Rondelo’s sword flashed, and the point fell toward Shula. “Madeline, do not try anything. That blade—”
Gilenyia had backed away from Yenil. “This is a magic blade, Rondelo. It is called Thirsty, among other names. If there is a healing spell to counteract that blade, I do not know it. Even at the height of my powers, if Madeline were to cut an Elenil with this blade, I would not have the powers to reverse it.”
The sword hummed in Madeline’s hand, the edge of the blade pulling her toward the Elenil. She felt its rage, felt its desire to drain them, to drain all of them. “Stand on the plates,” she said to Shula. Shula edged away from Rondelo and toward the hover plates.
“You will have to take the stairs,” Gilenyia said. “Archon Thenody is no fool. He’ll not speed your way to assassinate him.”
Assassination was not the plan, but Madeline felt the sword hum with glee at the thought. Still, it made sense that the archon’s magic would not help them to the top.
“Let me help you,” Gilenyia whispered. “There are those of us who would see the current archon replaced with someone . . . younger.”
Shula stepped behind Madeline. “Perhaps as a hostage,” she said quietly.
“Good idea,” Madeline said. “Rondelo, give Shula your sword or I’ll run Gilenyia through. That’s right. Good. Now—Gilenyia. Up the stairs.”
Gilenyia tipped her head slightly. “A pleasure.”
The Sword of Years pulled in Madeline’s hand. She hoped she had the strength to keep it from striking.
Delightful Glitter Lady frolicked among the warring Scim and Elenil with joyous abandon, and Jason shouted and tried not to fall off. The Elenil fought with the terrifying certainty that no wound given them was permanent, and the Scim with a desperate anger. Baileya struck among them like lightning, wounding Elenil and Scim alike if they came too close to Jason.
The Elenil were confused about whose side Jason and Baileya were on. A Scim came up behind her as she nocked her bow, and Jason brained him with the hilt of his sword. The Scim went down hard, and Baileya gave Jason such a warm smile he almost lost his grip and fell from the rhinoceros.
Just as they fought their way through the tower entrance, a wind kicked in. It howled through the palace compound, blasting them with sand. Jason covered his face. If they had broken into the tower a moment later, he might well have been blinded by the sand, but as it was, the walls of the tower had protected them. “Sandstorm?” Jason called. “Baileya, what is going on?”
Everyone stopped fighting.
Floating like monstrous columns through the melee were fifteen-foot-tall creatures covered in wings. They did not turn, and they each had four faces, each one directly facing one of the cardinal directions on a compass. To the east, a face like a lion. To the west, an ox, and to the north, an eagle. The southern face was that of a human being. The wings sparkled. Or, on closer examination, they didn’t sparkle—they blinked. The wings were covered in jeweled eyes, and as they blinked, the patterns on the wings moved like a school of fish.
“Kharobem,” Baileya said, wonder in her voice. “They come to watch some story that is about to unfold. The last time they came in such numbers . . . it was the fall of Ezerbin.”
Jason let out a war whoop. “That must mean we’re about to win!”
“The people of Ezerbin did not win,” Baileya said. “Even now their city is a haunt for jackals.”
“Oh,” Jason said. “Good point.”
A barefoot girl in clothing that was little more than a sack limped into the center of the battle.
The Kharobem did not move or speak or make a sound, but Jason knew with a deep certainty that the Kharobem knew the girl. That they were, in fact, here because of the girl.
She stood at Dee’s feet and looked up at Jason. “There was a cactus,” she said, “born in a city. It lived in a pot upon a counter. It did not grow large. It did not flower. Until it returned to the desert. There it lived a long and happy life, and the desert and the cactus and the sun and the moon and the water and the sand lived happily together for many a year.”
Jason shrugged. “Okay, thanks, I guess. And now we fight some more?”
There was silence from the assembled warriors. Jason slid off Dee’s back and stood in front of the limping girl.
Break Bones stalked among the warriors, moving toward the tower entrance.
Baileya stepped toward him, her double-bladed spear at the ready.
“Wait,” Jason said. “I have a better idea.” He snatched the pebble out of his pocket and threw it into the tower doorway. He grabbed the embiggenator and turned Dee all the way to kitten sized. She let out a plaintive squeak as the tiny pebble became a door-blocking boulder.
Baileya squeezed his arm, just below the gold armband she had given him. “I would rather a clever warrior than a strong one,” she said.
Jason blushed. In the middle of a battle. How embarrassing. He leaned toward her.
“They are working to move the stone already,” she said.
She was right. The stone shuddered, and he could hear the shouting of the Scim outside, Break Bones’s voice piercing through.
“Let’s get up those stairs,” he said, running ahead of Baileya.
She called his name, and he stopped to find her pointing at the ground. Delightful Glitter Lady struggled to get over the first stair, her tiny war cry lost in the cavernous room. But she squeaked again, scrambling for the next stair.
“Aw,” Jason said. “So cute! C’mere, Dee.” He scooped her up and settled her into his pocket. The sword and the bag of weapons Baileya had thrown to him were all discarded on the ground now. He sorted through it, searching for a lighter sword. He found one and tried to lift it over his head with one hand. He almost fell, and the sword went clattering to the ground. He dug through again until he found—well, he wasn’t sure if it was a small sword or a long knife. He lifted it above his head and shouted, “TO WAR!”
Baileya followed him up the stairs. The strange limping girl followed too, silent and watchful.
The Heart of the Scim.
They stood in the glass room at the top of the tower. The stone was on its pedestal. It was the true stone, not the ship-sized stone that hung outside.
Their journey had been easy—suspiciously easy. The Elenil had fallen out of Madeline’s way when they saw the Sword of Years in her hand. Gilenyia had helped, shouting that there would be no healing for any who opposed the sword. No doubt it also helped having an Elenil funeral taking place at the base of the tower. Near immortals being reminded of their mortality turned out to be cowards in battle.
Madeline put her hands on the stone and lifted, but it wouldn’t move. “Why can’t I pick it up?”
“Only certain of the Elenil can remove it,” Gilenyia said.
“You’re one of them,” Shula said. It wasn’t a question.
“It would be an act of treason for me to put the Crescent Stone in your hand,” Gilenyia said.
The black and purple energy moved inside the stone, almost like water trapped in crystal. Madeline strengthened her grip on the Sword of Ten Thousand Sorrows. She lifted the blade. “I don’t need to hold it,” she said.
“You don’t understand,” Gilenyia said, falling in front of Madeline, blocking the stone. “Killing the archon, that makes sense. Let someone else take his place. Perhaps someone more . . . understanding of the Scim. Perhaps that would be wise. But Madeline, if you destroy that stone, you destroy the Elenil. If you destroy the Elenil, my dear—believe me, this is true—you will destroy the Scim, the Aluvoreans, the Pastisians, the Maegrom, and all the people of the Sunlit Lands. I do not claim the Elenil to be without fault, but you must understand we are the foundation of this society. All else is built on top of our work, our city, our magic.” Madeline’s tattoo was pulsing now, linked to Yenil in a way she hadn’t felt before. She could feel the magic guzzling, pulling at Yenil, siphoning her breath away and into Madeline. The Scim girl slid from Shula’s b
ack and stared at the source of all their trouble, her hair disheveled and half covering her face.
From where they stood, in the glass room at the apex of the tower, Madeline could see the chaos at the base. Fire had broken out somehow, and the strange creatures Gilenyia called the Kharobem hovered unmoving all around the tower floor, some of them on the stairs, a few floating in the center of the tower. She could see Jason and Baileya running up the stairs, Scim close behind them. They were almost to the top.
She hesitated, and lowered the sword.
A Scim came slowly across the glass bridge toward Madeline. It was one of the servants of the archon. She remembered meeting him but not his name. He was dressed like an Elenil. Madeline understood now that he was wearing his war skin, but it had been modified to make him look powerless, like less of a threat. He could have merely taken on his other form, like Yenil’s. Instead they had kept him in his fierce battle skin and humiliated him. They had cut off his tusks. Even in war he would be unimpressive now. She did not remember his name because he was not someone to be remembered or to be seen. He was a decoration in the living quarters of the archon.
“Miss,” he said, and his voice was raw. “My lady Gilenyia says all will be lost, but they have taken everything from us. What more is there to lose? They have even taken our language.”
“Taken your language? What do you mean?”
“Does it not seem strange that we diverse people speak the same tongue? We are all speaking the Elenil language, through means of their magic. When you break that stone, those who have known their mother tongues will speak them again. But my children and grandchildren will know only Elenil. I speak it only through magic. We will not be able to speak to one another. You are not speaking your native tongue, either. Nor are your friends. When magic ceases, our language will be all but dead, with only the elders knowing it well.”
Madeline, wide eyed, turned to Shula. “You’re not speaking English?”
“I don’t know English,” she said. “Only Arabic and French.”
Madeline turned back to the Scim. “Are you saying to destroy it or not?”
The Scim bowed his head. “Perhaps once all has burned, my grandchildren will rise from the ashes.”
Madeline lifted the sword over her head. “Yenil?”
The girl nodded, a fierce look on her face.
“You don’t understand,” Gilenyia shouted again. “The magic of that sword cannot be sated. It will destroy the Heart of the Scim completely. Madeline, please, listen to reason!” Shula grabbed Gilenyia and pulled her from in front of the stone.
The sword came whistling down, and a fierce joy radiated from it. It smashed into the stone. The Heart of the Scim shattered into a hundred thousand shards, which flew like shrapnel through the glass room.
Nothing happened.
Nothing changed.
Madeline took a deep breath. Yenil struggled for oxygen.
“It was a fake,” Shula said. Above them, the giant facsimile of the Crescent Stone still hung over the tower, crackling with power.
Madeline gripped the sword tighter. She knew, somehow, where the true stone must be. The archon. He would be carrying it on his person. She had a sudden memory of the first time she had seen him without his sheet. She remembered the choker he’d worn, with what she had thought to be a miniature facsimile of the Crescent Stone. Of course he would keep it on him. Now that she knew, it seemed so obvious. She spoke to the old Scim servant on the bridge. “Take me to him.”
The Scim bowed his head and shuffled across the bridge into the quarters of the archon.
Being shot with an arrow hurt. Not in a stubbing-a-toe sort of way, but in a screaming, burning, let-me-faint-now sort of way. The arrow came in through Jason’s shoulder, from behind, at a high angle so it only caught flesh and muscle. One moment he was running up the stairs, the next an arrowhead appeared, sticking out of his shoulder. It was the worst pain he had felt in his life: a throbbing, burning, pulsing nightmare of excruciation.
“A lucky wound,” Baileya said.
“Lucky?”
“Clean through, the arrowhead on the other side, no bones damaged, no major bleeding.” She glanced back down the stairs. Some Elenil guards had engaged with the ascending Scim, giving them a moment.
Baileya steadied him and, without warning, broke the head of the arrow off, then yanked the shaft out. Jason’s vision swam, and he put his hand against the wall. Baileya pulled out a handful of leaves, chewed them, then pasted them over the hole in his shoulder. “Bloodsop,” she said. “To stop the bleeding.”
It had a strong, almost minty smell. “You should probably carry more of that if we’re going to be hanging out.”
Baileya grinned. “Wait here,” she said.
“Where are you going?”
“To throw any archers I can find off the stairs.”
She slipped down into the battle.
Jason set Dee down, and she explored a few different stairs. Jason sat, putting pressure on the wound. It had been several minutes, he thought, but the blood had already stopped, and the chewed-up leaves had hardened. There must have been some sort of painkiller in the leaves too, because although his shoulder felt hot, the pain had lessened considerably. The limping girl stood below him, watching, but she did not speak or intervene in any way.
Across the tower, Jason noticed a single Scim sneaking up the opposite stairway. “Dee,” he said. “Come here.” The little rhino trotted to him, and he slipped her into his pocket. Jason had seen the Elenil swinging across the center of the tower to reach the opposite side. He found a rope tied alongside the edge of the stairs. He tucked his tiny sword into his belt.
“Okay, shoulder,” he said, “don’t kill us.”
He swung. Shooting pain fired through his whole body, and he screamed as the rope spun him onto the stairs on the other side, landing a full flight up from the Scim. It was, of course, Break Bones.
Break Bones curled his lip in disgust, shifting his grip on the massive stone ax in his hand. “Thou hast no weapon, Wu Song.”
“Break Bones. Hey. How’s it going?” Jason pulled his tiny sword out. He regretted its size now. He wasn’t sure it could even get through Break Bones’s thick skin. Dee climbed out of his pocket and scampered off to the side, and Jason lost sight of her.
“Thou art in my way, human child.”
Jason shrugged. The sudden pain in his shoulder made him regret it. “I get that a lot. Here’s the thing, though. I feel like if I let you pass, you’re going to murder my friend.”
“The Heart of the Scim is ours. She must not be allowed to destroy it.”
“Why do you want it so bad?”
Break Bones spit on the floor. “Fool! They have enslaved us with it for centuries. The balance is shifting. I would take it back so that we can enslave them. Without the Heart of the Scim we cannot use the Heart of the Elenil. We will reverse the flow of the magic. A few hundred years of justice should make things even. We shall live in towers of glass, they in mud hovels. Our children and grandchildren will rule over them. Your friend Madeline would break our chains and deny us our crown.”
“Just to be clear,” Jason said. “You’re planning to kill her. Instead of talking things out?”
“The Scim have talked to the Elenil for decades, and what has changed?”
“Obviously I can’t stop you,” Jason said. “I only have this tiny little sword.” As if on cue, Delightful Glitter Lady leapt down the stairs toward Break Bones, letting loose a full-throated kitten-unicorn war cry. She crashed into Break Bones’s foot. “And a tiny unicorn.”
Break Bones chuckled, ignoring Dee completely. “Then stand aside. Run if you can. When I have finished your friend, I will come back for you. Let no one say Break Bones breaks oaths.”
“But first,” Jason said, “Delightful Glitter Lady: ATTACK!” Dee trumpeted and hit Break Bones’s foot, smashing into it over and over again.
Break Bones caught her easily and lif
ted her to his face. “Wu Song,” he said. “Your perseverance is to be commended. But this little beast is no threat to me.”
Jason pulled out the embiggenator. “Heh. That’s what you think.” He turned the knob all the way to the right, and Delightful Glitter Lady went from kitten size to the size of a Labrador, to the size of a rhinoceros, to the size of a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex. Break Bones fell backward, pinned beneath her.
Delightful Glitter Lady scurried to her feet and trumpeted so loud Jason could feel the stones vibrating through the soles of his shoes.
Break Bones stumbled away, rushing down the stairs.
“Dee,” Jason said. The rhino’s enormous head swiveled toward him. “Fetch!”
Dee bellowed her delight and charged down the stairs after the retreating Scim warrior.
Jason raced up the stairs, laughing, his wound momentarily forgotten.
They found the archon, at last, sitting in a three-acre garden built, somehow, on a balcony of the tower. He was sitting at a small metal table, sipping tea with Hanali. Both of them were dressed in the extravagant head-to-toe white mourning clothes of the Elenil. The archon raised his eyebrows when he saw Madeline and Shula, Yenil and Gilenyia, and the old servant. Madeline looked up. The crescent-shaped crystal at the top of the tower could be seen from here, glinting in the bright sunlight, still emanating the power of the Crescent Stone.
“So,” Thenody said. “You are the ones causing the ruckus below and interrupting poor Vivi’s funeral. Now you interrupt me while I have tea with his grieving son. What have you to say for yourselves?”
Madeline still held the sword. It shook in her hands, eager to decapitate the archon of the Elenil. She could feel its attraction, could see the generations of bloodshed and murder and pain that had given him so much power, so much wealth. Her breathing quickened, and as it did, Yenil swayed, her breath rattling in her lungs. “You would kill this little girl so I can breathe,” Madeline said.
The Crescent Stone Page 40
