Slight and Shadow (Fate's Forsaken: Book Two) (18 page)

Chapter 16

Abomination

As they traveled deeper into Whitebone, Kyleigh kept track of the days by rations.

At dawn on the fourth day, they had no meat left — because try as she might, she couldn’t keep Silas from pilfering it. She remembered the fifth day clearly, because Silas had spent it moaning loudly about how he was sure to shrivel up and waste away if he had to eat one more bowl of spice rice and dates. On the sixth day, she clocked him over the head and carried his unconscious form across her shoulders for miles, just to have some peace.

Then on the seventh day came relief.

            “Stop. Do you hear that?”

She turned and saw Silas standing with his arms and legs apart. He stepped gingerly in a circle, as if he was trying to pick his way across a path of rusted nails.

“Kyleigh, please hit him again,” Jake muttered as he caught up with them.

Poor Jake. After their first day in the burning sun, he’d woken with his face and neck covered in angry red blisters. Kyleigh hadn’t thought to pack any ointment: the sun weakened her, but it never burned her skin. And Silas had just turned a deeper shade of brown. But Jake burned badly.

He’d been so miserable that he’d tried to heal it himself out of desperation. The result was that the hair on his face now grew twice as fast as it had before. And with the painful blisters still underneath, he couldn’t shave. Six days later, he had a full, bushy beard.

“No, I hear something — little scratching sounds …” Silas’s voice trailed away as he sank into his lion form. He tore into the sand with his front claws, ripping it up onto Kyleigh in stinging waves.

She was too exhausted to pound him for it. Instead, she sat on her pack and felt around for the nearest canteen.

The skins kept the water cool, but their thirst drained it faster than the sun’s rays ever might have. She’d been rationing her drinks, and the lack of moisture was beginning to take its toll on her body. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d relieved herself.

“He’s gone completely mad,” Jake said as he plopped down next to her, shooting a look at Silas.

After a considerable amount of effort, Jake managed to find the top of one of his invisible canteens. He uncorked it, tilted it back for a drink — and poured most of the water straight up his nose.

“How close are we?” he snapped, wiping his face impatiently with his arm. He grimaced when his sleeve brushed across his blisters.

Kyleigh looked away before he could catch her eyes. “It shouldn’t be too long, now.”

“What does that mean? A day? Two days?” Jake made a disgusted face at the sun. “A week?”

“I’m not sure. I think we’re close —”

“Not sure?
Close
? I thought you knew where we were going.” When she didn’t respond, Jake reached over and very suddenly pulled down her hood. “We’re lost!” he said, when he saw her face.

She bristled against that thought. “We’re not
lost
. I just … well, it’s a little more difficult to navigate than I thought it would be.”

“But I thought you said you’d been here before?”

She hardly had a chance to open her mouth before Jake figured it out:

“You flew.” In his shock, his glasses slid the whole way down his nose, and he made no move to push them back. “The last time you traveled to the Baron’s castle, you
flew
there! You didn’t walk. You have no idea how to navigate from the ground, do you?”

“Of course I know how to navigate from the ground,” Kyleigh said defensively. She gazed around at the endless dunes, at the white-hot sky, and the realization began to creep in. “The truth is, I’ve never wandered through a land quite like this …”

Her words trailed away as a wave of exhaustion swept over her. The sun may not have burned her skin, but it thwarted her in far more exhausting ways. In this empty land, her senses were next to useless: there were no scents to follow, no trails to pick up, and even a dragon’s sight couldn’t reach far enough to do them any good.

During the day, the horizon danced madly in the blistering heat — stacking the dunes atop each other, creating illusions of refuge to tease them. At night, the light from Jake’s fire wall kept them from being able to see into the distance. They’d rise with the sun at their face, determined to keep it there. But by evening it would be hovering far to their left or right.

She had no idea just how many miles they’d wandered off-course. And the longer they stayed trapped in the desert, the more her strength began to fade.

Her blood had already begun to lose its magic. The sandy hills burned so hot during the day that Kyleigh swore she could feel the heat in the soles of her boots. The moment the sun went down, the hills turned cold — chilling her to the bone.

The hot, dry air raked across the insides of her nose every time she breathed in, and the skin cracked like the barren ground beneath them. Her nose had bled and dried several times over, and it wasn’t long before she couldn’t smell anything at all — not even Silas’s stench.

All around them, the land was deathly quiet. Only the wind seemed to have a voice, and it never stopped speaking. Every gust of air carried little bits of sand in its folds, just enough to sting their lips and ears. It howled through the hollow hours of the night, blowing the tops off of the dunes and gathering them into new piles — so that by the time they woke, the land had completely changed.

They had no choice but to set out stubbornly at the dawn of each day … prepared to lose themselves to the hot, shifting world once again.

“It’s not all that bad,” Jake said. He must’ve seen the many frantic thoughts flashing behind her eyes, and now he was determined to solve their problems. “Let’s see … ah!” He twisted towards her, planting his hands on his knees. “You could always go on a scouting expedition — you know, wing about and see what’s out there. Silas and I would wait for you.”

Kyleigh tried to smile, but the gesture pulled too roughly on the dried skin across her lips. “I can’t, Jake. I haven’t got the strength for a flight.”

After they’d run out of meat, things had gone downhill quickly. Now her dragon half was starving.

It took all of her concentration to melt them a new glass shelter each night. Even at that, the lightness in her head often sent the world spinning. Her hunger was far beyond pain or a rumbling stomach — last night, she’d nearly passed out.

If she tried to take flight, she thought she might very well drop straight out of the skies. And who would look after Jake and Silas, then? No … she needed to save her strength. There was a cleverer way to go about things, and she was determined to figure it out.

Kyleigh looked to the north … well, she hoped it was north. In the desert, the sun seemed to spend an unnatural number of hours hovering at the top of the sky. It climbed eagerly to noon each day and then paused, as if the wispy clouds somehow held it captive. Several hours would pass where the sun hung directly over their heads, making any sort of navigation impossible. At last, it would manage to pull itself free — only to plummet beneath the horizon as quickly as it had risen.

“We ought to start cutting back towards the Baron’s highway. I don’t know how many nights of fire I have left.”

“That goes for both of us,” Jake muttered. A grim smile peeked out through his tangled beard. “If we don’t get some food in our bellies, or find somewhere solid to plant our feet, we might as well —”

A scream interrupted him — a cry that Kyleigh recognized immediately. She spun to look at Silas.

He’d been digging while they talked. Sand coated his nose and powdered his coat, but all of his work had been worth the effort: he now had a lanky rabbit clamped between his pointed teeth. He pounded his front paws into the earth, jerking his head repeatedly at the hole he’d dug.

Kyleigh needed no translation.

She jumped into the hole and jammed her arm into the rabbits’ burrow. It was a natural rock tunnel, a giant stone hidden beneath the sand. There was a whole family of hares hiding out inside the rocks, where the minceworms couldn’t burrow in and get them. She grabbed a pair of flailing legs and yanked them free, flinging the terrified creature in Silas’s direction.

Five hares flew out of the tunnel and into Silas’s waiting jaws. There might’ve been more, but Kyleigh couldn’t reach in any further. She sat back on her heels and turned to look at Silas. There was a brief moment when she realized that he could’ve gobbled the hares up as she flung them, leaving none for anybody else. But that fear passed when she saw him doing nothing more than standing protectively over their mangled bodies.

“Well done, cat. We’ll have a feast tonight,” she said.

Haughtiness flashed behind his eyes, but it was a halfhearted and exhausted gesture. He must’ve felt the weariness more in his animal form, as well.

Silas stepped aside, letting Jake wrap the hares so that they wouldn’t spoil. A week ago, he might’ve snapped Jake’s hand off at the wrist — or perhaps he would’ve already eaten him.

For a moment, Kyleigh was actually rather proud of Silas … and she wondered if that meant she might be sun-stroked.

*******

When evening came, they were all in high spirits. Kyleigh cleaned the rabbits and Jake cooked the whole lot with a hefty serving of spice rice and dates. They each had two heaping bowls full — though the way Silas and Jake carried on, passersby might’ve wondered if they’d had a few tankards of ale to go along with it.

“Oh, fantastic,” Silas moaned, rolling over on his side.

Jake was doing a very off-key impersonation of Uncle Martin. He raised his invisible canteen in a toast. “To your health, Sir Cat! Had it not been for your keenly pointed ears and your keenly pointed teeth, we wouldn’t have such fine rabbits to grace our pot!”

Silas wore a bearskin pelt like a cape, with its massive front paws tied in a knot around his throat. He bowed and swooped it out beside him. “I thank you, shaman. You could not have put your adoration in a more deserving direction. As for
you
…” He fell on his knees next to Kyleigh. “I think I’ve earned a kiss.”

“Not a chance,” she said, shoving him away.

His glowing eyes widened pitifully. “Please? I’ve never had one before. I’ve often wondered why the humans find them so exciting.”

“You know, I’ve never had one either,” Jake said, looking up from where he’d been busily cleaning his spoon. “Why
are
they so exciting, Kyleigh?”

A memory that she’d fought for months to bury suddenly burned sharply against her lips. Heat sprung to her face. She found she couldn’t think of anything to say … and that
never
happened.

Fortunately, her companions were so flush with glee that they didn’t seem to notice.

“Ooo, you’ve had one? Who was it from?” Silas said, creeping in closer beside her.

“Kael Witchslayer!” Jake shouted, shaking his fists at the crowd of minceworms that had encircled their camp. “And if he were here, he’d have crushed every one of you sorry little blighters with his bare hands!”

“Kael Witchslayer?” Silas growled, and Kyleigh knew he could sense how her heart thudded harder at the sound of his name. “Who is he? Another halfdragon?”

“No, he’s a whisperer,” Jake answered — which was a good thing, because Kyleigh doubted if she could’ve said it herself.

That memory was suddenly all she could think of. She was surprised at how well she remembered it: the feeling of his lips, pressed firm and confident against hers. The way his arm had wrapped around her waist, holding her tightly in the very moment when her legs went numb. She thought she’d felt a burning between them — a fire that arced from his heart to hers, a thrill he felt that set her soul ablaze …

But then again, perhaps she’d only imagined it. Perhaps she’d wanted it so badly that it hadn’t been
him
at all … perhaps it was only her own thrill she felt …

“Whisperer,” Silas murmured. He closed his eyes tightly, and Kyleigh knew what he was doing.

It was a price all shapechangers had to pay: when their souls bonded, they lost a good portion of their human memories — and gained new ones from their animal halves. Kyleigh found it difficult to sort through them all, to remember which memories were hers and which were those of her dragon soul. Sometimes she would have dreams of lands she’d never visited, of battles she’d never fought in.

And sometimes, if she closed her eyes and concentrated, the memory she needed would come drifting out of the dark, swimming up like a fish to rocky shores.

She knew that was what Silas was doing. He was combing through his human memories, searching for the meaning of the word
whisperer
. And she hoped desperately that he wouldn’t find it.

Then his eyes snapped open. “No … not a Marked One,” he hissed, glaring at her accusingly. “Dragoness, you know bet —”

“Are we going to play tonight?” Jake called from the edge of the fire wall. He twirled his staff in his hands, leveling it at Silas. “Or do you concede defeat?”