“Giovvo Shom wants… wants… the bees… are everywhere.”

I shushed him. My husband lay by my side on the howdah, shaking. I took a quick glance at his bandage - it would need to be changed soon. He slept, but with constant nightmares and bouts of delirium.

I was nervous I might get delirious too. I hadn’t closed my eyes the whole night; as a matter of fact, I hadn’t had proper night sleep since the stabbing. I pressed our inix, the hardy, long-legged lizard that carried our packs, to keep up its speed - our resources were dwindling fast, and there were real worries we might not make it to Kurn before we deplete our reserves.

Grinscar, our halfling guide, scout, and the only crewmember I had decided I could count on, climbed into the howdah. He could pass for a child at a glance: big eyes and a boyish haircut. Until a smile revealed his sharp teeth and the scares that crisscrossed his face. Yet, he still moved with a child’s energy. He hopped from foot to foot, observing my husband.

“How’s the captain? I got some herbs that should help calm down the hauntings,” Grinscar said as he played with his necklace. “You holding up ok?”

“Don’t have much choice do I? Ruxialom will get better. He’s tough.”

I caressed my husband’s forehead, wiping away some of the cold, sticky sweat that covered it.

Grinscar wore a necklace of finger bones, and had what seemed like a good dozen obsidian daggers strapped on him. Why had I decided I could trust him? I wasn’t sure. No one trusted halflings, and maybe he’d try to prove his loyalty out of spite alone.

He pointed his chin at my belly. “I meant this,” he paused, thinking for the right word, “that sack of meat isn’t due anytime, is it?”

I smiled and extended my hand for the herbs the halfling had brought. He gave me the herbs and shook his head. “I’m sorry Anovia, it will sound the way it sounds, but I don’t get it. Why haven’t we ripped out the heart of that mad mul?”

It didn’t surprise me that Grinscar didn’t understand. I’d have my revenge. I certainly didn’t keep him alive because I believed the mul’s claims that he was innocent - we all saw him jump and drive the blade in.

Rumor held that Grinscar had killed men for a bottle of wine gone sour; no one doubted it. However, my husband and I were merchants. None of us would have put a mul to death given the price they could fetch - I’d personally make sure to sell him to the worst slaver I could find in the region.

“Make sure he gets enough water.” I looked at Grinscar. “Not a drop more, but not a drop less so that we don’t end up carrying a dead body. Understood?”

As I prepared the herbal concoction for my husband, a kick came from inside me. I let out an audible “oh”. My baby had been quiet for the last few days, and had been an additional unnecessary worry. I finished the thick concoction, and began to sing a lullaby as I applied the paste to my husband’s wound.

A soft, shy voice came from the back of the howdah. “Anovia? Or, sorry, should I say captain?” That was Eromk, young but built like an oversized slab of muscle. He was, among other things, our cook. He had grown up on the caravan roads, and despite his young age he had more experience than many of us.

“I’m only captain until Ruxialom gets better,” I said. Eromk struggled to repress a doubtful frown, which he forcibly morphed into a weak, thin-lipped smile.

I gave him that look that meant, go on, just as the delicious smell of freshly cooked eggs shifted my irritation to hunger.

“I got your breakfast.” He put a generous, maybe too generous, plate in front of me. “Erdlu omelette - just the way you like.”

After the heavy meal, I felt sleepy. I took out a small cloth and dampened it in the hot water that had been prepared, vigorously rubbing my face to wake myself up.

I carefully unrolled my deep royal-purple tunic made of wyrm’s silk. The inside was filled with symbols that only made sense to me - their stitches on the outside were meant to be mistaken for ornamentation. Small engraved obsidian rods served as buttons. All the bindings were tight; good.

I took a fine bone needle to begin studying; if I was interrupted, it would look as if I was doing some sewing on my valuable tunic.

A kick from inside my belly surprised me.

“Shh, don’t worry, only good things,” I said - I had promised that when I found out I was carrying Ruxialom’s child. For years, I thought defiling magic had made me barren. When I discovered I was wrong, the vivid dreams started: my spells sipping my baby dry, leaving me with nothing but ash all around. I dismissed them as nonsense, until Ruxialom described the same dream, down to the feel of the ash. That was it. I swore I would not defile again.

To study the clean path of preserving magic took much longer. The pregnancy made it worse, if not impossible at times, to learn the spells. I had learned defiling magic, not out of greed, but because no one around me knew any better. It was my husband who showed me the difference - he had been trained in the way of the preservers as a child. He was a lousy pupil, and gave up as soon as he could, but it had been enough.

The real issue was the spell casting itself; once your soul had tasted the power of defiling magic, it was something that stayed with you forever. A taint. A taint, however, that gave a high, nigh-invulnerable feeling of absorbing life as you cast a spell. It was as tempting as a noble feast for a mad, starving slave. I salivated just thinking of it.

As I studied, I began to doze off; I needed a nap, just a little one.

My head snapped up at the loud exclamations from our advance scout. My heart fluttered. I wasn’t sure how long I had slept, just that I had slept long enough to drool. Another shout - I rushed to the front of the howdah, and was immediately filled with awe. The massive butte of Hogalay was just coming into sight; for most of us, it was our first introduction to this dwarven wonder of a bygone age.

Hogalay rose hundreds of feet tall from in the middle of a vast, barren stretch of stone. Its walls were of a dark reddish, almost-blackened, colour and had an oddly-organic shape to them, as if they were some bone or organ thrust out from the heart of Athas. A long-dead carcass, slowly forgotten by history. No matter how awe-struck we were, we couldn’t stop to admire it, and few probably ever did; it was as breathtaking as it was terrifying just from its size alone.

Our scouts were riding far ahead, almost at the foot of a large ramp leading up the wall and into the ruins. The citadel must have been able to house thousands upon thousands in a different age.

Suddenly, one of them raised a bright blue flag - we weren’t alone. Up on my inix, I saw our men taking positions. Defensive but not threatening - better to show that we weren’t to be messed with. I grabbed my purple silk vest, rubbing my fingers over its magical symbols. I would rain fire on any outsider who’d even think to threaten my family or our caravan.

The scout dropped the blue flag, and raised a green one crossed with a yellow line. Herders, it appeared. We could relax, but none of us did until we saw their large herd of aprigs grazing around some large boulders.

My husband coughed, almost choking. “No, no, Anovia… no, the water is foul. I can see them.” I tried to shush him, but he grew agitated. “Save yourself, it’s a trap!” I bit my lip so as not to shout at him to shut up, feeling guilty for wanting to.

“Easy, calm down, Ruxialom.” I gently pushed him down, making sure he didn’t wipe the healing concoction off his wound. “They’re just Eloy herders. Maybe we’ll be able to buy an aprig from them, eh?”

I struggled to stand, one hand gripping the carriage’s handrail, the other resting on my swollen belly. The jolting of the inix made it hard to keep my balance, but I wanted to get a better look at the herders. That view turned out to be disappointing - they clearly wanted nothing to do with us, going as far as to turn their heads away from us.

Eromk, who had joined the scouts, noticed a small but already plump aprig piglet that strayed from the herd and was coming towards him. He gently grabbed the little critter and put it under his thick cape to soothe it. He walked with it toward the herder chieftain, who wore a large, elaborate straw hat, wide enough to shade past his shoulders. As Eromk approached, the chieftain raised his sky-colored herder staff and waved it. “You bad-lucked Drylanders can go climb a mountain and never come back!” he shouted as he snatched the piglet from our cook’s hands.

“By the dead king Kalak, you stupid Eloys got no manners at all, ah!” Grinscar shouted. Everyone tensed, our men as much as the herders, except for Grinscar, who pranced toward the chieftain, making him take a cautious step backwards. The halfling bowed to the chieftain, and then, with a single swift movement, snapped up the now-squealing piglet.

“This is what you do in this forgotten part of the world, swear by the wind, right?” asked the halfling, who didn’t wait for an answer. “Well, I swear to the wind: I’ll do the same to you if you dare look funny at any of the men here.” and then he snapped the squealing piglet’s neck, its sudden silence surprised the chieftain as much as it did us.

For the next few hours, the scouts kept laughing and imitating the poor chieftain mumbling about the six-legged piglet carcass, begging to get it back from the halfling. Egged on, Grinscar kept repeating his answer to the chieftain, adding more theatrics each time. There was no way the chieftain would have gotten the carcass back, and Grinscar brimmed with malicious happiness over it.

The rest of the afternoon was rather uneventful, except for the usual bickering that erupted between some of the scouts over their ration of water, and my husband, who kept going from a deep sleep to fever-fed delusions. I managed to close my eyes for a few more hours.

I was awakened by the sudden stop of our inix. “Captain, we’re stopping for a meal break!” Eromk shouted from his quickly-arranged temporary kitchen. Some of the scouts helped me down, and one volunteered to keep an eye on my husband. The men were muttering among themselves about the food going down fast. The aprig piglet wouldn’t even be enough to sustain our group for a meal. A few scouts volunteered to go hunting, while food was cooking.

“Water! I haven’t had a drop since this morning!” came from the traitorous mul, crouched on his knees and covered in dust, tied behind one of our larger erdlu. A wave of unanimous voices rang out, telling him to keep quiet. Grinscar rolled his eyes. “Shall I?”

Again, he didn’t wait for an answer, and stood up with a small water gourd. As he arrived at the mul, the halfling gave him a hearty kick to the ribs. The mul slowly rolled to the side, but his hands were only holding the rope - they weren’t tied. Dragon piss.

A cloud of dust rose into Grinscar’s face before I had the chance to shout a warning. A kick to his leg sent Grinscar to the ground with a surprised thump. Already on his feet, the mul grabbed the water gourd, lassoed a mounted scout by the neck, and yanked him down. Then, he hopped on the erdlu and took off, leaving before we could realize what was going on.

“Don’t let him go!” I shouted. “Get on the erdlus and go after him!”

I could still see our scout being dragged by the neck behind the mul’s erdlu, his legs no longer fighting. Four of our scouts on their erdlus went after him. Catching up with him was one thing, but bringing a mul back alive, no matter how tired by the long walk under the searing sun, was another matter.

Grinscar came toward me flashing his needle-like teeth in an oddly angry smile. “I think we should follow; we can’t afford to lose any of our men, and…” he paused, squinting his eyes, “we’ll cook that traitor this time.”

Closing in on them didn’t take long; our scouts had cornered the mul by a small dried creekbed that would prove laborious for the erdlu to pass while carrying the mul. They were at a standoff, we arrived just in time. Our archers could easily take care of him, but I hadn’t given up on my plan to sell the man who tried to kill my husband to slavers.

“Koiras!” I shouted his name, which I had forbidden being said aloud since the stabbing. “Surrender now and live another day, or make peace with your ancestors before Grinscar eats you alive!”

Koiras looked left and right, up and down, trying to find a way out. The only escape route was across a stretch of large boulders, and he had no way to climb them. He kept looking at them, disgust spreading across his face as it became clear they weren’t a path to freedom.

“So?” I said as I motioned to my archers to get ready to down the mul.

Koiras looked resigned, nearly on the verge of tears, as if about to claim his innocence again.

Then a number of long lances rained down toward us. One of them hit Koiras’s erdlu, missing the mul by just a few inches. Another struck one of our archers straight in the belly, leaving him gasping in shock and panic.

“It’s an ambush!” shouted Eromk.

My mind raced with how Koiras had managed to bring us to an ambush that easily, but the shock on the mul’s face told me otherwise - we were all targets. Our men quickly closed ranks, waiting for the enemy to show their faces.

A loud screech came from a nearby boulder. Then a gith leapt from behind it, suddenly appearing in the sky as he jumped right at us. His head looked as if thin reptilian leather had been pulled tight over a deformed elf’s skull, with pitch-black eyes and a protruding lower jaw.

How many were there? I couldn’t count them, but they outnumbered us easily two to one, and they charged with disconcerting confidence. Even Koiras realized he’d better turn his weapon toward them than us. Useless as it was, it was a relief that he hadn’t been the one to betray us to a roving band of gith.

I rushed to open a small jar filled with that dark, thick honey from Gulg’s carnivorous bees, a whole crate of which my husband had stolen from a Shom caravan. The honey could open up a psionist’s mind as well as help with magic spells. This was also why we were so far north, as we couldn’t sell it anywhere in the Tablelands without one of Shom’s agents finding out.

I dipped my finger into the honey and slowly spread it upon the spells written inside my tunic. I raised my head just in time to see a gith stabbing at my face with its spear. Everything slowed down as if I had cast a spell to stop time itself, which I hadn’t. My mind went to thoughts of my unborn child and my injured husband as the tip of the spear crawled towards my face.

THUMP!

The gith fell to the ground, grappled by Eromk, who had just saved my life. They tumbled in a violent struggle. Around me, all our men were crossing weapons with the giths. Grinscar jumped from the gith he’s just gutted onto the next, biting its hand until the weapon fell, then plunged his obsidian sword into a third. Nearby, Koiras held his ground with two heavily injured giths lying at his feet, but several more were closing.

I swiped through the arcane sigils embroidered on my tunic with my middle and ring fingers. My lips moved silently to the secret magical words; a surge of energy flowed into my bones and the air danced before my eyes. I felt the prickle of desire rise on my tongue, pushing me to take the energy from the living soil and keep it. To bleed it dry. The lie didn’t last more than a moment; defiling wouldn’t protect my child, and as I returned the extra life energy to the soil, a protective magic barrier shrouded my body.

A spear flew straight at me, and it shattered like broken glass when it hit. But no one else noticed my magical protection except for the gith who had just thrown the spear.

I blew air into my palm and snapped my fingers at a gith running towards me. Three tiny glowing darts left my fingers and went straight into the gith’s head, stopping it in its tracks. The honey helped keep me focused, but I now felt the hunger for defiling through my whole body.

Eromk was bloodied but on top of the now dead gith. I went to give him a hand to stand up. We needed to back up and regroup. I tried to rush, but was slowed down by my swollen belly.

“Are you crazy!?” screamed Eromk. “You gotta get out of here, now.”

I winced in pain as I caught Eromk by the forearm and pulled to help him stand up. “Let’s get back to the inix,” I said as I saw, to my horror, a gith climbing onto our mount.

It happened in the blink of an eye. There was a sudden pull on my hand from Eromk’s, and then a hair-raising, animal scream of pain deafened me. I turned around just as a gith was lifting his obsidian sword from Eromk’s mangled forearm. Without thinking, I plunged my wrist-razor into the gith’s chest.

I must have hit it right in the heart, as I saw the life drain from its eyes. The scream coming out of Eromk was so bestial it made him nearly unrecognizable. His left hand was gone, and he held the bloody stump with terror in his eyes.

I grabbed him and forced him to keep moving. If we didn’t get clear of the fighting now, we’d be no better than dead. Again I blew into my palm and snapped my fingers at the gith climbing on our inix, then started searching for the life transference spell on my tunic. Eromk had regained a bit of his composure and was rolling his cape around his injury to stop the bleeding.

In the chaos of the battle, my eyes caught those of Koiras. The mul might have fought close to half a dozen gith, but that was it. He was on his knees, face bloodied and severely injured. I was about to turn my head, unwilling to watch his last moments, when I saw Grinscar fall upon the gith nearest to Koiras. Was he laughing as he stabbed that gith?

We reached the inix. One look at Eromk made it clear that he was about to fall unconscious; it was strangely convenient. Many of the crew might have suspected that I could dabble in magic, but only my husband knew for sure. I’d rather keep it that way if possible.

I whistled, and the large lizard-like beast of burden lowered itself to its large knees, giving us cover from the battle. Eromk turned white and slumped; my fingers went to his jugular.

“Please, don’t be dead, Eromk. Don’t die now,” I muttered through my teeth, as I struggled to catch any heartbeat. “Dragon piss!” There was no point in wasting some of my magic on a dead man; I slapped him across the cheek in fear rather than rage and felt myself starting to give up.

Eromk gasped, opened his eyes, and let out a loud gurgle. Quickly, I grabbed his stump. The cape was drenched in blood; I felt its warm, sickly stickiness on my fingers. I closed my eyes, searching for nearby life in the surrounding land. Time slowed down, as my power struggled to flare up as I grasped for the life energy of some plants.

My nose caught the smell of burnt ashes, which meant I was being careless with the life energy. I was about to tear it from the land in a way that I could never give back… and by the Dragon, that was all I wanted to do - take it, rip it away, and keep it for myself. Stealing life, taking life, having it rush through my body and give me a sense of power, a moment of invincibility. Just as I was about to rip the life from the soil, my baby moved. The illusion shattered. There was no invincibility to be had, only the choice to defile the land or not.

I cast life transference - a terrible spell that aimed to take a sliver of my life to help save Eromk. The moment the incantation was finished, I knew something was wrong - I should have felt the skin of my hand withering in front of my eyes; instead, pain was building up in my belly.

I choked. My baby’s life was about to be taken. I bit my tongue until I felt blood, closing my eyes and driving all my strength into pulling the pain away from my belly. It took a moment before the sharp pain hit my ribs, rising up quickly through my breast, burning the skin. I pulled too hard and felt the pain going through my jaw as a tooth rotted. Only then did I feel the life leave my fingers and soak into Eromk’s wound, staunching the bleeding. He wasn’t saved yet, but he wouldn’t bleed to death now.

“Stay here,” I said, and began to climb back on the inix. It was time to put an end to this. My belly threw my balance off as I waddled and struggled to get back on the howdah.

“Shom sent the gith.” my husband kept repeating, his eyes white and glass-like. He was curled into a ball, rocking back and forth. I crawled toward him to soothe him, though I was scared of the madman my husband had become.

“He sent them to punish us for the stolen honey,” he said, his voice hiccuping as he struggled to regain his senses. He blinked. I stared at him with my mouth agape; it was the first time since the stabbing that I recognized my husband’s voice as his own.

“Ruxialom? My love?”

He struggled to swallow, forcing himself not to slip back into madness. “Anovia, listen, the gith chieftain…” he coughed, his eyes going wild for a moment, his nose starting to bleed.., “The chieftain, he tried to psionically destroy Koiras and me.” He coughed, a droplet of blood landing on his lips. “Kill him, or we all die.”

I sprang into action. There had been this obsidian rod on my tunic used as a bottom button. I’d never thought I would have to use it. I’d always assumed we’d eventually sell it for an exorbitant price, since we knew exactly what it was.

I crawled to the side of the howdah and carefully raised my head to get a view of the battle. Where was he? Gith chieftains were usually easy to recognize with their elaborate ornaments or fanciful chitin armour.

There he was - standing triumphant over Koiras’s dead body as he guided his warriors to attack our men. This time I didn’t hesitate. I pointed the obsidian rod straight at him, rubbing my finger over the tiny secret sigil engraved along its length.

WHAM!

I didn’t realize it, but I had closed my eyes instinctively before it fired off. The heat licked my face, and I could see the brightness even behind my closed eyes. Panicked, the inix bolted upright beneath me.

When I opened my eyes, it was a mere second before the fireball engulfed the gith chieftain and a group of his closest warriors. The battle stopped with the fireball; the sudden eerie silence was only broken by the panicked animals and the burning inferno. Both our men and the gith hesitated to continue the fight, confused by the display of magic. The gith were the first to notice their chieftain was gone. They backed away slowly at first, but the retreat turned into a panicked rout.

Our men regrouped in a shocked silence. We, at least some of us, had survived the ambush. I received a few furtive looks from my men, who seemed as shocked by the battle as by my display of magic.

Grinscar, approaching with a severed gith finger as a trophy, let out a loud laugh that broke the silence. “Ha! No wonder our captain lost his mind; he married a witch.” Silence. No one laughed.

He sighed and shook his head. He raised his hand and pointed at two of our injured men. “Okay, let’s help the injured. Nothing’s funny now, but remember: that witch just saved all our lives.”

We regrouped to help the injured. I might have saved them, but I had a bitter taste in my mouth. My child gave a gentle kick, as if to reassure me.