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  “What is it?” she asked of the large warrior. He had watched Cynder’s communication attempts with disinterest—for the most part, he had instead been focused on the crowds, his eyes watchful, his posture alert. To him, dayside’s newness wasn’t as much exciting as it was potentially dangerous. Unlike Flennid, however, he seemed observant, rather than nervous.

  Baon nodded toward Acron. “That man seems to understand him,” Baon explained simply.

  “What?” Cynder asked.

  Khriss looked again. Baon was right, it did seem almost like … Acron were conversing with the man.

  “Look in the window,” Baon suggested.

  She did so, squinting against the sun’s light. She could barely make something out—a sign. A sign written in Dynastic.

  “Shella!” she breathed in amazement. The sign read, in very distinct letters, ‘Dayside Supplies and Maps.’ “It’s in Dynastic!” she realized.

  “Yes,” Cynder said slowly, noticing the board. “Though the spelling is atrocious.”

  “Come on,” Khriss said, heading directly for the building. A shopkeeper—one of the lighter-skinned Daysiders with a broad smile and short brown hair, was speaking eagerly with Acron. He noticed Khriss’s approach and smiled eagerly.

  “Ah, more Darkside good friends! You want supplies, okay friend?”

  “How …” Khriss said with amazement. “How does he … ?”

  “I don’t know,” Acron said. “He just started talking to me. Amazing, isn’t it?”

  “Good Dynastic, yes friend?” the daysider said with satisfaction. “Darksider come much, escape Dynasty. Very bad. Much exciting. Need much supplies, yes friend?”

  “Perhaps the Dynastic blockades aren’t as effective as dear Emperor Scythe would have us believe,” Cynder noted at her side.

  “Much Darksiders,” Khriss repeated. “How many?”

  “One, maybe two ship one week,” the man explained.

  “Shella!” Khriss said with disbelief. “Those blockades are supposed to be impervious. The Dynasty doesn’t even let its subjects travel from one province to another! There’s no way they let that many ships escape.”

  “We got through,” Baon noted.

  Khriss turned “True,” she agreed. “We got through.”

  “And it wasn’t very hard,” the warrior continued.

  “We lost two men!” Flennid objected, still looking at the daysiders with anxious eyes.

  “Also, true,” Khriss agreed. “And not just any men—Captain Deral and his lieutenant were well-trained warriors.”

  “They weren’t killed by the blockade,” Baon explained. “We lost them sneaking out of Elis and crossing Dynastic lands to reach the ocean. Once we were on the waters, we barely even saw another ship.”

  Khriss paused. She’d assumed they had just been lucky, but … . “Shella,” she cursed. “This just got more difficult. Come on, we’ll buy supplies later.”

  She turned to walk away from the shop, and her entourage followed, leaving behind a disappointed shopkeeper. Khriss could hear him swearing under his breath in poor Dynastic, thinking he had lost a potential sale.

  “I assume you plan to tell us what suddenly made our lives grow more difficult,” Cynder said, strolling beside her.

  “The Darksiders,” Khriss explained. “That’s why no one thinks we look strange—Darksider fugitives are a common sight.”

  “Ah. It is a difficult thing to realize you’re not as unique as you thought.”

  Khriss snorted. “It is a difficult thing to realize no one in this entire town would have taken note of Prince Gevalden’s arrival two years ago. I was counting on the event having been unique enough that people still remembered it. Now we have no idea which way he went.”

  “At least we know this is where he started,” Acron chimed in.

  “If the ship captain’s telling the truth,” Khriss mumbled.

  “He has no reason to lie,” Cynder pointed out. “Unless, of course, someone paid him to do so. Or he just forgot. Or maybe he wasn’t really the one who ferried the prince to Dayside, and just said that to get our business. No reason beyond those three, and maybe a couple more.”

  “All right, back to the ship,” Khriss decided. “I have to think.”

  The group began to wander back toward the ship. Khriss walked quietly, thinking to herself. How was she going to find Gevin now? Their ability to speak the language had proven even less-useful than she had assumed, and the fact that darksiders were common on dayside … .

  She only had one option. The sand mages were supposed to live in a kingdom called ‘Lossand.’ She would have to make her way in that direction and assume Gevin had done the same. She would have liked to follow his trail exactly, but … .

  Khriss’s thoughts trailed off as something else grabbed her attention. A voice. She wasn’t certain what about it bothered her—it was a faint voice, barely audible over the market’s crowd. It wasn’t in Dynastic, but she felt like she could almost understand it.

  Khriss stopped. The others paused, looking back at her, but she raised her hand to forestall questions.

  A short distance away, sitting in an open space beside the market street, was a domed building with broad windows. People were gathered inside it, and it seemed like the voice was coming from inside. Not bothering to look to see if the others followed, she crossed the small distance to the building and peeked inside.

  At the front of the room stood an olive-skinned man with a shaven head. He wore nondescript robes, with a golden chain around his neck, and in his hand he clutched what appeared to be a long spear with a bone head. Directly in the center of his forehead were a pair of stark white scar marks that formed an ‘X’.

  The man was speaking forcibly to the crowd, his tone familiar for some reason. He stood with his arms outstretched, the spear pointing toward the sky. The language was gibberish, though it seemed like Khriss could almost …

  Ker’Naisha’Totar’Kersha. The words, pronounced almost so oddly that she missed them, suddenly jumped out at her. She would have missed them completely if they hadn’t formed the single most pervasive phrase in the books she’d studied. She wasn’t a genius at daysider, but she had taken some classes.

  “May the Sand Lord Bless us,” she whispered. The words, or ones similar to them, ended nearly half the sentences written in dayside, one of the reasons the dayside books were so incredibly thick.

  “I understand it too,” Cynder whispered. “It seems to be a speech of some sort. A religious ceremony?”

  Khriss frowned. He obviously understood more than she did.

  Cynder stepped forward into the room, clearing his voice. The man at the front looked down at him with a frown of annoyance.

  ““Iresha’takasha Ai’Dakasha—” Cynder began, obviously trying to pronounce them as clearly as possible.

  “Aiesha!” the man said angrily. “A’Reel Karshad’n Shan’Tershadan!”

  Cynder backed away before the man’s anger, leaving the building and its occupants behind.

  “Do you understand it?” Acron asked eagerly.

  “A little,” Cynder said with a frown. “The words were spoken so quickly … . Karshad. It means … .”

  “Holy language,” Khriss realized, her eyes opening wide with understanding.

  Cynder nodded. “Why, yes. You’re right, duchess. Kar … priest. Priest-language.”

  Baon snorted, “You mean … .”

  “We learned the language of the clergy,” Khriss realized.

  “There is precedent for such things,” Cynder agreed. “I have studied class-specific dialects.”

  Khriss sighed, turning away from the building. “Well, I guess it’s not as bad as it could be.”

  “True,” Cynder agreed. “If we can’t get directions out of them, then at least we can call them to repentance.”

  Chapter Three

  Kenton lay frozen in the darkness. He hung in forced immobility, unable to cry out, unable to feel his l
imbs—unable to feel anything except the horrible nothingness. Like a maelstrom of ice, the blackness ripped at his soul and flayed his mind. He struggled against it, terrified of this one awesome power that every Daysider feared. Darkness. Frigid, emotionless, lightless . . . .

  Kenton cried out, sitting up with such force that he flung the wet rag off his face, hurling it across the room. It slapped against the side of the tent, leaving a wet stain on the cloth as it plopped to the ground. Kenton sat for a moment, breathing heavily, his injured arm pulsing in protest. Finally, his heart coming under control, he groaned and reached up to wipe the droplets of water and sweat off his face.

  “You’re awake!” a voice exclaimed.

  “Eric?” Kenton asked with confusion. Then, however, memory flooded back to him. He was on the sands. He had run the path. The voice couldn’t belong to Eric—his friend had left for Darkside years before.

  Standing in the tent doorway was a small, red-haired boy. Dirin. He looked younger than his sixteen years, probably because of his Talloner heritage—they were a racially small people.

  “Dirin?” Kenton asked, shaking his head to clear his mind. “How long was I out?”

  “About a day,” the boy explained, still standing hesitantly at the doorway. There was a look of excitement in his eyes. “When they brought you back, Kenton, all covered in sand and blood … we assumed you were dead. But … six spheres, Kenton! How did you do it?”

  Kenton looked down at his shoulder, inspecting the clean white bandage as memories of the previous day’s events returned. “Honestly, Dirin, I don’t know,” he confessed.

  “Hush now, boy,” a new voice said. “Go and fetch mastrell Traiben as you were instructed.”

  Dirin nodded, moving away as a taller, blondish form entered. One of the physicians maintained by the Diem, a cool man who prominently wore a Kershtian sun medallion around his chest even when working on sand masters. He walked over, feeling Kenton’s forehead and checking the bandage.

  “No fever,” the healer mumbled. “I assume you will insist on attending the advancement ceremonies tonight?”

  Kenton nodded, reaching for the clean sand master’s robe sitting on the floor beside his cot. Then he paused—there was something more important he needed to check first. Suddenly worried, he hesitantly reached over and scooped a pinch of sand off the tent’s cloth floor. Then, taking an anxious breath, he commanded the sand to life.

  The small pile of sand flashed, glowing brilliantly and remaining in the air even when he removed his hand. Kenton sighed in relief; he hadn’t overmastered. His abilities, such as they were, still remained.

  The healer’s lips turned down at the sight, but he didn’t say anything. He simply rose and left the room as Dirin returned, followed by two familiar forms.

  “You scoundrel!” Traiben exclaimed, rushing over to clap Kenton on his good shoulder.

  Kenton smiled, allowing his sand to fall stale. Traiben looked immaculate as always in his robes and golden sash. He had gone bald early in life, and kept what hair he had close shaven, accentuating his firm square face.

  “I knew it,” Traiben continued, stepping back as Kenton threw on his robes and tied them with a white sash. “The moment you declared you were going to run the path, I knew you would surprise us. Kenton, if you weren’t around, life in the Diem wouldn’t be half as exciting.”

  Kenton shrugged, retrieving his qido and sword from the corner of the tent. He nodded in greeting to Elorin, who stood more reservedly at the front of the room. The aging undermastrell was often unassuming, especially when there was a mastrell in the room.

  “So, how did I do it?” Kenton asked as he tied on his sword. “Where did that sixth sphere come from? Were there always six possible, and I’m just the first to find the last one?”

  “No. It must have been—”

  “Mastrell Traiben,” Elorin interrupted softly, nodding to Dirin, who had started to fold the cot’s bedsheets and place them meticulously in a pile.

  “Oh, yes,” Traiben realized. “Dirin, lad, thank you for fetching us. Why don’t you go tell the Lord Mastrell that his son has recovered?”

  “Yes, mastrell,” Dirin said lightly, leaving the room.

  Elorin nodded for Traiben to continue. Though there was little chance the boy would ever run the Path, it was general policy not to let younger sand masters hear the Path’s secrets.

  “Anyway,” Traiben continued eagerly. “There aren’t supposed to be six spheres. The one you found must have gotten left behind following someone else’s run.”

  “As you might expect,” Elorin added, “spheres are often lost where the sandling is concerned. They get buried deep in the sand, where even the most powerful mastrell wouldn’t be able to retrieve them. It is just assumed that they will never turn up again, but …”

  “One must have gotten lodged in the creature’s carapace,” Kenton realized, taking a ladle of water from the bucket next to the doorway.

  “For all we know, it could have been my sphere. I only found three of them, you know.”

  “What’s the other one you missed?” Kenton asked curiously.

  Traiben flushed slightly. “The one on the cliff ledge. I just jumped over the canyon, never bothering to look down.”

  Kenton smiled slightly to himself. It made sense—Traiben was known for his impetuousness. Still, the failure had been difficult for the mastrell. Kenton could remember well his return to the camp after only finding three of the spheres, his normally energetic personality reserved.

  Kenton remembered being slightly surprised at the failure. Traiben was one of those rare individuals who was good at everything he tried. He had entered the Diem the same day as Kenton, but had quickly proven himself a capable sand master. He hadn’t even needed to stretch himself to make mastrell—though it was impossible to be jealous of him. Traiben was just too amiable. Sometimes Kenton found it frustrating—if only Traiben were a bit more like Drile, then it would be possible to envy him. As it was, they remained friends even despite Traiben’s status as a mastrell, something that should have kept him from associating with a lowly acolent.

  “The Lord Mastrell is calling sixth sphere invalid,” Traiben was saying. “But, that doesn’t really matter—the entire Diem has already heard about what you did.”

  Kenton shrugged, pulling open the tent flap to check the time. The moon hovered above the horizon in the northeast; it was about seventh hour, just past mid-day. The advancement ceremony wouldn’t be until tenth hour.

  “The Lord Mastrell is, of course, rather perturbed with you,” Traiben noted.

  Kenton smiled. “When isn’t he?”

  “Now more than usual, acolent,” Elorin explained. “You weren’t supposed to slay the creature.”

  Kenton looked away from the moon, instead turning to study Elorin’s reserved face. Up until six months ago, the undermastrell had been the one who oversaw the training of new sand masters. He hadn’t ever explained why he had given up the position, or why he continued to pay particular attention to Kenton. The man had a gentle wisdom about him that was far more powerful than any mastrell’s sand, and Kenton could sense there was something behind his words. He seemed … anxious for some reason.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Path is destroyed forever now, Kenton,” the undermastrell explained. “No one knows how that deep sandling came to be isolated so far away from the deep sands, but it was the central trial of the Path. More mastrells failed to recover that one sphere it was guarding all the other spheres combined. For centuries the mastrells have fed the monster, using it to test their newer members. Now it is gone.”

  Kenton frowned.

  “Good riddance,” Traiben mumbled. “When that thing burst from the sand I nearly died from the shock.”

  “Wait a minute,” Kenton interrupted. “You can slatrify. Why did it give you trouble?”

  “I did slatrify,” Traiben explained. “It fled beneath the sand as soon as I tossed a h
andful of water on it. Unfortunately, it took the sphere with it. Its digging probably buried the sphere all the way down to Darkside. Personally, I don’t think it was a very fair test—I did what I was supposed to, and I still didn’t get my sphere.”

  “The point is irrelevant now,” Elorin said, shaking his head. “The Path, or at least the Path as we know it, is no more.”

  Kenton flexed his shoulder, feeling the pain of his gash. He had always wondered what happened in the rare cases when a mastrell died while running the Path. “I’m going to have to agree with Traiben,” he decided, wincing in pain. “I know it hasn’t killed anyone in decades, but we’re still probably better off without it.”

  “And you will be remembered as the one who defeated the Path,” Traiben said with a congratulatory smile. “And an acolent, no less!”

  “Kenton,” Elorin said, looking at his shoulder with concerned eyes. “Perhaps you should … stay back and rest today.”

  “What?” Traiben said, his face shocked. “Elorin, how could you even suggest such a thing?”

  Kenton frowned as well. It was an odd suggestion. All sand masters, except those left behind to watch the Diem, were expected to attend the ceremony—no matter what their state of health.

  “I apologize, mastrell,” Elorin said immediately. “It was a thoughtless suggestion.”

  “I mean, today of all days!” Traiben continued. “After what you did, Kenton, the Lord Mastrell will have to make you a mastrell.”

  “My father doesn’t have to do anything,” Kenton said with a shake of his head. “In fact, knowing him, I’ll bet he’s less likely to make me a mastrell after what I did yesterday.”

  “What?” Traiben asked incredulously.

  “Praxton is very concerned with image,” Kenton explained with a sigh, seating himself back on his cot. “The more I protest his decisions, the more he’s going to resist giving me what I want. If he were to grant me mastrellship now, it would mean admitting defeat in front of the entire Diem.”

  “But …” Traiben asked uncertainly.

  “Why do I keep trying?” Kenton finished. Then he shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. I’m not even convinced that I deserve to be a mastrell. Maybe an undermastrell or a lesstrell. I’d probably even be happy as a fen, except …”