Dawnspell

by Sarah K. L. Wilson

  The ray of sun disappeared. The voices around him quieted.

  Tamerlan looked up to see the light-colored belly-scales of a dragon skimming over them. His breath caught in his throat as the spire of the Cathedral of the Clock crunched and folded, raining to the ground in pieces as the dragon’s belly skimmed the Temple District.

  He didn’t have time to breathe out before his consciousness was taken over by a familiar Legend.

  Hi, pretty man. Looks like it’s us again.

  There was a strange sensation as if Tamerlan’s insides were being pulled out through his nose and ears and then pain shot through him. Lila’s voice was gone and another voice – this one deep and manly – filled his mind.

  What madness is this?

  He stumbled. What happened to Lila?

  She is not the hero for this time. Or this place. I sense one of the five dragons.

  Yes! And it was attacking H’yi!

  Disaster! We will stop this dragon.

  Tamerlan almost sagged with relief. He’d lucked into a Legend willing to help!

  It wasn’t luck. I have taken the reins. This shouldn’t be left to peasants and apprentices. The fate of the cities lies in your hands. The future of nations.

  Yes!

  We must find the Eye.

  It was with Grandfather Timeless.

  His body froze.

  The Grandfather has Abelmeyer’s Eye?

  Yes!

  My amulet has been taken by the Fatemaker? Dragon’s blood in a pot! This is disaster!

  Could that really be King Abelmeyer in his mind? Tamerlan’s mental eyes were wide with surprise as his body leapt off the gondola racing up the steps, dodging buckets and fire brigade chains. He ducked under a slopping pail. Clutching his sword scabbard to keep it from catching on anything.

  They were rushing toward the cathedral. The roof was alight with flame. Long tendrils of orange flame like a blossoming flower licked down the sides of the cathedral as the fire spread. And there, in front of the building stood a massive clock. Wings formed the pediments and the tips of their feathers the finials. It glowed with power, the hands whirling around the face of the clock as if time had gone mad.

  It has gone mad! The Fatemaker is here! Many are the tales of the Grandfather, feared among fates, hated by mortals. He steals joy, crumbles power, cripples even the strongest man, and steals the beauty of the fairest of maids. He is cruel and indiscriminate in his ravages across the earth.

  King Abelmeyer sped through the crowds, not bothering to stop or look when a blow from his shoulder accidentally sent one man spinning over the rail and into the canal.

  No time for that! There is a dragon in the sky and the Fatemaker stands before the clock that we built to keep him at bay!

  Wait. The clock was built for Grandfather Timeless?

  How else do you harness time? How else do you slice it up into tiny pieces and whittle down its power? You must contain it somehow. Analysis is the death of power. Close monitoring can bring down even the most energetic of foes.

  Interesting. Abelmeyer was drawing his sword – a dangerous thing to do in streets so full of bodies. His gaze was on the sky, watching as the head of the dragon spun around and flamed something in the distance – something that looked like the Palace in the center of the Government District.

  The Palace of the Nine Blossoms. A beautiful place. I drew up the plans for it myself.

  Was there anything he hadn’t done?

  I was unable to find a way to bind the dragons permanently. Their binding must be renewed every year. In blood.

  Yeah. And that was a problem.

  All good things require sacrifice. And we always pay with our lives.

  But it wasn’t him who was paying. It was innocent girls.

  It was our blood debt. It was our tithe – the promise of the Dragonblooded to defend the world from what we wrought.

  We?

  They pushed past a woman hefting a yoke with two buckets dangling from chains and the moment they were past her, Tamerlan saw up the long steps to the foot of the Grandfather Clock.

  Marielle! He’d found her!

  Etienne held her by the hair, but she lunged forward, biting him. Way to go!

  He ripped something from his neck. It glittered red in the sun.

  “No!” Abelmeyer bellowed, racing forward, sword brandished high in the air. Tamerlan felt himself screaming with the King, his heart racing as the fires burned all around them in the streets and the smoke blurred their vision with puffs of acrid black.

  By the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, Etienne had grabbed one of her hands, slicing it with his knife and pressing it to the base of the clock.

  The lower door of the Clock of Ages opened with a rock-on-rock scraping squeal. It stood three stories high and as the door opened, the lightning around the pendulum sped up so that it arced up and down the pendulum at an alarming rate.

  Time seemed to freeze and suddenly movement was painfully slow.

  Abelmeyer fought it, his feet desperately trying to climb against the frozen air.

  “Nooooot,” he said, the word slowly squeezing from his lungs.

  Etienne – unaffected by the frozen time – slung the chain suspending the Eye over Marielle’s head as her eyes widened with horror.

  “Thhhhhheeee,” Abelmeyer said, leaping higher and freezing in the air as he tried to take the steps three at a time.

  Etienne dragged Marielle to her feet. Her mouth was frozen in an “O” shape and her body seemed to drag against frozen time while Etienne’s movements were easy and free. Something dropped from her hand, hanging frozen in the air. It glowed yellow for a moment.

  “Eyyyyyyyeeee!” Abelmeyer finished, landing on the top step in slow motion.

  Etienne’s eyes flashed with delight at the sight of Tamerlan. With a cruel smile, he placed his hand on Marielle’s frozen chest and pushed her into the clock.

  Etienne froze the second she stumbled through the door. She was the one moving quickly now, her bindings falling off, her scream piercing the silence as she fell into the depths of the lightning-filled clock and the pendulum passed through her body. She flickered. Frozen. Turned white and translucent, frozen in screaming horror.

  A translucent figure stepped out from the exact place she was standing. An old man, beard long, top hat and coat meticulously kept. As he strode past the door of the clock, he began to pick up color – pale at first and then darkening by hue so that by the time he reached Etienne, seizing him by the collar and dragging him from the door, he was almost fully opaque.

  Full, bright color flashed into the old man’s reddened face and rheumy eyes. The yellow thing Marielle had been holding dropped to the ground and Etienne stumbled forward and fell down the steps.

  Time had returned.

  A moment too late.

  34: Pendulum

  Marielle

  MARIELLE COULDN’T MOVE. She couldn’t catch her breath. She felt her arms and legs frozen in place as she flickered in an out of the clock. When she was in the clock, she could see the world beyond it – the flames of the burning city. Tamerlan – face certain and noble – brandishing a huge sword as he lunged toward The Grandfather.

  When she was not in the clock she was floating through space – not human at all – she was time personified. She made the grass grow and the seconds tick by. She watched the sun rise and fall and the moon wax and wane.

  Human.

  Not human.

  Human.

  Not human.

  It was becoming hard to remember who she was at all.

  Had it been seconds or hours or years?

  Who could even know?

  35: Abelmeyer’s Eye

  Tamerlan

  KING ABELMEYER SWUNG his sword, a devastating overhand strike toward Grandfather Timeless. Tamerlan felt his mental teeth gritting against the blow. But the sword plunged through his ethereal body, sweeping out the other side and sending Tamerlan tottering fo
rward, off balance.

  “I’m not all the way here, yet!” Grandfather Time screeched. “You can’t – ”

  Abelmeyer reached out, grabbing the Legend by his golden waistcoat and pulling him in close so he could speak right into his face.

  “What comes out can go back in,” he said, fist quivering with emotion. “That clock is your prison, and your term is not yet served.”

  The man cackled. “I broke the binding when I put a substitute in the clock. To put me back, you’d need to bind me again. And what will you bind me with? The Eye is on her neck!”

  “If I take it off,” Abelmeyer growled, “I can use it to bind you.”

  “And let that dragon go free?” the Grandfather’s eyes twinkled. He found this amusing? Playing with the fates of innocents?

  Of course, he does. He’s the villain in this story.

  How did Abelmeyer know?

  He’s one of the villains in every story. Tell me, boy. What can steal your love and happiness? Only time and death. He paused. I can only bind one thing at a time with my Eye and if I use it to bind him again, the dragon will go free.

  “It was never in your nature to let cities burn,” the Grandfather said, slipping out of Abelmeyer’s hold and leaping away. Abelmeyer swiped for him, but he was too fast. He scrambled down the steps, leaping over Etienne as the Lord Mythos was still recovering, his head in his hands, blood flowing from bite marks down his arm.

  With a roar of frustration, Abelmeyer spun, cutting Tamerlan’s palm on the tip of his own sword and pressing his palm to the clock.

  You are Dragonblooded. I feel your blood pulsing in your veins. It sings to me.

  A horrifying thought.

  We offer your blood to keep the clock door open a few moments longer.

  Would that free her? Would it free Marielle?

  Nothing can free her now. She is the substitute. You can’t trade her for another person, only for the true thing - the Grandfather.

  Then why hadn’t the Grandfather kept the Eye? Why leave it here?

  He can’t use it again. He doesn’t have what it requires, so he leaves it here to delay us.

  Abelmeyer stepped inside the clock, sword still raised.

  Marielle flickered into view and then flickered away again like the flame of a candle flickering – frozen in a horrified scream. Tamerlan’s heart froze in his chest, his breath catching. He couldn’t leave her like that. Not Marielle. She was the best of them all, the most worthy of life.

  Not Marielle!

  Abelmeyer snatched the Eye from around her neck and stepped back but Tamerlan reached out with his hand to stroke the side of her face and Abelmeyer let him. One flickering caress and then she was gone again. He felt a lurch in his chest.

  He couldn’t leave her like this.

  Abelmeyer spun them around and leapt back out of the clock, letting the door close behind him. The door of the clock shut with the finality of a sepulchre.

  No! They couldn’t leave her! Tamlerlan shook himself mentally. It wasn’t leaving Marielle – not forever. They had to get to the Grandfather and bind him with the Eye.

  People were stumbling up the steps now as the fire in the Church of the Clock claimed more of the ancient building. The dome collapsed in a roar behind them as a priest stumbled forward, falling to his knees beside them, his eyes on the clock.

  “He wasn’t supposed to actually be real,” he said, his voice hollow.

  “Then why did you worship him?” Abelmeyer spat. Why was he wasting time? They needed to run through the crowd. They needed to chase the Grandfather!

  It’s never the wrong time to set someone straight.

  Etienne was also on his feet, climbing the steps in a daze. Tamerlan recognized that lost look. He’d seen it in the mirror.

  Etienne sounded numb as he spoke. “He was supposed to help me set time backward. We were going to restore Jingen. Return to a time before the dragon rose up.”

  Abelmeyer glanced up at the face of the clock. The hands had returned to normal, ticking the minutes and seconds at their normal speed.

  “Things that happen, stay happened,” he said grimly. “There are no second chances.”

  “We need to get her out of the clock,” Etienne said, his voice catching. “I never meant ... I thought ...”

  “No,” Abelmeyer said quietly. “The Eye can only bind one thing at a time.”

  Tamerlan reached down and picked up the yellow thing she had been holding. A single shell. Abelmeyer let him have that much control. Let him put it in his pouch. Let him shed a single tear before he spoke again with Tamerlan’s voice.

  “The clock has her now. She can only come out if she is replaced by the Grandfather again.”

  “Then we chase him down,” Etienne said grimly.

  Of course they would. They would put him back in the clock!

  Abelmeyer looked up to the sky where the dragon wheeled again. Around them, screams filled the air. The fires were spreading. Buildings were collapsing. Flames wreathed the city as the buckets of water were no longer enough.

  Abelmeyer’s voice roared through his mind. You’d let the dragon burn these innocents to save one person? You’d trade all their lives for hers?

  Horror gripped Tamerlan’s heart. That was the choice he made last time – though he didn’t know it at the time. That was the burden he already bore. Marielle had said it was the wrong decision. She’d said he shouldn’t have saved her. And he already had thousands of lives to atone for.

  And yet – and yet he wanted to do it all again. He wanted to free her from the clock.

  He wanted to, but he couldn’t.

  With a wrench that shook him to the core, he pulled his gaze away, looking to the sky where the dragon was just a silhouette across the sun. From this height at the Temple District, he saw it wheeling over the farm fields to the south-east where the Cerulean parted into the North and South branches.

  Jingen had to be stopped. Whatever it took.

  Good boy. And now we will require a little more of your blood, hmm?

  “We will choose the dragon,” he said aloud as if the declaration was needed.

  Abelmeyer threw the chain over his neck, letting the Eye fall to his chest. This close, the flaw in the stone did look like an eye winking at him.

  It was my eye before I gave it up for this purpose.

  The thought of that made Tamerlan’s stomach heave.

  Sacrifice. To use it, a similar sacrifice will be required of you.

  Wait.

  No.

  No, no, no!

  Realization of what King Abelmeyer meant filled him immediately.

  If you want to use the eye, you have to give an eye.

  No!

  Panic shot up through him like icy daggers, sinking into his spine, his heart, his brain.

  Does this mean you have changed your mind?

  He shook himself. He had so much to redeem himself for. No sacrifice was too great ... was it?

  “I’ll do it.” He’d been allowed his own voice to say those words, though it quavered with fear even as he said them.

  Would the King gouge it out right here and now? Would he do it with the sword? Plunge it into Tamelerlan’s eye and –?

  His thoughts cut off as the vision from one of his eyes winked out, like a blown out candle. He gasped.

  It’s magic. You won’t have to lose the physical eye. Not like I did.

  Half of his sight was gone.

  And just like that, the far-away dragon dropped from the sky.

  Around him, the breath in a thousand throats caught as the people of the city watched the dragon fall in the golden light of morning. He hit the earth so hard that the city shook beneath their feet, the half-burned buildings around them collapsing with a boom.

  Earth and vegetation shot up into the air around the fallen dragon and Tamerlan felt an ache in his chest as he saw the dragon fall.

  It had worked.

  H’yi was saved – mostly.
<
br />   There would still be fires to put out. Still rebuilding to accomplish. But most of the city still stood, and the dragon did not. How long would he sleep?

  With what I’ve done? As long as he is bound by the Eye. Keep it close.

  He tucked it into his shirt, carefully hiding it from sight.

  As his hand left the chain, he felt the Legend fade from his mind.

  With a choked cry, Tamerlan slumped against the clock, his forehead against the glass. He’d made the right choice, hadn’t he? This time he’d made the right choice.

  Then why did it feel like the wrong one? Why did it feel like he’d sold Marielle’s soul and his along with it?

  The vision of his single eye was making him dizzy. He closed it, gritting his teeth and hammering at the door, but all the blood of his hands did not open the door. Not even when he beat against it until every knuckle was a bloody pulp and the tracks of his blood ran down the front of the clock like spatters of rain.

  Maybe it needed Grandfather Timeless there, too. But now he had nothing to bind the Legend with and no way to free Marielle.

  Tears tracked down his face as he screamed her name, battering the door of the clock with his fists.

  Epilogue

  Tamerlan

  “TAMERLAN,” A GENTLE voice said eventually, pulling him away from the clock. “I don’t think you can get in that way.”

  The Lord Mythos sounded tired as he pulled Tamerlan away and helped him sit on the edge of the stairs.

  “You chose the dragon,” he said and there was no emotion in his dead voice as he said. “I would have done the same thing.”

  Tamerlan choked down a sob. He wanted to smoke again and let a Legend take him, but there was never a happy ending when they did.

  “I don’t have bandages here,” Etienne said after a while. They were both still bleeding – Tamerlan from the wound on his hand. Etienne from the bites on his arm. “Let’s find you somewhere safe. Did the boy with the gondola come with you?”

  “Yes,” Tamerlan said weakly, turning his head to look at the clock. Everything looked strange through just one eye.