“Death,” Tamir said. He coaxed his camel down to the ground and threw his saddle over its back. His voice when he spoke that single word conjured a thousand gruesome ends. His voice was always gruff, always dry and scratching as a desert wind on the dunes, but there in the badlands it was cold, too. Tamir’s voice was a wasteland. He drove us through the heat, and I felt nothing but his maddening fear. He drove us in a stop-start-stop-start stutter as the drain interfered with his gifts. Paths became sinuous, circuitous, elusive. At least twice we had to double back and lost a day of travel. Around the evening campfires, none of us managed to choke down much food. We had been in the badlands for a solid week by then, and it had taken its toll on everyone. Sorcha could not sleep and took to slumping only half-conscious in his saddle. Shayat carried herself with a tall, unforgiving stiffness, a holistic resistance, like she could will the land to turn magical. Tamir pulled into himself, taunted by memories, teased by the instability of his gift. And I, I felt the damned drain twice over: I felt it as myself, and I felt it as Tamir. By a week into the badlands, I had lost my ability to marshal the gift. It flared and flickered, grafting onto the lean and quietly terrified cartographer at odd moments, with a fury that blotted me out of my own mind. Shayat had told Sorcha it would be three or four days, but we spent another full week in that terrible place, making less progress each day that passed.

And then we tasted magic on the wind. Shayat spurred her camel to a gallop and caught up with Tamir, who rode well ahead of us. He had taken to avoiding me in those last few days in the badlands. I don’t know if he did it consciously, if he was aware of my gift, but he put as much space between us as he could, and for that I was grateful. “What’s all that, you think?” Sorcha asked.

“I don’t know. Do you feel different? I feel like my head has cleared for the first time since Bardondour.”