There's no shortage of charlatans peddling relics of dubious origin, promising ancient power to any fool with coin. The gullibility of the masses never ceases to amaze me. They want hope so badly, they will fall for anything. Like a man dying of thirst chasing a mirage. Right hand to the Nituob, it's easier to sell a cursed trinket than a loaf of bread.
— Adnan al-Farsi, Bazaar Merchant of Chentoufi
***
They carved a slow and steady procession across the vast slopes of the Scorch, their thornback mounts skittering nimbly along the spines of the dunes as they headed northward toward the Burning Hills. A vast, barren stretch of shifting sands stretched out before them like a golden, wind-tossed ocean. Overhead the relentless heat of the sun beat down like a blacksmith’s hammer.
Rift hardly noticed. That was one of the many perks of both his advancement and the curious nature of his Unnamed Path.
“We’re chasing a mirage, Rift,” Chains grumbled, her hands lightly gripping the reigns as her cobalt scaled mount swayed beneath her. “That beautiful girl dancing just over the next dune? It’s a pile of camel’s kith. That’s what this is. A heaping pile of kith. Surely you must realize that, eh?”
She sounded miserable. She looked even worse. Like a drowned cat.
Although the thief was a hard woman, capable of amazing physical feats and extraordinary violence, she was also soft in her way. A creature of comfort who craved the finer things. Goldsilk robes and soft sheets. Chilled wine and fresh fruits plucked from the verdant orchards nestled in the rolling hills south of Dowia. Though she was resilient, as all Diamond Envoys were, she wasn’t a Warden by nature. Her primary calling was as an Arcanist of Shadow, and such gifts did little to insulate her against the heat.
To her credit, very few could weather the brutal temperatures of the Scorch.
Even the nomadic Zarifian merchants, who regularly traveled from Kenza to Nassir, then west to Al Kadeeri in a never-ending loop, didn’t attempt to forge the sands during the hottest parts of the day. It was madness and misery in equal measure. The thornback mounts they’d taken from the dead Scouts made the trip bearable, though only just.
Thornbacks were contentious, mean-spirited creatures—much like Chains in that way—but their ability to navigate the dunes was unparalleled. Unlike the dromedaries and horses used by most trade merchants who traveled the Scorch, thornbacks were a lesser type of Divine Beast. Each possessed a small core filled with Earth and Ground Aspect, which enabled them to dash effortlessly across the mercurial and ever-shifting sands with a speed no other pack animal could match.
Unfortunately, that same Mana also made them cunning and temperamental.
Rift and the others had originally traveled into Telrala on camels.
Camels were slower, but they were also much less temperamental and less conspicuous. For thieves and outlaws, going unnoticed was vital to survival, even if it was inconvenient at times. In Rift’s experience, reckless outlaws had a nasty habit of dying young and painfully. After last night’s skirmish, however, speed of was of the essence and so they’d begrudgingly swapped their dromedaries for three of the thornback mounts the imperial patrol had rode in on.
It was possible the lesser divine beasts would attract unwanted attention once they arrived at their destination, but they would also cut the travel time considerably. Which was good, because they had a long way to go.
None of them had been able to discern how to operate the strange orb Elder Ferhat had given them, though Idwan was well-enough versed in ancient Driss to tease out a few scant details. From what the Muzhry man could discern, the location of the buried temple was near a border city called Bhaleel, located deep in the interior, which was a six-week journey even on Thornback. Assuming the Vaultseeker’s Eye was real—a notion Chains had serious and vocal doubts about—it would act as a homing beacon, leading them directly to the temple, then guiding them safely to the ancient treasure within.
They just needed to figure out how to use the demandable thing, though Chains insisted she had an old acquaintance in Bhaleel who could help. Rift was in no way surprised. Chains had contacts from Amella and Thelmarak in the north, to Tamara and Kenza in the south with a network of eyes and ears in every city in between. Although she was an accomplished Cultivator and a master thief, she’d also served as a trade broker with the Stone Skulls before she’d been abruptly expelled from the organization.
Though technically she was no longer in good standing with the Syndicate, her contacts remained.
“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Chains growled, swiping away the sweat dotting her brow with the back of one hand, “but I don’t work for promises or rumors. I work for gold, and I insist on being paid up front. Because I’m smart and not a gullible sucker.”
“Trust me on this one,” Rift replied evenly, “the reward will be worth it.” He ran an affectionate hand down his mount’s scaly neck. The creature chirped contentedly at the gesture. Although his mount was the largest of the three, it had a rather gentle and affectionate disposition.
“Gods above, don’t tell me you really bought that sob-story about a lost temple?” she spit, her brow furrowed, her eyes narrowed. “Idwan, certainly, but not you. We both know that every single town from here to the Blighted Lands has some ‘magical family heirloom’ passed down from generation to generation. It gives their short, pathetic lives meaning, but these things always turn out to be fakes. Always. How many times have we seen it firsthand?”
Rift grunted. She wasn’t wrong.
The number of fake relics that supposedly dated back to the Seventh or Eighth Age were legion.
He could find enough “sacred wooden shards” of the Brander’s Ship to build the thing four times over, and that was without ever paying a visit to a single merchant stall. In the Grand Bazaar of Chentoufi, Rift could find a thousand sacred treasures, ranging from the legendary Mizbah Al-Dhulumat—the Lantern of Shadows—to Asa Al-Rih’s Sacred Staff of the Winds. The very same staff Asa had used to call on the Goddess Mirelie to seal away the corruption of the Blighted Lands.
Rift had seven different versions of the Sacred Staff secreted away in his Dream Vault.
They made great kindling.
“I’m telling you, Rift,” she glowered, “we’re wasting our time. Time that would be better spent disappearing from watchful eyes.”
“This is different,” he said tersely. “This is not the first time I’ve heard tell of the Vaultseer’s Eye, and though I can’t date the artifact, I have no doubt that it’s authentic. It’s the handiwork of the Ydrissid. A thousand gold suns, says I’m right. And you’re forgetting the scout patrol we wiped out. If they wanted this bauble bad enough to slaughter an entire village, then that probably means there's more to it than strictly meets the eye.”
Chains snorted. “It means nothing. Those scouts would’ve slaughtered everyone in that village for a single bottle of half-decent wine. Besides, even if what you’re saying is true,” she continued, undeterred, “you’re forgetting something important, Edriah.”
She always used his given name when she wanted to make a point.
“We are wanted criminals,” she said slowly, as though he were daft or drunk or both. “I know this might come as something of a shock to you, but generally the goal of criminals, like us, is to stay away from the Watchers and the Imperial Wardens. So going where they are likely to be is a bad idea.”
“And what would you have us do then?” Idwan barked at her from the back of a beefy thornback with burnt copper scales.
Unlike Chains, Idwan looked completely at home in the sun-scorched wasteland, which was true in its way. No one called the Scorch or the even more brutal Burning Hills home. No one, save the Muzhry. The secretive blue people built their strange, hidden cities in elaborate tunnels that snaked beneath the great desert, which was so inhospitable to most life.
“Would you have us walk away?” Idwan pressed. “Just leave these people to suffer needlessly when we can help?”
“Of course not,” she replied indignantly. “I propose we fence the bloody trinket, that’s what. I’ve got a contact in Bel-Adia who would pay handsomely for something like that. He’s a collector of odd curios and antiquities. Will it earn us a wagon overflowing with uncut diamonds? No. But if we play it smart, we could walk away with a bagful of golden suns each. Money which we will need to throw off the Blind Fathers, who are no doubt already tracking us.”
“They need our help,” Idwan chided softly. He spoke like a long-suffering father explaining some fundamental truth to an obstinate child.
“I fail to see how their local deity having performance issues could possibly be our problem or responsibility,” she replied dryly.
“Chains,” Idwan said disapprovingly, “we’ve talked about blasphemy. It is unwise to provoke the divine so cavalierly just because you do not owe allegiance to their deities.”
“One, it’s not blasphemy if the criticisms are true,” she shot back, “and two it’s only blasphemy if this god of theirs is real, which I am not at all convinced of.”
“Come now, you’re not curious?” Rift asked, cocking an eyebrow at her. “Not even a little? An ancient map? An Ydrissid artifact? An unexplored temple? The promise of sacred treasures and cultivation manuals.”
Although Rift wasn’t a man easily moved to compassion, the notion of sacred treasures and manuals from the Seventh Age were too tantalizing to ignore. Especially after losing years’ worth of work in that damnable cave.
“You don’t want to even take a peek?” he asked.
She glowered and sniffed.
“Of course, I’m curious,” she finally snapped. “I’m a thief, aren’t I? There is nothing I love more in the whole world than the prospect of buried treasure and unclaimed riches, ripe for the pilfering. But I’m also smart. I’d like to knock over the Sorcerer-God’s Dream Vault too, but it’s important to know your limitations. Any half-decent thief can spot a good mark at a thousand paces, but it takes an excellent thief to spot a bad mark, disguised as a good mark. And I’m telling you, this whole thing is a bad mark, Rift. The worst kind. Best to cut our losses, earn what we can, and move on.”
She was digging her heels in. As always, this was going to come down to money.
“Twenty platinum stars upfront, plus your regular share of the take?” Rift offered. It was a princely sum, but one Rift was more than happy to spend if it would mollify the woman. He had a great deal of coin to spare and there was no way he could do this job without her help.
She pressed her lips into a thin line and seesawed her head back and forth in consideration.
“Fine,” she finally said, tossing up her hands in surrender. “But the second this thing turns sideways, we fence the goods and find something more lucrative and less idiotic.” The fact that she didn’t haggle for more showed exactly how interested she truly was. The thornback beneath her let out a squawk and a disgruntled hiss. “Oh, shut up or I’ll turn you into a pair of boots.”
***
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The next few hours passed largely in silence, the sun tracing its blazing path across the sky then slowly descending toward the western horizon. The terrible, oppressive heat was finally starting to slack, but the cool of the night wouldn’t truly kick in until sunset.
When that happened, the abrupt shift in temperature would be dramatic. Turning from blistering hot to frigid cold in the span of an hour or less.
Rift absently focused on cycling Mana while Chains muttered and grumbled constantly under her breath about the heat and how much she loathed the desert. Idwan seemed lost in his own thoughtful contemplation but was the first to break the quiet streak.
“Not to alarm anyone,” the man said, glancing over one shoulder, “but we are being followed.” He paused, his face an unreadable stone mask.
“How long?” Chains asked, her complaining suddenly forgotten as she pulled free her name-sake weapon. She ran a thumb along the outside of the kusarigama blade, checking its edge. It was a motion of habit, not one of need. The weapon was a sacred treasure, crafted in the Dreamfire Forges of Ruk, the Grand City of Sacred Smiths, and further tempered with Shadow Aspect. The weapon would likely outlast Chains and still never lose its edge.
“Since Telrala,” Rift answered, before Idwan could.
The blue man shot him a guarded look, the smallest flash of annoyance passing across his face. “I should’ve suspected you already knew,” Idwan replied levelly.
“Should we be worried?” Chains asked, though there was a note of excitement, and not a whiff of fear, lingering beneath the question.
“No,” Rift replied with a shake of his head. “I would’ve said something earlier if there was any need for concern.” He pulled up his reigns, wheeling his mount about in a slow circle. Even though he couldn’t see their pursuer—not even with his enhanced preternatural vision—he could feel the distant thump of his heart. He eyeballed the sun. Three hours until full dark when the more dangerous beasts of the Scorch would crawl and slither from their dens to hunt.
He drummed his fingers against the pommel of his saddle.
“A short break,” he declared. “Just long enough to persuade this fool to turn back before he winds up dead. Or worse.”
“What is bloody worse than dead?” Chains asked.
“Ending up in a Sand Scorpion’s den,” Idwan replied evenly. “They don’t kill, you know. Not right away. They paralyze their victims first, then pump them full of gestating eggs. The process can take months and when the hatchlings eventually emerge, they eat their way out. It is a very unpleasant way to die.”
Chains screwed up her face in evident disgust, “That’s underselling it a bit, I think,” she said while Idwan picked through the provisions entirely unperturbed by the unpleasant prospect of death by scorpion spawn.
The blue man pulled out several small rounds of flat bread along with goat cheese and dried beef. That beef was as hard as their saddles, but the cheese was soft and quite flavorful. Rift, for his part, just waited. Cycling. Always cycling. Even here, in this barren wilderness of sand, mana could be found. It was as weak as the badly watered wine cheap inns liked to serve.
The process was second nature to Rift, though. As natural as breathing.
He opened his spiritual sense and saw the mana drift across the land, pooling and eddying like the flows of some great river. It resembled a thin, low-hanging mist that glinted with a metallic sheen. Gold and yellow, in this case, since it was tainted by Earth affinity.
He drew in from the shimmering air, refining the power in his churning Core, slowly but steadily stripping away the incompatible Aspects until only pure mana remained. Then he cycled that power outward through his mana channels in an ever-turning wheel. Rift further refined that gaseous mana, pressing it inward with the weight of his will, until it formed a single drop of condensed liquid which joined the swirling mass of scarlet and purple light that made up his core. Liquid mana was far more powerful than its gaseous counterpart, and even a single drop was powerful enough to level a city block.
The voice of his unwelcome traveler, quiet since the bloody battle from the night before, stirred. Questing tendrils of Ruin reaching for the liquid mana. Mine, the voice said, little more than a whisper. Rift ignored the voice and focused instead on the horizon. He didn’t have to wait long before a reddish dot materialized on the skyline, small at first but growing rapidly with each passing moment. Rift could see the approaching rider long before the others: a boy of maybe fourteen summers, clinging for dear life to the back of a thornback three times too large for him.
“Gods below. I don’t play well with children,” Chains growled as their pursuer finally drew close enough for her to see. “They’re annoying, disgusting little beasts.”
“About that, at least, we are in agreement,” Rift replied.
“That’s close enough,” Rift said, once the boy was finally in range.
The hunched figure straightened in his saddle, panting beneath the layers of black fabric covering his chest and arms. He had a keffiyeh wrapped around his head, though the cloth didn’t cover his youthful face. Now that he was closer, Rift suspected the boy might have been older than he’d first assumed. Perhaps sixteen or seventeen summers. Still, he was small for his age. Likely malnourished. That was common, especially in far border villages that regularly subsisted off a few staple crops and little else.
The boy slipped from his saddle and landed lithely on the sands with a soft whisper of fabric and the subtle creak of leather. There was an intensity to his gaze that gave Rift a single heartbeat of pause. The brutal warmth of the day had not been kind to the boy but the fervor in his gray eyes wasn’t simply the result of heat exhaustion.
Rift had seen that look before.
Saw it every time he looked in the mirror.
The boy’s eyes burned with hunger. He had an appetite for vengeance.
“If you’ve come to kill the great Son of Blood and Sand hoping to make a name for yourself,” Rift drawled lazily, “you’ve come a long way for nothing. I don’t honor duel children or burn orphanages, despite what the stories might claim. If it’ll make you feel better, though, I can beat you black and blue before sending you on your way so that you’ll have a good story to tell all of your friends.”
For a thin moment, Rift was stone certain the boy was going to reach for the weapon at his side, but instead he dropped to his knees, right there in the sand. The boy pressed his fists against the ground and bent himself nearly in half, until his forehead brushed the dirt.
Gods. What fresh hell is this? Rift thought, trying to suppress a thread of annoyance.
Dissuading would-be heroes was one thing, but this was something else entirely. It was common to treat Cultivators with high honor, but such displays of humility were nauseating.
“Azifan al-ma'na ma'izzan el bi'karam,” the boy croaked, his voice raw and hoarse. Despite the rasp, he spoke the old words without a stutter or a pause. “Bi'ruh al-sadaka wa'qalb al-wafa. Wa'anmaf il-quwati wa'laht al-ijtima', Narfa'an baynina al-liwa'a al-sama'a.”
As the boy finished the pledge, his face still pressed against the earth. The words rang like a gong in Rift’s heart. “In the name of honor and loyalty, pledged in spirit with the sincerity of blood, let us unite our strength and seek justice, dust to dust until blood waters the sand.”
This was an old ritual, and one that Rift hadn’t heard in decades. He doubted the boy truly even understood the words he spoke, or their implications.
“That’s enough of that,” Rift said, waving for the boy to stand. “We’ve got things to do and places to be, so just tell us why you’re following us?”
“Peace be upon you, Son of Blood and Sand,” the boy replied, slowly climbing to his feet. “My name is Torrick al Ferhat, son of Emirhan, grandson of—”
“Grandson of Elder Ferhat,” Idwan finished. It was a statement, not a question. He crossed his arms and eyed the boy with renewed interest.
“That’s right,” the boy said, straightening. “I’ve come to help you on your journey.” He paused and licked lips, which were dry and desiccated from the blistering heat. “With my father gone, the protection of the Vaultseeker’s Eye, which you now carry, falls to me.”
Rift grimaced as a small piece of the puzzle clicked into place. The elder who’d been killed, his head so thoughtlessly carved away, had been the boy’s father. Which meant he’d also been the son of Elder Ferhat—the very man who’d entrusted them with the Eye in the first place. For the barest moment his heart softened, and he felt for the boy. Sympathized with the pain he must be feeling.
“You want to help us?” Chains asked, giving him a wide, mischievous grin. “Then climb your scrawny arse onto your mount, head back toward that dirt-patch you call a village, and forget you ever saw us.”
“But I can help—” the boy started to reply.
Rift steeled himself and cut the boy off with a word and a raised hand. The boy was angry and he had every right to be, but that anger would not serve anyone here. The boy was weak, pitifully so, and would only be a liability.
“No,” Rift said. The word was as flat and hard as the face of a boulder. “I don’t care about old pledges or soul oaths. I don’t care about grand gestures or childish sentiment. This is not some game, Barrick—”
“—It’s Torrick—” the boy attempted to correct.
Rift ignored him. He’d pronounced his name wrong on purpose to show exactly how little he cared.
“This is not some fanciful adventure,” Rift continued, “spun by the tongue of a Goshan wordweaver. This is a war. We”—he motioned to the others—“are mercenaries, not babysitters.”
“But…” Torrick tried to protest, a look of desperation welling up in his eyes.
“I said no,” Rift repeated sternly. “You’ll be a liability and you’ll only slow us down. You want this temple of yours saved?”
“—We never actually agreed to save the temple—” Chains interjected.
“Then do us all a favor and leave,” Rift growled, ignoring the thief’s protests.
“But I can help,” the kid insisted once more, his face contorted into a snarl of anger. The thin veneer of reverence was gone. Stripped away in a second. There was a fighting spirit in him. “You need me. To work the Eye,” he hurried to finish before Rift could cut him off again. “It’s old magic, but I know the trick of it. My father taught me. If you take me with you, train me how to be a Cultivator, I can show you.”
Rift could feel the boy’s heart racing, beating madly inside his chest, though from fear or excitement or just the heat of the day, Rift couldn’t be sure. There was a wild desperation about him, though, and it was impossible to say whether he was lying or telling the truth.
Rift wasn’t sure it mattered. Not to him.
The idea of taking on an apprentice was nauseating and although he disliked children in general, he didn’t hate this one enough to subject him to the life of an outlaw cultivator.
“Please, Honored Cultivator. Give me the Eye, I’ll show you.” The boy raised a hand. Rift noted that it was the hand of a farmer, not a soldier.
He considered the boy’s outstretched hand for a long moment. There was no harm in entertaining the notion, he supposed. Rift fished the Eye from a pouch at his side and tossed it to the boy, who caught it with surprisingly nimble fingers. The boy withdrew a kerchief and placed it over the orb, hiding it from view. A moment later there was a brief flicker of light so bright it pierced through the cloth, before guttering out just as quickly as it had come.
The boy dropped to the ground, panting, shaking, great drops of sweat running down his brow. He uncovered the orb and offered them a shaky smile.
Rift was not surprised the simple action had taken so much out of the boy. He’d used mana to power the orb, which meant he was indeed a Cultivator. Or, at least, he had the innate gift to become one given time, training, and discipline.
“See, I told you,” the boy said, still panting. “I have the gift. Just like my father and grandfather before me. If you train me, I can cleanse the temple. If you bring me along, I’ll teach you the secret of the Eye. How to activate it.”
“You know we could just torture you until you tell us, right?” Chains asked, idly cleaning her nails with the tip of her kusarigama.
“Yes, Mistress,” the boy confessed, though he didn’t sound afraid, “but I don’t think you will. I think my grandfather is right about you. That you have a good heart.”
“No, he isn’t,” Rift said, cold as the desert night.
He dismounted and plucked the Eye from the boy’s hand. Torrick had tried to conceal the trick, but Rift could see with more than just his earthly sight. Although the orb served as a key, the sigils covering its surface acted as a safeguard. A lock of sorts. To open the lock, mana needed to be channeled into seven different sigils, all in a very specific order. There were thousands of sigils, though, which meant thousands of possible configurations.
Discerning the combination would’ve taken weeks or even months to figure out, though Rift was sure Chains would’ve solved the puzzle eventually. Now there was no need. Rift effortlessly mirrored the energy pattern he’d felt just a moment before. He maintained the flow of mana and the orb lifted from his hand, erupting with azure light. A beam of blue energy exploded from the stone set into the top of the sphere, pointing north and slightly east. Directly toward the temple.
Chains whistled softly under her breath.
“As you can see, we don’t need you.” Rift cut the flow of power and the Eye dropped back into his palm, dead and lifeless once again. “And, more importantly, we don’t want you. This is the last time I’ll say it.” He leaned in close, as if confiding a great secret. “No.”
Then Rift lifted the veil masking his core and let the sheer force of his aura drop down on the boy like the foot of a giant angry god. This wasn’t a technique or an ability. Mana, so tightly condensed, had a sort of gravity to it. This was the weight of power concentrated. It flattened the boy, driving him into the dirt. Not even Chains or Idwan were wholly unaffected. Chains dipped to one knee against her will, while Idwan swayed, fighting to stay upright under the immense pressure.
“This is the power we will be facing,” Rift whispered into the boy’s ear. “This and more.”
Rift knew how he sounded.
Bleak and merciless and inevitable.
He also knew how painful this would be for the boy. To hear that he wasn’t special. That he wasn’t the chosen one. That if he walked this road, he was liable to end up in a shallow grave before he saw his sixteenth summer. And that is why Rift had to say the words. Better a cold, hard dose of reality now, then a slow painful death by inches later.
“Go home, boy. Tend to your farm. Marry a pretty girl. Have a normal life. And if you know what’s good for you, forget the day you crossed paths with us.”
Rift stood, then, and reeled his power back, veiling his core from the world.
The boy just lay there, wheezing on the ground while Rift and the others mounted up.
The boy’s pride would be injured, no doubt, but if he was smart and turned around now, perhaps he would survive the night.
That was the kindest gift Rift could offer. The only gift he could offer.