Dawnspell

by Sarah K. L. Wilson

  “Drop me off on the bank and I’ll go the rest of the way myself,” he called to Jhinn.

  “Ha! Let’s not play this game again,” Jhinn said, rowing harder. “You know I love the adventure and you’re not leaving me behind!”

  “It looks like hell in there,” Tamerlan called through gritted teeth. It was becoming more difficult to weave through the boats on the glutted river. Every craft in the city was fleeing.

  “I’ve told you before that everything out of the water is the land of the Satan. This time you see it burning, next time you’ll think it is safe, but to me, it is always deathly dangerous.”

  How did you tell a friend to stop being so selfless in a way he would obey? He was going to have to think up a better way for next time.

  Smoke and char puffed in irregular clouds across the water as they reached the city. They had passed the last boat a moment ago – a rotting hulk that was only barely floating. But any boat was safety right now and anyone who owned one was fleeing in it. The canals ahead of them were shockingly empty. And above them, noise filled the city as people fought the fires sweeping across their city. Hopefully, more had fled by land.

  Tamerlan scanned the sky, but it was still too dark to make out the dragon unless he crossed the moon. Up there somewhere, Jingen soared through the darkness, reveling in the chaos and terror below. Up there somewhere, the dragon was plotting revenge for a thousand years of captivity.

  Tamerlan felt tension growing in his belly when they hit the first set of locks. There was no one manning them. No way for them to climb through the city via canal.

  Jhinn cursed, maneuvering the boat to where the chains and hydraulics were located in a little cabin beside the canal.

  “Go in there and raise the water level,” he said.

  “How?” Tamerlan asked.

  Jhinn shrugged.

  “Right. Land of the Satan. That’s my territory, right?” Tamerlan asked, but he leapt out and ran into the cabin immediately.

  Fortunately, the locks were made to be operated by people happy to sit and watch a canal all day. They were simple to operate and after a single false start, the water rose up to the next level.

  Tamerlan leapt from the canal edge into the gondola as Jhinn sped onward.

  “Which way?” Jhinn asked.

  “I think the clock is in the Government District,” he said.

  Think again. Who in this city worships clocks?

  And as if drawn by Lila’s words, the bells of the city began to ring the hour. Three o’clock.

  “Scratch that. Go to the Temple District,” Tamerlan said. If the Timekeepers worshiped Time, it stood to reason that they would have the clock with his avatar.

  Precisely.

  Dragon. Dragon. Dragon.

  Ram was growing louder as they passed the first burning building, a tall smokehouse in the Spice District. Just like in Xin. The dragon certainly had a favorite target. Tamerlan shivered as he watched buckets of water thrown at the spiraling flames as if that could possibly do anything to stop their rampage. Already, the roofs on either side of the smokehouse were wreathed in flame.

  He leaned over his oars and rowed, the heat of the fires searing his skin as they passed. Steam rose up off the canal in steady swirls and the gondola hissed as the wood dried in the intense heat. They were past the fire in moments, but each moment had felt like an eternity. Already, Tamerlan was slick with sweat as he fought the oars, leaping into the little cabin the moment he saw it at the next lock.

  They rose up to the Temple District, flying down the canal. Above them, long lines of Timekeepers strode down the street above them, holding bells.

  “What are they doing?” Jhinn called out as they passed the white-cloaked worshippers.

  “Spellend,” Tamerlan said. “On Spellend the Timekeepers wake up at the first hour and parade through the streets ringing bells until dawn when everyone bathes in cold water to signify the end of Dawnspell and the washing of the past to start new. Surely, you must have seen that in Jingen.”

  “Yes, but usually not when there’s a raging fire right in their district!” Jhinn pointed down the canal to where the tallest temple – a Timekeeper Cathedral burned. Only the tower was on fire – right now. The tallest spire flickered as the flame spread. How long would it take a building like that to burn? And where was this clock he was looking for?

  In front of that cathedral. That’s the Cathedral of the Clock.

  Tamerlan felt his mouth go dry.

  32: Cathedral of the Clock

  Marielle

  IF THE CITY HADN’T been in chaos when they arrived, someone might have noticed a woman being carried on a man’s back. They would have noticed that her hands and feet were tied. They would have noticed she was fighting as hard as she could to get free.

  If the city hadn’t been burning, then the Watch would have stopped Etienne – or Grandfather Timeless – or whoever this was who was carrying her through the night into the glorious city of H’yi. If the guards at the gates hadn’t been watching the sky, crossbows trained on the night, watching for the flicker of moonlight on scale, then they would have stopped them and asked questions. If the shoals of terrified people weren’t pushing out of the city like a surge of loose farm animals, desperate to escape the sound of their own slaughter, then someone would have at least noticed.

  But no one did.

  She coughed and choked on gouts of smoke, fighting against her captor. She couldn’t choke him – not with her arms pulled so far forward and held in place by one of his hands. More than once, he cuffed her in the head to make her stop fighting, but she wouldn’t stop. No one grabbed girls and tied them up for good reasons. No one was ever tied up and then brought to a cheery room full of fresh fruit and a door opening to wide fields or a secluded forest and told. ‘Just enjoy yourself and leave when you want.’ That didn’t happen.

  What did happen to girls who were grabbed and tied up was more like what she and Carnelian had found on her first patrol. Marielle had smelled what was below before they even broke down the doors in the fish market. She’d been on the side spilling her breakfast all over the street long before they dragged the bodies out of the hull of the barge that had been stowed under the fish smokers. But that hadn’t stopped her from dry heaving when Carnelian told her that some of those girls were still alive.

  She’d vowed right then that she’d never be taken alive. Better to die fighting than live to watch yourself die in some worse way. It was the waiting that she thought would be the worst part – the endless waiting knowing that death was your only way out. And yet, here she was, still alive despite fighting so hard.

  “Fight all you want,” that horrible high-pitched voice whispered to her. “It will only tire you. And I want you tired for what comes next.”

  Her belly lurched at his words, but she fought harder, biting his shoulder with her teeth until she tasted blood and thought he must be leaving a trail of it behind him. It didn’t even slow him.

  She heard bells ringing the fifth hour of the night as they pressed through thick bodies and the swishing of robes. She smelled the Temple District. The smoke of the Smudgers – mostly sage but with other additions – still hung in the air long after the practitioners had left and mixed with the dust and bronze of the Timekeepers. Religious sanctimony and a thick band of deceit colored the snatches of cobblestones and robes that she saw. She’d heard that the Timekeepers always wore white, but to her eyes, they wore pride like a violet robe and deceit like a greeny-yellow scarf. She almost gagged on the thick emotions of this place. At the height of Dawnspell when all of the rest of the Dragonblood Plains were cleansing themselves, the Temple District stank like midden with rotten power and misused souls.

  She gagged and her captor hurried his steps.

  Smoke tinged the air – just buildings so far. No humans. Not yet. But if the heat she felt – the heat slicking her body in sweat and making her mouth dry as paper – was anything to judge by, then soon t
he fires would be worse, and then people would die.

  Anyone with sense should be fleeing the city, not forcing their way to the heart of it. Not ringing their bells like mindless drones in love with their own magnificence more than life.

  Her captor fumbled with something and then her legs were free, hanging down, frozen with the stiffness of being immobilized for so long. He spun her around to the front of him, her arms still bound around his neck. She clenched her jaw, willing life into her legs. This was her chance to get free. He’d know she was hampered by pain and frozen limbs and think she was helpless. She could take advantage of that.

  Her fate looked at her with grim analysis from only inches away as she stomped her feet, trying to bring back feeling. Oddly, the expression suited Etienne. Even taken over by this spirit, the sharp look was in his eyes and the careful tactical judgment he always exercised painted his expression. His emotions were a terrible tangle. On the one hand, there was a surge of ambition and exultation. On the other hand, a squirming discomfort and shame – as if he were two men in one, fighting for the tiller of his soul.

  “The city is in flames,” she said. “Whatever you are trying to do can’t take precedence over the dragon. He needs to be stopped.”

  Etienne laughed and the laugh sounded nothing like him – as if he were opening his mouth while someone else stood behind him and made the sound.

  “Tamerlan said you stole Abelmeyer’s Eye,” Marielle said. “Can’t you use it to stop the dragon?”

  Etienne leaned in, the huge ruby around his neck slipping out of his shirt for a moment before he tucked it back in. He was close to her height and it was surprising that his wiry frame had carried her so far and so quickly – as if the strength from within was overriding all his body’s limits.

  “Who says I want to stop it?” he asked, his eyes glittering in the glow of firelight.

  He lifted her arms, slipping his head out from between them.

  She didn’t hesitate. She began to run the second his head was out from between her arms. She was awkward with her hands tied, but she shoved every ounce of energy into her strides. She barely made it four steps before something tangled in her long hair, wrenching her backward. She cried out, fighting against the hand, but it buried deeper, yanking her neck sharply to one side and then forcing her in front of him.

  She dropped to her knees. She wouldn’t make this easy for him.

  “I don’t need you to walk. It’s not my pretty hair that will be torn out by the roots.”

  He strode forward, dragging her by her hair as she screamed. She shoved her bound hands forward and managed to flip back up onto her feet, stumbling to keep up as he forced her up a long, shallow flight of marble stairs.

  “The Cathedral of the Clock!” a man gasped as he flew by. “We’re going to lose it!”

  Feet few up and down the steps as people rushed with buckets in hand and soot smeared across their faces and clothing. Droplets of water flew from the edges of the water-soaked rags that clung to their faces, framing their desperate eyes. For once in her life, Marielle was not the one with her face wrapped against the onslaught.

  “It’s aflame! The dragon set it on fire!”

  “Oh, sweet Legends!” a voice gasped.

  “The history of H’yi!” another moaned. “The glory of our people!”

  None of them noticed Marielle being forced to her knees as they reached the top of the steps before the looming white Cathedral of the Clock. She knew this place immediately. Would have known it from the description alone even if she hadn’t heard the worried cries.

  Marielle craned her neck to look upward past the soaring face of the cathedral, the carefully set glass panels of the stained glass, the domed roof swirling with flame and the spire sticking up from the top like the stamen from a crimson flower. Ashes as wide as her palm, still cherry red, drifted down from the sky.

  “Wha ... wha ... wha ...” she tried to say, but it came out as stuttering because through the crowd she smelled overpowering magic laced with so much fear and horror that she couldn’t seem to think. Terror swirled in the air in wide, raw, red ribbons as fear crackled along the edges and shattered her nose with vinegar and acid.

  “My worshippers,” Grandfather Timeless said with delight, forcing her forward to the front of the cathedral where before the entrance stood a soaring grandfather clock. Its base was rooted here in front of the wide double doors of the cathedral, a pendulum there – but not there – flickering with ghostly blue light and then back to a frizzling smoke as it swung ponderously back and forth behind the glass.

  The clock was not on fire like everything else. It was almost as if it wasn’t entirely in this world. As if it couldn’t catch fire.

  Marielle shivered, remembering the bonging domed clock at the Seven Suns Palace. It had spelled her doom. But this one – this one felt worse.

  Gleaming in white marble, the clock soared toward the sky. Its face and moondial were wrought of stained glass and stood as high as the peak of the cathedral. It’s finials and planton nearly reached to the top of the cathedral’s dome.

  “The Clock of Ages,” Grandfather Timeless said and in his mouth, it sounded like a curse.

  The marble of the case was intricately carved with the protective wings of angels and the flowers of a hundred gardens but weaving between the flowers and wings was black wrought iron that looked horrifically like a cage. It crackled and popped with electric turquoise and the smell of magic was so strong around it that Marielle swayed under the power of it.

  There – but not there at the same time – through the glass of the lower door, a ghostly figure flicked in and out of life whenever the pendulum crossed its silhouette. Crackling sparks and flowing blue power sparked at that point before the figure faded again from view. He appeared to be frozen – stuck in one terrible pose with a single hand lifted pleadingly for all of time.

  It was a surreal object – so heavenly – and yet not. And with the fires swirling behind it as worshipful Timekeepers in flowing robes rushed to douse the flames, it looked for all the world like a space between heaven and hell.

  Marielle never wanted to hear another clock.

  Never.

  At least this one wasn’t spelling out her doom.

  “How many seconds are there in a thousand years, Marielle?” Etienne purred in her ear. His voice was smooth, but his emotions were a tangle of frantic excitement and desperate terror. Behind the clock, there was a loud crack as part of the dome of the Cathedral of the Clock caved in. “How many fractions of a second? I feel every one. I experience every single one. In stasis. I know the end of every story, the lie behind every truth. Nothing can surprise me. There is no joy left undiscovered, no brighter future tomorrow, no blessed sleep to clear the mind. No forgetfulness to mend the shattered heart. There is only the long, slow, infinite march of time, the watching as each piece goes exactly as it must, exactly as it is planned to go, never outside the tolerances or the boundaries. Endless sameness forever and ever, world without end.”

  He laid a hand on the clock, and the turquoise lightning flowed to meet his hand from the other side.

  “At last,” he said and Marielle thought that she could almost hear singing from inside the clock as if it were calling to him.

  A ray of dawn light hit the stained glass clock face, gleaming and filtering through to the burning dome behind it, warped by the heat of the flame.

  “My suffering is over!” Etienne said and it was like a prayer. He turned to her, beaming with joy. “And yours has just begun.”

  Spellend

  Day Four of Dawnspell

  33: Grandfather Timeless

  Tamerlan

  “COME ON, COME ON!” Jhinn said, pulling the gondola up to the edge of the canal while Tamerlan lit his roll-up with a shaking hand from the flame in the lantern hanging from the ferro.

  He shouldn’t be doing this. It was going to be a disaster. He shouldn’t be tempting fate by calling on forces he
didn’t understand, but these few fires were only the beginning. If he didn’t find a way to get Abelmeyer’s Eye from whatever Legend was controlling Etienne – likely Grandfather Timeless – then there wouldn’t be any way to stop that dragon before it finished torching H’yi.

  Besides, Etienne had Marielle. And Tamerlan was the one who had asked her to come with him here. He was responsible for her. He’d told her he would keep her safe, that all she needed to do was track the magic. And he hadn’t protected her from being snatched from under his nose.

  Why are you doubting this now? Lila asked. You need us. You can’t let the Fatemaker make your fate.

  Maybe he wasn’t here to free his avatar. Maybe he’d gone somewhere else.

  You underestimate the power that the draw of freedom has over a man, Deathless Pirate interjected. Freedom is the greatest treasure.

  Okay, it was time to do this if he was going to, or he’d lose his chance to do anything about this mess. He needed to smoke now and hope he’d be taken by a friendly Legend and not a horrific one.

  “Come on!” Jhinn called.

  Please, not Maid Chaos. Please, not Maid Chaos.

  With trembling hands, he brought the roll up to his lips as cries for bucket chains broke out around him.

  “It’s in the cathedral roof!”

  “Dragon’s spit!”

  “Legends preserve us! Not the Cathedral of the Clock!”

  They were dipping the buckets down on ropes into the canal, nearly smacking Jhinn’s gondola as they threw them in without looking or thinking.

  The first ray of dawn sparkled through the empty spaces between the temples and shrines around the canal as he drew in a long, lingering breath of smoke.

  Please, not Maid Chaos.

  Another puff. And then another, shuddering through his lungs as he hoped and prayed he wasn’t making another disastrous mistake.