The flat beach soon gave way to the desert dunes that stretched as far as the eye could see. The air turned arid and gritty, and I had to close my watery eyes against the glare of the sun off the white sand. Gus had known where to take us in the mountains, so I’d have to trust him to find the hidden ke’tain in this vast desert.
We flew for another hour before we came to a small canyon. On the canyon floor, dozens of columns of white rock rose from the ground. There was no pattern or uniformity of size to the columns, so I assumed they were natural formations. Aside from some spiny bushes, there were no signs of life in the canyon.
Gus circled the columns and found a space big enough for him to set down. We had been in the air so long I felt the landing in every one of my stiff joints. He put me down, and I fell back on the sand. I was going to need a few minutes to recover before I got to work.
“Ouch!” I scrambled to my feet and touched the back of my neck, which felt like I’d pressed a hot flat iron against it. The ground was so hot it had burned me. I crouched and held my hand a few inches above the sand. It was like hovering over a hot stove.
Standing, I surveyed my inhospitable surroundings. Aedhna sure knew how to pick places to hide her ke’tains. Now I needed to find the one I was looking for.
I walked to the nearest column. It was roughly four feet in diameter, and up close, it appeared to be made of some kind of porous rock with tiny holes in the surface. Circling it, I discovered a hole on the other side big enough for me to fit into. A faint clicking came from inside, and I took a step closer to listen.
Something moved inside the column, and I heard the unmistakable sound of claws on stone. I jumped back, my heart racing. No way was I going in there. I’d seen Pitch Black, and it had not ended well for those people.
I walked among the columns, making sure not to get too close to any of them. Once again, Aedhna had not been specific about the exact location of the ke’tain. All she’d said was that I would know when I was close to it. So far, my spidey–sense was not tingling.
I approached the two biggest columns, which I had been avoiding because they also had big holes in them. I had no desire to see what lived inside those creepy dark holes.
Keeping a wide berth, I studied the columns. There was nothing to mark them as special, but then Aedhna wouldn’t have made it easy to find the ke’tain. I’d hoped the ke’tain I carried would be drawn to the other one like it had in the cave, but so far, it wasn’t picking up anything. I was going to have to get closer.
I stepped up to the columns, trying to block out the scratching sounds echoing from the holes. The moment I stood directly between the columns, the ke’tain in my pocket began to vibrate softly. I didn’t move as the ground rumbled and the sand in front of me sank, slowly revealing a set of stone steps disappearing into darkness.
I pulled out a laevik crystal and went down the first three steps with it held before me. It illuminated the bottom of the stairs and the floor of what looked like a tunnel.
She wouldn’t have sent me here if it was too dangerous, I reminded myself. She needed me to do this for her to save Faerie, and I still had one more after today. With that encouraging thought, I descended the rest of the stairs.
The first thing I noticed when I reached the bottom was the drop in temperature. It was over one hundred degrees outside, but down here, it felt about thirty degrees cooler. The second thing I noticed was that, unlike the tunnel in the mountain cave, this one was not a natural structure. It was also much shorter. After ten feet, it opened into a low round room with a smooth stone floor.
The room was about fifteen feet in diameter with a small, plain circle etched into the center of the stone floor that was covered in a fine layer of sand. I stepped inside the room, and my hair lifted, crackling from the static electricity in the air. I was definitely in the right place.
I took the ke’tain from my pocket and walked to the center of the room. After the first step, the bottoms of my feet started to tingle, and by the time I reached the circle, the tingling had become a serious case of pins and needles that had spread to my calves.
I studied the area inside the circle and blew away the sand. It was roughly a foot wide and bore no special markings. There hadn’t been any markings in the cave either, though. I held the ke’tain over it, and the stone began to pulse with energy like it had last time. Leaning down, I laid it in the center of the circle. The moment it touched the floor, I felt the energy signature of the other ke’tain, and my excitement built as I straightened and waited for the hidden ke’tain to appear.
The floor inside the circle rippled once and went still. I stared at it. Had I done something wrong?
Crouching, I reached for the ke’tain. The instant my fingers made contact, the floor began to move again and lose its color. When it was fully translucent, it was like looking into a deep well with a faint purple light at the bottom. The stone under my hand quivered, and then it sank into the floor.
“What the…?” I watched in confusion as it slowly moved toward the purple glow. Was it supposed to do that? In the cave, the other ke’tain had come to me.
The ke’tain reached the bottom and began to glow. Seconds later, a blast of energy came from the floor, knocking me back on my ass. My body went rigid as the power surged through me, and for one terrifying moment, I thought my heart would stop under the onslaught.
When I thought I couldn’t take it a second longer, the power receded, leaving me limp and gasping on the floor. I wasn’t sure how long I lay there before I was able to move. My limbs felt rubbery when I rolled over and pushed up onto my hands and knees. I crawled to the circle and looked down at the pulsing lights of the two ke’tains. There was nothing left for me to do but wait.
It took half an hour for me to regain the full use of my legs. I paced the room, frequently stopping to look in on the ke’tains. A few times, when I got close to the walls, I heard faint scratching inside them. I shuddered and tried not to think of what was living in there.
Looking for a distraction, I walked to a section of the floor where my boots hadn’t scuffed the layer of sand. Grinning, I bent and wrote Jesse was here in English in the sand. If someone ever found this place many eons from now, my message would give them a mystery to puzzle over.
After what felt like hours, the blue ke’tain separated from the purple one and rose to the surface. I reached for it hesitantly and cried out when it shocked me. The pain didn’t last long, but it was enough to bring tears to my eyes. I tucked the stone away in its pouch, wondering if I would be able to touch it at all when it reached full strength.
I picked up the laevik crystal I had dropped when I’d fallen and walked through the tunnel. At the base of the stairs, I spotted a narrow crevice in the wall at eye level, and I held the crystal up to it. Call it morbid curiosity or the academic in me, but I would never come back to this place and have a chance to see what kind of creature could live in this hostile ecosystem.
I let out a small scream when a black claw shot out of the crevice. It looked like a crab claw, and it made clicking sounds as it grabbed at me. My curiosity fled, and so did I. I sped up the stairs and back into the world of blinding sun and suffocating heat.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I yelled as I ran to Gus.
We were in the air, seconds later, and rising from the canyon. My heart was still pounding when he set off across the desert toward the ocean.