How had Najran been able to resist the verse she had used to strike at him? What powers did he possess?
Then she noticed something else. His hips were girded with his belt of jeweled daggers, the tip of his glaive spiked with blood.
“You killed the child?” she cried in protest.
His eyes hooded, he answered her, “I put a traitor to death.”
His voice was the scrape of a blade, metal crunched against bone.
The group of riders circled her, drawing closer, the hooves of their horses stirring up clouds of sand. The caracals crept closer on the ridge, predators who now assumed a hunting crouch. She met the eyes of one and motioned it away with a wave. The black tufts of hair at the tips of its ears quivered before it bounded down the far side of the ridge, its packmates following behind.
Arian kept moving, one slow step at a time, her eyes on the man with the glaive. His eyes struck sapphire sparks as the riders tightened their circle.
“Fall back,” she warned them, the promise of the Claim beneath her words.
Najran raised his glaive, his head cocked to one side, listening.
Her tone gentle, Arian called up the Claim. “Would any of you wish to have a garden with date palms and vines, rivers flowing underneath, and all kinds of fruits?”
A soothing whisper chased at the edges of the dunes. The riders nodded to one another in answer, loosening the reins of their mares.
Arian motioned at them, just as she had motioned at the caracal. The horses drew away, giving her space to maneuver.
And still Najran watched her with those sapphire-studded eyes, his fingers loose and relaxed around the glaive.
The whisper in the valley rose into the air, gathering traces of sand, the silver pathways of the stars dimming above their heads.
“But you would be stricken with age, your children too weak to tend it, your garden struck by a whirlwind, lashed with fire until burnt.”
Najran raised the glaive high above his head.
But it was too late now for him to undo the power of Arian’s spell. The crests of the dunes that surrounded them exploded in a tornado. The distance between Arian and the riders increased as the vortex rose around them, pierced by ribbons of flame. Hot winds from the north mixed with cold winds from the south: the aesar of the desert put to the test of the Claim.
They were smothered by sand, while fire roared in their ears until it had swallowed their cries, burning the riders to ash, their horses scattered to the winds.
In the eye of the storm, Arian waited until the whirling sand subsided, a shimmering waterfall of fire that circled her until it ebbed into a single line—a wall between the encampment she had escaped from and the uncharted distance ahead.
Flames spun orange-gold patterns on the sand—it was over; it was done.
But when she looked up, one man remained on his horse, his weapon poised in his hand as he watched her across the veil of fire. He lowered the glaive, his gleaming eyes fixed on hers.
She finished what she’d come to say.
“So does the One offer clear signs so that you may reflect.”
The sapphire glint in his eyes dimmed to amber, as he acknowledged the words. He wheeled his horse around, searching for a way through the whirlwind her voice had summoned from the sands. When he realized there was no path that would allow him to cross, he spit out a lengthy curse. Then he bowed at her in respect.
“Until we meet again, First Oralist.”
She nodded and left him on the sands.
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