Running. It was all there was. The world narrowed to the burning in my lungs, the frantic pounding of my heart, and the patch of dark, treacherous ground illuminated by Kael's small, bobbing lantern ahead of me. Every instinct I had was wrong. I was trained to scan the horizon, to watch for the tell-tale spray of sand that signaled a predator. Here, the threat was underfoot and all around.
The forest itself seemed to turn against us. A root, thick as my arm, twisted out of the ground with an unnatural speed, trying to catch my ankle. I leaped over it, my desert-honed reflexes serving me for once. A shower of glowing, distracting embers, like fireflies, burst in front of my face, trying to blind me.
"Illusions!" Kael yelled back at me. "Don't look at them! Watch my feet!"
Then came a new sound, carried on the night air. A deep, guttural baying that was no mere animal. It was a hunting call filled with malice and magic.
"Shadow-Hounds!" Kael's voice was strained with effort. "They've unleashed them! They're close!"
Fear gave my aching legs new strength. I pushed harder, my cloak snagging on thorny branches that reached for me like skeletal fingers. The roar was getting louder, but it wasn't the hounds. It was a different roar. A constant, powerful rush of sound.
"The river!" Kael shouted. "I can hear it!"
We burst through a final wall of thick ferns and there it was. The Old Ghyll River. It was no gentle stream. It was a churning, angry torrent of black water, crashing over rocks and carrying debris downstream. It was terrifying. It was beautiful. It was our only hope.
"In!" Kael commanded, not even breaking his stride. He half-ran, half-slid down the muddy bank and plunged into the icy water up to his waist.
The shock of the cold was so intense it felt like a physical blow. It stole my breath and sent a tremor through my entire body. I followed him in, crying out as the powerful current immediately tried to sweep my feet out from under me. This water wasn't like the still, precious liquid of an aquifer. This water was alive and furious.
"We have to move downstream!" Kael yelled over the roar. "Let the water wash our trail away!"
It was a nightmare. The current pulled and pushed, the rocky bottom was slick and uneven. I stumbled, going under for a terrifying second before Kael's strong hand grabbed the back of my cloak and hauled me up, sputtering. I was losing my footing, my strength, my hope. My mind screamed for something solid, for the comforting stability of the sand I knew.
And something answered.
It wasn't the deep, full-throated chorus of the Expanse. This was a thin, gritty whisper, a different dialect of the song I knew. It came from the riverbed. Instinctively, I reached out with that part of me that was the Sandsong. I focused on the ground beneath my feet.
For a single, impossible moment, the swirling silt and loose pebbles under my boot solidified, becoming as firm as sandstone. I found my footing. Just for a second. But it was enough. I lunged forward, finding another temporary foothold, then another. It was clumsy, exhausting work, a pale imitation of my power, but it kept me from being swept away.
We finally scrambled onto the opposite bank, collapsing onto the wet rocks, soaked, shivering, and gasping for air. Across the raging river, we saw them. Torchlights bobbing between the trees. Then, the hounds appeared—large, canine shapes that seemed woven from shadow itself, their eyes glowing with a malevolent red light. They paced at the water's edge, howling in frustration. They could not cross the running water. We had made it. Just barely.
"Shadow-Hounds," Kael panted, his chest heaving. "Creations of the Magi. They follow the scent of your spirit, not just your body. The river confuses them."
I barely heard him. I was staring at my boots, then back at the churning water. That feeling... that whisper of power... it was real. I wasn't completely defenseless.
Kael slowly got to his feet, wringing water from his tunic. He looked older, more frail than he had just an hour ago. He pointed with a trembling hand toward a dark, jagged line on the horizon, barely visible against the starless sky.
"The mountains," he said, his voice heavy with exhaustion. "The Sunken Library is somewhere in their heart. And the sun will be up soon. We must keep moving."
He spoke of the mountains, but my mind was at the bottom of the river. The song had been faint, almost not there at all, but it was a promise. There was sand here, even if it was just the grit at the bottom of a river.
And where there was sand, I was not entirely powerless.