sense if doing it actually helps the droughts—or if they're trying to hide something.”

“Maybe both,” Jae said, thinking it through. “From what I can tell, the Well will send water to any of the reservoirs where there are enough people—particularly descendants of the Wellspring Bloodlines. So it makes sense that if a reservoir was entirely abandoned, the Well would send its water elsewhere. That would certainly make it
look
like the Highest have control.”

“But if they just leave the Closest there, then the Well would keep sending them water,” Elan said. “So…maybe the Closest still live at those estates.”

“Or maybe the Highest have them killed when everyone else leaves,” Jae said.

Tal looked stricken, horrified. “We thought we'd be left to die but that we'd have some time. You truly think…”

“It would be the only way to ensure those reservoirs go dry,” Jae said, grim. It shouldn't have made any difference. The Closest would die either way, whether they were abandoned to sunsickness or killed in cold blood. But somehow this outright killing felt more brutal, even more cruel.

“But Aredann…His Highest still ordered it to be abandoned,” Tal said. “If he gives that order…”

“I warned him,” Jae said.

“But he might still…” Tal trailed off.

Jae knew he was thinking about Gali and the others. They might restore the Well but get back to Aredann and find it was too late. She bowed her head. “If he has hurt them, I'll make him pay for it. I warned him I would.”

She expected Tal to rebuke her, but he stayed silent.

“Besides, if he harmed them, he's sealed his own fate,” she continued. “Because each time a section of the Bloodlines has been killed, the Well's binding has weakened. The fewer Closest there are, the less blood there is to bind the magic. Abandoning estates may help the Highest look like they have power over the Well, but sooner or later too many Bloodlines will be lost. The binding will break entirely. There's barely any of it left now—Aredann may well be the last grain of sand on the pile.”

“Only if he really…really killed them,” Elan said. “His Highest knows what you can do—he's not foolish enough to ignore your threat.”

“Maybe,” Jae agreed. She had no idea if Elthis would harm the Closest at Aredann or not. If he had, it was too late to help them at all, but if he'd simply taken his Avowed and left the Closest at Aredann, then the Closest needed the Well's binding restored immediately. It would give them the water they needed to survive on their own, until Jae could break the Curse and free them.

“For now, let's…let's assume they're alive,” Tal said. “And help them.”

Jae nodded her assent. “I just need to find a way to restore the binding. It must be possible. It
must
be.”

Again she looked up at the mosaic of Janna. Janna, who had known she was going to die, who'd crafted the Well and then a fountain to preserve her legacy. Jae reached out, placed her hand against Janna's on the wall, and reached for the magic that had created and preserved this strange little room.

She opened her mind to it, searched for the binding, and found it in the roots of the massive trees themselves. She tugged at it with her mental fingers, pulling and coaxing, until the world went white—

They were gathered near the edge of the cliff, a semicircle of two dozen mages. The air was already thick around them, like inhaling soup, but it still crackled. That was what came of bringing so many mages together, having them all hold their magic carefully, keeping it at the ready. If they'd done everything right, the clouds would burst with torrential rain the moment the binding was sealed, and over the next few weeks, rain would fill the basin below entirely. There was some water in the basin already—they'd built it on top of a natural oasis—but there would be so much more, and the magic would make sure the water would last forever.

Tandan's mother stood nearest to the edge of the cliff, her back to the Well she'd spent so many years preparing and crafting. It was the largest work of magic ever—well, no. Tandan cast a look past his mother and toward what would be the distant shore of the Well. The mountains back there had been the biggest work of magic in history, and the biggest mistake. But the Well his mother had masterminded wouldn't be like that. It would protect and heal, not destroy, and it would keep their land safe forever.

“It's time,” she said, taking out her knife. The knife was ceremonial, passed down through the mages in her family since before they had come to this land, imbued with power from everyone who'd used it.

Tandan winced as she drew the blade from her wrist almost up to her elbow. The magic around them soared, sensing the binding she'd already built into her blood. Now she only had to share that blood with the others, to bind all the mages' bloodlines together, and then to bind those joined bloodlines to the Well. It was a complicated plan, with layers upon layers of magic worked in, but in a few minutes, it would all be done.

The mage who stood next to her stepped forward. Janna handed him the knife, and he mimicked her gesture, cutting his arm. Not as deeply, but enough to bleed. They pressed their arms together, blood to blood, and the mage kissed Tandan's mother's cheek and murmured a soft goodbye.

She only smiled at him, serene despite any pain from the cut, and passed the knife to the next mage. They took it one after another, cutting themselves and sharing their blood, linking their families' bloodlines together. Finally she offered the knife to Tandan himself.

She didn't need to. They already carried the same blood, just like his children did, and their children would. But he'd helped craft the Well, too, and contributing to the binding was an honor.

Clouds roiled overhead as he sliced his arm. It did hurt, but that pain was nothing next to the enormity of what they'd done—and the loss he still wasn't entirely prepared for.

His sorrow must have shown on his face, because his mother said, “No, none of that. No crying.”

He wiped at his cheeks. The air was so thick and hot that it was hard to tell water from sweat from tears.

“This is no time to be sad; it's a time to celebrate,” she continued, loud enough for all the gathered mages to hear. “Look at what we've built. Our families will live safely forever. That is what we've done here. And I will give myself to the Well gladly to make sure that happens.”

Tandan nodded, finally letting her go, and she pressed the knife into his hand. “You should keep this. Pass it down to one of the twins.”

“I will,” he promised, and slid it into his belt. Then he stepped back, her gaze still on him.

She smiled one last time and said, “I love you.” Then she looked up at all of them, casting a last glance at every mage she'd brought together to help her. The Well with its linked reservoirs and aqueducts was too enormous an undertaking for any one or two mages to craft alone, so she'd built this alliance, ignored the mages who'd thought it was foolish or dangerous, and simply done what needed to be done.

As she would now. But this last part she had to do alone.

“Thank you,” she said, and raised the hand above her bloody arm in something that was part wave, part salute.

She turned and looked down at where the wind hammered waves up against the cliff. Then she threw herself forward in an inelegant dive. Tandan held his breath, the magic around them surged and crackled, and then—

It started to rain.

The binding was complete. The Well had been sealed, his mother's life providing the energy the binding needed, linking the Well to the Bloodlines forevermore.

Jae startled out of the vision and stumbled back several steps, colliding with Tal. He jumped to catch her, even as she turned to face him.

“I know how they did it,” she said, her voice scratchy. “I know how to restore the binding, but…”

She shook her head, choked. She would do it. She
had
to do it. She could still save the Closest at Aredann—if they even still lived. She could buy the time they'd need to find and destroy the knife that bound the Curse. Tal wouldn't be able to do that, she doubted any Closest could, but Elan might be able to. She had to hope he could.

She turned to stare at him, and he stepped back, startled. “Jae, I don't understand. What—” He cleared his throat. “I don't understand what just happened, why you look so…wild.”

“The only way to restore the Well's binding is a sacrifice,” she said. “If we're going save Aredann before the Well goes dry, then I…I need to give my life to the Well.”