The Gems of Raga-Tor (Elemental Legends Book 1) by CA Morgan

very center of the city; an inconvenient location for making good on their escape should it come to that.
    In the distance, several leagues to the north of the city, was a gray-brown cluster of tents. In the cool quiet of the morning, the travelers heard camels bellowing and goats bleating as the shepherd boys gathered the animals to take them to feed on patches of scrubby plants.
    “In many ways, that is the real Reshan,” Raga said, pointing to the tent village.
    “Then what need have they for a Sultan?” Eris asked.
    “Aside from being a moderator between the nomadic tribes and merchants, or between the tribesmen themselves—truly, I’ve never seen a group of people who argue amongst themselves as much as they do—the Sultan is the head of a very large, well-disciplined army that patrols this vast desert,” Raga told him.
    “What have they to trade except sand and goat cheese, much less guard with such an army?” Eris asked, gazing across the endless dunes.
    “You surprise me. I was sure a rascal such as you would have heard the stories about Reshan.”
    “I’m not fond of deserts, so I avoid them.”
    “Dismount and follow me,” Raga said.
    Eris followed Raga several paces from the barely discernible road they were following. The sorcerer held out his hand, palm down, and closed his eyes. Slowly, he turned in a circle. Eris laughed at the picture he made.
    “What in the Seven Hells are you doing?”
    “Shh, I’m listening.”
    “Listening to what? The sand rolling beneath your feet?”
    Raga waved him silent, took a step to his right, and had almost completed another circle, when he stopped and smiled.
    “Found it,” he said. He knelt and dug into the warm sand using both hands as a scoop. “Ahh, you can’t hide from me. Here, hold out your hand.”
    Promptly Eris did as he was asked and Raga dropped a shimmering red ruby, perfectly faceted, into his hand.
    “Verin’s blood!” Eris swore. He held the gem up to allow sunlight to pass through it. “There’s not a flaw in it.”
    “That, and many more like it, is the reason for the Sultan’s armies,” Raga said, dusting himself off. “Without some sort of control, this desert would become a place of utter chaos and endless war with people from every land searching for those gems.”
    “This entire desert is filled with gems like this?” Eris asked, incredulously. He surveyed the seemingly endless dunes and a rocky outcropping that protruded upward in the distance. He bent his head to look at the stone. As he tilted his hand, the gem played with the sun creating flashes of red on the ground.
    “They are here and there,” Raga answered.
    “Where did they come from? And how can they be cut so perfectly right out of the ground?”
    “The truth is buried somewhere in all the legends, and what that truth is, I have no idea. The nomads have been uncovering them for countless generations.”
    “It must take years to find one.”
    “Not usually that long. A few months at most.
    “Pretty lucky then, I’d say.
    “Luck is only a small part. No, you see each tribe has at least one diviner to help locate them,” Raga said.
    “How do they do this?”
    “Just as I did.”
    “Then they are tribes of witches,” Eris assumed, a cold, hardness in his voice.
    Raga smiled.
    “This doesn’t have much to do with arcane ability. This gem, or any crystalline form for that matter, emits a vibration. The diviner is simply a person sensitive to these vibrations. A good diviner can sense gems in up to thirty spans of sand,” Raga told him and held out his hand.
    Reluctantly, Eris handed him the stone. “A man could get rich here.”
    “He would probably die first. Without the aid of a diviner they are near impossible to find. A man could dig all his life and miss by the measure of his hand,” Raga said and threw the gem far out into the sand.
    “What did you do that for?” Eris demanded. “Our purses aren’t that fat.”
    “Better to go hungry