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G RAYLIN LEANED NEXT to Fenn at the ship’s navigation station. Others continued to gather behind them, summoned by Darant to the wheelhouse.

The captain now manned the large maesterwheel, guiding the Fyredragon across the spread of ruins. He shouted orders to the crew operating the vessel’s secondary controls that flanked his position. Levers were pulled and screwlike subwheels were spun. The massive ship slowly gained speed and height.

Graylin glanced past the tall arc of windows. The Necropolises of Seekh rolled under their keel. Off in the distance, some thirty leagues away, the ruins ended. Beyond its borders stretched a broken landscape of sand, salt, and scoured rock.

It marked the true edge of the Barrens.

The journey ahead would be difficult enough.

Even without hunters at our back.

Fenn straightened from the ship’s array of scopes. The navigator shook his head, his face flushed with fury. “They’re still in pursuit—and continue to draw closer.”

Graylin expected no different. The Bhestyan warship had surely spotted the Fyredragon. With the target in sight, they had no doubt stoked their forges to their fullest. Already in motion, the enemy had the advantage. The Fyredragon ’s massive bulk took time to get a head of wind behind her, for the forges to push her faster.

We should’ve left sooner.

He turned to the reason for their delayed departure. Nyx entered with Daal. She hung on his arm. Both looked drawn and hollowed out. Even from across the wheelhouse, Graylin noted the bluish clouding over Nyx’s eyes, marking the toll it had taken for her to rescue Daal and his remaining crew.

He wanted to rush over to help her, but he resisted, knowing he would be rebuffed. He had come to accept such attempts at drawing closer to her were selfish on his part. He had only come into her life a year ago—a year of strife, hardship, and loss. He had no right to add to her burden by trespassing where he was not wanted, where he had no role in her life beyond a shared bloodline. Instead, Nyx had found solace in another, in the arms of the young man at her side now.

Graylin had already heard their story, of what had transpired out in the desert. The second rider of the raash’ke team, Tamryn, had rushed up with her report, while Daal and Nyx had settled Bashaliia in the hold and seen to Daal’s mount, who had been injured. He had also learned how a Hálendiian corsair had been left broken and stranded in the desert.

One less threat.

He glanced over to Nyx. Despite his anger at the risk she had taken, she had accomplished something remarkable in ripping the enemy from the skies. But there remained another danger out there.

Graylin turned back to Fenn. “Any sign of the second Bhestyan warship?”

“None. Daal’s diversion must’ve sent them well off course to the north. They cannot recover in time to be any danger.”

Graylin nodded.

“But what are we to do with the bastards behind us?” Fenn pressed him.

Graylin understood the anger that stiffened the navigator’s every movement—also the fear shining in his eyes. According to Daal, Fenn’s uncle had been spotted aboard the warship, along with the navigator’s sister, who appeared to have been abused and was found in shackles.

The young man looked ready to cast off in one of the Fyredragon ’s sailrafts and go after his sister. This passion clearly trembled through him. Even now, Fenn’s hands clenched into fists.

Graylin hated to quash that desire, but he had to be clear. He had already discussed this with Darant and Krysh.

“We can’t risk a direct confrontation,” Graylin explained. “The warship has us outgunned. Twice the cannons, four times the ballistas. And what we have atop our decks is centuries old. Most of which is crusted by rust and weakened by age. Even if we survived a battle with the Bhestyan ship, the damage sustained could cripple us.”

Graylin sighed at his own words. He had hoped to be able to upgrade the Fyredragon ’s aged weaponry while in Spindryft, or even out here. But harried at every turn, they’d had no time.

Graylin ended with a blunt truth. “We dare not engage the enemy—not even to save your sister. The world’s fate depends on us reaching the turubya out in the Barrens.”

Fenn closed his eyes, as if trying to shut out these words.

“I’m sorry, Fenn.”

The navigator’s shoulders slumped, but when he opened his eyes, he stared toward Nyx. “But we have another weapon at hand. One strong enough to down a corsair.”

Graylin followed his gaze. “It will take days for Nyx to recover. Same with Daal’s reserves. And we cannot put them in harm’s way again. You must know that.”

Even if Nyx did not.

Irritation flashed through him at her rash action. She had risked not only her life, but the fate of the world, too.

“Then what do we do?” Fenn asked, his voice sharpened by pain.

“We fly on. With every league gained, the heat will grow. They cannot pursue us very deep into the Barrens. Not without cooling units. The scorch alone may shake them loose from our path.”

Darant approached, after turning the maesterwheel over to his daughter, Glace. The pirate had heard this plan. “Mind you, we may also hit that same fiery wall if we can’t get those coolers humming,” he warned. “If that happens, we’ll be trapped between the scorch and a warship.”

“In such a case, nothing will matter from there,” Graylin said. “If the cooling units fail to churn, then all is lost. Moonfall will become inevitable.”

Darant scowled. “So we just run.”

“And pray those coolers engage,” Graylin finished.

He knew Rhaif and Shiya remained below, monitoring for any change, struggling for any other solutions.

A commotion drew their attention to the door. Graylin straightened, praying for some hopeful news from below. Instead, Jace and Krysh hurried inside. A young woman in white desert garb followed, leading in a calf-sized black crab.

To the side, Kalder burst to his legs at the sight of these newcomers, especially the strangeness of the eight-legged creature. The vargr rushed forward with a deep-throated growl, a ridge of hackles raised across his back.

Graylin stepped forward to scold Kalder away, but before he could utter a word, the crab scuttled to face the challenge, clacking and snapping a pair of foreclaws in clear warning.

Kalder skidded to a stop, then retreated from the noisy display. The vargr’s home in the Rimewood had no such beasts, and clearly Kalder did not know what to make of it. From a distance, Kalder skirted a wary circle, sniffing and chuffing, taking in the strange scent, doing his best to judge this threat.

The woman, in turn, stared wide-eyed at the massive vargr. She mumbled angrily in the Chanaryn tongue.

Graylin interceded before matters escalated. He gestured Kalder back, reinforcing it with a firm order. Kalder took several steps away but kept on his legs with his hackles raised.

Satisfied, Graylin faced the others. “What has you rushing in here?”

Jace lifted a hand, holding the map he had secured in Bhestya, while Krysh raised a folded parchment. “Esme may have already helped us. Come see.”

Krysh headed toward the open door into the neighboring chart room. “I want to check my calculations to be sure. If I’m right, we may have a problem.”

Graylin scowled.

As if we don’t have enough already.

G RAYLIN GATHERED EVERYONE inside the Fyredragon ’s chart room. Even Nyx hobbled into the cramped space with Daal. Not that she could see much with her clouded eyes.

Inside, a single lamp hung from a chain overhead, illuminating walls covered in hundreds of round cubbies, all crammed with curled scrolls of countless maps. Atop a center table, a drawing had been splayed and tacked down. A sextant rested there, along with a sheaf of papers with scrawled calculations in charcoal, marking the labors of the navigator and Krysh.

Graylin had studied this chart countless times. One side had been sketched with the border of the Eastern Crown. The rest showed an expanse of the Barrens, with several known landmarks embellished on it. Most of the additions clustered near the Crown’s border. Deeper into the Barrens, those numbers dwindled away to blank paper, waiting to be filled as the Fyredragon crossed those lands.

A few flagged pins had been stuck into that empty expanse. Tiny writing marked features that had been copied from the Bhestyan map onto this chart. They hadn’t been inked onto the page, as Jace, Krysh, and Fenn were still struggling to assign distances and exact locations.

Looking at the bare chart only highlighted the daunting task ahead.

Jace circled to one side of the table and spread out the copy of the old Bhestyan map. He waved a hand across those pinned flags. “Over the past days, we’ve been able to correlate a rough approximation of this ancient map to the breadth of the Barrens. Then I ran into Krysh while headed to the wheelhouse with Esme…”

The alchymist nodded. “As the ship was already underway, I asked Esme to stop and look at the map we secured, to see if any of what’s drawn on it matches what she knows of the deep desert of the Barrens. While she couldn’t verify every detail, she did confirm enough.”

Graylin glanced to Esme, who looked overwhelmed, her eyes wide and unblinking.

Jace nodded. “I asked her if she knew anything past where this map ends.”

Krysh unfolded the parchment in his hand and laid it across the chart, to the east of all those flags. “She was able to add a few more details. Nothing she witnessed personally, but the Chanaryn have a rich oral history. She had heard stories of strange sights in the deep desert.”

Krysh tapped at places he had crudely sketched onto his parchment. “An ancient lake bed, dried and crusted in bright emerald crystals. Pools of pearlescent black oil that bubble and cast forth poisonous gasses. Deep caves with cold springs.”

More spots were marked, but Jace cut him off, plainly too excited for this litany to go on. “But there were even older stories she knew. Of sections of the desert even beyond the edge of Krysh’s parchment.”

“That’s right.” The alchymist nodded to Esme. “Tell them what you told us, about the gods of the deepest desert, where sand turns to glass.”

All eyes turned to the Chanaryn woman. She looked strangled by their attention.

Jace touched her shoulder, not to spur her to talk, but in support.

She sighed out her tension. “I know little more. The Chanaryn have great odes, ancient sagas. The telling of which can take days. But one of the oldest speaks of a strange forest of living crystals. Of vast sands blasted into black glass—and a great beast sleeping beneath it.”

“A beast?” Nyx asked, squinting, clearly struggling to pierce the veil over her vision.

Esme stared out the door toward the front of the ship. “A giant draakki. ”

“In the common tongue,” Jace translated, “a dragon. ”

“According to our sagas, the creature goes by many names. Most often it’s simply called the Draakki nee Baersh. Or the Dragon of Black Glass. Sometimes it’s described as a god, other times as a daemon. But all those stories agree on the threat it poses.”

“Which is what?” Daal asked.

Esme stared around the table. “According to legend, when the Draakki nee Baersh wakes—the world will shatter.”

Graylin winced. This apocalyptic warning sounded eerily prophetic of moonfall. Others must have thought so, too, as silence settled around the room. Still, they also knew that if the turubya lay in that direction, they dared not turn aside.

Only Krysh seemed oblivious to all of this. As Esme shared her account, the alchymist had collected a scatter of navigational tools and had set about laboring at the far end of the tacked-down chart, opposite the sketch of the Eastern Crown. He had been meticulously measuring with a scissored compass, marking lines in charcoal.

Graylin suddenly guessed where this was all leading. “Esme, according to your stories, how far out into the desert does this dragon sleep?”

The young woman reached and touched the sketch that Krysh had drawn on the parchment. It showed the deep cave with a freshwater spring—which surely had to be an important landmark to the Chanaryn nomads. “From here, it takes yegga menna twil yegga to reach the Dragon. Or so most sagas claim.”

Graylin frowned.

Jace tried to explain. “The Chanaryn measure time by the cycles of the moon. That passage means five moons times five. ”

“Or roughly two years.” Krysh straightened. “But that’s across the sand on foot. Aboard the Fyredragon, we can cross that distance in less than a tenth of that time.”

So, about two months.

Krysh pointed the tip of his measuring compass toward the lone emerald flag staked on that side of the map. Shiya had marked that location long ago. It was their destination in the Barrens, where the second turubya was hidden.

“As I feared,” Krysh warned, “here is where the Dragon of Black Glass sleeps.”

Graylin scowled. “And where we must go.”

“And where we dare not disturb its slumber,” Jace added.

Before anyone could respond to this revelation, a door crashed open out in the wheelhouse. The noise drew them out of the chart room.

Graylin led the way. He discovered the ship’s quartermaster searching the wheelhouse with great distress etched on her face.

Vikas gy Wren stood a head taller than Graylin and massed twice his size. She was all muscle and grimness encased in leather armor. She carried a broadsword, one so lengthy it had to be sheathed across her back.

“What’s wrong?” Darant asked.

The quartermaster lifted an arm, formed a fist, and stuck out her thumb and smallest finger. She waggled it under her other palm, then turned that hand over to reveal a small scroll sealed in crimson wax.

The gesture was easy to interpret: A skrycrow reached the ship, carrying a message.

Darant nodded and took the scroll from her.

Vikas had been born mute—due to her mixed Gynish blood, which also accounted for her sheer size. The craggy giants of the northern steppes—the Gyns—had lost the ability to speak in the distant past, possibly due to the perpetual howl of winds across their cold lands, which deafened all. To compensate, the Gyns spoke in a language of gestures and expressions. Vikas had taught this same to the raash’ke riders, to aid in coordination through the air.

“Who sent the message?” Nyx asked.

Graylin could guess.

Darant confirmed it by turning the scroll and revealing a symbol stamped into the wax. It showed a rearing Bhestyan panther. “I’d say this came from Fenn’s uncle.”

The navigator rushed over, reaching for the scroll.

Darant rebuffed him. “My ship, my message.”

“Read it,” Graylin urged.

Darant broke the seal and unrolled the missive. He scanned it silently, his expression darkening as he did.

“What?” Fenn pressed. “Tell us.”

“It’s an offer. Signed by Orren hy Pashkin.” Darant glanced to Fenn. “Your uncle, I presume.”

Fenn’s angry glare acknowledged this.

Darant lifted the scroll and read it aloud. “‘Hand over Fenn hy Pashkin, traitor to the realm, and we guarantee free passage from here. Refuse and we will hang his sister in his stead, from the prow of the Sharpened Spur at the first dawn bell. Thenceforth, we will hunt your vessel down with great haste, without mercy. None will be spared.’”

Fenn retreated, as if to flee the horror of those words.

Darant crumbled the scroll. “Sod that. Anyone who uses the word thenceforth is not worth the last drip of piss from my cock.”

Graylin rubbed his chin, eyes down, weighing their options. If handing over Fenn would end the threat of the warship, it had to be considered. They didn’t need an enemy at their back. But he also knew this enemy could not be trusted.

He cleared his throat, sweeping his gaze over those gathered in the wheelhouse. “We must all harden ourselves if we hope to stop moonfall,” he stated firmly. “Sacrifices were made in the past and will be made again. In this decision, in this moment, we must weigh one life against all the world.”

“No!” Nyx stumbled free of Daal’s support. Though near blind, she came at him unerringly. “We can’t hand over Fenn. If it means a battle, so be it.”

Graylin sighed. “We’ll do neither, Nyx.” He could not keep a scolding tone from his words. “Orren’s offer of free passage is as worthless as Darant so eloquently attested. The Bhestyans came with a Hálendiian corsair. No doubt promises were made. Fenn’s traitorous uncle surely knows what could be gained—both for the kingdom and for himself—by securing us. He will not let such a prize sail off.”

“Then what do we do?” Nyx asked.

“We stay the course as planned. We continue forward and pray the desert burns these bastards from our trail.”

“But my sister…” Fenn moaned.

Graylin turned to him. “Like I said, we must weigh one life against all the world.”

Fenn looked aghast, knowing who would pay that price.

Graylin offered the only solace he could. “I’m sorry.”

A heavy silence followed. They all knew he spoke the truth. Even Nyx stumbled back into Daal’s arms.

An objection finally broke through, coming from an unlikely source, stated with absolute certainty.

“We cannot go forward.”

All eyes turned to Esme. The Chanaryn woman had drifted to the windows fronting the ship.

She pointed toward the horizon. “Ishuka sweeps toward us. We cannot escape her wrath.”

Graylin frowned, spotting no threat, only a glaring haziness.

Jace joined her. “In the Chanaryn tongue, ishuka is both the name of a deity and their word for sandstorm. I’ve read of these monstrous squalls. How the two air rivers—flowing east and west—tangle into a snarl that pulls the desert far into the sky.”

Graylin squinted. As he watched, the haziness at the horizon darkened, climbing higher and higher, erasing the line between sky and land. Soon, the true breadth of the Chanaryn god revealed itself. The desert rose up into a wall of churning sand, stretching north and south, towering ever taller, certainly beyond their ship’s ability to sweep above it.

“She will rip you from Her skies,” Esme promised with a dread solemnity.

“What can we do?” Jace pressed her.

“To survive Her wrath, you must bury yourself deep in the sand, while burning offerings to the god above.”

“In other words, we must go to ground.” Darant shook his head and scowled at Graylin. “So much for your plan to let the desert rid us of our problems.”

Graylin ignored the gibe. He knew the storm wasn’t the only threat. If they were forced to land, there would be no escaping the Bhestyan warship, no flying from this confrontation.

The faces around him reflected that grim reality.

Except for Fenn.

He looked relieved.