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“These are not dragons. Not like yours.” He gestured at Naî where she was slowly calming herself, her teeth still bared, her fierce hissing decreasing to a snarl that still buzzed my eardrum. “These are salamanders, grown in the waters of the Ariphadeus. They are the children of the animalia, but they retain none of their parents’ intelligence. In exchange for their help, we care for them.”

“They’re your pets?” I asked, unable to keep the incredulity from my voice.

“No.” He shook his head, but from the frown on his face it was clear that he wasn’t sure what a pet was. “We care for them in order to honor the promise we have made with the animalia.”

“The animalia?” I said, my voice rising. Was it the same way my own people still held our promises with the great northern bear? Or how even in the Imperium they were unable to shake the reverence they had for dragons?

He turned to the matriarch, and light glinted off his horns. I could see someone had taken hours, if not days, to carve slight indentations in them, filling the scratches with gold. It became a pattern, and I was sure that it told just as much a story as braids did in the north.

“How much do you want me to tell him?” He kept his voice level, not giving anything away when he asked, “Are we planning to let him leave alive?”

“He has a dragon that scares even the elephants. I doubt we have much hope of keeping him.” The matriarch lifted her arm, waving her hand, and one of the other older women stood to bring over a strangely shaped bottle. The neck was narrow and the base wide. The liquid inside reminded me of the dragon seer’s temple all over again.

It was fluorescent, blue that shifted to green in the light of the salamander. The matriarch placed the salamander back in the center of the room, and it nestled down into the sand, turning each of the grains into sparkling gemstones.

“General Bemishu has not told the Imperium what he seeks in the desert?” The warrior’s question would have seemed out of context if I wasn’t staring at a creature the tribe claimed was a child of the animalia.

“No. He says it is for the glory of the Imperium,” I said. “Is that where the animalia are hiding? In the Ariphadeus?”

“Some of them,” the warrior said. “Any one of them would be quite the prize for anyone who conquered the desert.”

The matriarch poured some of the liquid into two shallow dishes, waving with one of her hands. The warrior picked it up delicately and presented it to me.

I took it between my fingers. It was small enough I probably could have taken it with one hand, but both the matriarch and our translator had held it in two hands and even I wasn’t foolish enough to treat it casually. The matriarch picked up her dish, raising it above her head. I followed her motion, watching as she lowered the dish and drank everything in it in one long swallow.

Naî’s claws tightened on my shoulder, but I didn’t even hesitate, putting the dish to my lips and drinking.

I felt my body go still, the dish falling from my fingers, and I could hear Naî screaming in my ear, although it felt very far away.

My body rushed over the desert, following the salamanders, seeing how each of a dozen different paths led to the same location. The vision stopped before I reached it.

I was suddenly back in the tent, looking down at blood on my shoulder where Naî had been clawing. She took up most of the building, so large that if she grew even a few inches, the magic-created stone would turn to sand around her.

Her voice screamed through the air.

Undo it! Whatever you did—fix it!

“We cannot. It is his own vision. He must come back from it on his own.” The warrior was smart enough not to draw his blades on the snarling dragon.

I was very far away from my body, and when I looked over, I could see a shimmering outline of the matriarch. She spoke to me, and I understood it as though we were exchanging thoughts instead of words.

“I have looked inside you and I see that at least in this, you are telling the truth. You want the same things we do. I have given you the map. We will not accompany you on this journey. There are others there who will be of more help.” She reached out, touching my face, her fingers feeling like sunlight on my skin. “Good luck to you.”

Then she was gone, and I saw the shimmering outline of her flow back into her body like water refilling the glass.

I looked over, toward the southeast, and I could still see the path we needed to take, the route to the oasis I had seen. The desperation in Naî’s voice reached a fever pitch, and I let myself flow back into my own body.

“Naî,” I said.

She whipped her head toward me, her tail nearly piercing the wall of the tent. Ice began to form along the seams, dripping down into sharp icicles.

“Let’s go,” I said. “We have all we need.”

She hissed again, gnashing her teeth. They kidnapped you.

“They gave me information,” I said.

Unhappily, she followed me, shrinking in size until she was only as tall as my hip. She nudged me out of the building first, following behind. None of the goblins tried to follow us. At the center of the circle of buildings, I knelt down, looking into the fire pit. A dozen salamanders slept on top of each other, one waking at my presence.