Air.

Elan had said that for magic to last, it had to be bound to a physical object. Someone had stitched the two elements together to create a sandstorm, binding them both somewhere so they would protect the Well for generations. Instinctively she searched for the binding object; that was the key to the storm.

The earth’s energy was familiar, but it glowed with a feeling of foreignness; maybe this was her element, but it was not her magic, or magic crafted by the Wellspring mages. But she could still examine it. When she looked at its binding, the barrier wasn’t one unbroken streak; it was a series of nodes, magic stretched between them. The nodes weren’t only magic; they were physical. Rocks, enormous boulders, mostly buried under centuries’ worth of sand, linked to enough magical energy to pull the very air down, give it direction. They were the binding. Without them…

Jae coughed again and tried to pull her robe up over her face without falling out of other-vision. It was caked with sand, but she managed to pull a few clumps off. Just enough so that she could press the cloth to her mouth and nose.

When she could finally breathe again, she cast out for any spare energy she could feel, and pulled it toward her. It wasn’t much—most of the energy she could sense was part of the barrier—but she could gather a little. It wasn’t very strong, hardly enough for the kind of destruction she’d caused at Aredann, so she focused on only the nearest of the boulders.

When she tried to shatter it, it struck back, the magic infused in it protecting itself—but she could hit near it. She shook the ground, and a decade’s worth of sand shifted, falling away, enough of it moving to make the boulder roll. The bright streak of the barrier dimmed, so she pushed harder. The streak didn’t snap, but it frayed like twine. She moved to the next boulder, and instead of pushing, she pulled, drawing the land closer to her, yanking the boulder onto its side. Better still, it hit a natural slope and started rolling. She tugged and tugged while the streak frayed further, until the distance between the two giant stones was enough that the streak snapped and went dark.

The air crackled with energy as the magic lost focus, its binding broken, and the wind suddenly gushed in all directions at once. It hammered Jae until she fell flat onto her stomach, swallowing another mouthful of sand, bleeding where the wind and sand tore her skin open.

Jae ignored the pain and reached for the newly freed energy. Gathering the air’s magical forces didn’t come as easily as earth’s. The energy prickled, jangling her until she had to clench her jaw to keep her teeth from rattling. But once she was immersed in it, she could feel its natural flow, and she sent it careening back to the way it flowed naturally, only diverting a tiny bit. That, she wrapped around the three of them, circling and catching the sand until they were in the middle of a whorl, sand and wind like a wall around them, but dawn in the sky above.

Panting hard, she looked up and found Elan half buried, trying to pull himself free. Tal had fared a little better—he was crawling toward them. The camel was nowhere to be seen. She pointed at Elan, didn’t even have the energy to speak, but Tal understood and moved toward him instead.

While Tal struggled to dig Elan out, Jae reached for the water skin on her belt, swallowed everything that was in it, and then began her own slow crawl toward Elan. She didn’t have the energy to help, though. Instead she just lay on the hot sand, head swimming as she kept the protective wind whipping around them, and waited for the larger sandstorm to die down.

She must have fallen asleep, because she woke to find Tal curled against her side, Elan sprawled less than an arm’s length away. The wind still circled them sluggishly, but the sky was bright overhead. The storm had passed. She released her grip on the wind, and fell back to sleep, exhaustion claiming her.

She woke again, this time, if not refreshed, then at least no longer too exhausted to keep her eyes open. The night sky was dark now, and their campsite—if it could be called that—was even darker. Looking around, Jae almost laughed as she realized why. Her winds had been effective, and while they’d been safe from the storm, sand had piled up around them, high enough to block out the sun earlier and the moon now. The three of them were at the bottom of a cone made of sand, steep slopes all around them.

Tal and Elan were both nearby, their gear strewn around. Elan had his knees folded up to his chest, his arms wrapped around them. Tal was kneeling by their gear, stacking it, lips pressed shut in a grim line.

“Good morning,” Jae murmured.

They both looked up. “I was starting to worry about you,” Tal said. “We tried to wake you, but you barely stirred.”

“Using that much magic is exhausting,” Jae said.

“What—” Elan stopped. “I’d like to know what that was.”

“A barrier,” Jae said. “I think it must have been crafted during the War—and definitely by the Highest mages, because the magic felt just like the Curse. It must have been meant to keep the Closest away from the Well.”

Elan nodded slowly. “If the Highest couldn’t control the Well, then…they must have hoped that barrier would keep the Closest from controlling it, too. Maybe the Highest even hoped that it would force the Closest to give up control.”

“But they didn’t,” Jae said. “They decided they’d rather die, and…I had a vision. They did die. Taesann somehow took all their magic and pushed it into the fountain to hide it, and he knew Aredann would kill him once he was defenseless.” She shuddered. She remembered that as if she’d felt it, as if Taesann’s memory was her own. Now she was the only one who remembered what had really happened, that he was not the traitor the Highest claimed he was.

“So if the Highest built a barrier to keep Closest out…” Tal tapped his fingers against his water skin as he thought it through. “Then I ran into it, and that’s what started the storm. And when Lord Savann was caught out in the desert…”

“He must have had a Closest in his party,” Jae agreed.

“But now the barrier is gone,” Elan said, an almost-question as his voice quirked up. He cleared his throat.

“Yes,” Jae agreed. “And thankfully, we’re still alive.”

“For the moment,” Elan said.

Jae frowned. He was still slumped over, defeated, and when Jae looked at Tal, he wouldn’t meet her gaze. Something else had happened while she’d been unconscious. “Please tell me what’s going on.”