“What will you do with him when you find him?” he asked.
Perhaps, if Queen Mer’s people were still here once all the dragons had been freed – perhaps it would be best to give them Tamerlan. He was far past saving now. And the plains would need to be free of madmen and villains to rebuild and find hope again. He would sacrifice anything for that. His own life – and the lives of all others.
“There is a prophecy. We are bound by it. And bound by secrecy,” the Ki’Squall said.
Etienne turned his gaze upward. Nothing had fallen among them in a few moments. Perhaps the dragon was departing.
Yes. He swallowed down bile as he watched the mud-coated underbelly. The dragon swam through the sky to the northwest. He was already heading to the portal – he and all the helpless victims who had been unable to flee their city before it became their tomb.
“How convenient,” he said dryly, wrenching his gaze from the horrific creature. It had never been intended for their world. But its removal was as painful as the removal of an organ.
The Ki’squall’s gaze turned to the departing dragon and his throat bobbed as he swallowed down his own reaction.
His eyes turned bright and furious as he spoke, “He will open the Bridge, and in that day, it is only the Heir of Mer who may close it again. In retribution, the heir of Queen Mer will lay waste to the Legends and return the dragons to their place and they will be quelled forever, their fury kept at bay for all eternity. That’s the prophecy, man of dust. Listen and be warned.”
He turned, calling for those who still lived to follow him and rode toward Choan.
Etienne flexed his fingers, wishing – as he had a thousand times before – that he still had access to the magic of Jingen – or even just the power of a city at his back. He felt oddly vulnerable. And vulnerability was the one thing he could not afford.
15: From Depths to Heights
Marielle
Marielle woke to pain in her lungs. She coughed violently, trying to rein it in. She failed. Coughs bent her double, tensing her whole body and clenching her eyes and fists shut. Between smoke inhaled, water inhaled, and someone trying to strangle her to death, her lungs had been through too much. Could they survive long enough to end this?
Strong arms held her as she coughed again, waiting until the agony of it subsided long enough to open her eyes.
“There you are, sweet Marielle,” Tamerlan said, gently stroking her face. He looked rakish with the black patch over his eye. “You’re with us. You’re safe.”
“Where are we?” she gasped.
“Still at sea. Jhinn is trying to navigate the rubble of Xin so he can bring us to Yan,” Tamerlan said.
She struggled to sit, but he put a hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t sit up, Marielle,” his tone was dark. “There are things in the water you’d rather not see. Better to rest.”
But she knew what he meant. When Jingen fell it had been him feverish in the bottom of the boat while she navigated between the bloated bodies of the dead and the floating rubble of what had once been their lives.
A pain – sudden and intense – seared her chest and her hand reached for the Windrose automatically. She hadn’t felt a burst of pain from that since the Harbingers had tried to call her from on the dragon’s back.
“My Windrose,” she gasped, ripping her cloak and shirt aside to look at her chest. A flare of light greeted her. Tamerlan’s face was bright in the glow of it, his concern painted across his face as plain as the sun in the sky.
“They’re calling you again.”
“But who? The only ones who knew I had this mark are dead!”
He shook his head, but the pain intensified. It was tugging her toward something.
“I need to go that way,” she said, pointing north.
“To Xin?” Tamerlan’s brow wrinkled. “The city is gone, Marielle.”
“No,” she gasped. Even talking hurt. “Further north.”
She felt Tamerlan’s kiss to her brow, but she saw Jhinn’s drawn expression. He looked worried. His mouth opened and closed a few times as Tamerlan murmured to her, “Of course.”
“Not ‘of course’,” Jhinn interrupted. “It’s a bad idea, Marielle. We should go to Yan first. We can talk to your mother there. It’s the easier avatar to find.” He shot a wary glance at Tamerlan. “There’s no point trying to hide what we’re doing from Tamerlan anymore. He knows.”
She tried to nod, but the pain was too much. Instead, she settled for gripping Tamerlan’s hand in both of hers and squeezing as hard as she could.
“I think she’s in a lot of pain.” Tamerlan’s voice was always calm and steady. So strange when she remembered that he was fighting a never-ending internal battle. “I have a feeling that she has no choice in the matter.”
Sweat broke out across her forehead.
“We all have choices,” Jhinn said, his voice rough. “What we did back there was a choice. People died. People suffer right now – a lot more than Marielle is suffering – as a result of what we did.”
“Sure,” Tamerlan said, placating him now. “But you have to go to Choan eventually, right? You have to deal with the Admiral.”
“The Admiral is on our side. We should leave him until the end. He can help you as an ally inside your own mind.”
Tamerlan tensed at that and Marielle longed to look in his eye, but her own eye was squeezed shut. She could hardly think, her breath coming in gasps as they sped away from the pull when all she needed with all her being was to speed toward it.
“You don’t know what a Legend wants until it tries to spend your soul to have it. The Admiral might have fought for us in the past, but that doesn’t make him our ally,” Tamerlan said grimly.
“He’s more your ally than Lila is. I hear the threats she breathes in your ear. Even now she is telling you how she will make you dance to her tune as soon as you have the Admiral and Ram destroyed. She says the crown is hidden where no one will ever find it and so she will always possess you.”
“Sometimes I forget that you can hear them, too.” Tamerlan’s voice was both regretful and oddly grateful.
“Please,” Marielle gasped. She hadn’t meant to. She wasn’t in control of herself anymore. She shook with tremors from deep in her core, heat washing over her making her muscles like liquid.
“Every Legend is a threat, Jhinn,” Tamerlan said gently. “Perhaps it would be best to go to Choan and deal with the Admiral first.”
There was a long silence where Marielle could hear nothing but her boots bumping against the hull as she shook, Tamerlan’s comforting shushing sounds and the whirr of Jhinn’s pedal-powered motor. And then he finally spoke. He sounded almost painfully serious.
“Etienne thought we should kill you to destroy their access to this world. Marielle thought you could help instead. Tamerlan, you are my friend and closer than a brother. I do not see the Legends as the threat that Marielle and Etienne do and I never have. Which is why this whole ... thing ... with them has been I don’t know, hazy. It’s been hazy to me. These people of the plains are not my people. I’ve never really cared about them – they’re the dead. Not a part of life. But it turns out that the dragons are a part of it. I care about them. I must see them free. And though you are like a brother to me, things changed when I learned the great truth.”
“Meaning that you’ll kill me yourself if you need to in order to open the water between worlds for your people,” Tamerlan replied. Marielle’s eyes shot open with his words.
“Yes.”
“I accept that.”
“Please,” she begged again, but now she didn’t know if she were begging for herself or Tamerlan or someone else.
“Kill me, if you must, Jhinn,” Tamerlan said quietly. “But you can’t go on the land. And Marielle is in too much pain to go on land for you unless we take her where she wants to go. So, either we take her north and you trust her to do the right thing or we keep going east and then you’ll have to trust
me.”
Jhinn grunted. And then the boat turned in the water and Marielle felt a momentary lessening of the pain as they changed course.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Tamerlan,” Jhinn said. “It’s just that it’s not always you that I’m dealing with. And I heard what Lila just said. I know that she will kill me if she can.”
Tamerlan shuddered at Jhinn’s words, but he drew Marielle in closer so that she could cling to him as she rode the waves of pain that rippled through her chest as the noose around it drew her ever northward.
“As long as I think with my own mind and feel with my own heart, I am yours, Marielle,” he whispered. Devotion radiated off him in ripples of daisy scented pearl that laced itself around his golden scent and seemed to almost root itself within him so that all she could smell was his firm commitment as she clung to consciousness. “I will keep you as safe as I can and help you as much as I can until the Legends finally take me and Jhinn or Etienne or you must slay me.”
She moaned, the pain too much to speak – not just physical pain anymore, but the emotional pain his words brought. There had to be some way to do this that didn’t mean his death. There just had to be.
She drifted in and out of reality, feeling his kisses on her forehead in her conscious moments as he kept her close.
Memories of diving deep, deep, under the sea with Jhinn, surfaced. She remembered the gleam of treasures within the Pirate’s cave. She remembered the way they’d fought the sea to shatter his avatar, the form of its hardened flesh crumbling like broken coral in their hands as they wrenched it from the cage.
But this time when she pulled it apart, the avatar wore Tamerlan’s face.
This time, when she sucked in water and nearly drowned, she sucked in bits and pieces of what was left of him.
“It’s okay, Marielle,” she heard him croon to her. “You will do what you must, and I will help you. My dying breath will be yours.”
She saw herself killing him in her mind’s eye, her hands wrapped around his throat, her knife slicing into his skin, her sword piercing his heart. And each time she saw herself kill him, a new wound ripped across her soul.
There just had to be some other way.
16: Touch of Queen Mer
Tamerlan
Strangely, Choan had changed very little considering it was occupied by invaders from across the ocean. It was clear at once that it was occupied, but the buildings and structures remained mostly intact. Ships still sailed in and out of the harbor. Guards were posted at the gates.
There was, however, an orderly but steady stream of small craft leaving the city packed to the rails with people.
Jhinn’s gondola was stopped by a family boat with a blustering man at the helm.
“Ho there, Waverunner!” he called to Jhinn.
“I see you, brother.”
“Change course, boy!” the man said with a friendly smile. “Haven’t you heard the news from Jhinn of Jingen? We had a boat come to the city from Xin only yesterday. The Waverunner piloting it told us he’d heard word from this Jhinn that all the stories and prophecies have been made true. Our faith is complete. We set course upriver to the mountains to join the great waters of beyond!”
“Then I wish you well,” Jhinn said and Tamerlan shared a smile with him. The word was spreading.
Fools! They join the dragons to their own doom. Ram’s mutterings were almost constant now.
Cold instantly filled him. Unless all the dragons were freed, all these people would have their hopes and faith dashed on the rocks of the mountain city. And right now, the hopes of that were looking grimmer. Marielle had lost consciousness hours ago and he could barely keep the Legends at bay. They had kept him awake all night breathing threats in his ears and when he had nearly drifted off to sleep, Lila had tried to take his body – and nearly succeeded. It had taken all his efforts to beat her back and now he didn’t dare drift off again, not even for a moment.
And how long do you think that will last? Everyone must sleep.
Her mental voice caressed him, as if she could lull him to sleep with her words.
I can wait, and I will. You are no Legend, only a boy. And a boy who will give in eventually. You think you are winning because you have destroyed avatars, but haven’t you noticed that with every one you destroy, the ones who remain become stronger? We no longer need you to smoke to open the Bridge. We can take you and hold you against your will. And that was before Deathless Pirate was gone. Now, when you lose concentration for even a moment, even to sleep, we have the chance to grab you. And that’s with three of us still remaining. What will happen when there are two? Or one?
Her laughter sent jagged spikes of fear through every part of him, but he didn’t dare surrender to it. Not now. Not ever.
He’d just have to stay awake. For as long as possible.
A pair of guards stopped them. They wore only voluminous trousers and carried harpoons, their stony gazes unmoving. Their bare chests were so covered in tattoos that he couldn’t tell what color their skin was. Coastlines bled into strange birds and flowers and even monuments and curling waves.
“By order of Admiral Black Sails, no new travelers are to be allowed into the city. Full evacuation has been ordered,” the nearest one said, his face – dark with the scrawl of tattoos – was unreadable.
“We have to get in,” Tamerlan protested. “Can we speak to this Admiral Black Sails?”
“No.”
“Can we speak to your commander?”
One of the guards chuckled. “Our Ki’squall does not speak to riff-raff. Be gone with you and be glad you’ve had warning. Did you spy the ruins of the other city as you passed? It lifted up into the air and flew. If this city does the same, you’ll be entreating the Legends to favor me for what I’ve done for you today.”
Marielle moaned and Tamerlan clutched her tighter to his chest. A magical glow shone from her coat – glowing brighter the closer they came to the city until they arrived at this gate.
“She was marked by your people,” Tamerlan said softly, gently pulling back the collar of her coat to show the marks. He’d traced those marks with a finger only a few nights ago. They’d been nothing more than a beautiful decoration then. Now, they seared her skin in lines of glowing agony. “And the mark draws her here. Surely, you can let her in.”
The guard leaned over the boat, studying the glowing tattoo before he grunted and turned to his fellow guard.
“I’ll go report to the Ki’squall,” the other guard said stiffly. Both of them looked at Marielle like you might look at a cat who started speaking in the human tongue. He trotted away down the lip of the canal almost before he was done speaking.
“What is her name?” the remaining guard asked.
“Marielle Valenspear. Do you know why her tattoo is causing her so much pain?”
“Deep calls to deep. The sea calls in her debt. This happens sometimes.”
The sea was calling in her debt? That didn’t sound good. They had enough trouble on their heels already. Concern ripped at him as he watched her but just as suddenly a stab of someone else’s thoughts shot through him and his fingers turned leaden. It was all he could do to shove the specter back, his shoulders and head drooping at the effort.
Next time you will be mine, Ram said in his mind, firm and confident.
They were eroding him moment by moment, but he didn’t dare give in.
He clutched Marielle to his breast, as the sweat formed on his brow. To my last breath, Marielle, I am yours. To the last flare of thought in my mind. To the last drop of blood in my veins.
You’re a fool. You gamble the lives of thousands on one transitory love. How many died when Xin rose in the air? It didn’t have to be that way. You could have let the dragon sleep. You could have let Deathless Pirate live on. You’re both instruments of wickedness and the downfall of nations.
He didn’t know when he started shaking or how long he crouched in the bow of the gondola waiting for
the Ki’squall while he trembled and fought to keep sane.
It was growing dark when Jhinn crouched down beside him.
“Do you want something to drink?”
“Hmmm?” His heart was racing. Could you have a heart attack from fighting within?
“I have water.” Jhinn’s eyes squinted as they assessed him.
“Trying to see if you have to kill me yet?” Tamerlan asked dryly. “It’s not time yet, my friend. But we should give some water to Marielle.”
Jhinn grunted. “We should probably tie you up, but I think the guards would find that suspicious.”
They’d been stashed to the side as they awaited the Ki’squall.
Jhinn brought the waterskin and Tamerlan gently let some water trickle down his finger and into Marielle’s dry lips. She sucked at his finger as he dribbled a little more past her lush lips, but he was worried about her. How bad was the pain if it kept her unconscious? He smoothed her hair back and wiped her brow. She wasn’t looking well. Why put this mark on her and waste her like this?
He looked up at the wall with fury pulsing through him.
“You sure you’re still sane?” Jhinn whispered. “Because you look like you might lay siege to this city all on your own. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but they are making us wait for good reason. Most of the citizenry has left the city walls. The voices and bodies lessen by the hour. And I’ve been watching the ships leave the harbor. This is good, Tamerlan. When this dragon rises, the deaths of innocents will be far fewer than they have been before now – if there are any at all. Aren’t you happy not to have this on your conscience?”
That all made sense. He should be happy. But mostly he was worried about Marielle. She looked so ill. She was so pale. What if the guards didn’t let them through in time? What if she died like this?
He swallowed, standing on wobbly legs. Maybe there was a way to get her into the city without the agreement of this Ki’squall.
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