Before he became the Death Rose of Atal and faced the seventeenth garrison; before he was Myth-hewer and Champion Star, before he drowned the valkyries in a desert of glass; Raelus Marrow sat in the heat of an uncaring sun and tried to dump the sand from his boot.
It was noon now, or close enough. His own shadow hid from him and he winced as he looked out over the unending dunes. In all his years growing up in the gentler weather of the southern hills he had never before felt such allegiance to the dreary, rainy city of his birth. Indeed had it not been for the presence of his companion, he would never have ventured this far inland, never have slipped between the jaws of the steadfast mountains that framed his world. In the distance, over miles and miles of desert, he thought he could still see them on the horizon.
But it was difficult to say no to Serena. She had a gravity that sucked in the attention and favor of all who let her speak.
“It’s time,” she said.
He stood and fruitlessly dusted himself off. Turning around, he saw her on the top of the dune, gazing north. Her cloak shifted on a gust of wind. The sign they’d been waiting for for three days.
Serena hefted her pack, which was filled with papers, books, scrolls, and a variety of other tools, some scholarly and some decidedly illegal. While these were useful for her life’s work, it left Raelus to shoulder the pack that held most of their other supplies. Luckily he traveled light; an instinct carried over from a youth of destitution.
The wind picked up, blowing faster and stronger. Raelus joined Serena and looked out over the sands as they began to move. Dunes melted away, valleys bloated and replaced them. Rivers of wind carved through the landscape, changing the world.
They gripped each others hands as the winds began to tug at the dune they had made camp on. Their hoods and masks protected them from the assaulting grains, but only so much. They slid down, scrambled up, and did their best to keep each other from being buried alive. Such were the dangers of the desert called the Mar. It stained the heart of every map of the world like a great wound, and Raelus knew that for Serena, the comparison was more than apt; it was historical.
Great were the kingdoms of old, or so said the scraps of legend and myth passed down over ages. Here, at the soul of the world, it was said, gods walked the earth and worked miracles on the living. The Sorcerer Lords held their might and lore with vice grips, and rose to prominence thereby.
And yet, now their supposed kingdom was so much sand and dust. The Mar was a brutal place, completely uninhabited by even the hardiest of creatures. The sun was its lord now, and it fixed a jealous eye on its prize.
Serena defied that lord. She had studied for years to prepare for this moment. Years of poring over maps, diaries, and transcripts of traders’ tales. Years of scouring myth and song for clues. But they were here now, buffeted by sands and struggling not to be consumed by them.
For one heart-wrenching moment, the two explorers broke apart. Raelus went up, stumbling to remain standing as a dune welled up beneath him, and Serena went down as the desert floor beneath her vanished. But Raelus had reflexes honed in back alleys and barrooms. He ducked down, sliding over the sand as it heaved, and grabbed Serena by the hand before they got pulled apart any further.
“I was off,” she called over the wind. “We’re close, though!”
A massive dune rose before them, blotting out the sun. With a cry of “Now!” Serena dove forward toward its base. Raelus had a split second to notice his brow slackening in the shade for the first time since morning before tensing them back into a grimace and following her.
The sand rose higher and higher, and for a moment Raelus wondered if this was how a ship felt on a cruel and ragged tide. Then he saw it. A hole in the desert. As the dune sucked sand from its surroundings to swell, it revealed something underneath: The tip of a stone structure. As Serena and Raelus slipped inside, they felt the ground beneath them slide and pull, as if the desert itself wanted to swallow them whole. If the land had such aspirations, it realized them in the space of a breath. The sand passed over the crevice, and it was as if no one had been there at all.
The sun ruled the dunes, keeping its silent vigil; if it knew what horrors lurked beneath its domain, it had nothing to say that could be heard by man or beast.