The sprite, for it could not be anything else, wavered in the sunlight, and then vanished before our very eyes. We stood still for a few long moments, though I could not have said what we waited for, and then we turned together and left the glade.
“This plan of yours,” said Saoud, after we were well on our way. “You plan to talk to one of those things.”
“Maybe not a sprite,” I said. “Or a unicorn or a phoenix or a dragon.”
We both shuddered.
“It was overwhelming, even though it was small,” Saoud said.
“Yes,” I said. “But I think a gnome or a piskey might be a little bit more approachable.”
“What makes you say that?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” I admitted. “I only hope they are, because otherwise I am not sure how we are ever going to talk to one.”
“Maybe the Little Rose will have an easier time of it,” Saoud said. “They seem to like her already.”
“We can hope,” I replied.
We didn’t talk the rest of the way back to the hidden valley that had been our haven. I had not stayed there very long, and I had felt lonely, angry, or desolate when I did, but somehow I was reluctant to leave this place, even though I knew we would be safer in the desert. I had begun to know the Little Rose here, and thought about how my life would follow the course of hers, whatever course that might be. That gave me peace, and it was a peace I was sad to relinquish for a dash across Kharuf to the unknown sands beyond it.
So I took each chance I had to memorize the grass and the stone and the way the sunlight gleamed off the ore that still hid in the rocks where the Storyteller Queen had put it, and I hoped that it would be enough to sustain me on my road.
IT TOOK A DAY TO REACH the gentle foothills that hemmed the mountains to the north of the main trade pass. Moving downhill and over mostly familiar ground, we were able to make good time. We could have pressed on, but Saoud wanted to camp for one last night in the shelter of the hills before going back into Kharuf. He remembered, after all, the manic nature that had all but overcome us there, and wanted to be sure we would face it as well rested as possible.
“Come on, Yashaa,” he said, holding my staff in one hand and his in the other. “It’s been too long since we practiced.”
It was easy to fall into the rhythms of staff patterns with him, to block each of his strikes and mirror his movements with my own. We did the straight-line patterns first, and then he nodded and we began the circular forms. Stepping carefully, we moved around each other. We didn’t need to watch our feet—the ground was even enough—and I hardly even needed to watch Saoud; I knew where he would step next in the pattern.
I felt all the discomfort of the past weeks slide away as we trained. All the oddness of the Little Rose, the danger and magic of the mountains, and the almost certain peril we would face in Kharuf seemed to fall into the pattern beside me, and then they were ordered into something I could manage. Only that last argument with my mother refused to fall in line, and I pushed it away so it would not be a distraction.
“Are you ready?” Saoud said. We had done the full circuit twice, and he was grinning.
“Come and get me,” I replied.
He stepped outside of the pattern then, staff flying in a flurry of movement. I answered his motion with my own, stepping into his strikes to get past his guard. Fighting with Saoud was like breathing. He came at my left side, which I had momentarily exposed when I’d raised my staff to block him. I saw it in his chest and shoulders, his slight overcommitment to the move. Years of practice, and he still thought I was weaker on the left than I was. I stepped into the blow instead of dodging it, turning so that Saoud’s staff cut the air next to the place where my shoulder had been. I saw realization on his face, a brief flicker of rueful acknowledgement that I had him again, and then I neatly hooked my staff behind his knee and brought him down.
“It’s not about hitting at all,” the Little Rose said, as I helped Saoud back up and we bowed to each other. “You use the staff to put your opponent out of place, and then you press your advantage when you have them on the ground of your choosing.”
Saoud looked impressed.
“That’s true, Zahrah,” Arwa said. “Saoud’s father says that that is the first lesson of staff fighting. He would be pleased to have you as a student if you learned that so quickly. Have you seen staff fighting before?”
“Not really,” she said. “But this was an excellent example of it, I think.”
“Tariq,” Saoud said. “It’s your turn.”
Tariq took my place, and they squared off. We watched them execute the same patterns, only slower, and the Little Rose followed each rise and fall of Saoud’s shoulders, not his staff. Then it was Arwa’s turn, and the pace slowed further, though Saoud still moved deliberately against her.
“Saoud’s father calls himself our dancing master,” I said. “Saoud is nearly as good a teacher as he is, though he’ll tell you that it’s only because his father started the work.”
“Do you teach?” she asked.