They approached it at late afternoon, after it had hovered there in the distance all day, taunting them with promises of shade and fresh water. When they were still almost a quarter of a league away, Sellis halted the group.
“Oases can harbor all sorts of dangers,” he said.
“Sellis, I’ve been living in the desert my whole life. You think I don’t know that?”
He folded his arms across his chest, his muscles bunched and round, forearms veined, tracked by scars. He was almost thirty, and was in many ways the most capable, experienced man she had ever known. His pale blue eyes missed nothing. He was quick to laugh, and when he did, head thrown back and mouth open, it was all she could do not to join right in. But when he was serious, those eyes narrowed and a deep gash appeared between them, as though a tiny hatchet had split his brow, and his usually smiling mouth turned into a thin, grim line. Jutting over his shoulders were the hilts of his twin swords, worn crossing each other on his back.
“I’m not saying it to educate you, Myrana. I’m only explaining why I’m going ahead alone.”
“What, so you can drink first?”
“Myrana!” That was Koyt, shorter and leaner, but just as deadly with his bow as Sellis with his twin swords. His face was round, with liquid brown eyes, and she might have thought him soft if she didn’t know him. He mopped sweat from his eyes. “You know that’s not what he means.”
“I was teasing, Koyt.”
“Koyt will cover me from here,” Sellis continued. “If it’s clear, I’ll wave you in.”
“It had better be,” Myrana said. “We need to stock up on water.”
Sellis flashed her a quick grin, dimples carving his cheeks. “Now who’s telling us what we already know?”
Without another word, he trudged toward the oasis. Koyt drew an arrow from the quiver he kept on his back, right between his shoulder blades, and fitted it onto his bowstring.
“Can you really hit something from this distance?” Myrana asked. She knew he was a skilled archer, but this seemed impossibly long.
“Let’s hope Sellis doesn’t have to find out.”
The oasis appeared calm from this distance. A light but steady breeze ruffled the fronds of tall palms, so they flashed light and dark in the afternoon sun. Beneath them was thick shadow, and somewhere in that shadow, Myrana knew, was water.
So close. She slipped the bladder off her shoulder and took a drink.
“Easy,” Koyt said, his voice calm but firm. “Save it.”
“But there’s bound to be plenty there.”
“If we can get to it.”
As she had said, Myrana had lived on the road, cutting across one desert or another, since the day of her birth. She was fully aware of the dangers an oasis could conceal. She just wanted this one to be different, to be safe, so they could drink their fill, get out of the sun, and make camp in a grove of trees that would offer shelter from the night winds.
Sellis walked right up to its edge and paused. He shaded his eyes with his hand, and Myrana guessed he was trying to peer into the shadows. Apparently satisfied, he stepped into the shade of the palms, and an instant later he was gone.
“Now what?” Myrana asked. “How can you shoot something you can’t see?”
“Let’s go a little closer,” Koyt said. He kept his tone even, but she could tell he was worried, too. If he hadn’t been he wouldn’t have so quickly disobeyed Sellis’s instructions.
They started forward. After they’d been walking for a couple of minutes, Sellis reappeared on the fringes of shadow and waved them in. “Looks fine to me!” he shouted.
Koyt offered a relieved sigh and slipped his arrow back into its quiver. He and Myrana picked up their pace, Myrana’s staff digging into the earth with every step. It seemed forever, but then the cooling shade cut the day’s heat and she could smell water, see its reflection casting shimmering light onto the undersides of the palms.
“Everything seems clear,” Sellis said as they approached. “Drink up, and fill those skins.”
“Can we camp here tonight?” Myrana asked.
Sellis eyed the horizon. “We still have almost an hour of daylight.”
“But we’re not even sure we’re going the right way, Sellis. Let’s stay here tonight, and I’ll dream tomorrow’s route.”
Koyt had outpaced her and dropped to his knees beside the shimmering green pool, shoving knife-edged blades of grass out of his way. “I agree with her,” he said. “Camp here, push on tomorrow.”
He lowered his face toward the water, cupped his hands, and drank. Myrana had almost reached the stiff, broad-bladed grass. Sellis stood watching, a sword in each hand, as the water began to churn and roil before tentacles burst from beneath the surface.
“Water worm!” Sellis cried.
Myrana let out a shriek, dropped her staff and yanked the dagger she wore from its sheath on her belt.
Water rolled off the creature in sheets as it shot up from under the surface. The thing was a translucent green, invisible inside the water. As it rose into the air, it revealed a thick cylindrical body, like a massive snake, with squirming rose tentacles encircling it.
Koyt scrambled back from the pond’s edge and snatched up his bow. A tentacle darted at Myrana and she dodged it, slashing at it with her dagger. Thick green blood spurted where she cut it, and a foul, rotten stench filled the air. Sellis hacked at it, too, slicing a tentacle and being drenched in awful blood for his trouble.
Koyt’s bowstring twanged and an arrow flew into the creature’s side.
Myrana’s blade cut into a tentacle, but then another wrapped around her ankle. It released before she was able to swing at it, but where it had touched her, the flesh burned. She took a step backward, then another, and the leg the creature had caught—her right leg, the good one—almost gave out beneath her.
She remembered what she had heard about water worms, also called cistern fiends. Their tentacles contained a paralyzing poison, which they used to bring down their pretty. Once they were subdued, the fiend would suck out their bodily fluids, feeding the nutrients and eliminating the rest as pure water into the well or pond they inhabited.
“Don’t let those tentacles touch you!” she called. She slashed at another one coming toward her.
The thing had twenty feet or so of its length out of the water by this point, thrashing around madly. Koyt sank two more arrows into it. Sellis lopped off another tentacle. Myrana dodged one, but her good leg was already partly paralyzed, and she slipped on the damp grass by the pond’s edge. She went down on her knees, and a tentacle snaked around her waist. Even through her clothing she could feel the fiery sensation of its touch.
She raised her dagger to chop at it. Before she could, yet another arrow slammed into it. The cistern fiend jerked back, its tentacle pulling taut, and Myrana was hauled into the water.
She hit with a splash, but the surface was so roiled from the creature’s writhing that it was barely noticeable. She pawed at the surface, but the tentacle circling her waist dragged her under. Another caught her right leg, just above the knee, and then one twined around her right wrist.
Myrana had managed to catch a breath on the way into the water, but not much of one. She felt her lungs would burst as the thing held her beneath the pond’s surface. Her body was quickly going numb, her muscles refusing to obey her mental commands.
But in the water, her legs were both equally useful, the crooked as strong as the straight. She told herself not to panic—listening to herself was another story, especially as her lungs ached to draw breath—and she forced her bad leg to kick at the tentacle where it gripped the other. At the same time she moved the dagger—she hadn’t the strength left to slash through the water—to the one holding her wrist, and she began sawing at that one. When its blood flowed beneath the surface, its heat warmed her skin.