The Bone Sword dripped his blood, and the queen was careful to let it run into the tub. Talfi tried to respond, but he couldn’t catch his breath under the glorious pain. Every sensation was sharp and unending—the warm blood running down his sides, the bruising grip of the golems at his wrists, the chill air running over his exposed lungs, the dead leaves rustling under his feet. This was going to be how every day went for the rest of his life. He hated the queen then, hated her for perverting the gift Death had given him, the gift he had died so many times to earn. His blood burned with the hatred. It ran like lava through him, gushed out his veins, and ran into the tub. The world dimmed. Talfi turned his head and saw one of the golems. For a moment, its—his—face reflected the same hatred Talfi felt, and with the insight that came just before death, Talfi understood. He and the golem didn’t simply share blood. The golem’s blood was Talfi’s blood. The golem’s flesh was Talfi’s flesh.
“The First,” said the golem.
Something inside Talfi shifted, like a drop of blood finally gathering enough weight to fall. Instead of trying to pull away from the flesh golem, Talfi reached toward him. But it was more than a reaching with mere hands. It was reaching with blood and with bone.
“I’m you,” Talfi whispered, and died.
Chapter Nineteen
The Slippery Fish skimmed over the waves. Danr stood with Aisa at the bow with a wide, idiotic grin on his face. The speed was sensational. Glorious! He had thought riding a wyrm was the fastest thing in the world, but now they were outracing birds. Danr wanted to spread his arms and join them. Wind whipped through his ears, tugging at the thick felt hat tied under his chin. Speed or no speed, his half-troll shape still disliked the sun.
Beside him, Aisa looked more pensive. The breeze whipped at her skirts and loose blouse, teased at her hair, but she barely seemed to notice. Waves curled in white slices away from the prow, and she stared thoughtfully down at them.
Danr was about to ask what was on her mind when he felt it: a shift beneath his bare feet, as if the deck had become rippling sand for just a moment. Aisa’s head came up.
“Did you feel that?” she asked in a distant voice.
“I did,” he replied, worried now. “What was it?”
“Why did you feel it?” she added.
Here he had no answer, and so he was able to shrug. “Is that important?”
“Ashkame tips and the world is sliding,” she said in the same distracted tone. “I can feel it more and more with every passing moment because of my connection with Nu and Tan. I do not understand why you feel it. Or why you continue to come to the Garden. Or why you join in with the Gardeners’ triple conversations.”
“I do?” Danr said. A pod of dolphins leaped in and out of the water just ahead of the ship, racing ahead of it, laughing in a strange language all their own.
“Too many times.” Aisa looked into the distance, her eyes glassy. “Something odd is happening to you.”
The ship slowed so fast that Danr was thrown off balance. He swayed. Aisa stumbled and would have fallen over if Danr hadn’t caught her. Ahead lay the green, forested shore of Alfhame, and the ship coasted slowly toward it.
“Land ho?” said one of the sailors, and the others laughed nervously.
“Most fun I’ve had outside the bedroom,” Greenstone boomed, striding up to them in a heavy felt hat of her own.
A wide cleft opened between the trees, a cleft the width of a good-sized river, though no water poured from it. Nothing grew in the cleft, either, though the ocean lapped at it like a silvery cat’s tongue.
“Is that—?” Danr began.
“The Sand River,” agreed Captain Greenstone. “Been dry for a thousand years.”
Danr eyed it speculatively, hands on the gunwale. “How long to walk to the Lone Mountain from here?”
“Three days, maybe four,” Greenstone said. “And that’s if you don’t get elves poking their heads up your arse.”
Aisa put her hand atop Danr’s. It was hot and dry. “The Tree tips tonight.” Her voice changed. “After sunset.” It changed again. “Midnight.”
“Aisa, are you all right? What’s wrong with you?”
“The Gardeners are fading,” Aisa said dreamily. “Slipping. Sliding.”
“Dying?” Danr’s mouth was dry now. “What are we going to do, then? Maybe you could get there now. Change into a hawk and fly.”
“And face the queen alone.” Aisa’s voice was a whisper of water across stone. “I do not have the power.”
Danr looked about frantically, as if the answer might be written in the rigging. “Then what do we do?”
The ocean gushed. With a rush of seawater, Grandfather Wyrm’s great head rose from the ocean beside the ship. The sailors made a uniform sound of dismay and backed away, even though the great wyrm had been pushing the ship for the past two hours.
“Did you feel the earth move, yes?” he boomed. “The second earthquake?”
The pieces fell together. That had been the strange sensation Danr and Aisa had felt. “I did,” he called. “What did it mean?”
“The Tree tips, and the earth is sliding away, yes,” said Grandfather Wyrm in his deep, measured voice. “We have little time to stop the Fae queen. But the earthquake will help us. First, you will need the sails. Second, your captain must be ready at the helm for some skillful maneuvering. Follow me!”
Grandfather Wyrm plunged toward the shore. To Danr’s awe, he didn’t stop when he reached it. Instead he slammed straight into the cleft. A wave of sand and dirt exploded to the left and right banks of the old riverbed. Grandfather Wyrm’s massive body plowed up the cleft, creating a channel that filled with seawater in his wake.
“Follow,” Aisa said, pointing.
“Harebones!” bellowed Greenstone. “Get the foresails up! Follow that wyrm!”
Danr gaped. “How is he doing that?”
“He uses Stane magic to change the shape of the earth.” Aisa’s breath came quick and her pink tongue ran over her lips. “The Tree tips, Hamzu, and boundaries blur. Water becomes earth becomes fire. All magic is the same. We are all the same, yes.”
The Fish slid forward under creaking canvas. The end of Grandfather Wyrm’s tail had already disappeared. Seawater gushed into the channel, creating a current that helped move the ship forward. Greenstone had moved to the aft deck to take the helm herself. Danr ran back to join her, dragging the dazed Aisa with him. Worry chewed at him with cold teeth. She seemed between worlds, half in this one and half somewhere else. He didn’t know how to help her, or if she even needed help. He was a truth-teller, but he didn’t know what was going on. Danr looked at Aisa again. She was still clearly somewhere else. Was she dying like the other Gardeners? He had to find out.
There was only one way. But he had promised he would never look at her with his true eye again. Sworn.
Vik take it, he thought. Forgive me, Aisa. He closed his right eye to look at her.
Everything around him vanished. Rotting air filled his nose with its heavy stench, and he found himself ankle-deep in mud and shit. The sickly light of the Garden twisted his eye and pounded at his brain. In all directions sprawled a tangle of dying, rotting plants. In the center of it all stood Aisa. She had one foot in the muck and one foot on the deck of the ship. Within her nestled the tiny, shining light of their son. Behind her stood the shadowy, emaciated figures of Nu and Tan, barely visible inside their ragged cloaks. And looming over them, taller than a castle, was the golden form of Queen Gwylph. The elf queen was leaning against the wall of Ashkame’s bark. With a start, Danr realized she had always been there. She had merely loomed so large that he never noticed her, the way a rabbit never noticed a mountain. Ashkame’s power was draining into her, and the great tree was rotting through and through as a result. It was leaning, tilting, tipping, and this time it wouldn’t simply upend itself as it had done a hundred other times. It would crash into oblivion.
“Aisa!” Danr called.
“Do you have the Bone Sword yet?” Death strode up to him, eyes blazing. “It shouldn’t take this long, boy.”
“Why don’t you just kill her?” Danr gestured frantically at the giant Gwylph. “You’re Death!”
“I told you, I can’t touch her.” Death pulled a knitting needle from her hair and jabbed at Gywlph’s golden shin. It rebounded as if her skin were granite. “See?”
“Is Aisa all right?” Danr demanded.
“Course she isn’t. The Garden is dying, and she’s connected to it. You only have a couple hours. After that, I’ll get a rush of business and close up shop forever.”
“This wasn’t supposed to happen!” Danr cried. “It wasn’t supposed to be me! I’m just a farmer! I hoe rows and plant seeds and pull weeds. Why am I doing this?”
Death gave him a strange look from within the darkness that continually overshadowed her face. “If it makes you feel better, child, you’re nothing special. Your seed just ended up in the right row at the right time. Otherwise someone else would be standing here bawling like a wounded calf. The only difference is that if you keep feeling sorry for yourself, we’re all dead. Including me. Now get!”
She jabbed him with a bony finger, and his right eye popped open in surprise. He was standing next to the still-dazed Aisa and Greenstone next to the helm of the Fish. The Fish was just entering the new channel, and Greenstone was staring intently ahead.
“Where’d you go, handsome?” she asked.
“The Garden,” he said shortly. “The whole world is dead in two hours if we don’t get the Bone Sword.”
Greenstone’s fingers went white on the wheel. “I don’t know if we’ll make it. Even with this current, the—”
For a moment, the Fish halted, then drifted backward a little. Greenstone glanced over her shoulder. “Vik and Halza humping on hardwood! Foresails down! All hands brace!”
Sailors scuttled around the deck, repeating her order to one another. Several secured loose equipment. The sails collapsed like dying clouds.
“What is it? Why are we moving backward?” Danr spun, trying to understand what was going on. The water level in the channel, indeed in the entire ocean, seemed to be dropping.
“Now I know what that damn wyrm meant by a second earthquake,” Greenstone muttered. “We’re in for it now.”
“For what?” Danr grabbed her shoulder.
“Tidal wave.”
A wall of water skimmed over the horizon and rushed toward the shore. Danr’s insides shrank to see it coming. This was a force of nature. It had no thoughts, no emotions. It didn’t care what lay in its way or what happened to anyone or anything. There was no way to fight it or stop it. It would simply happen the way it happened. Danr grabbed the unresisting Aisa with one arm, wrapped the other around a set of ropes, and prayed aloud to the Nine.
“The Nine don’t have shit to do with it, handsome,” Greenstone said. “Gonna depend on how good a pilot I am. Just like that damn wyrm said.”
The wave slammed into them. It created a chaotic wash big enough to engulf a city at the mouth of the channel and rushed inward. The roar was a thousand angry lions. The Fish bolted forward, bobbing like a toy in a torrent. The sailors shouted. Wood creaked. Danr’s stomach dropped, then came up, then went back down again. Wind rushed past his ears. He clutched Aisa hard.
“Hang on, handsome!” Greenstone yelled. “Gonna be the ride of your Vik-sucking life!”
The Fish pinged from side to side along the newly carved channel, jerking and jolting and smashing as it went. With every crunch and crack, Greenstone bellowed in protest, as if she herself were hit. The saltwater river bellowed back, challenging her, but Greenstone kept her powerful hands on the spoked helm.
“Wyrm ahead!” shouted Danr.
They were indeed catching up with Grandfather Wyrm, who was still using his great body to plow the channel deep enough for the ship. But also ahead now Danr could see Lone Mountain rising out of the forest. Earth and sand spouted out on either side of Grandfather Wyrm, covering the trees as he rushed ahead while the Fish came roaring up behind.
“Go, Grandfather!” The shout tore itself from Danr’s throat before he even thought. “Go! You can do it!”
He didn’t know if Grandfather Wyrm heard him, but the wyrm seemed to speed up. The Fish careened ahead. It slammed into the left bank, recovered, and rushed on. The mountain loomed bigger. They were almost there. But Grandfather Wyrm was tiring. The Fish was catching up with him, and they had a good quarter mile to go. Moving so much earth was draining even his mighty reserves. Danr stared helplessly at him as the ship rushed closer. What—?
And then he remembered the day he had gotten his own power of the shape. Grandfather Wyrm had bitten off Danr’s hand to force Danr to change shape. He flexed his regrown hand in sympathy of that moment. His blood. Giving his blood to someone else let that person share his power. And Aisa said Danr had a lot of power.
Danr closed his right eye. Grandfather Wyrm … changed. The wyrm was still there, but deep within it was a human, a man, the shape mage Grandfather Wyrm had been before the Sundering. Danr also saw a thin golden line running from his hand to Grandfather Wyrm. Exhaling hard, Danr thrust out his hand and pushed.
Power pulsed from his hand, zipped down the line, and infused Grandfather Wyrm’s body. He paused a tiny moment and raised his head. Then he plowed forward again with renewed vigor. Sand and earth vaulted high into the air, and the Fish zipped along in its wake, pushed by the current and the remains of the tidal wave. Danr pushed more and more power, feeling the strength drain from his muscles. He went to his knees as Grandfather Wyrm boomed forward.
“Almost there!” Greenstone shouted. “A few more seconds!”
The last of Danr’s strength left him. He brought his hand down. Ahead of them, Grandfather Wyrm reached the base of the mountain. With the last of Danr’s energy, he bored around the western side and headed for the River Bal. Greenstone frantically spun the helm so the ship would follow.
“Captain!” A sailor scrambled up to the poop deck. “We’re taking on a lot of water. Cracks in the hold.”
“Get a full crew on the bilge pumps,” she snapped. “Double time!”
“You’re taking a beating,” Danr panted.
“We all are, handsome,” said Greenstone grimly.
The ship bumped and smacked its way around the mountain, slower now. Every jolt drew a grunt from Greenstone, as if the mountain were hitting her own bones. They hove fully around it and on the other side stood the biggest tree Danr had seen this side of Ashkame. It shaded the river that flowed west, and Danr also noted both the biggest Fae army the world had ever seen camped just beyond it.
Grandfather Wyrm had put on a final burst of burrowing. In moments, he would smash through the last piece of earth standing between the Sand River and the River Bal. When that happened, the water from the Bal would wash them backward. His eyes met Greenstone’s, and he knew she had the same thought.
“Go!” she said. “I’ve got the ship.”
“Aisa!” Danr shouted. “We have to get off!”
Aisa didn’t respond. Danr was so tired now he was barely able to stay upright. Frantic, he grabbed Aisa’s hand, the same hand that she had cut so she could take in Grandfather Wyrm’s blood and become a shape mage. He felt the power inside her and without thinking, he drank from it. Energy surged through him, and he felt he could leap to the sun.
The move snapped Aisa out of her trance. “Hamzu! What—?”
“Come on!” Without waiting further, he hauled her to the rail and leaped overboard with her. They went under together in the murky salt water, but when they surfaced, Aisa had changed into a dolphin wrapped in a wet cloak. The tidal wave current had slowed now to nearly nothing.
Grandfather Wyrm broke through the earthen barrier to the Otra River. Water exploded in a mountainous fountain. Aisa chirped and sped for the southern shore, opposite the tree, with Danr clinging to her back. He only barely managed
to save her cloak from floating away.
“Hold on!” he heard Greenstone bellow faintly from the ship above them.
Like opposing gladiators, the two rivers met. A snarl of waves and water thundered against Danr’s ears, and a white wall roared toward them. The Fish creaked as Greenstone frantically brought it about. Danr’s feet scraped bottom, and Aisa changed back into herself. They crawled onto the muddy shore just in time for the maelstrom to tear past them. It swept the Fish sideways back the way it had come. For the first time in a thousand years, fresh water coursed down the ancient riverbed.
With an earthshaking thud, Grandfather Wyrm flopped down onto the southern bank of the River Bal, opposite the Fae encampment and only a few yards downriver from where Aisa and Danr were sitting.
“Nice, yes,” he murmured. His golden eyes closed in sleep. With him, Danr supposed, went all hope of any help.
Aisa pulled on her sopping cloak. “That was … a fine ride, my Hamzu. Now what do we do?”
Danr pointed to a company of elves standing in consternation on the far side of the river. A flock of sprites wheeled over their heads and dashed back to the great, ugly tree. “They can’t cross the river yet, but they know we’re here.”
“I had hoped to arrive by stealth,” Aisa said. “That hope is lost now. What do we do? We only have a few hours before all this”—she gestured—“falls apart.”
As if to underscore her words, the earth shivered. Trees waved and the river splashed in wild whirlpools. The elves careened about, and several lost their balance. Grandfather Wyrm slept straight through it. Danr’s stomach tightened with desperation. Everything was falling apart—literally. The world would end in moments. How would it happen? Would everything cease to be in a blink? Perhaps the world would fall to pieces and everyone would tumble into some endless void. Or maybe everything would dissolve into sludge and muck. Gwylph didn’t seem to know or care, whatever it was. A blinding hatred overtook him. She was the center of all this. She caused all this pain and suffering to his friends, to his Aisa, and she didn’t have the slightest care. All that mattered to her was power, a power she hadn’t earned and didn’t deserve to wield. She had no heart.
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