In Thy Name

Chapter 20 - Flight

Sareb was tying up the stinking, dripping hides for transport on Djusra, when he realized that Stormwind hadn't even asked him if he was going with them.

If she had asked, what would he have said?

He didn't want to think about that that. He went back to tying up the hides, focusing on his fingers to block out any thought.

They took to the air once it was full dark. The land fell away under them, became a landscape of needleleaf trees pointed up at them, their many-fingered branches limned with the faintest sheen of light from the stars and quarter moon. The lake spread to their right, a rippling silver sheet, and the lights of Dalaïda began to fall behind them. Sareb could just make out the mountain ridge as an uneven line of higher spires below them, but they weren't navigating by that; they were following the Sword. They were headed roughly north, a little to the left of the constellation, which would have called them diagonally across the enormous lake.

Sareb tried to keep his mind on Djusra, the flight, the white-speckled shapes of the Tainian siblings, the silent presence of the girl behind him. He found his eyes could traverse the treetops below, the scudding silver foam of the lake, for watch after watch without wandering into thought. Whenever his mind tried, he found something else to focus on.

Deep in the night, he began to feel tired, eyelids sliding closed. He rummaged in his pack for the dried ghara root his people chewed on for energy. He wondered if he should offer some to the Tainian siblings, but they were arrowing ahead, wings beating steadily.

Maybe they didn't get tired. But no, Teshem got tired and slept—had slept. Sareb cursed himself for thinking of him. Best to leave him behind, with the desert. The desert that he would never see again...

No. This journey couldn't go on forever.

And when it ended?

Not something he wanted to think about. He focused his blurring eyes on the two falcons. All that mattered now was staying awake, following them, and making it to morning.

***

As soon as the sky began to lighten, Sareb and the Tainian siblings landed and tried to get some sleep while it was still dark. They dozed until the sun rising over the mountains woke them, and Sareb noticed how gingerly Stormwind and Frostarrow got up once they awoke. They were both still injured, and shapechanging and flying all night certainly wasn't helping them. "Let me work on your injuries," he said.

Besides tending to Stormwind's ribs and the laceration on Frostarrow's leg, Sareb also spread ointment and spoke a spell over the burn on his face. It was now shiny and pink in the center, far paler than the rest of Frostarrow's skin, with darker, rougher edges. It was healing.

Frostarrow glanced at him, and Sareb realized he was lingering, his hand still hovering by Frostarrow's face even though the spell was finished. Frostarrow flashed him a smile with a note of apology in it, but said nothing. They had talked about the burn so many times; was there even anything left to say?

"How...is it?" Sareb said, struggling to swallow the twinge of regret that still came.

"It doesn't hurt much now," Frostarrow said. "Thank you."

"Of course," Sareb said, and turned away quickly, before they got caught up in another round of apologies. He was suddenly angry, at himself, at the limits of abilities. Would that he could take it back, that he could fix it now. Why did Frostarrow's pain and their mutual embarrassment have to be drawn out like this?

He arranged his healing supplies in his pack for far longer than was necessary; by the time he had finished, Stormwind and Frostarrow were absorbed in wringing out the brainsoaked hides by twisting them over a tree branch.