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How many of them had heard the rumors from the storm? It made me uncomfortable to think they might be giving me far more credit than I deserved.
Eldrida soon faded behind us in the pre-dawn gloom, and I was surprised that my mind lingered on the disappearing city instead of the task ahead of me. I had roamed the streets until it grew pitch black, hoping the activity would make me tired enough to sleep again, and I couldn’t forget my breath-taking first glimpse of the ocean.
I had known it would be large, but the vastness of it still struck me somewhere deep inside. The seas were shockingly still after the furor of the storm, the blue growing darker as it approached the horizon.
The smell of salt on the air, the call of the seabirds, and the white spray thrown up by the breeze permeated all my senses, immersing me in the moment in a way I’d rarely experienced. And when I returned to our lodgings, the sound of the waves chased me into a light doze.
Even the slate gray of the buildings—those near the harbor specked white with dried salt—seemed different from the buildings I knew from the rest of the kingdom. And the people were different as well, speaking with a lilt to their words that was refreshing and new to my ear.
“This is my first time east of the forest too,” Luna had told me after leading me to the harbor and watching my reaction with satisfaction. “But I’ve heard talk about the people in this eastern stretch of the kingdom. Those in the capital say the easterners have their own ways. They’re so isolated from the rest of Tartora that I suppose it makes sense.”
I had hoped to find the two locals who had helped me during the storm, but I had no way to discover their names or locations. Even the grizzled stable master—who recognized Ember and Phoenix before he recognized me—had no idea who they were.
I had spent only a short time in the city—and for much of it I was unconscious—but fighting the storm shoulder to shoulder with the locals had given me a sense of kinship with Eldrida that I hadn’t managed in months of living in Caltor. I just hoped I would have the chance to come back one day and spend more time here.
At first, we traveled north through the same sort of hilly grazing country as we had traversed from the river to the city. I didn’t have much chance to observe it, however, since we traveled in closed trading wagons. Our mode of travel was one of the decisions made before Amara's and my arrival in Eldrida. The decision makers had decided that merchants traveling by an unusual route would draw less attention than a collection of royal guards and mages heading north.
Each wagon was pulled by a team of horses, and we made good time on the little used road that headed north and slightly west, heading for the northeast tip of Lake Aterra, where travelers could skirt the southern tip of the desert and join the fertile land that covered the middle of Calista.
We didn’t camp for the night until after dark, when Nik appeared from the front wagon and told me we had crossed the border.
“You mean we’re in Calista right now?” I asked.
He nodded. “My father will probably have sent word to Zeke and Cadence since the desert is officially part of their territory, but they have little true ownership over it since it’s infertile and uninhabitable.”
It took me a moment to realize he was talking about the Calistan king and queen. I nodded silently, reminded that Nik was the kind of person to casually refer to foreign monarchs by their first name.
An old memory suddenly surfaced of him claiming to have helped Queen Cadence restore Calista from its fallen state. I had scoffed at the suggestion at the time, but now I felt foolish for having done so.
Amara appeared, handing out bowls of stew, and our moment of private conversation ended. His words stuck with me, though, as we continued traveling the next day.
Even traveling at speed, starting before dawn and continuing until after dark each day, it took us two more days to reach the tip of the lake. A few settlers had moved into the rundown village there, but they had only restored three of the houses so far.
Our group slept under the stars before parting ways with the wagons and their drivers. They would return home at a more leisurely pace as the rest of us continued into the desert on foot.
I expected it to be burning hot on the desolate stretch of sand, but the pre-dawn cold of harvest season left me shivering as we stepped past the last scrubby patches of grass. As the sun rose, it grew hotter, but never to the blistering heat I had expected.
A comment from Nik told me it had been less pleasant during the summer, and I was glad for the timing that brought us here on the verge of winter. My legs soon grew weary of trudging over lightly packed sand, however, and they would eventually have been burning more than the noonday sun if I hadn’t used my power to soothe the ache.
When I saw Hayes and Clay circulating among the soldiers—a soft word and brief handclasp enough to provide the same service for them—I offered my assistance. Hayes agreed, having Luna and me join him in providing relief for several of the guards. Like with our studies in Caltor, he used his own power to complete the task, having us join with him and shadow his activity with our power, amplifying his efforts. His demonstration, combined with a few words of explanation, showed me a more efficient way to target the relevant muscles, a method that required less power than I’d been using on myself to achieve the same end.
It was an interesting process—the only proper stimulation in the whole day—but he warned me that he had only permitted it as a training exercise.
“I don’t want you using unnecessary energy from tomorrow onward. Keep it for whatever you encounter in Grey’s camp.”
I nodded, trying not to show how unsettled I felt at his words. The closer we got to Grey, the more real this whole situation became, and I was dreading the moment when I left the rest of the group behind.
Nik had spent the journey in the lead, accompanied by the desert tracker who consulted with him in low tones. I could only assume Nik was teaching him the route he was taking and the two of them were choosing the best place for the rest of the group to wait.
In the end, they led us to the coast, the sight of the sea catching me by surprise. It had been huge and overwhelming from Eldrida’s harbor, but from the desert it seemed vast and wild in a wholly different way.
We all traipsed down a short but steep cliff, finding a tiny hidden cove at the bottom. Gazing out to sea, the water looked tempestuous, roiling over unseen obstacles that occasionally reached above the water level, the jagged points of rock deadly and unwelcoming.
Turning, however, I saw that the small strip of damp sand led to a deep cave that stretched back into the cliff side.
“Even if Grey sends a team south from his camp, they won’t see you in here,” Nik said with satisfaction.
“How did you find this place?” I asked, gazing back up the invisible path that had led us down the steep incline.
