Summernight
Bridge of Legends, Volume 1
Sarah K. L. Wilson
Published by Sarah K. L. Wilson, 2019.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
SUMMERNIGHT
First edition. April 13, 2019.
Copyright © 2019 Sarah K. L. Wilson.
Written by Sarah K. L. Wilson.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Legends
1: Summernight Procession
2: Advice of a Friend
3: Scenter
4: The Queen Mer Library
5: Patrol
6: Desperate Measures
7: To Catch a Thief
8: Plans and Hopes
9: Lord Mythos
10: Now or Never
11: Bridge of Legends
12: Grimoire
13: A Curious Crime
14: A Curioser Invitation
15: Noxious Threat
16: Legend Ball
17: Unexpected
18: Sunset Tower
19: Byron Bronzebow
20: Scent of a Name
21: Queen Mer’s Son
22: To Catch a Law Breaker
23: A Gamble
24: For a Sister
25: Rampage
26: Shaking Shame
27: Cold Regret
28: The Chase
29: The Others
30: Summernight
31: Silk Dresses and Swords
32: Hope Twists
33: Breath of Ash
34: Lady Sacrifice
35: Ram the Hunter
36: Flight from the Seven Suns
37: Wake the Dragon
38: Gondola Dash
39: Flotsam Hope
Epilogue
Appendix
Behind the Scenes:
For Cale, always and forever. You keep me in reality.
***
With many thanks to Harold and Eugenia for their invaluable help, support, and encouragement.
***
Thanks also to Francesca Baerald for her excellent mapwork and to Polar Engine for the gorgeous cover illustration.
Legends
BYRON BRONZEBOW
A good-looking hero who carries a bronze bow. Known in history for his care for the poor and needy.
Deathless Pirate
Known for his love of treasure and invulnerability and recognized by his hook for a hand and belt of human skulls.
Grandfather Timeless
Based in the Timekeepers religion he is known for his high hat, long black coat and golden waistcoat. He is Time in human form subjecting all to his will.
King Abelmeyer the One-Eyed
Known for his single eye and broken crown, King Abelmeyer united the five cities of the Dragonblood Plains in the alliance that lasts today.
Lady Sacrifice
Known for her loveliness, innocence and sacrifice for the people, she is usually clad in a white dress.
Lila Cherrylocks
A master thief and trickster. Known for her long cherry-red locks, deft skills, and adventurous spirit.
Maid Chaos
The right hand of Death. Known for destruction, death and the golden breastplate she wears.
Queen Mer
Queen of the Sea and mother to the Waverunners. Queen Mer is known for her revenge upon man in the form of hurricanes and typhoons and for the shells, scales, and seaweed that she wears.
Ram the Hunter
The unspoken Legend. Not mentioned in the Dragonblood Plains except in whispers, he is known for slaying dragons and going insane in the aftermath.
1: Summernight Procession
Tamerlan
LEGENDS WERE COMING alive.
Or at least, that was how it felt to Tamerlan as he braced himself against the jostling crowd in the rising mist of the morning. Stale water, anticipation, and the smell of feast-day cakes baking filled the air, warring for dominance. He leaned a little farther over the edge of the railing.
“Come on, little fellow! You can’t stay there or you’ll fall right in!”
He was inches from scooping up the stray dog – a small sharp-nosed black puppy with wild scared eyes. He’d been edged to the very brink of falling into the canal and if Tamerlan couldn’t scoop him up he’d fall right in. The canals of Jingen were no place for dogs. Their slick sides weren’t made for ease of climbing – especially for someone with four feet.
He pushed a little farther, smelling oranges and roses on the breeze as he hung over the railing. Was that Dathan below? His fellow apprentice hung from a sign pole below the railing, looking out over the canal. Fool! He would fall right in
“Excuse me, Apprentice,” a merchant said, jostling past him, his conical hat knocking two other people in the face as he passed. He smelled of oil and figs and his thick belly pressed Tamerlan even closer to the railing. Quiet curses followed him but Tamerlan kept quiet, his face screwing up with concentration as he finally scooped the puppy up.
“Got you!”
The poor little thing tucked his nose into Tamerlan’s armpit, shaking from nose to tail. He wouldn’t be able to keep it. Alchemist Apprentices were little better than property themselves. But he could find a safer place than the edge of a canal.
He pressed through the crowd, keeping the puppy held tight to his leather apprentice apron as he searched for a quiet alley. How many more people would join the crowd before the gondola procession passed through the District of Spices? Already street vendors pushing laden box-carts pressed against priests carrying smoking braziers. Goodwives wearing crisp aprons barely managed to keep hold of bright-eyed children in the press of the crowd.
The people of the Alchemist’s District were layered over the canal like the tiers of a cake, some looking down from red-shingled roofs, some from high windows or balconies, others from along the rail on the street, and some – like his friend Dathan, below – lined the slick, narrow walkways along the canal.
Tamerlan slipped into the alley, glad to find it mostly abandoned with the crowd so obsessed with the coming procession. There was a set of steps leading to a back door and underneath it, a safe looking shadow.
“Will you be okay here?” Tamerlan asked the puppy, tucking him into the space under the steps. “Just keep your head down and no one will notice, yeah? That’s what I do.”
He gave the puppy a last stroke, leaving regretfully. In a perfect world, he could bring the puppy back to his lonely room in The Copper Tincture. In a perfect world, he wouldn’t have been sold as an apprentice to Alchemists, but instead he’d be a librarian or a monk. Something that required a lot of reading and thinking. Something that didn’t involve manhandling crates of spices until he thought his mind would go dull from boredom.
He slipped back into the crowd. He should check on Dathan. He’d been late with his duties three times this week and if Master Kurond caught him hanging from a flagpole, he’d be put on short-rations for a month.
He eased through the crowd and down the crowded steps to the canal below, ignoring angry looks and fierce curses. The rock here was slick. Someone was bound to slip and fall in. It wouldn’t be Tamerlan. He kept a hold of the rockwork, his eyes fixed on the bend of the canal.
An orange cat slid through the crowd – a bad omen. Tamerlan’s mouth went dry at the thought. He wanted no more bad omens. Acid washed up into his mouth and he swallowed it down, ignoring his churning belly. The cat was grabbed by a pair of hands hanging out from a Waverunner boat and pulled inside.
“Just a cat, Apprentice!” a goodwife laughed at his expression. Her face was bright w
ith excitement. “And now a meal for the Waverunners!
He didn’t believe those nasty rumors. Just because the Waverunners never left their small house-boats and gondolas didn’t mean they ate cats. Or at least, he didn’t think so. And if they did, it wasn’t important today.
The crowd murmured with anticipation, a thousand voices whispering the same hopes, a thousand eyes dancing with visions of the season. Some enterprising fool was even playing a lute beside the stone steps that led to the streets above, his tunes a litany of seasonal songs, blessing the waxing of summer, the roundness of fertility, the call of the river, and the strength of growing warmth.
There was something about Summernight that made people forget their everyday lives as the days bled into the night, snatching minutes and hours that didn’t belong to them until the longest day of the year crowned the season.
Tamerlan made his way carefully through the crowd, trying not to step on feet or elbow anyone. He felt tight and ragged inside. He’d heard a rumor yesterday. Just something in passing. But it had him worried. If the Legends would truly rise and walk the city again on Summernight – as the tale went – then why couldn’t they rise now? Why couldn’t they come when he might need them? Legends were as useless as wishes.
Enough of that. He wasn’t a dreamy boy anymore with the luxury of imagining Legends walking the earth. He was a man with responsibilities – like keeping his friend out of trouble.
If he didn’t get to Dathan in time the fool might even break an arm - then he’d be in real trouble. He tried to keep from glancing at the canal. He’d look when the procession arrived. He’d watch then. But what if she went by and he never even caught a glimpse? Or what if it wasn’t her at all, but he never found out. What if guilt and grief still ate at his heart a bite at a time? He shook his head, trying to clear it.
“Dathan!” He called to his friend as soon as he saw him. Dathan stood out in the crowd just like Tamerlan did by wearing the uniform of Alchemist apprentices – a thick leather apron and rolled sleeves to reveal arms burned with acid scars. They were all fresh scars. Dathan had only been an apprentice for a year – bought from a destitute farm family in a landhold to the east of Jingen. He’d taken to city life better than Tamerlan had – he was more social – but it was only last week that Tamerlan had to hunt him down and help him finish his tasks before sundown. They’d traveled by gondola on this very canal. Strange how last week felt a million years away.
Dathan was stretched out along the sign pole, trying to get the best possible view of the procession when it finally turned the corner into the Spice District. Tamerlan rubbed sweating palms on his apron. He needed to get his friend down before that procession arrived. What if Dathan saw his relief when it turned out his suspicions were groundless – or watched him break when he turned out to be right? He’d never live that down.
And he would break.
He was close already – his nerve endings all alert, his hair on end, his senses sharper than ever. But he needed to deal with the problem in front of him first. Dathan might fall into the canal and drown if he wasn’t careful. His tools – strapped to the apron as usual – would sink him to the bottom in the blink of an eye if he lost his grip. He wouldn’t bob right back up like the street urchins across the way who even now were diving to find coins in the wrecks of ruined gondolas.
The sound of a dozen throats sucking in their breath made him stand on his toes to look. Had the procession arrived?
No. Just another fool falling from the street above to the canal ledge. A duck quacked loudly and took off, feet slapping the water as he fought to gain height.
“Get off me you son of a -!”
Chaos swirled as some people dove for lost belongings and stooped for coins while others tried to grab for what had never been theirs.
The poor fool who fell was kicked into the canal and left to sputter and grope at the slick stone walls. Unless he found a friendly gondola, he’d have to swim a long way to find an entrance to street level again.
Tamerlan lunged forward, scrambling along the narrow stone ledge – just wide enough for a hand-cart – that rimmed the canal.
“Dathan!” he called. He was prodded with elbows as he passed. He felt the blows – there would be bruises tomorrow – but this was his chance. That was a chance worth gambling on. “Let me help you down! It’s not safe up there!”
He tried not to flinch at the cries of pain from the crowd where he passed. He wasn’t trying to injure – but he chewed his lip as he watched Dathan rocking on the sign pole. He still hadn’t noticed Tamerlan and that perch was tenuous, the sign pole creaking under the weight.
He climbed up the side of the wall, fingers feeling for the cracks between the stone as he tried to reach his friend. The toes of his worn leather boots scraped along the side of the slick stone wall, catching any purchase they could find. Dragon’s guts, but it stank along the canal! What was rotting in those murky waters?
“Son of a Legend! Would you stay put?” one of the onlookers cursed, dodging Tamerlan’s kicking feet. “First one fool, then another!”
“Dathan!”
“Tam! Look at the view! Come on up!”
And then he was level with the sign pole. Fresher air prevailed here. Peonies and roses in garlands were strung along the rail to the street above for the Summernight Festival. He breathed them in, trying to find calm in their familiar scents.
Today was the first morning of the five-day Summernight festival. Five days of celebrating and feasting. Five nights of mystery and delight.
Today, the city would rejoice.
A burst of raucous laughter spilled onto the street above him as someone left a tavern. Early morning and the celebrations were already beginning. The smell of meat tarts and the local brew swirled into the street before the door was closed again. Tamerlan’s mouth watered. He could already taste the holiday cakes he loved so much, but this was not why he was here.
“You’ve got to come down. Dathan! The sign pole is close to breaking. If you fall – ”
But his words were cut off.
A gasp drew again from a thousand throats and cries of excitement quickly followed.
“They’re here! The procession!”
Below him, a woman’s voice pierced above the rest, “The dragon’s tribute! The Lady Sacrifice!”
She sounded almost worshipful. And of course, most of the people here were. They weren’t in the costumes of the Legends yet – that would come later in the festival when they ran through the night like the Heroes of Legend reborn – but this was just the first part.
Bells pealed loudly, flooding the streets above and jangling in strung lines along the canal. Some were the dull throbbing sound of the big guild bells, others the tiny tinkle of shop bells, or deep bong of temple bells. Bells would ring throughout the city, District to District as the procession passed through each part before stopping at the Sunset Tower in the center of the Seven Suns Palace. Tamerlan remembered that from last year, although last year his only thoughts had been filled with drinking in the tavern and eating holiday cakes with Dathan.
This time was different. The Lady Sacrifice had arrived. And if she was who he thought she might be, then all was lost. His eyes strained to try to see down the canal as the boats of the Waverunners – long sleek boats low in the water and painted in garishly bright colors – scuttled out of the way in every direction.
Tamlerlan could almost feel the rumble of the dragon beneath them at the sound of the bells. But that was just imagination. The dragon had slept beneath the city for a thousand years – if it had ever lived at all. Perhaps it was only rocks and carvings and not a dragon at all.
That made more sense than what the religions said. After all, why would anyone build their city on top of a dragon – literally chiseling their foundations into his scales – if he were alive? No one would be that stupid. Though mentioning that to his childhood priest had resulted in having his ears boxed and a second beating from his
father when the priest had opened his fat mouth to snitch.
But if the dragon was nothing more than an interestingly shaped mountain, then why would they drain the blood of the Lady Sacrifice over those rocks? Why would they spill her life out, like water splashed across the street and running into the canals, for nothing at all?
Last year, the Lady Sacrifice had been from Pale Lily Landhold and the procession had begun with Pale Lily spearmen twirling their spears and marching in place in the gondolas in careful synchronicity. Everyone knew she was from Pale Lily after that display.
If he saw the Pale Lily spearmen again, he would be able to breathe – or the canasta spinners of Gentle Trees Landhold who had been there the year before, or the bright purple banners of Summer Wheat.
It was none of those.
Tamerlan’s jaw clenched as a pair of pale bulls decked in wreaths of red roses stood steadily in the front of a wide canal-boat – a gondola would never fit them. Their corded muscled bunched under their pale flesh and their minders carried pointed sticks and wore blue tabards. Pale bulls were raised in the north – where Tamerlan had been born.
With every new appearance his hands felt sweatier, his head lighter. Could that rumor he’d heard be true?
The flag hanging from Dathan’s sign pole began to flap as a breeze rose, pushing the gondolas a little faster down the canal. They couldn’t come quickly enough for Tamerlan. With every new glimpse, his heart sunk faster.
“I just want to see the procession. Just a minute more,” Dathan protested. His eyes gleamed with excitement. He was two years younger than Tamerlan and two years more wide-eyed.
Behind the bulls were drummers and cantonelle flute players in their own gondolas, being carefully poled forward at an even pace. The flute players spun and danced as they played, the ragged rabbit skins that hung from their belts proclaiming them to be of Long Wind Landhold.
And now Tamerlan felt an icy chill wash over him. He’d grown up in the land of cantonelle players. Their haunting tune, like the song of the water loon, had haunted his dreams when first he was banished to the glorious city of Jingen to serve in the Alchemist’s Guild as an apprentice.
Summernight Page 1
