Autumngale

by Sarah K. L. Wilson

  “Filthy habit,” Anglarok muttered. If he had any idea what Tamerlan was doing ... but fortunately he didn’t. If he smelled magic, he still wouldn’t know what Tamerlan was doing with it.

  Etienne’s lips thinned as he pressed them together. He gave Tamerlan the same look every time he glanced at him. Etienne clearly didn’t like interacting with the Legends. But would he prefer that he had just regular Tamerlan the apprentice swordsman at his side or the great King Abelmeyer at his side?

  Don’t let his reluctance trouble you. He doesn’t know what a great gift you give him.

  “The section with Queen Mer was not the only section he looked at in this book.”

  “How do you know?” Tamerlan asked.

  “I read the rest of the book – something you should have done.”

  “Just explain, if you please,” Abelmeyer said crisply with Tamerlan’s voice.

  “The section about Byron Bronzebow has a burn along the side of one of the pages – like it was held too close to a candle flame. A librarian would never do that. Only a person flipping through a book illicitly in the dead of the night would do that.”

  “Why is there a section about Byron Bronzebow in a book entitled Queen Mer and the Sea?” King Abelmeyer’s voice sounded taut. Why was he so anxious about Bronzebow?

  “It mentions off-hand that there was a tribute to him set up after the death of the queen and that there are similarities to their graves.”

  Tamerlan felt his hand tighten on the rail of the ship. What had Abelmeyer so upset? His knuckles were white.

  “We’ll worry about that once we’ve checked on the Isle of Mer,” his voice said. But there seemed to be some added weight to Abelmeyer’s words – like he was choking on them. “One thing at a time. Always, one thing at a time...”

  He sounded crazier than Tamerlan felt and Tamerlan was the one with a whole party of Legends on his mind.

  I am not crazy.

  And now here they were, hours later, stepping out onto the Isle and it worried Tamerlan that he could feel Abelmeyer’s heart racing in his chest like it was trying to outrun his feet.

  We’re here for the Grandfather. Be ready.

  It felt so personal to Abelmeyer.

  Isn’t it personal to you? We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.

  That was true.

  “Prepare yourselves,” Abelmeyer said, holding a lantern high above his head as they leapt from the rowboat the moment it was close enough to the beach.

  Down the beach, a small sailed craft leaned precariously where it was anchored out from the shore. Waves had beat it into water too shallow for it. No one stood on the small deck. Etienne had been right. The Grandfather had brought a craft of his own.

  That was never in question.

  It was for Tamerlan. He didn’t share Abelmeyer’s unshakable confidence. Besides, what kept him from simply vanishing and appearing like he did last time Tamerlan tried to grab him?

  That takes an enormous amount of energy and power. Without the reservoirs of the clock to draw on, he is limited in how often he can do that. Why waste it on the mundane?

  “I smell trouble,” Anglarok said and he held his harpoon at the ready while Liandari drew her blade.

  The idea of them behind him with blades made Tamerlan’s skin crawl, but Abelmeyer was unaffected, drawing his own sword and holding the lantern higher as they climbed up and around the jagged rocks.

  “There’s a shrine here somewhere,” Etienne said, looking at the book in his own lantern’s light.

  “More than a shrine,” Abelemeyer said calmly, but there was a sharp frost to his tone that puzzled Tamerlan. Had he and Queen Mer been friends?

  Of course not.

  Then why the horror tinging his tone?

  Some things should never be done. And yet – sometimes they have to be.

  The clock. The dragon. Marielle. That was his list.

  We all have a list.

  They clambered around a black rock that jutted up to the sky like a broken incisor, and then around two more. They seemed almost like a double-spiked crown.

  “Inside the Crown of Mer,” Etienne read from his book. “The arms of her ancients are frozen. They reach for the sky in horror at what was done to their Queen.”

  “Does anyone come here?” Abelmeyer asked quietly.

  “Of course not,” Etienne replied. “It is forbidden. The island is cursed.”

  And that didn’t worry him? He was as mad as Tamerlan was!

  There was blood on the rock in front of Abelmeyer. Someone must have cut themselves on the broken shards.

  “So that boat had to be the Grandfather’s then,” Abelmeyer said. “But whose blood is this?”

  They turned the corner and if Tamerlan had his own body he would have been biting back a scream. As it was, Etienne gasped and Liandari’s jaw clicked as if she had shut her mouth hard over some response.

  “Mer’s spit!” Anglarok gasped.

  This was the shrine.

  It was set in a gap in the spiky black rocks. Arms had been carved reaching up into the sky – arms of the largest squid a person could imagine. Though if the book was to be believed they weren’t carved at all, but frozen there - reaching in wavy desperation toward the sky.

  “The Kratoen,” Abelmeyer breathed, awe in his voice.

  But the others weren’t looking at the kratoen. They were looking at the dead girl hanging from a rope tied roughly to one of the arms, head down, her blood still dripping out of her into a sticky pool on the floor. She was the age of Marielle – or Amaryllis. Had she been as foolish as his sister, trusting the Grandfather only to have her blood spill on the rocks?

  Tamerlan’s soul shivered. This was what Etienne was going to do to Marielle. What he’d done to other young girls before. He shot a glance at the other man, but Etienne’s face was stony and expressionless.

  “Just your type of party, isn’t it?” he said.

  Etienne’s dark look spoke volumes in the light of the lanterns.

  “Do you see what it opened?”

  And he was right, of course. The blood was pouring into a small channel cut into the rock. And a clam-shell had been opened high above them – so high that whatever it might contain could not be seen from here. Steps led up to the opening. And on the steps, footprints were smeared in fresh blood.

  Abelmeyer craned his neck, but he would have to climb the steps to see what was going on in the clamshell.

  Beneath them, the ground trembled. Was it Tamerlan’s imagination, or had one of those tentacles moved slightly? Abelmeyer swallowed, but he strode toward the steps without hesitation.

  “Now we prove we are heroes,” he whispered to the others. “Stab your knife through your courage and pin it in place lest it vanish with the meeting of blades.”

  Before they could answer, he was sprinting up the steps, sword in hand, lantern held high, ready to take on whatever he found there.

  21: King Abelmeyer

  Tamerlan

  HE STUMBLED AT THE top of the stairs, sword tip wavering. Was he shaking? King Abelmeyer shouldn’t shake. He shouldn’t stumble. Tamerlan was trying to see what had thrown him, but the King’s eyes were looking everywhere else.

  They were in a massive, black clamshell with runes carved along the rim. White pearls crunched underfoot – more pearls than he could have imagined. You could buy that whole Retribution fleet with this many pearls. You could buy a nation. They twisted under his feet, making ankles and calves work doubly hard to keep his footing.

  All around them, music filled the air. An ethereal, haunting tune sung from unseen lips.

  Abelemeyer – hands shaking, sweat dripping into Tamerlan’s eyes – finally looked back toward the center of the shell, where the Grandfather stood wearing a tall top hat and long open coat. He was grinning triumphantly and draped in his arms was the ethereal half-there, half-not corpse of a woman. Her long hair fell around her, tangling in shells and chunks of coral like seaweed. Her blan
k eyes stared. But falling from her slashed throat was not blood – but more ghostly white pearls.

  Not a living woman then – but what?

  An avatar.

  Her crown fell from her head, bouncing over the pearls and clattering to the edge of the shell at the same time that Liandari lunged forward toward the Grandfather.

  “Defend yourself, Legend, or taste my blade!” she cried.

  Shaking himself, Abelmeyer sprang forward, too, his sword darting toward the Grandfather like the tongue of a snake.

  They needed to use the Eye to trap him. Now!

  Laughter rolled over them from the mouth of the Grandfather as the music swirling around them began to fade.

  He dropped the corpse of the avatar, dodging backward to put his back at the hinge of the shell. So little care! As if she did not matter.

  Undaunted, Liandari leapt over the dead avatar, ignoring her too-pale skin and open mouth. But Abelemeyer couldn’t step over her. Tamerlan felt him trying to move his feet, struggling against the impossibility of it.

  Use the Eye! Tamerlan’s thoughts were a scream.

  Abelmeyer’s gaze was fixed on the woman. The avatar.

  Queen Mer.

  Was it possible to kill an avatar? To destroy a Legend forever?

  Yes!

  And with that panicked cry, Abelmeyer fled his mind like a retreating army. And with him left the knowledge needed to use the Eye to trap the Grandfather.

  With a roar, Tamerlan leapt over the cold form of the Legend queen. He wasn’t spooked by the death of the dead. He wasn’t worried that he might be mortal – he always had been. He shoved the cacophonous voices from his mind as the Legends’ voices poured into his mind.

  Dead? She can’t be dead!

  Have you seen her? Where is she?

  Mer? Mer!

  Abelmeyer, explain what you saw. Quickly!

  Someone grab the boy again!

  He mentally shoved them aside with a roar, slashing his sword toward the Grandfather as he battled Liandari blow for blow. The Grandfather laughed, turning Tamerlan’s blade aside easily. Why had Abelmeyer fled at just the moment that he needed him?

  “Two against one, is it? And yet you have no idea. I set you free. I kill your killers, destroy your destroyers. I release you from their power. Bow to me, fools!”

  He sounded insane.

  But who was Tamerlan to speak of insane? He could barely think with all the voices in his mind.

  Why did you let go of him!

  Fool!

  You’ll ruin us all!

  Who was the fool? What were they talking about?

  Etienne and Anglarok’s voices rang out with concern, but he couldn’t focus on that. The Grandfather was winning. He was going to beat Liandari at swordplay even though she darted and rolled like a ship on the sea, quick as a darting fish, but skillful as the fisherman. She sucked him into a false thrust, only to slide to the side, ducking under his guard and striking out with her knife. But beautiful and capable as her fighting was, she was not fast enough. Each blow just missed the Grandfather. When she moved to strike, he simply wasn’t there.

  Someone needed to grab him before he darted away. Like he had all those times before. Maybe they couldn’t use the Eye to trap him, but they could hold him physically.

  Tamerlan clenched his jaw, dropped his sword to the ground and leapt forward in the air, arms out, reaching for the Grandfather. All the Legends in his mind were screaming at him. His own fear was screaming at him. But someone had to stop that maniac. Now. Before he destroyed the whole world.

  He felt cloth in his hands. Smelled the spice on the Grandfather’s breath. Saw the gleam in his eye.

  And then he hit the ground hard, scattering white pearls all around with his rib-cracking landing. His hands were clenched around something. He opened eyes that had shut in response to the fall.

  But there was no one else there. Just a top hat clutched in his hands.

  He scrambled up, scattering pearls all around him.

  Spun.

  Looking, looking, ready.

  Liandari stood with her sword out and her jaw hanging slack like she’d been stunned. She closed her mouth with a sudden click of her jaw. Etienne and Anglarok were frozen in place, identical looks of shock on their faces and weapons held ready with no foe in sight.

  “He vanished,” Liandari breathed. “You went to grab him, and he vanished.”

  “And what about the woman who bleeds pearls?” Anglarok asked quietly.

  “Queen Mer,” Tamerlan gasped. He turned the hat around in his hands, staring at it as his heart sank. They’d been so close. So very close. He had the Legend’s hat. “Her avatar is dead.”

  “They can be killed,” Etienne said with a sound of horror – or was that hope? – in his voice. His eyes met Tamerlan’s. They’d seen another avatar before – Deathless Pirate’s. But that was all the way back in Xin.

  “Mer’s Spit!” Anglarok looked shaken, his dark face pale in the lantern light.

  Liandari was muttering what sounded like a prayer. Her eyes were closed as her fingers tapped out a pattern on her other forearm. She’d sheathed her sword and her expression as pained – her face tattoos dark in the moonlight – as if they somehow were more significant now.

  “We can set a trap for him,” Tamerlan said to Etienne. He was trying to stay calm. Trying not to throw up with nerves and withdrawal. Everything in him wanted to smoke again – to call a Legend to help while he still could. Before they were all gone.

  Call us! That was Lila Cherrylocks. Trust us!

  “We just have to guess where he’ll be next,” Tamerlan said, swallowing down bile. The Harbingers looked like someone had killed their nearest relatives and the power of their emotions washed over him like waves of sound, reverberating in the echo chambers of his mind where the Legends screamed for release.

  Etienne was quiet for a long moment, staring at the broken avatar lying in the sea of pearls at their feet.

  “The Catacombs of Choan,” he said at long last.

  “Catacombs?”

  Etienne met Tamerlan’s gaze, hope and fear warring in their depths.

  “They were long known as the haunt of Maid Chaos. Her devotees still go there on pilgrimage. It’s the nearest place belonging to a Legend that I can think of.”

  “But will her avatar be there?” Tamerlan wondered aloud. In truth, he didn’t want to go there. He shivered at the horrific memories that flooded over him at the thought of Maid Chaos. The horrors she had wrought with his body – the people she had killed. He swallowed.

  Etienne was shaking his head. “How would I know? I didn’t know that the Grandfather’s avatar was in that clock in H’yi. Didn’t know about your pirate friend until we saw him through the glass. Didn’t know about this shell. I don’t think it’s been opened since it was sealed. Or these pearls wouldn’t be here anymore.”

  Tamerlan looked around him. He hadn’t thought of that. But Etienne was right. No one would have left such a fortune behind – even if the island was said to be cursed.

  “You’re right,” he agreed. “We have to hurry. I don’t know how he left here, but if he can jump to another place as well as another time, he might be there already.”

  “It’s not a trap if you don’t get there first,” Anglarok spoke, his words heavy. “And it’s definitely not a trap if you have no way to catch the one you’re trapping.”

  “We have a way, if Tamerlan will use it,” Etienne said quietly.

  “It didn’t work. I tried but it didn’t work,” Tamerlan admitted. His face felt hot. “Do you have a better idea?”

  Exhaustion filled him like water in a bottle. He didn’t have any idea. Didn’t have any books to read to get ideas from. He was just responding now, no longer initiating. He ran a hand over a weary brow. What else could they do? They could chase. They could try.

  But what if the next Legend refused to use the Eye for him? He didn’t know how to use it without them
.

  The only thing he didn’t dare do was give up.

  “We’ll sail to Choan,” Etienne said firmly. “And by the time we get there, you’ll figure out how to make that necklace work.”

  “And the blockade?” Tamerlan asked wearily.

  “That’s Liandari and Anglarok’s job – to get us through.”

  Liandari’s eyes snapped open at her name, as if they’d shocked her out of her prayer.

  “Enough talk,” she said. “The worst is over. The Queen is desolated. We will bury her properly in these pearls and sail. And pray our souls are cleansed by salt and scoured by wind and somehow saved.”

  “Let it be this day,” Anglarok agreed.

  Tamerlan was silent. But he followed the others as they laid the ghostly, broken avatar in the center of the shell and covered her in pearls. It seemed like something a person might do in a dream – not something anyone would do in reality. But then again, who hunted down ancient Legends come back to life? Who made allies of enemies and fought wars to save the world?

  His heart was heavy as they took to the sailing boat. While Etienne and the others prepared to sail, he found the bow of the boat and curled up in the “v” where they prow cut through the water and examined Abelmeyer’s Eye. It was still the same as the day he’d found it. The fire hadn’t harmed it. But then why hadn’t Abelmeyer used it? Was it broken? Had they lost their chance? Nothing made any sense. He had the tool, but no way to use it. He let the darkness of despair wash over him until sleep stole him blessedly away.

  22: Scent of Gold

  Marielle

  SHE FOUND HIM AS HE slept, his eyelashes lying across his innocent-seeming face. Ghostly figures formed a ring around him, trying to hold her back, trying to prevent any contact. But she was not governed by them. She’d learned that, finally. Time and place had no hold on her. She slipped between them, to his side.

  “Tamerlan?” she said gently, leaning in close to his sleeping form. She lay a spirit hand on his shoulder.

  He muttered in his sleep, brow furrowing. And then his scent was there – swirling through her mind with intoxicating sweetness. Warm honey and golden light, cinnamon and tarragon, hot butter, and heat that made her want to open herself to him.