Dragon Soul (57 page)

I was lucky this magician was so powerful, the magic so prevalent. What made him strongest was the very thing leading me straight to him, with Badger as my handy weapon. He didn’t seem altogether delighted to be in his position, but a soldier was nothing so much as a tool, meant to be used at an appropriate occasion—and none was so appropriate as having to confront an unknown magician with none of my usual wiles about me.

Even if I’d thought to bring a pistol, all this sand would’ve rendered it useless in short order.

“I believe this is the man who put Madoka in her current position,” I told him, as incentive. “Does that assuage your qualms any?”

It seemed to. His back stiffened with resolve, and the square cut of his jaw hardened.

We were both equally contemptuous of this man—and no one hated him more than Madoka. I felt bad that I was not trapped here with her—for truly, she was the one who deserved to force him into a corner and laugh in his face. I only wished she could have been given that chance, but fate had preordained otherwise. It was strange for me to have cause to think about anyone’s motivations other than my own, but I couldn’t allow such thoughts to distract me at such a crucial interval. It was pointless to even wonder what the
Esar
was thinking, though I’d done a fair bit of it on this trip. Not exactly my usual style.

I pushed Badger onward, the sand whipping around my boots and sending my skirts in all directions—yet another reason to be glad that Kalim was not here, or for the moment, at least, I’d lost the scent of him. I pressed myself up against Badger for shelter as we moved, tugging on his left arm or his right when we needed to make a turn. We made a fine team in silence—neither of us being much for words when there was serious work to be done—and the next wall we broke through flooded my nose with the thick spice of magic. It was nearly overwhelming and I smiled grimly; we were drawing closer. Our pace was something to contend with: one step forward, two steps back, it seemed, and my legs were screaming. No doubt things were worse for Badger, taking the brunt of the wind as I supported him from the rear. At least he was trained in soldiering. All I had to do was allow him to shield me and to keep up my own fierce pace.

We were at a distinct disadvantage, but it was my sole purpose now to nullify the magic’s effect. How I had come to the point of helping others to get the job done in my stead, I would never know—but after this, I swore to myself, I was done with it. I worked best on my own, as all true agents of change. Allowing myself to become engrossed in the curious, baffling lives of others—their whims and their wants—had more than distracted me from my ultimate goal.

It had changed so much in recent days that it was difficult to keep track of it. My missions from the Esar were always straightforward—almost childishly clear, bastion bless him—so that I had never had cause to call my purpose elusive. Now, with the wind at my back, Badger at my front, and, somewhere out there, a magician I had to kill, I couldn’t quite escape the feeling that I’d somehow lost sight of the duty I’d been charged with.

Simply defeating the magician was not enough, and neither was freeing Madoka. Those were both goals set for my own personal satisfaction, and nothing close to my true duty. No doubt the Esar would have laughed to see me now, a grown woman tramping around in the desert with his erstwhile enemies, all of whom were as good as struck blind by all this blasted sand. Meanwhile, he sat enthroned in our beloved country, enjoying the comforts and pleasures of home. At least it was clear his paranoia-inspired nightmares had been based in some real truth, but still, it seemed hardly fair at this current juncture. I
could only hope that what I brought to him at the end would be more than just a handful of sand.

A sharp gust kicked up without warning, blowing straight into our faces and bringing with it the honeyed overtones of some sweeter magic, more pleasing to my nose. It was a part of the dragonsoul; I recognized that quite easily—I was willing to stake my life on what I smelled—and I paused to note, with some curiosity, that it was
not
in the same place as the magician, when a terrific crack broke through the sound of the wind and sand, followed by a deep, shuddering rumble that passed beneath our feet and through the entire dune. It was followed by the scent of something spicy, and though foreign, it seemed strangely familiar. I fell into Badger, and Badger fell into the sand.

Quickly I pulled myself to my feet once more, stretching my hands out to help Badger do the same.

“What was that?” he yelled against my ear once I’d tugged him up.

“I don’t know,” I told him, not for the first time wishing I’d had something more to give up for the as-yet-undiscovered Talent of omnipotence. The smell was more my concern than the earth’s rumbling, but I couldn’t tell him that either. “We aren’t heading in that direction.”

“If Madoka—” Badger began, squinting off into the distance.

“She’s not over there either,” I said, raising my voice. The curious quality it held—tinny, Madoka called it—became more obvious when I shouted. I sounded a little like the wind itself, sharp and strange. Lucky for me, the wind was devouring all it came across now, and the tone of my voice was the least of Badger’s concerns. “Trust me—I would know!”

In truth, I had no idea where Madoka was, since I’d lost the scent of even her hand in the wake of all this other magic. It drowned everything else out, to the point where I felt rather blinded by it. The explosion had made things worse, and not just because of the wild roiling of the sand. At present, I needed Badger to stay on course, and if he needed to hear that Madoka had not been caught up in whatever minor earthquake had just occurred in the middle of the desert, then I was doing us both a favor. In the past, I had done far worse in order to get what I wanted. The only difference was, it had never bothered me before.

Badger squeezed my hands, though, and straightened his back once
again. The walls of sand had shifted, collapsing in on themselves with the force of whatever had erupted in the distance, but they still held strong. I drew in as deep a breath as I could dare, one hand pressed over my nose and mouth. Sand found its way in, but at least there was still some air left for breathing.

We were so close now that the stench was burning my nostrils—a sharp pain that made my eyes water. The wind whipped my tears away as quickly as they formed. In fact, our sheer proximity was what made it difficult for me to choose our next move since the magic on the air was overwhelming no matter which direction I turned in. Much like Madoka’s compass, I could not operate when I was too close to the source.

I could be sure, at least, that we did not need to head toward the direction of the explosion. That much was certain. Its cause was beyond our present concerns. And if we stood here for very long, we were all too likely to become too tired to fight any longer against the fierce winds and sands. I would simply have to trust my instincts—those, at least, were always good—and follow them for the time being, instead of my nose. I knew what direction I
had
been heading in; in this storm, it seemed impossible that even the man controlling the winds could navigate all that quickly through them. It was a safe assumption to make: that he had not gone far from when last I’d been certain of his whereabouts.

I tugged at Badger’s shirt and gave him a little nudge in the direction I’d chosen, hoping he wouldn’t decide that now of all moments it was time to do something foolish. I’d underestimated his soldierly training, however, and he did nothing of the kind, simply starting off through the sand the way I’d indicated and leaving me to scurry along quickly in his wake. He didn’t like me, but he was willing to work with me for Madoka’s sake. People could be so funny when they were trying to be decent.

I clutched Badger’s shoulder as we walked, and the scuffling sound of the sand beneath our feet coupled with the shrieking of the wind—much more intense than it had been moments ago—covered up any further conversation we might’ve indulged in, about Madoka or otherwise. Of all of us, including the men from Volstov as well as Kalim, I understood Badger’s stake in this quest the least. I would have liked to ask him more about it, had there been ample time and opportunity. It
had been my experience, of most of the soldiers I’d known, that their loyalty to country far outweighed their loyalty to themselves, but his behavior wasn’t that of a man acting out of duty. I’d suspected he’d had feelings for Madoka, but to see it in action now had startled me. I had never allowed my own personal feelings to take precedence over my missions.

I’d never had personal feelings strong enough to warrant it.

Unfortunately, fate seemed to be rather short on both time and opportunity these days. I could trust his motives. They were not fickle. That was all I needed.

I’d only just adjusted to the inundation of magic flooding my nostrils, a heady brew that made my brain feel lazy as I followed along tightly behind Badger—when the quality of the air around us changed once more. I tensed, unsure of what to expect, when another boom shuddered through the sands—this one much stronger than the first and stinking to the heavens of a new brand of magic. Sand sprayed everywhere, like someone had overturned a giant hourglass, and ahead of me, Badger pulled up short. For the first time, I felt the sand falling as a weight against my shoulders instead of pulling at me right and left. Realizing what it meant, I had time only to give my companion a firm push as I threw what remained of my energy into a speedier pace.

“Run!” I shouted, the sound of my voice nearly swallowed by the sand now hailing down around us. A blizzard of sand, one might call it; but whatever the name, it was a terrifying and unnatural expression, perhaps the landscape’s reaction to so much torturous manipulation.

We had no choice but to escape it.

Badger broke into a sprint behind me, though I couldn’t exactly promise I was the best person to be following at the moment. Like everyone with a bit of sense still left in them—and I did have that, despite what everyone had always told me—I had an inordinate fear of being buried alive, and the way the sandstorm had turned on us, I was beginning to fear that might be the result. I was running toward the direction I’d chosen, but I no longer had any guarantee of what we would discover once we arrived there.

I stumbled through the soft dune sands, and at one point Badger even hauled me back up to my feet, the pair of us running blind through the sudden downpour. My heart was pounding, and my lungs ached from the lack of air they were receiving. I could only hope that
somehow—despite all the odds, which seemed to have turned against me as of late—we would break clear of the sand before it covered us. Already, every step I took was sinking a little lower into the ground. The sand sucked at my ankles, pooling around my shins and threatening to tear my boots off the more I struggled. And behind me I could hear it, roaring like a wave. We had to outrun it as it chased us from the center of the storm. As for our comrades, it was more than possible they would be buried beneath all this madness. The very desert had turned against these insults and was reclaiming itself from us. So much for Kalim’s theory that his gods were behind the appearance of dragonmetal in these parts. A more suspicious person would have suggested this was the gods’ revenge against the very piece in question.

At least this would make an excellent story for Dmitri, if I ever saw him again.

Then, just as I was all but ready to accept the almost certainty of my final resting place, unmarked and unremarkable in the midst of the desert sands, the air pressure lifted from my shoulders. I stumbled forward with the sudden lightness in my feet, falling onto all fours on the ground, the sand scorching hot beneath my palms. I could feel the sun, and hear Badger’s boots on the sand behind me, and—feeling acutely foolish—I risked opening my eyes.

The deluge had stopped completely.

Good girl
, I thought privately. Even among Ke-Han magicians, the quickest solution to stopping a spell was killing it at the source.

All I saw was sand, sand for miles, the shapes of the dunes shifted but unmistakable. Blank and impenetrable, as well. My eyes stung with the ferocity of the sunlight. It must have been about midday.

I drew in a deep breath, daintily picking myself up off the ground and dusting off my skirts, trying to regain some semblance of self-respect. The smell of magic was still potent in the air, but it hung about my body like an aftereffect—nowhere near as strong as it had been before. There was still that other scent I’d detected, tickling in my nostrils like strong pepper, and I followed its direction with my eyes. A great dune in the desert was shifting. At least, that was what it looked like from here.

“What’s that?” Badger asked abruptly. I assumed he was talking about the same thing I’d seen, but when I turned to look at him, he was facing in the exact opposite direction.

Some few feet away was a funny little mound, not at all natural to the area, with something glinting off the side of it. I couldn’t be sure from this distance—all that peering through the sand had done some damage to my eyes—but it very
nearly
looked like a compass. At least, it was metal, polished to exquisite brightness by the force of wind and sand.

“Madoka?” I asked, a little wonderingly, and Badger was across the distance in a flash, using his hands as blunt shovels to clear the sand off her.

Somehow, her body had made it through.

I let Badger go for her. It seemed to please him that he could. I had been under the assumption earlier that they had not known each other for very long, but soldiers often grew attached to their companions. I was a little jealous, but I could hardly begrudge them their closeness. It was almost sweet.

He grabbed her under her armpits and hauled her up out of the sand, shading her with his own body—again, a small thing that was, to me, quite touching. In the meantime I undid the laces of my boots and dumped the sand out of them, and as I redid the laces I scented the air. The magic was still there, simply muted, as though all the sand had deafened me—or it. But it was fading fast.