Sun's Heart

Chapter 16 - New Discoveries

"Wil! Wake up!"

Wil shrugged off the hand grabbing at his shoulder, struggled to catch the slipping trail of a fading dream. It jostled and shook him until he was sure he was being robbed, and he sat bolt upright, squinting into shapeless dimness. "Wha? Whassappennnn..." Eyelids slipped shut, and words mumbled into nothing.

The hand violently shook him some more, and he batted at it until it stopped. "I'm awake, I'm awake!"

"Where are those bits of crystal you got?"

"Bits of...what?" Memory of a lightning strike flashed. "They're in my pocket—Hey!"

Dain's hand dove into the pocket, grabbed the crystals, and pulled them out before Wil had a chance to say much more. "Thanks!" Wil rubbed his eyes and blinked after him, realizing he had in fact been robbed, and jumped when Dain leaned in and said offhand, "Oh, and we're leaving soon."

The sensation of Dain's magic gathering drew his eyes after the other boy when he once again left the tent, and Wil frowned in confusion. He picked up the noises of tribesmen conversing and collapsing tents, and a light wind breathing through the tent flaps. Hoots and hollers announced the hunters returning from a successful outing. He hadn't any idea how they managed to find meat in the endless rolling waves of emptiness.

He remembered struggling to find meat in the empty fields on his own. It had positively teemed with life, but never was he able to catch anything. Especially after he accidentally set the entire field on fire. No, it became much easier to hunt after the trees grew.

He stretched and ran his tongue over his teeth. Less sand than the night before, thank heavens. Surely after enough nights in the desert, his teeth would be worn to sharpened nubs for all the weathering they endured, until they resembled the Serpent Teeth on the northern Beryllian coast.

Dain's magic continued to pulse, drawing further away. He sighed and stood. He could already tell he was going to earn a crick in his neck from constantly looking over at the other boy while his magic drew the attention of every nearby mage, and possibly the shadowbeasts.

Children giggled and shuffled in the sand, and some men laughed low in their chests. Whooopffff. A tent collapsed, and muffled scrapes of its poles being taken down. He hurried to collect his bag, make sure his clothes were on straight, and swish water through his mouth.

He ducked out of the tent, leaned aside, and spat the water in the sand. A woman nearby stared at the dark spot, then threw him a vexed look. The sun was nearly up, the eastern horizon filled with pale green and blue stripes and grayed dunes.

Children with arms wrapped around sacks of grains and salts trotted past and wove through groups of brown-clothed men hefting sturdy rolls of tents and wooden poles over their shoulders, women folding large swaths of painted hides and canvas with sand veils drawn over their faces, and hunters butchering the last of their kills over beaten metal buckets where the blood was collected. Another bucket carried the organs and excess meat, which several women picked over with red-streaked fingers. The hunters responsible for the kill took the hides for tanning, which would apparently be done while they travelled.

It amazed Wil how much work they were capable of while walking through the scorching desert.

The darkling's cage was draped over with extra canvas. Haburnah, feeding a thread of power into it, carefully shrunk it for carrying.

A scattering of other hunters spread around the encampment appeared and disappeared over distant dunes, their footprints reforming the sand and betraying their absence. If they found shadowbeasts nearby, they'd be the first line of defense with whirling sasuri. The surface of the desert made it easy to spot distant objects, and shadowbeasts had little natural camouflage against pale sand.