“Oh, I’m a curse. Ask anyone else. Two of you is two too many.”
Uh huh.
I made it up to the next branch, but there were no orbs nearby. I would have seen their glow despite the golden sunbeams that pierced the leaves in streams of goldenrod and lime. Tiny dust motes danced in the light like magic and I shivered.
I didn’t mind the magical beauty of nature, but I was done with any other kind of magic. If I had my way, it would never touch me again – never touch my friends, never exist at all.
I was done with magic.
They said it was fading from the world, did they? It couldn’t fade quickly enough for me. Not at all.
I climbed on. I’d lost any sense of where Apeq was. I’d lost any sense of where I was, as the minutes merged into hours and translated into sweat soaking my shirt and clinging to my every hair.
I needed water. I needed food. I needed rest.
There was none here.
Twice, maybe three times, I thought I’d found an orb, only to come upon it and realize there was nothing there. This place was ruled by illusion and madness.
No new test had surfaced since I last saw the ancestors. There was only the tree, and light, and the mimic. and me. He was chatty.
“I don’t know, it’s nice up here,” he said as we reached the smaller branches. “No girls doing confusing things. No dragons making demands. No prophecies or danger.”
“Or fun,” I wheezed.
“Sure, no fun.” He kicked idly at a patch of leaves as I stopped for a break. He was playing with a throwing knife – one of mine, obviously – letting it roll across the back of his hand and then flipping it in the air to catch the handle just before it pierced his leg or fell down into the branches below. Every time he succeeded it looked like an accident and only his saucy grin told me it was intentional.
Yeah, he’d been right. I was annoying to hang around with.
Too bad I couldn’t change him for Bataar’s mimic. At least it wouldn’t be mine.
“A breakthrough,” he laughed. “You’ve learned how annoying you are. That alone is a gift.”
I ignored him and began to climb again. The branches were small now, waving wildly when I put my weight on them.
I pulled on one and my head burst through the leaves to the sky above. The branch I was on was thicker and stronger than the ones around it. Hurriedly, I climbed higher, out of the dense leaves on this single leader branch.
I was looking out over a forest canopy. In the distance, something flew in the sky, Not dragons. There were no wings. The things seemed to float, huge and bulbous in the distance, heavy baskets dragging beneath them. Far, far in the distance, a golden city squatted on a mountain and beyond it in the blue haze of distance, I thought I could almost see a sea.
I gasped. I had almost begun to think this single tree was all there was in this world, but here, beyond it, a world existed.
I swallowed back the nauseating fear that accompanied the realization. I was here to do a single task. The World of Legends was not a place for me to call home. Not now and not ever. It was a place beyond our world. A place for heroes. A place I would never see again.
But my vantage point had one advantage.
I could see, not far away, a huge blue orb glowing between the leaves below. A dark figure was next to it. Apeq.
If he had found the last orb, then he had already begun that test. And it was up to me to wrench victory from his hands before he used it to destroy the people I loved.
I aimed my body toward the glowing orb and leapt with all my might.
Chapter Fifteen
I SAILED THROUGH THE air, clutching at leaves. This was a bad idea, Tor! What were you thinking?
“That you are immune to death. As per usual,” my mimic said calmly as he sailed beside me.
Leaves became twigs and I thrashed at them, trying to get a grip – any grip – on the waving fingers of the tree.
My body smacked – belly first – against a wrist-thick branch.
Ooof! That hurt.
I clung tightly to the branch and pulled myself up on top of the wide strength of the limb, maneuvering down it to a bigger branch further back. This one was the size of my waist. A little work and I had it underfoot once again.
Further down the branch, the orb glowed bright and blue. Good. I had nearly aimed right.
“And you nearly got yourself killed,” the other Tor said.
I didn’t need his criticism.
Apeq stood over the orb, blue juices trickling down his chin. His eyes stared wide in horror and his hands were frozen around the fruit. Whatever that last challenge contained was not something that made him feel safe. But it would also give him some sort of power I didn’t have, unless I beat him too it.
The problem was, that power involved self-sacrifice and I had never been the sacrificial sort.
“We’ve had enough trouble in our life,” my mimic said. “No need to add to it. Let someone else do the sacrificing. But you can worry about that after you win.”
Nervously, I ran a hand through my hair and stepped slowly toward him. If I entered this test I would have to win. And I wasn’t sure I could push the other responsibilities away if I won. Then again, if I didn’t fight, I’d be letting Apeq become this Ko’roi and who knew what that would mean.
I was no hero, but somehow, I kept having to do hero-work. Where were all the heroes? They should be here doing this. This was their job!
“I think all the heroes are dead,” the mimic said. “There’s a whole city of them over that way.”
He pointed in the direction of the golden city we’d seen.
“You aren’t even real,” I muttered.
“Keep telling yourself that.”
“Just tell me that we can handle this.”
“We?” The mimic pulled a coin out of his belt pouch – my belt pouch – and flipped it, covering the flipped coin with a hand. “Who says I’m going to help you? I never agreed to that. I’m just along for the ride. Stars you bite the fruit. Skies you don’t.”
“I have to bite the fruit,” I said nervously. “I just don’t have to like what might come after.”
“Well, no one ever said life was fair. You play with the hand you’re dealt and the cards that pop up and if you don’t play, then you lose. Do you want to lose?”
I did not want to lose.
He flipped the coin and caught it, letting it bounce across his knuckles like a magic trick before clasping his other hand over the coin and handing it to me, face up.
It showed skies.
I expected to feel relief but instead, I only felt tension. The blue orb drew me as if I wouldn’t be able to resist it even if I wanted to. It was like responsibility and heroics. They were always showing up and demanding that I take them. I didn’t even have the choice to say ‘no’ anymore. Not now that I cared about people.
That’s what got me every time. Caring.
In the distance, a bright light seared through the sky in the direction of the golden city. The brightness seared through the trees, piercing through leaves and branches and leaving afterimages dancing across my vision. A moment later, the branch beneath me trembled, rocking and swaying so that I stumbled for support and grasped at the branch holding the blue orb. Apeq rocked in place, his hands still clutching the orb and his face twisting in pain.
A sound like a thunderclap filled the air.
When the shaking stopped, my mimic had vanished.
There was only me, and Apeq, and the orb.
“You must taste it,” Gautm said from behind me. His voice sounded grim. Behind him, the other ancestors stood along the branch. I spun, and they were in all the branches around us, staring at Apeq and me. “You must submit to the last Trial.”
An idea came to me. I needed an advantage. “Only if you tell me what precept controls this one.”
I didn’t know which precept this one was for. I ran through my mind over the ones that had already been used
. We’d done the striving one. We’d done the one where you could only claim what you already were. We’d done the one where no man was an oasis. That left two more. And it could be either one. Who knew how many tests we had skipped along the way?
The two left were:
Glory is an empty cup. Do not grasp for it.
Those with feet rooted in the ground will never reach for the stars.
But I really needed to know which one to follow because one told you to reach for something and the other told you not to reach and only one of those could be true, couldn’t it?
“I can’t tell you the answer, but you must hurry!” Stress tainted Gautm’s voice making it crack as he spoke. “Did you see our city explode in the distance? Did you feel the branches shake? The Day of Destruction has come. The last test takers are here. One will leave as the Ko’roi – the weaver of the future and the other will die, but there will be no more Ko Bearers who come to us after the last test is taken. Not until the reweaving. Not until the Future is Reborn.”
I hated prophecies and foretellings – hated them worse than arbitrary tests based on a religion I didn’t follow. And these guys were full of them.
“The fire will spread to this tree,” one of the ancestors said.
“Fire?” That got my attention. I felt the blood rushing from my face, felt the branch below me suddenly feel less stable. I could still feel the heat of the flames of Vanika, still smell my neighbors burning to ash, still remember the panicked tears sizzling up in steam off the faces of the survivors as I pulled them from the wreckage, still ... stop! Stop, Tor, before you lose yourself again!
I spun, meaning to grab Gautm by the shirt, but he had no shirt. I seized his throat, pulling him to me, quivering with an emotion I couldn’t even understand.
“A fire? How soon until it reaches us?”
“Hours perhaps, if that. But in this world, you could not make it back to the ground before the fire arrives. Here, time is different.”
My friends were tangled in roots at the base of this tree. They might have hours. Maybe. I didn’t realize I was choking Gautm until I heard his gasping breaths. Around me, the ancestors stared, their wide-eyed looks owlish in the morning light. I eased up my grip but held him fast. I had no idea that I could be so deadly.
“My friends – the ones below,” I said. “I will fight this fight, and I will win, but I can’t be sure you will set them free in time. Set them free now. You are not bound by space. You can be there in an instant. And if you aren’t bound by that, then you aren’t bound by any rules. You can set them free if you want to.”
“I cannot,” Gautm said.
“Release them,” I said, squeezing his throat again in my grip. I could feel his pulse hammering against it. His arms reached up, palms wrapping around my forearm, but I would not stop.
Not with my friends at stake.
Death from fire.
Fire!
The horror seared my mind, licking across my heart again. If I never saw another fire it would be too soon. I only had one bargaining chip with these ancestors. Now was the time to use it. They needed me as much as I needed them.
“Release them now and I will bite your fruit and take your test. Don’t, and I will kill you here and see if I can save them myself. You know you don’t want Apeq to win this. You know what sort of leader he would be to the people you care so much about. You need me. You need me to win.”
There was no response from the silent ancestors except the horrible sucking sound of Gautm trying to breathe.
And then a soft hand lay on my arm.
I spun, certain of a threat, but it was only a woman in thick robes, her waist-length white hair waving in a breeze that didn’t touch me.
“Let our brother go,” she said gently. “We shall release your supporters and send them back through the gate – though what they do after that is not under our authority.”
“Do you promise?” I asked, afraid to let go of Gautm, afraid that they wouldn’t keep their promises, afraid of the fire.
Together, the mass of the dead spoke as one, “You have our promise.”
With a shudder, I released Gautm. He fell for a moment and then disappeared. Lucky fool. He could be away from me in a moment and I couldn’t get away from them without a price.
“Wise to choose to save the innocent,” the woman said. “Wise to choose compassion. Foolish not to ask at what price. Had you a supporter, they may have helped you in what is to come.”
“I thought you wanted me to win,” I said defiantly. “I thought you preferred me over Apeq!”
The woman raised her eyebrows as if she were disapproving of a fussy child. “Our world ends and we with it. We go on to the life beyond this place that held us for so long. Who comes after us is none of our concern. Win and live or fail and die – what does it matter to us? But we must send one of you back to be the Ko’roi. That is destined. Our last act.”
She faded as she said the word “act” and when I looked up, they were all gone and there was only me and Apeq and the pulsing blue fruit left – and the fires in the distance that were coming to swallow us up.
Chapter Sixteen
IF I PASSED THIS TEST, would there be time for me to get out of this world before the fires came for me? I didn’t want to die like that. And could I really trust that the Ko Bearers had set my friends free?
There was no point stressing about things I couldn’t control. I had only one thing to do – enter the test and fight Apeq – man to man – for the chance to get out of this burning world.
I wiped my hands on my trousers, trying to get the sweat off of them. I was going to die in this ridiculous Kav’ai get-up like a fake Bataar. I chuckled darkly at the thought of how horrified he’d be to have me defile his national costume.
And then, before I could change my mind, I leaned down, grabbed the orb, picked a place as far away from Apeq as I could, and bit the fruit.
There was another boom and the ground beneath me shook, but now I didn’t know if it was shaking in the World of Legend or in the vision I had just entered.
There was fire here. Which hardly seemed fair, since there had been fire out there, too.
I was standing on a metal platform that was already far too hot. Above me, a series of ladders and platforms twisted and turned, but from where I was, I could see everything.
Above us, were a pair of bracelets and what was clearly a crown glowing magically in the dark smoke above. I didn’t have to know Kav’ai legends or precepts to know that those were clearly what we were here to get. They were at the apex of the platforms and ladders and they hung on a long chain that was slowly lowering.
Which seemed strange.
Until I looked down.
Beneath me was lava. I’d never seen lava before, but it was obvious that was what it was. It was far, far down below, but the point where a human could stand the heat of it was pretty much exactly where I was standing – which told me one thing: you would have to climb the ladders and descend that chain to get the crown and bracelets before they got lower than the platform I was on – or lose them forever.
I could do that. I was faster and stronger than Apeq and climbing and jumping had become second nature to me now.
But someone out there had thought to themselves, “How can we make them really sweat.” And he’d clearly been the designer because out over the lava were hanging cages.
There were two hanging in front of me and two hanging over where Apeq must have entered – on a platform equidistant from the hanging crown but at least two hundred paces from my platform. I couldn’t see what was in the cages over there, but in the cages right in front of me were a broken promise.
Saboraak, chained around the snout, was jammed into one of the cages, her eyes wild and flashing. I could not hear her mind at all.
In the other cage, Zin and Zyla clutched at each other, their eyes equally terrified, their mouths and legs chained.
My head spun. My lungs and heart
wanted to give up right now – they were working triple-time, making my head spin with the sudden rush of it.
.And it was obvious why.
There was only one of me and both those cages were being slowly lowered toward the lava. They were just above my head right now, but by the time I could get to either of them by way of the ladders and platforms, it would be nearly too low for a human to live from the burning heat. I didn’t know about a dragon. But I remembered that Ephretti’s dragon hadn’t been immune to fire. They had more tolerance than we did, but even Saboraak could be killed by fire.
To reach either cage, I would need to climb up to the arm from which the cage hung suspended by a single chain and then, just like with the crown, I would need to climb down that chain.
My gaze swiveled wildly from one cage to the other. I couldn’t save both. And I certainly couldn’t grab the crown.
And that was the test, wasn’t it?
Who will you save?
A ridiculous test. A test I couldn’t help but fail. But I couldn’t just sit here and watch them all burn, either. I couldn’t. Already, my tears were drying as fast as they could fall and the steam of the heat of them fuelled my anger.
Crying! Like a child. Ridiculous.
I was only crying because those ghostly ancestors had lied to me and I’d never get my revenge. Already, their kingdom burned. I almost wished I could burn them all with it. That was all. It wasn’t because I was watching my life end before my eyes.
And then my gaze was dragged to a small inscription on the rail around my platform. I should be running already.
Each second counted now, but I could not help but read.
One wish to help you pass this test. One wish alone. You may not wish the test away. And what you wish will live on.
One wish.
I swallowed and began to run from my platform to the ladders. I didn’t need to decide which route until after I’d climbed the first ladder. It wasn’t until after that that the paths would branch. As I ran, my mind thought so quickly that I couldn’t keep up.
I couldn’t wish the test away. I sucked in a breath as my feet pounded along the platform.
Dragon Chameleon: Episodes 5-8 (Dragon Chameleon Omnibuses Book 2) Page 13
