Travel on the Lost River was easy and full of solitude. The ground there is packed in, cooked by the sun until it shatters itself into a million interlocking polygons. It is banked on either side by huge dunes, unmarred dunes, that crest with edges sharp as knives. The Mother Desert is a windy place, but the height of the dunes on either side of us shielded us from the wind. The dunes cast shadows and blocked some of the beating heat during the day while we did our best to sleep. We traveled from dusk until dawn in the black night beneath a tremendous amount of stars. Each of us had a clockwork lamp on a pole, which hung out over the heads of our camels, lighting the few feet in front of us. When we traveled, we were four small spheres of light gently bobbing through the empty desert.

The Lost River did much of the navigation on this leg of the journey. Tamir was needed to chart a path through the badlands, and then to find the Lost River from there, but he had little to do but travel like the rest of us once we were on it. Every few days when we stopped at dawn, he would venture out into the loose sands, hauling himself to the top of one of the nearby dunes, and survey the land. There was always a chance that the land magic had turned the river and that we were being led off course. It was a slim chance, but it was there. He enjoyed this leg of the trip. He climbed those dunes with a sense of purpose, and when he fiddled with his compass, he did it half-smiling.

The magic embedded in the desert was a familiar thing to me. It feels different than the magic of Vilahna or the magic of the City. It’s a smoother, more sinuous thing, something with no rough edges. Magic slides in and out of you easily there. It felt like home. I found it easier to put the skills I’d learned with Vathorem into practice there. I was able to live that dual life—know my heart and someone else’s—without much struggle. I was even able to ignore it when the gift pulled me into someone else. Acknowledge it, know it had happened, but I was able to pay little attention to it. It was like letting someone talk at you, yammer on, but not really hearing any of the conversation they have forced on you.