“Literally.” A hairline crack zigzagged around Djola’s heart fortress. Had he gone too far? No change without risk. The mountain quaked in the aftershock of his spell. The steps were shivering, crumbling. The devastation he called up ran deep.

“I don’t understand what you’ve done.” Hezram was curious despite rage.

“I only amplify what you do. Xhalan Xhala. What everyone does…”

“Impossible. Xhalan Xhala is a Lahesh tall tale.” Hezram burnt his hand on encroaching sand. “Who are you?” Few witchdoctors or masters wielded more power than Hezram and they sat on the Emperor’s Council in Arkhys City.

“You’ve been blissfully ignorant in Holy City.” Djola barged past Hezram and addressed the crowd. “Floating cities and archipelagos refuse passage to Empire caravans and trading ships unless we hand over half the cargo at each port. Pirates steal what remains and sell our own goods back to us for profit and sport.” There had been no sport in it for him. “Spies slip into our villages, poison wells, and pollute young minds, inciting rebellion for love of this god or that delusion.” He tapped his blind-man staff against a clay urn. “War rages on every border. Tribes fight each other over goats and cheese, over stolen women and wounded pride. Over water and air … Poison desert encroaches on green lands, starving us all.”

“Poison desert?” Hezram pulled blue robes tight against his muscular physique. “Why punish Holy City for other people’s crimes?”

“You bleed even children for your power,” Djola shouted. “Children!”

Tembe’s drummers drowned him out. She danced and spoke. “Hezram conjures with transgressors. Their spirit debt is so high, dying in the huts is a blessing. We’re not to blame for their crimes.”

“We’re all to blame.”

Djola should never have offered Council his map to tomorrow without iron proof. His family paid for this arrogance. Tessa, Bal, and Quint were bone and ash, scattered in the desert where he could not mourn them. Samina walked only in Smokeland. Their suffering was Djola’s fault, yet Samina helped him solve the poison desert mystery and asked him to end torture in the huts, on the sea, in the woods and fields.

“I live for change, not revenge.” Djola smashed an urn in Rainbow Square. Water cascaded down the altar to the ice gods. “You celebrate lies rather than seek truth.”

“What truth?” Hezram shouted.

Djola shoved him onto the crystal sun lines. “Your Amethyst River floods even high farmland during first planting and dries up before first harvest. The mountain god is angry. All will be desert soon. Yet for cool afternoons, scented thighs, and goat cheese, you chop down the mountain and doom your people.” He’d said as much to Council, but now he had undeniable proof—a mound of poisoned turquoise. Xhalan Xhala! They’d have to listen to him.