Sun's Heart

Chapter 18 - Joining

Dain swept a foot through the layer of soot coating the floor of the tent. There was a spot where it was thinnest, where the stone cage had stood. Its bars, now uneven chunks of earth scattered across the tent, hadn't been any good in keeping the darkling from causing trouble.

It seemed it had the power to escape all along, it simply didn't want or need to. The reasons escaped him, but he ruefully wondered if they'd been the object of its study. Whenever someone entered the tent, its dim eyes, lit deep within its head, would follow them until another person crossed between them. Even without human eyes, the darkling managed to unnerve them with its stare.

"No wonder Haburnah switched tents," he muttered.

"What?" Wil said, behind him. He had a chunk of burnt wood in his hands. It drew Dain's gaze as he stepped forward.

"I said, no wonder Haburnah switched tents."

Wil nodded and looked around at the carnage. "I wouldn't want a thing like that watching me sleep."

There wasn't much left of the cushions, or the walls of the tent. Jagged tears in the thick canvas and tanned hide allowed night air to stream inside. Newly repaired, set up perhaps an hour before the deafening boom had drawn every armed tribesman in the area.

Dain touched a finger to the charred wood in Wil's hand, and felt the thrumming of an unfamiliar footprint within it. Its last breaths were being used up. Soon, it would fade and leave nothing more than an unremarkable chunk of blackened wood.

Wil turned it over in his hands, and Dain raised his eyebrows in interest at a rune whispering with ghostly magic. "Well, hello."

"Feel anything?" Wil asked. The only emotion in his features was expectancy. No unease, no distaste at Dain's open use of his affinity.

"Yes, but it's not anyone I know." He looked up, and met Wil's knowing gaze. "I can't find where the caster is. Maybe it's too weak." He dropped his hand. "It's nearly gone."

"So, there is a somebody making these things, and not just a something." Wil pursed his lips and weighed the rune-marked object.

"I've never heard of a relic that can animate coals and soot."

Wil pocketed the wood and scratched his forehead beneath the head covering. "I don't think this was an explosion. Not in the way explosions usually happen, that is." He pointed at a pile of splintered wood that had been a small, collapsible table. "No burn marks. So it couldn't have been Fire and Air."

Dain thought fast, recalling lessons and research on explosions. "Teleportation?" He looked at Wil, skeptical. "Impossible."

Wil lifted his shoulders. "Could be." He crossed his arms and scuffed at the black dust blanketing the ground. "Teleportation can be dangerous. The faster the spell, the less precise it is. This felt..." he shook his head, searching for the proper word, "...sloppy. Like a quick teleportation."

"Hold on. You're saying this," he gestured at the carnage of wood and cloth, "is from displacement. Caused by teleportation. Mages are the only ones who can teleport. And gryphons."

"I'm saying it could be," he said soberly. "We might have a mage out there using gryphons and an unknown relic to animate soot and ashes into shadowbeasts, which have apparently been terrorizing Sand Sea since the Rending."

"Or not, since that's utterly ridiculous." Dain laughed at the implications. "Honestly, nobody could have survived the Rending, and still be alive two-thousand years later. Besides, where did the rune come from?"