psychic shield shimmered like heat over the sand. “No trainer can interfere.” She smiled in what was probably meant to be a comforting way. “We’ll be near, though, in case of emergency. Of course, if the worst happens, it most likely will occur too fast for us to make it through the shield.”
That . . . was not comforting.
“You can do this,” Trainer Verlas said with finality, and then she stomped back toward the stands, where the other trainers and about a dozen paying students were all waiting and watching.
“That’s your trainer’s idea of a pep talk?” Jalimo said, staring after Trainer Verlas. “‘We’ll help you, but by then you’ll already be dead’? Very helpful.”
She’d been thinking the same thing, but she felt as if she should defend Trainer Verlas. “Well, what does your trainer say to you?”
From the stands, Trainer Osir cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed, “Show them no option! Show them no mercy! Ride them hard!”
Raia raised her eyebrows at Jalimo.
“He more shouts than peps,” Algana admitted.
They all focused on the track ahead. It was a narrow straightaway into a curve. Like running through a canyon. I can do this, Raia thought.
And then: I wish I was out on the sands.
“Ready?” Trainer Osir bellowed.
No, Raia thought. She immediately corrected that: Yes. We can do this. “Run. That’s all we have to do,” she whispered to the lion. “You know how. Run like there’s no one around. Run like we’re on the open sand.”
“Prepare!” Trainer Osir shouted. Then: “Race!”
And then Trainer Verlas hit the lever that unlatched the gates simultaneously. The gates slammed open, and all four kehoks leaped forward. Raia clung to the saddle. “Run!” she cried. “Run!”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Algana hit the backside of her cheetah-rhino with a spiked whip. “Faster or death!” she cried.
The others echoed her: “Faster or death!”
Raia’s focus snapped. She didn’t want—
She felt it the moment her concentration broke, and knew with absolute certainty what would happen next: Blood. He’d attack the others. Claws. Teeth. Jaws ripping at their legs—she saw it in her imagination in a fast burst of images before she clamped it down. “Run!” she screamed at the lion. “Please, just run!”
And to her shock, he did.
He powered past the other kehoks, leaving them in clouds of sand kicked up by his hind paws. She heard the cheers behind her as she took the lead, and she leaned forward into the wind, rising up a few inches in the saddle, the way she did out on the sands.
They neared the first turn, and she tried to think of it like a dune, like her trainer had said, and take the curve—
But the black lion didn’t turn.
He ran straight toward the wall of the track.
“No! Turn! Please, turn!”
Raia felt his weight shift. Oh no, he’s going to—
He jumped, sailing into the air.
The racetrack walls were built high, so that no kehok could escape into the crowd, but they weren’t high enough for the black lion. His stomach scraped along the top, and he landed hard on the other side. Raia was knocked forward into his mane. Her forehead hit the obsidian, and pain blossomed, obliterating all other thought.
She didn’t lose consciousness, though. She kept clinging to the saddle as the black lion ran across the sands, away from the racetrack and toward the open emptiness.
Tamra watched the black lion clear the wall and run, with Raia on his back, into the desert. She wanted to shut her eyes and unsee it.
Around her, all the students were shouting. They’d never seen a kehok leave the track. It was common for them to attack their rider or the other racers. Sometimes they refused to run. Often they tried to attack the audience. They never fled. It had caught everyone off guard, Tamra included, and no one had reacted fast enough to stop it, even once they’d removed the shield.
At least I’ve given them something new to gossip about, she thought.
“Mount a rescue,” Osir ordered. He began to bark at the other trainers.
Tamra held up her hand.
He quieted.
“She’ll come back,” Tamra said, eyes fixed on the desert.
“You’re betting a lot on a student who couldn’t control her mount enough to stay in the race!” Osir said. “If we move fast, we might be able to reach her before her kehok quits running and decides to kill her.”
Tamra repeated, “She’ll come back. Wait.”
“She’s not a paying student, right?” Zora said anxiously beside her. “Where’s she from?