by Ken Scholes
He approached Vlad’s body. Somewhere not too far north, he heard a shriek. Guard me, he told the dragon again.
Vlad’s clothing and hair had been burned away, but the staff shone brightly in his skeletal fists. He heard the collision of massive bodies behind him and moved quickly, pulling the sheath of light that protected him close as he reached for the staff.
The grip was firm, and Neb jumped when the wide and wild eyes turned upon him.
He is still alive.
The old man croaked something and jerked the staff away from Neb, knocking him off balance. He fell heavily on his satchel and winced as metal bit into his hip.
Groaning, he rolled and reached in to find the handle of the hand cannon. Vlad was trying to climb to his feet, using the staff as a prop. Neb fumbled with the weapon, pulling it free of the leather bag and the cloth it was wrapped in. “Your work is done now, Vlad,” he shouted.
Vlad cackled. “Only one more fish to hook,” he said.
The dragons were closer now, and Neb raised the canon. “No,” he said, and with the pyre and grave of Windwir fixed steadily behind his eyes along with every bloody river of loss that had flowed into and out of that desolation, Nebios Whym squeezed the trigger and felt the cannon buck and roar in his hand.
Winters
The field stretched out all around her, white and expansive, and Winters sighed as she adjusted her back against the tree. Even in its massive shadow, the air was warm and the scent of the grass and the tree and the fallen seeds was intoxicating. She’d been lulled to sleep, even, until a distant sound jerked her head back.
What was that?
Wind, maybe?
No. She heard it again and climbed slowly to her feet.
Crying.
Winters moved around the base of the tree—easily the size of Rudolfo’s giant library—in the direction of the noise. It was a child; that much she could tell.
Winters stopped when a woman’s voice rose above the sobbing. “Don’t look at it,” she said, “or the false promise of it will seduce you. Just wait for me there and I will come to you soon.”
“I can’t bear it anymore.” It was a little girl’s voice.
Winters started walking again, this time working harder to stay quiet. She ran one hand along the smooth white skin of the great tree as she went.
The woman’s voice dripped with sympathy. “I know, dear. We will make it stop.”
Make what stop?
When the voice filled her mind, Winters’s feet once more refused to move at the finality in the tone. All of it.
Then, somewhere around the bend of the tree, the old woman laughed and the little girl sniffled. “All of it,” she said again, and Winters woke up.
She was disoriented at first, wondering why she felt damp and cold, why the bed had become so hard, and then remembered that she slept in the back of a wagon covered with a tarp. She felt about for her pouch and her boots, then crawled from the bedroll and dropped to the ground.
Captain Thrall and the others were already up and making breakfast. To anyone who passed them on the road, they were just another caravan of refugees bound for the Ninefold Forest, and they played the part well, right down to the food they cooked and the exclusive use of Landlish.
She rubbed sleep from her eyes.
Endrys Thrall smiled. “Good morning, Lady Winteria. I trust you slept well?”
She shrugged. “Well enough,” she said. “I continue to dream.”
She’d found that she had little appetite of late, so while the others ate, she sipped chai and jotted down what she could remember of her dream.
She suspected the woman was the same she’d encountered before but had no idea who the little girl might be. And the old woman had known she was there.
All of it. There was something chilling in the tone, and Winters shuddered at the memory of it. Then she closed her dream log and tucked it back into her pouch.
When they set out, she decided to walk for the first stretch. It was cold and dry for a change as spring approached in the Named Lands. There were birds singing in the forest to either side of the road they followed.
They’d not gone long before the ground shuddered—a long, slow ripple that was enough to throw off her balance but not drop her. The wagon lurched to a halt as the mules protested the shaking ground.
“What was that?” She looked up at Captain Thrall on the wagon.
“I’m not sure,” he said. They waited a few minutes, and when nothing followed, he whistled the mules forward and they moved on.
But then, it shook again. Another slight ripple. Followed not long after by another.
Earthquakes were rare in the Named Lands, though they were more common in the far north near the Dragon’s Spine where Winters and her people made their home. But this was an unprecedented number—too slight to do any harm. And of late, no earthquake had boded well. She remembered the quake that preceded Windwir and the times she felt the ground shake during Neb’s fight with the Watcher. “Something is awry,” she said.
Endrys Thrall nodded. “I agree.”
They’d not gone much farther when he stopped them and climbed down from the wagon. His face had gone dark, the line of his jaw set with an emotion Winters couldn’t place. The young officer pulled a man and a woman from the group off to the side and started a hushed but emotional conversation. The man gasped, and when the woman met Winters’s eyes, she saw something terrible there. Like the look on the Y’Zirite lieutenant’s face when she told Winters that Jakob had been killed. It chilled her blood, and her fears went to the first place she could think of.
Neb.
Captain Thrall glanced at her, her eyebrows furrowing at the look he must’ve seen on her face. His mouth became a grim line, and he nodded once before stepping away from the others and approaching her.
“There has been a development,” he said in a somber tone. “Word has been relayed that Vlad Li Tam has accessed the Cacophonic Deaths. We have verification of six cities destroyed so far.”
Six cities? And one of them, she knew, had to be Ahm’s Glory where Neb had gone to face Tam down and take back the staff. She tried to contain the panic that rose up within her. “Neb?”
Endrys put his hand upon her shoulder. “Lord Whym survived the destruction of Ahm’s Glory, but I know nothing beyond that.”
“What about Marta? And Isaak?” She was reeling, her heart already being drawn back along the path of loss to the death of Jakob and Hanric and all of the other losses before.
He met her eyes. “Isaak is believed to have escaped. We do not know about the others.” The captain looked away. “The council had pulled back its operations in that region due to the instability but—”
Captain Thrall was interrupted as the ground shook again.
Seven cities.
He waited, his face pale, and opened his mouth only to close it again.
Eight cities.
No, she thought. Eight Windwirs. Not nameless Y’Zirite cities, but places with mothers and fathers, sons and daughters all now snuffed out. More light gone from the world for the sake of blood.
Blood for blood.
She felt the tears, but they were more than sorrow. They were anger. There were people in those cities who longed for a new home. She could only hope that they were able to make their way somehow. But Winters knew that for all who made the trek, there were others who for their own reasons could not. And Vlad Li Tam, who had taken so much from the world already, took yet a little more.
The captain’s face was kind, and he remained quiet until she spoke. “It wasn’t enough,” she finally said in a quiet voice, “that he killed the children.”
No, he’d taken it even further. Because, she realized, he was dismantling Y’Zir completely. With a bigger knife than the one they’d used to dismantle his family.
Now Endrys had conflicting emotions on his face, and finally he swallowed. “I have more to tell you. I hope you understand why it was necessary to k
eep this from you before. It was vital that as few people knew as possible, but I think you yourself have said that the time for secrets has passed.”
Winters tried to puzzle out what came next by his eyes but had no luck. “Knew what?” Her eyes narrowed and some of that anger leaked into her voice. “Knew what?”
He took a deep breath. “The children are alive, Lady Winteria. Lord Tam faked their murder and we intercepted them. They are safe, and Lady Tam is with them now.”
It was surreal to feel such unexpected relief flood her alongside of that anger; she had no time to ponder it as the ground shook again.
Nine cities.
But Neb was alive. And Jakob was alive. And these bits of light in such great darkness shone all the brighter for her as Winteria bat Mardic accommodated the shifting of the earth and set herself north to finish her work. Then, at long last, she could go home with her Homefinder and her people and hope to build something better than blood calling endlessly for blood.
Chapter
19
Jin Li Tam
Jin Li Tam lost all sense of time as they moved faster than any horse could have drawn them past sights that overwhelmed her with a sense of wonder she had never known before.
Platforms where people gathered as airships loaded and unloaded passengers moving between buildings of white stone and crystal. At one point, she looked over to Administrator Gras. “If you’re able to travel in the way that brought me here,” she asked, “why would you bother with these other forms of transportation?”
The woman smiled. “The People—the Younger Gods—could fly to the moon or they could travel instantly through the lightrails, but they chose to sail there instead because it was more enjoyable and could be shared with others. And it paid tribute to their early years when leaving home meant an ocean of saltwater instead of an ocean of stars.” She reached into a basket beside her and drew out two pieces of fruit that looked like apples but were deep purple in color. She handed one to each of the children. “Don’t you find this more enjoyable than the other experience?”
Jin nodded. And she saw wisdom beneath it all and pondered it as she went back to watching this new world slip past the carriage’s open windows.
Soon, the landscape around them began to change. Now they rode a highway surrounded by flat fields freshly harvested, and Jin first noticed the pale white stretches of what she thought must be long ridges of stone beneath the soil, poking up above the ground for sometimes a half league at a time before disappearing again. She could see them out of either side of the carriage’s windows, and finally she pointed. “What are those?”
“Those are the roots of Lasthome,” Administrator Gras said. “They are more exposed the closer we get to the Firsthome Forest.”
The Firsthome Forest. Jin opened her mouth to ask about it and stopped when the carriage suddenly bucked and tipped as the earth trembled around them. The children squealed and tumbled over, Amara’s laughter suddenly a cry of pain as her head struck the ornate wooden edge of the bench. Jin lurched forward, falling into Chandra as they swerved off the road and came to a sudden stop.
She glanced at the administrator’s face and saw a look upon it that she had not expected. She is afraid.
And Jin felt the same fear when suddenly, the light around them guttered, dimming nearly down to nothing for a moment. Now Jakob added his crying to Amara’s, and Jin found she’d already scooped him up into her arms. When the light returned, she saw that the white stone ridges were now mottled nearly gray. And she saw the fear deepening on their hostess’s face.
“What’s happening?”
Elyna Gras tried to compose herself. “I will find out,” she said, drawing a small round stone from her pocket and closing her eyes. Then she opened them. “Your father has destroyed Ahm’s Glory.”
Jin sat with the words for a moment. “He found the spellbook and used it?” It was the first thing that came to mind.
The administrator shook her head. “What you call the Seven Cacophonic Deaths was actually a complex core function of the Continuity Engine. The Y’Zirites spent years studying its notes and finally, Xhum found a way to bend the melody away from shaping and toward destruction. But it isn’t magical. And Xhum Y’Zir’s twisted version of it did not come from the Library of Elder Days.” The guards opened the door to let them out while one of them walked around the carriage, inspecting it for damage, and the other looked down the road with a spyglass.
Jin stepped down, lifting Jakob up into her arms as she scanned the horizon. Already, the mottled color was fading as the roots whitened. And the light above felt brighter, too. The woman’s words registered with her, and she glanced back up at the administrator. “If it didn’t come from the spellbook, then where did it come from?”
But even as she asked, she answered her own question, and it broke her heart.
Isaak.
Somehow, Vlad Li Tam had bent Isaak in the same way he’d bent every other river around him. Doing the work of House Li Tam no matter what the cost. It was telling that she was more surprised that he had spared the children than she was at the idea of him murdering them, and she’d been flummoxed by his choice there. She’d even begun to afford her father grace, but to use Isaak—who had already been used in such a way—to visit his wrath upon Ahm’s Glory moved that grace again out of reach. She made no attempt to hide the tears in her eyes. “He used Isaak.”
“It appears so,” the administrator said. “We have very few resources in that region, so reports are coming in sporadically.”
The driver finished his inspection, and just as they started to climb back into the carriage, the ground shook again, and once more the light faltered.
Gras’s face went more pale than it had already been, and she shot a worried look to the driver. “Perhaps we should do this another—”
No. Bring them along. It is time.
The voice was heavy and old and familiar but far away, and Jin had nothing to measure it against. It was warm inside her skull, and it flowed over her.
Gras inclined her head. There was something in the gesture that Jin thought might be resignation. She smiled weakly, but there was grief and fear behind it. “Yes, of course,” the woman said.
Jin met Chandra’s wide eyes, glad she’d heard it too. Jin wanted to ask, but knew she was going to learn soon enough who it was they went to visit. It waited in line behind all of her other questions about this place and what was happening. They’d not gone long before the wagon shook again. This time, they pressed on but at a slower pace.
The farmlands ended abruptly at the edge of a silver lake that the road they traveled extended beyond, held up by a white bridge made from the same material as the roots. The massive roots disappeared here into the blood of the earth and then reemerged in the distance, climbing up hills into forests of deep green lost in mist leagues ahead. They stopped at the edge of the bridge, and the driver called back through the open window.
“Administrator?”
“Take us ahead quickly, Langston.”
He nodded. “Aye, ma’am.”
Jin Li Tam clutched Jakob close with one arm while looping her forearm through the leather handle that hung near her head. Her eyes searched the road ahead, looking for some evidence of cracking or other instability, but despite the quakes—seven or eight of them now—the surface continued to remain unblemished. They rolled out onto the bridge and picked up speed.
They had cleared the bridge and were climbing gently into hills covered in trees that looked familiar to Jin Li Tam, though there were slight differences in size and color. “They look like the trees in the Ninefold Forest,” she said quietly to Jakob. “The trees at home.”
Jakob laughed and pointed out the window. “Papa home?”
Jin swallowed. “Yes.”
“They are very much like the trees of the Ninefold Forest. Every crèche was seeded with Firsthome trees.”
There was the word again. Sister Elsbet and the Regent Eliz
Xhum had also spoken of crèches. The Named Lands was nestled within one. Y’Zir supposedly had eventually grown to occupy two. And there were others.
The light dimmed now as they crested the hill, and the road turned down and deeper into the forest. Jin watched the trees slip past, trying to soak in every type of tree and brush that she could identify. She’d been lulled by the road and the quiet dance of distant shafts of light within the forest when the ground shook again.
It shook one more time before they emerged from the forest to overlook an expanse of grass punctuated here and there by ponds and brooks of silver. And there, in the distance, at the center stood a massive, gray tree, its roots spilling out all around it before running beneath the grassy plain it stood upon. The front window of the carriage gave her only a sense of how large it was.
“This is our Grandmother,” Administrator Gras said in a voice filled with reverence. “She’s waited a long time to meet Jakob and Amara and the two of you.”
Jin blinked. “Grandmother?”
The warm voice flowed through her like honey on a summer day. And yet now, there was another aspect to the voice that Jin could hear. She is in pain, she realized.
Come closer, Great Mother.
It wasn’t the same tree that she’d seen in the Final Dream. But it was like it. “I need to see,” Jin said.
Administrator Gras motioned for them to stop, and the driver let them out.
She couldn’t take her eyes off of it. As Jin Li Tam climbed down from the horseless wagon, she looked up and saw a sky full of limbs stretching endlessly away, up and out, until it was lost in the haze above them.
The tree in the dream was the closest she’d come to seeing anything like it, but this tree was ancient and more gray than white, though she had no idea what color it had been before her father destroyed Ahm’s Glory.
Or before Windwir. Or before the Age of Laughing Madness.
And how much further back? Even as she thought it, the ground shook again, and Jin Li Tam fell to her knees as the tree went darker and the light around them faded.
This time, the Grandmother Tree groaned, and Jin Li Tam felt the ache of it deep in her heart and bones.
