Chapter 1

The sandstorm had passed, but the the desert’s dangers endured. The heat of the rising sun was heavy against her back—and her waterskins were far too light. One of the first lessons her tribe had taught her was that sun sickness could fell the greatest beast or noblest clan elder. Neither might nor riches would save those caught without water under the harsh rays of the crimson sun.

Erenil Halfshadow emerged from the thick, striped kirre hide that had protected her from the worst of the storm while she’d taken refuge between two rocks. She shook the sand and gravel from the fur, not expecting the foreboding clink of glass. Around her, sharp and deadly obsidian shards created a mottled pattern on the rocky wastes that reminded her of a riding crodlu’s scales.

Azhar lifted his sleek head out from under her hand, his hunting drive prickling in her mind and stomach as if it were her own hunger. The dying were close, the scent of their suffering whetting his appetite. Only hours ago, those whom Azhar considered prey had been traveling alongside her in the caravan heading to Altaruk.

She restrung her bone bow and checked her knives. She listened for any hint of danger, but there were only the sounds of the desert.

Lead, she thought on a psychic thread, and Azhar obeyed. She would decide whether the caravaners were now worth more to them than as food.

Water would be next—she trusted her ability to find water more than her ability to find her hunting companion a filling meal. Only the death throes of those at the edge of life could satisfy his hunger. The flesh he did not need, only the fear and desperation felt by the dying.

She followed him as he padded over to a large boulder, sniffing a drift of sand and pebbles and baring his fangs in anticipation. The half-buried human was near to succumbing to his wounds from the silt runner raid that had beset the caravan at the same time as the storm. A poison dart had found the soft flesh between his helm and leather armor, turning his skin red and bulbous. Not even the most skilled healer in her tribe would have been able to bring him back this many hours after the attack. Only a druid or priest would have that power, and she was neither, nor did she know of any traveling among their company.

For a fleeting moment, she wondered if the man had been born behind city walls or in the open desert, whether he’d been born free or a slave or member of a tribe. It didn’t matter now. He would die as part of the great cycle.

Eat, she allowed, and felt her own stomach churn as the morsels of agony and despair slipped through the partial barrier she’d erected between her and Azhar’s minds. She couldn’t shield herself entirely from his inner state without risking losing control of him entirely. They were bonded, but like anything else in this land other than the sorcerer-kings’ rule, that bond could be easily broken.

Behind her, the sudden sound of flapping cloth had her grabbing an arrow from her leather quiver and nocking it in the span of a breath. She stalked toward the noise.

Her eyes darted across the landscape, and fixed on the dust rising from a tattered sand-skiff sail. A squat dwarf, his bald head glistening in the morning sun, poked his face out from under the canvas.

With a few strides of her long legs, she reached the dwarf before he could stand upright, an obsidian arrowhead pointed between his bloodshot eyes.

“Don’t shoot,” he coughed. “I can pay.”

Money was of no consequence to her, not when he was a threat, or worse—a liability to her survival.

“Your ceramic can’t buy a life out here.” She scanned his person for weapons, but figured he’d hidden a few knives in his traveling clothes, the same as her. She kept her bow drawn. “You’re dressed like a city-dweller. Why shouldn’t I put you out of your misery?” Judging by the bulging pack he carried, Erenil figured he had several days’ worth of rations inside, which could buy her precious time.

“Because believe it or not, I know your people. Or knew them,” he says, eyeing the tattoo climbing up her neck and jaw. “The lost Desert Rose tribe, if I am not mistaken, judging by the ink the marks you.”

She narrowed her eyes. Few in the Tyr region knew of her tribe, as they had mostly evaded the cities and traded almost exclusively with other nomad tribes. More than two eclipses of Ral and Guthay had passed since most of the Desert Rose were wiped out in a raid and her clan was scattered to the winds. Those among the Halfshadows who’d been fast enough to outrun their attackers had been absorbed into other tribes if they were lucky, or if not, cursed to try to find their way among the dunes.

She tried not to think of her daughter and how she was faring among the Water Hunters tribe, and how long it would take Erenil to recover the tryvern’s toxin that would hopefully—if the druid’s words proved true—cure Linneia of her illness.

“How?” she demanded.

“They were the best source of rare… herbs and extracts that were sought after by my house. That is, if one could track them down. You were a hard-to-find lot.”

It was true. Unlike the dune traders and merchants of the other tribes, the Desert Rose were mostly hunter-gathers. Its members specialized in the secret cultivation of medicinal herbs, poisonous plants and fungi, and intoxicating leaves, seeds, and roots. Their techniques had been passed down through generations. Unlike the herbalists of her late husband’s tribe, the Halfshadow clan kept the tribe fed and clothed with the meat and skin the beasts that stalked the dunes. They followed the old ways.

“Your house? You’re a noble?”

She had only a vague approximation of the powers that were in Tyr. As she understood it, the templars were the ones that held the real power, not the nobles. But the fine silks and sparking jewelry the man wore evinced a wealth that outshined that of a chieftain.

“Well… not exactly. My patron is—was,” he corrected himself, “a beneficiary of your wares.”

“And so, you think that because you recognize a marking, I shouldn’t loose this arrow?”

“I overheard that you were looking for the tryvern. All the way out in the Sea of Silt. Do you think you have what it takes to survive out there?”

If she didn’t, she shouldn’t have bothered setting out in the first place.

“So you do, do you? Then perhaps you’d benefit from a companion who knows all the tales there are to tell of the Silt Sea. And of the vicious Silt Stalkers, too.”

Her eyes narrowed, and she considered. A hunter couldn’t survive on prowess along. Knowledge was key to a successful hunt. But was this dwarf’s knowledge worth having?

Her ears picked up at the same time as Azhar’s, They could continue this conversation later, after they’d dealt with whatever he’d sensed.

“Something’s coming.” She turned to aim her bow in the direction the zhackal was turning. “Will you flee or fight?” she demanded.

“I can fight,” he said, dusting himself off as he got to his feet. He drew a pair of bone throwing daggers from beneath his silken tunic.

“Good,” she said, and darted toward the closest rock for cover.