Somewhere in the distance, someone was calling the poet's name. All she could feel was the fire, consuming her alive. She was burning with her sisters: the coals coiling around her leg like a serpent and the flames pouring through her veins. For two days, the Sut Resi had moved, and as they did, Ilati shivered and sweated. Now, with ashen skin and no connection to the reality of the others, she drifted into endlessness. Her struggles to continue without showing pain, to brave her wound without succumbing, those were not enough to save her from infection.

Once she had realized what she was, it was too late to do more than suffer in silence. The fever had dried her mouth into the Desert of Kings itself and then came the delirium.

Again, she heard her name. Slowly, Ilati realized she was no longer on the mule's back. The swaying movement of a beast beneath her had stopped. The priestess turned her head and let her glazed gaze fall on a dark face, almost the indistinctness of a shade. "Ilati, hold on!" it urged in her brothers' voices.

Ilati could not speak through the agony of the fire. She was burning. Could the dead not see that? Surely they knew best that it already consumed her leg, roasting with the awful intensity of flaming oil as the rest of her suffered this terrible heat.

A voice, familiar and female, barked with disapproval. "We should have checked the wound sooner!"

"I will do everything in my power..." An old man began, but the rest of his words washed away like mud-brick in a flood.

Slowly, Ilati's perception unraveled. Her mind opened more and more until the limits between her spirit and the Beyond felt immaterial. The dead were coaxing to her, calling her name. Ilati, come back to us, they whispered over and over. Ilati, come back to us. She was sinking into the river of fire that marked the entrance of Ersetu, land of the dead. They were waving at her from shore, their hands passing mere inches from her face.

Her eyes fluttered closed and Ilati dreamed of being someone else, somewhere else.

—a deep knot of worry wormed its way closer and closer to the center of her stomach as she watched him, a king prowling back and forth before his throne. "You say this oracle will require a sacrifice?"

"One must treat with the One With a Thousand Faces. That is not so easily done," she said. "Fate is jealous with its secrets. Sacrifices are necessary to appease it when you seek to look into the truth."

"How much?"

She purposefully kept her gaze away from any in the room, fearing that to gaze at any would spell their destruction. "You wish to know the course of a life. The One with a Thousand Faces has spoken: a life in exchange."

A hiss of indrawn breath from the left, where the king's daughter by marriage waited, one hand on the curve of her belly. The woman shook her head. "That is too much to ask, creature."

It stung to be insulted so. Was it Ilati's fault that the overseer of souls was so exacting? Still, she could not say that she wholly disagreed. It was a terrible price and worst of all, it was one the warrior king would be all too eager to pay. Great power brought with it cruelty, an insensitivity to the life around him.

The king drew his sword, bronze gleaming in the lamplight. "Bring the magi to me," he ordered. "Let us see if their augury is more honest than their gifts."

Ilati tensed when the guards dragged two struggling men before the great king and his burning eyes. Merciless knots bound their hands to prevent them from casting spells and the removal of their tongues with hot pincers ruined any chance of escape by incantation. The maiming and agonizing wounds on their bodies, washed in vinegar, made her almost regret having exposed the plot. She closed her eyes just as the gleaming blade gashed open the throats, one after another.

"Speak!" The command burned in the air like a fiery sun. "Here are your offerings, O One with a Thousand Faces."

She stared at the body. This was not the prosecution of a battle, but an execution. The magi lay with their throats cut like sacrificed lambs. She knew she should have never spoken of the future at all, but knew with dreadful certainty there was no way out now but forward. When she spoke, it was not in the tongue of the common people.

Her words rolled out like thunder, understood in the bone rather than in the ear, quaking in the souls of all but the great king himself, who goaded and challenged with his very posture.

"The next son of your blood will burn with the heat of a sun and be as brave as the befits the ruler of the four corners of the world." The great king smiled, but then she kept speaking. "Yet he will stand as I have stood, not a man, in the shadow of one to come. He will play at his birthright, but it will always lie beyond his fingers, until his blood spatters into the dust."

Fingers closed tightly around her elbow: the king's daughter by marriage. "You do not have to keep speaking." It was clearly a wish that he say no more.

Wrathful, the king bared his teeth in a rictus grin. "Let us hear the fool out, if this is the prophecy the One with a Thousand Faces sends us."

Her focus shifted to the next born. "His brother will be fierce like a shepherd when confronted with lions, but like a dove to his people. He will win their love with his passionate words and marry well, uniting his people with a stronger tie. Yet he will perish in youth, twisting and writhing under the relentless sun, abandoned by them all, even the one who shared with him the water of the womb. With him dies all the sons ever to come of your line."

The great king closed the difference between them in a single bounding step, cracking his fist in a backhand across Ilati's face that sent her staggering with the sheer force of it. Blood gushed from her split lip, caught in her hands, and anger welled up in her as well as tears.

"Lies! You speak with the tongue of twisting demons, the treachery of a serpent!"

It took her a moment to compose herself again enough to speak, mouth dripping blood down her chin in a crimson flow. A third prophecy opened in her mind's eye. It was a rare thing to be given anything by the One with a Thousand Faces without paying a cost, but the god was only truth and could not be ignored. "Look into my eye and tell me I deceive you when I say this, great king." The challenge did not go ignored. "Look and hear the voice of one who loves you: there will be another."

"Another child?" The savage king seemed no less ferocious or confrontational.

She nodded slowly, never breaking eye contact. "You have conquered the four corners of the world with the sword and the strength of your arm. It will be done again with words."

He laughed, cruel and biting."Words?"

"Do not mock something you have seen shatter armies yourself." Ilati raised her chin. "Those words will tear across the land, fueled by the fury of the Great Flood. They will set mountains aflame and ruin cities. A war as there has never been a war will write the story of this great house into the earth and sky, to be surpassed by no other. When the gods have abandoned you and all your works, feeding them to the deserts and storms, she will raise them to the very summit of the joining of sky and earth where only immortals may set foot, and slay the deceiver who abandoned the last sons of your blood."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"A girl?" He snarled in disbelief and struck Ilati again, this time knocking her to the floor. "I should have you crushed like the crawling thing you are, for you bring the evil eye into my house. You have spat your poison, serpent! Begone!"

Gentle, trembling hands went to help Ilati up.

"I forbid you to assist this pestilence, wife of my son." Scornful eyes looked over Ilati. "You do not even have the spine to strike at me with your magic, serpent? Then you will crawl beyond this city's gates on your belly. Return, and I will have you stoned." The great king looked to his advisors. "It seems you were right. These magi are all the same."

Ilati went to pick herself up, and a heel slammed down into the center of her back. "You heard the King of the World," the king's son said, something between satisfaction and sorrow in his syllables. "On your belly."

Humiliation burned in her cheeks even more hotly than her terrible wrath. For a moment, she considered cursing every member of the court. The words of the evil eye, of destruction and famine and pestilence, boiled up to the tip of her tongue.

It was only out of love that she stopped and started her slow crawl away—

Ilati screamed in pain as she awoke, the cold of a river's depths sweeping through her body, turning her bones to ice. The fire was gone, replaced by this horrible feeling that gnawed at every sinew and fiber of her being. Hands framed her face as someone knelt beside her head. She struggled with everything she had to escape, but there was no way she could fend off anything after the ravaging of fever and infection.

"Let it go, Ilati," Eigou soothed. "Let the poison leave you."

She could feel something draining from the wound in her leg, some mixture of blood and, by the smell, pus. The priestess gagged at the stench of her own suffering and went still, though she remained as tense as a bowstring and her teeth were chattering.

"Color is coming back to her," Menes observed with relief. He held the bowl beneath her wounded leg, catching the spilling liquid until it trickled to a stop. "It seems the herbs worked after all. I thought you would kill her for sure with all of that."

Her leg was still throbbing, but no longer did it feel as though it burned and split open like roasting meat.

"I am aware," the sorcerer said dryly. "You protested most vigorously. You and Shir Del."

The warrior woman huffed, seated at Ilati's right hand with a nervous Roshanak crouched beside her. "You nearly killed her twice, Eigou. We had reason to be wary."

"And yet she lives, so what have we learned?" The old man sounded rather smug.

Shir Del rolled her eyes as she looked down at Ilati. "That you are insufferable when finally correct. How do you feel, little sister?"

Ilati shook her head slightly, still shivering even as the cold subsided. She felt drugged, tongue thick and lips slow to move. When she tried to turn her head to look at Eigou, everything spun until she felt like vomiting.

"Perhaps save your questions for when she is better?" Tahmasp said sourly. The old Sut Resi shaman gave Eigou a nod. "A better use for many of those herbs than most know."

"I was an herbalist once," Eigou said. He brushed some of Ilati's hair back and squeezed her shoulder in reassurance. "In Ulmanna."

"How long?" Ilati croaked out.

"You have been sick for five days, maybe six," Tahmasp muttered. "Too sick to move for the past two. Next time, girl, tell us when the burning starts. Don't wait until you drop out of the saddle."

"I...dreamed."

Eigou's hands stilled against her body, but then he gave her another reassuring squeeze. "It is common to have such deliriums with a fever like yours. I have heard those on death's door speak of many things in the Beyond. Demons and spirits enjoy playing tricks when one is so fragile and so close."

Her teeth still chattered as she tried to speak again. "Cold."

"Is it safe to wrap her up?" Menes asked as he picked up a linen blanket.

"With the fever broken? Yes." Eigou wrinkled his nose slightly. "Though I suppose she will wish to bathe as soon as she is strong enough. Let me wash and bandage what remains of the wound first, though."

Tahmasp inspected the piece of grass he'd been chewing thoughtfully. "She will not be walking on that leg for some time."

The one-eyed sorcerer bustled about his task. "Motivation for her to become a better rider."

"Painful," Tahmasp grunted.

"If there is one thing now known, it is that Ilati can tolerate pain. Enough to die without a mouse's squeak. If she had not fallen, she would have passed on," Shir Del snapped. "You and Artakhshathra were pushing her too hard."

"The tribe needed to move, Shir Del. The chieftain will not sacrifice all our people for one person's sake."

Before Shir Del could retort, Menes intervened. "It is past," the charioteer said, mahogany features gentle. "Let us leave it there."

Both Tahmasp and Shir Del glared at him, each for their own reasons. It didn't seem to perturb the charioteer in the slightest.

Roshanak perched at Ilati's side, hunkered down on her heels. "The bad men are gone."

"Always the peacemaker," Eigou said with a chuckle. "Yes, we are far from the Nadaren and only a week from Sa Dul. By the time we reach the village, this wound will have mended in full. It will be tender, but not open. I know the people there and their generosity. They will give us rest before we pass what remains of the way to the forest."

Shir Del raised her eyebrows. "So quickly?"

"I do know a bit of magic." Eigou winked at Roshanak when he saw the girl still worried, wiggling his fingers at her.

His little gesture worked, a bright smile spreading across the young Sut Resi's face. "Ilati will be all better?"

The sorcerer nodded. "Most certainly better."

Relief washed through Ilati at the knowledge she would be whole soon. She hated the idea of slowing down the tribe or placing them in danger. "Thank you, Eigou," she said, voice ragged in her throat.

Shir Del sighed, letting some of the tension in her body ease with the departing breath. "What of Vanushe?"

Ilati felt a pang of guilt, even with the fog in her mind. "The Nadaren killed her at the well."

The warrior woman made a faint keening sound, grief creasing her brow, and tears welled in her daughter's eyes. Vanushe was an old and well-loved horse, one Shir Del and Roshanak would miss dearly. She was not as bonded to them as Araxa or Thriti, but was still certainly part of their portion of the herd. Ilati knew there were funerary rituals for dead horses among the Sut Resi, though usually they were performed over the horse's body. For Vanushe, the tribe would pray and make offerings.

"We'll figure something out. Until then, Ilati should rest." Eigou's tone brooked no argument. "We can move in the morning. Someone must tell Artakhshathra that she is on the mend."

Shir Del rose to her feet, scrubbing at her eyes. "I will. Roshanak, you will come."

Roshanak clambered to her feet obediently, still despondent as she left the tent.

"There are other things I should see to," Tahmasp said, levering himself up from his seat with a grunt of ache. He departed as well, leaving Ilati alone with the two men who had saved her from the river.

Menes touched her arm, warmth radiating out from his hand. "I am glad you are better, Ilati. Not even the omens were clear that you would live, according to the Sut Resi."

Eigou shrugged a little. "Gods seldom account for mortals, so far are we beneath their notice. Besides, omens are difficult to read at the best of times."

"You are fortunate Tahmasp left," Menes said, raising an eyebrow. "He would take that as an insult."

"I did wait until he left, yes." The sorcerer sounded mild, but unapologetic. "I suppose I am more confident in our priestess than he is. The opportunity to rectify that will be before us soon enough, however."

"How am I to do that?" Ilati almost sighed from just the effort of speaking. She was exhausted from her wounds and the accompanying infection.

Eigou gave her a faint smile. "Something to speak of when you have more strength. Rest well, Ilati. You will need it."