Kendrell’s heart pounded, sounding louder to him then the steady beat of his mount's hooves. The wind whipped his long hair behind him, and air forced itself down his throat in ragged gasps. He squinted at the road ahead, hoping another flash of lightning would illuminate the path. He was never a skilled rider, but he knew enough to stay on the horse as it raced down the road away from Red Sands. He wondered, for the thousandth time, how his world had turned upside down so suddenly.

For someone who grew up on a farm, he had never ridden far. Before the drought, in fact, he had never been more than a few dozen miles from home. Until, that is, the parched soil and thirsty crops forced his family to abandon their farm, and their livelihoods, and move to the city in hopes of finding a way to feed themselves. That had been the first shock, but it was nowhere near the end of his troubles.

Red Sands was a harsh place, even more so for a family of foreign farmers. They were unprepared for the crowding, the sheer hostility of their neighbors. On their first day they had been shaken down by a gang of feathered humanoids for what meagre coin and supplies they had salvaged from their home out east. The gang had left the family in the city streets, up to their ankles in unspeakable muck, grimly chuckling at their condition.

Thankfully, Kendrell's eldest sister and her husband had taken them in. Kendrell knew how much it pained his father to rely on charity this way, even from family, but he knew all too well what fate awaited them if they hadn't. He had seen the half-starved skeletons sitting with sunken eyes in the dusty alleys of Red Sands, so motionless one could barely notice if they died. The thought of little Vanya in such state...no, they could swallow any indignity if it meant avoiding that fate.

The Harrows did not give up easily. They had done what they had for generations - rolled up their sleeves and got to work. Scratching out a living doing woodwork, mucking out stalls - it was better than starving, but only just. It would have been a desperate situation even if they had been a whole family.

What would Nikolas have done? Kendrell wondered. Brave and kind, and always ready with a joke or horrendous pun to brighten a dark mood, just the right amount of maddeningly annoying; Nikolas was the best older brother that Kendrell could have asked for. He'd been heartbroken when Nikolas left for the Academy, and secretly jealous, but he never stopped looking up to Nikolas. Unwittingly, one hand left the reins and gripped the talisman at his chest.

His brother had been his closest friend and idol for as long as he could recall, up until the very day the fateful letter had arrived two years ago. Now Nikolas was dead, his star plucked from the sky by the cruel hand of fate, and his family moved on without him.

The road turned sharply ahead. In the rain and dark, Kendrell almost missed it. He took his hand off the talisman - huh, when did I grab that? - to guide his mount in a desperate turn, nearly flinging himself from the saddle in the process. Righting himself, heart in throat, he wondered again at what had brought him here. Magic.

A flash of lightning; a peal of thunder. It was close, but it did not frighten Kendrell. Absurdly, the noise comforted him, a crack of reality in the nightmare of his flight. He glanced down at his mount, illuminated briefly by the flash. The horse was a pale blue-grey, with dark grey blotches like clouds across its flanks and brow. The odd color would mark it as magical in nature, even if it weren't for the sparks of static brought by every hoofbeat.

Kendrell had conjured it himself.

He hadn't meant to, exactly. But in his panicked attempt to flee Red Sands, all he could think of was his need for a fast horse. He had practically willed it into being, pushing magic out of his hands and into the air. It had taken form on the road outside the city, complete with a cloudy-grey saddle, and turned an eye upon him, the depths of its pupil flashing as if with lightning. It had not reacted at his cautious touch, nor so much as flicked its tail when he mustered the courage to mount. But when he kicked its flank, it ran.

For four hours now, it had run. Kendrell, in growing exhaustion and soreness, was beginning to think that he himself would wear out before this beast would. But terror drove him onward.

It happened in an instant. Kendrell felt suddenly weightless. Reflexively, he grasped for his mount's mane; but he caught only wind. There was nothing beneath him. He had time to think half a swearword before he plowed face-first into the muddy road, rolled heels over head, and came to rest on his back with a resounding splat.

He tried to gasp, but choked on mud. He snorted and spat, trying to clear the filth from his nostrils. It took him a full minute of coughing before he could breathe normally again. He thought he could still taste the boots of a small army in his mouth - if not their horses, too. Slowly, the small ditch he had carved with his landing filled in with rainwater and slick mud.

Well, hogswallow, thought Kendrell. That went poorly.

He should have known it would happen. Thanks to Nikolas, Kendrell knew enough of magic to be aware that conjured creatures didn't last long. But then, if he'd been thinking clearly, he probably wouldn't have tried to flee the city. Where was he going to go, anyway? He had little to his name except a few coins and, apparently, some kind of innate magic he couldn't control.

Well, that and his brother's -

Panicking, Kendrell clutched at his chest. Then he sighed with relief. It was still there, the only treasure he possessed, hanging on its chain. Kendrell ignored the faint static discharge when his hand touched the chain, and put it out of his mind. It was best not to think about that now. It was what got him into this mess, after all.

Kendrell got to his feet, wincing at the pain in his legs and rear. He would not be riding anything else anytime soon.

The pain, at least, was enough to sharpen his focus, and tamp down his still-present fear. Kendrell sighed, already worrying about what was happening in his absence. Steeling himself, he hobbled onward.

"Just a bed for the night and a bit of food," Kendrell repeated, wondering if the innkeeper still had all his marbles. The man was just standing there, mouth slightly agape, nodding vaguely at Kendrell with his eyes fixed somewhere just above the farmboy's own.

Kendrell had done his best to clean himself up after the harrowing ride from Red Sands. He knew he still had dried mud in places that didn't bear thinking about, but he should be mostly presentable - at least by the standards of dust-stained travelers on the road west. He frowned at the innkeeper. "Oh, come on, do you have a room or don't you?"

"What?" The innkeep, a short, balding man with beads of sweat perpetually dripping from his brow, started and met Kendrell's eyes at last. "Oh, oh, um, of course, yes, we do, we do have a room..."

"How much for a bath and a night's stay?" asked Kendrell patiently. Then, just to be sure, he asked it again. A bit louder.

"Oh, just four coppers, a fair price, very fair price indeed, none better this side of..."

"Good, thanks, here." Kendrell plopped the coins on the counter. The jingle of coinage evidently shook the inkeep out of his stupor, for he proceeded to introduce himself as Garge MakBorndred and attempt to upsell Kendrell on one of the "special guest rooms." Kendrell politely refused - well, mostly politely. He wasn't up to his usual friendliness standards whilst nursing a half-dozen bruises and an asscrack full of dried mud.

Perhaps it was Kendrell's imagination, but Garge seemed a bit distracted even while he was being argued out of a half-silver "upgrade." He kept glancing upward at something. Finally Kendrell managed to extract a room number and key from the inkeep, and excused himself to make a break for the stairs as fast as his chapped thighs allowed.

As he was just about to stump up the stairs and collapse into a bath, Kendrell heard the innkeeper blurt out, "Why is your hair standing on end?"

Kendrell just groaned and hobbled upstairs.

Over the next several days, Kendrell continued to make his way west. Unfortunately, he couldn't repeat his conjuring feat from the night before. Even if he knew how, the spell was gone now, phased out by use. Kendrell remembered the frustration in his brother's letters when the boy had learned that his magic would take weeks or whole octules to return to him; Kendrell had taken guilty pleasure in his brother's distress at the time. It was less funny now that he was waiting for his own magic to phase back in.

Kendrell sighed, rubbing his neck and squinting in the noonday sun. Some of the fear had left him, now, but what remained was a feeling of being lost.

He didn't have a particular destination in mind, unless it was "far away from Red Sands." But he found himself wondering if he'd make it all the way to Denlare. Maybe someone there could help him, like they had helped his brother. And gotten him killed, thought Kendrell bitterly. I don't need that kind of help. It seemed he was truly adrift.

What am I running from? wondered Kendrell.

The authorities in Red Sands were harsh, but fair, he had heard. Maybe they would be willing to hear him out. Then again, if the Clans had as much power as rumors said...what if they controlled the guards, too? Or what if the guards didn't believe him?

Kendrell would have been willing to risk it, if it had been himself alone. Better to face up to what he'd done than live in fear for the rest of his life. But he wasn't alone. He had his family to think of. If the Clans found out what had happened to one of their own...it would be far too easy for them to target his family. He thought of the grinning face of the shopkeep, imagined his sister's scream...he shuddered. No. He couldn't risk his family like that.

Murderers did not meet with kind fates in Red Sands.