Simple – but still not easy. He bit the inside of his cheek as the images rippled across his mind’s eye, biting harder at the pain that ripped through him, triggered by the memories. He could taste blood. The inside of his cheek felt ragged against his tongue, but it was hard to stop, hard to wrench himself away from the memories of that horror.
This one thing was all that was left. He just had to do this one thing – save his sister. The thing he’d been doing all of this for. And then he could deal with the memories and the guilt. Then he could bury himself in shame, drink away the memories, hide himself from friends, slide into decrepit death.
But first this.
He drew a long, tremulous breath, glad that it was hard for anyone to see him. He reached over to the brazier and lit the roll of paper, bringing it to his lips to draw in the smoke. It flowed over his ragged cheek, across his tongue and sucked deep into his lungs. He stifled the cough, letting the smoke drift out his nose.
There was nothing yet. He pulled again on the smoke, scanning the sights before him, ready to charge.
The moving mural was still slowly spinning and the Canticler was still speaking, “We bless the sacrifice, placing on her our debt. Placing on her our hopes.”
The mural spun into the wall and now a lattice of gold and roses was revealed as the wall continued to turn. Was that the whole base of the Sunset Tower spinning beside the Hall? Or was the Hall spinning around the tower? The ground beneath Tamerlan rumbled from the movement of weighty stone on weighty stone. Red light spilled from the lattice, flooding the front of the room as the crowd drew a wonderous breath together.
What was wrong with them? They were treating this travesty like entertainment! Their eyes sparkled, raptured looks painting their grotesque, made-up faces, their costumes looking utterly ridiculous – or maybe it was more pitiable, like children come to witness a beheading. Lost, broken children. What was wrong with Jingen?
The Legend still hadn’t come for him. Maybe smoking the ingredients this way didn’t work. Maybe he wasn’t getting enough smoke. He puffed madly on the roll of paper, his hands shaking like leaves in a thunderstorm, and his heart beating so hard that his pulse pummeled his eardrums. Come on, Tamerlan! Come on! Open that Bridge!
His eyes flitted along the rapt faces, watching them, seeing them in the crowd, trying to cement in his mind an image of who these people were who so glibly sacrificed the life of another for their own.
Wait.
He ran his eyes back through the crowd to the girl dressed like the Lady Sacrifice – the one with long blonde hair arranged in elaborate curls and the virginal white dress dipped in pink at the edges. The girl with flushing cheeks and excited eyes. The girl who was standing right beside his father.
Oh no.
No, no. no.
He was wrong. The Lady Sacrifice wasn’t going to be Amaryllis at all. His sister was safe, here only to attend the celebration. They must be guests. They must have come, as Landholds sometimes did, to attend the party.
But those had been her eyes on the barge, looking at him through the curtain. That had been her desperate, tear-stained face.
How could he have been so wrong?
He felt light-headed, suddenly, and his feet tingled as if all his blood had rushed away from his head and to his feet. They were glued in place, unable to run away from the events he had already set in motion.
Because it was too late for Tamerlan. Too late. The smoke filling his lungs was finally working its magic.
What had he done? What would he do?
The roll of paper dropped from his hand at the same moment that the moving wall finally opened to reveal the heart of the Sunset Tower. The bright glow coming from the base of the tower filled the Grand Hall, making the bright braziers and glowing chandeliers seem like candles on a summer afternoon. The rock of the floor – shaped like dragon scales, seemed to pulse to the same rhythm as Tamerlan’s racing heart.
At the very center of the room, a horrific metal contraption – like the ribcage of some beast of prey – stood open, the straps to hold hands and feet were loose and ready to receive a victim. The drains that ran beneath it led to the glowing chasm on the other side of the tower base.
“Accept our sacrifice, dragon!” the Canticler said as Tamerlan’s hands reached for his sword – no longer directed by him at all. “Spare us from your wrath!”
DRAGON! a deep voice in Tamerlan’s head roared.
The massive clock at the center of the Grand Hall began to strike.
34: Lady Sacrifice
Marielle
THE LORD MYTHOS HAD her arm in his hand, his eyes narrowing as the Canticler continued, “We bless the sacrifice, placing on her our debt. Placing on her our hopes.”
“The blessings of Jingen are upon her,” he said, his face grave.
Marielle swallowed. She’d chosen this. She’d chosen to take someone else’s place so that they wouldn’t have to die. She couldn’t back out now. She had to be strong.
As the mural faded and was replaced by a metal lattice, she strained to look through the lattice. Where was the girl?
Carnelian pushed a path through the spectators from the lower level of the pulpit and the Lord Mythos strode through it – Marielle’s arm still clamped in his hand. Seven Suns Palace guards formed up around them, obscuring Marielle’s view as she strained to see the girl whose life she would save. Where was she? A niggling voice in the back of her mind said, ‘Are you sure she’s worth it?’
Her mouth was dry, her limbs wooden and clunky. Why was Carnelian pressing in so close to her back? She glanced behind her to see her friend’s firm expression and tight eyes. She’d expected more protest from Carnelian. Instead, that sweet smell she sometimes caught a whiff of when Carnelian was around suddenly burst into a puff of fleshy-pink. It was the smell of rotting fruit. And betrayal.
And then the lattice opened up as the wall moved.
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” the Lord Mythos asked through a cold mask. “The tower walls spin on huge gears. A genius invention. I wish I could have shown you how it works.”
And the room it revealed was the very one that the Lord Mythos had led Marielle into, but this time, as the light spilled out from the tower into the room beyond, it spread past the railing at the back of the tower and out to a black metal chair in the center of the room – a chair that looked like a giant squid, if squids had legs of blades and wickedness.
And it was empty.
There was no Lady Sacrifice in the chair. There was no Lady sobbing in the room, her eyes looking desperately for her salvation.
Marielle looked down at the dress she wore – the one that the Lord Mythos had insisted she wear – and then at the empty chair and then at Carnelian, stiff and blank-faced behind her. She felt the blood drain from her head so quickly that she stumbled, her vision clouding with popping black and white stars, the smell of acid and blood in her nose.
“Etienne,” she said, her voice only a ghost of what it usually was. The voice of a child seeking reassurance.
“Marielle,” he replied gently but still pulling her along, her booted feet dragging slightly as if her body was just now realizing what her mind had concluded.
“I thought you said you didn’t want me to die.” She hated how her voice wavered. She was a Scenter. A Jingen City Guard. She was strong and capable. She was a hunter of criminals, a lover of the law. She was not a helpless sacrifice.
Only, that wasn’t true, was it?
“I also told you that I would do anything, sacrifice anything for Jingen,” the Lord Mythos said.
“It’s just a tradition. It’s superstition.”
“Oh no, sweet Marielle. It’s very real. Your blood will save the lives of thousands.”
She tried to pull away from Lord Mythos’ grip, but she couldn’t budge his hold. Carnelian stepped up and took her other arm in a firm hand.
“But there was never another Lady Sacrifice, was there?”
A l
ook of pain flashed across his face. “Circumstances changed. Debts were called in.”
“Accept our sacrifice, dragon!” the Canticler said as Carnelian and the Lord Mythos pulled her into the opening. Her feet were on the scales of the dragon. “Spare us from your wrath!”
She could feel the ebb and pulse of something underneath her – something alive.
The massive grandmother clock began to strike.
Bong.
The scent of magic filled the air around her until it was all she could smell. It obscured her vision, painting everything turquoise and gold.
Bong.
The crowd was chanting something she couldn’t make out. Her breath was coming in gasps.
“No,” she whispered, fighting against the iron grips that held her.
Bong.
“Shhh ... don’t fight it,” Etienne, Lord Mythos said, his young face twisted with pity as he pushed her into the horrific chair. “Remember that impulse you had to give your life for someone else? Cling to that.”
Bong.
They strapped her wrist in place.
Bong.
She could only hear the sound of the clock and the fervent cries of the worshipful crowd and a low purr in her mind like the largest cat in the world was happy.
Bong.
Both her hands were tethered now. She fought the bonds, tears streaming down her face.
Bong.
She could measure her life in seconds as she drew in the magic-laced air around her, choking on her stuttering breaths. She had five bongs of the grandmother clock left to live.
35: Ram the Hunter
Tamerlan
DRAGON. DRAGON. DRAGON.
It was as if that was the only thought that the Legend had as he took over Tamerlan’s body, raising his sword high and leaping from the shadows.
No! Tamerlan tried to shout as he leapt into the screaming crowds, surging forward. At least whoever this Legend was, he wasn’t slaughtering the crowd. A small mercy in a terrible mistake. He shouldn’t have smoked first. He should have waited and made absolutely certain that his sister was the one being sacrificed. He sought her through eyes no longer under his control – saw her screaming and darting behind his father, saw his father draw a blade to defend her.
But the crowd was not in danger. Tamerlan was the one in danger. A ring of Seven Suns Palace guards surrounded the base of the Sunset Tower. No longer kneeling, they sprang to their feet, swords flashing.
Screams erupted from the crowd and loud curses. They shrank away, distancing themselves from the spectacle. But there was curiosity there, too. There were looks that told Tamerlan that they still wanted to be entertained. Was this fun for them? Watching a man rush with cold steel against other men was a delight? Didn’t they realize that steel could bite and rend, could shred muscle and cleave bone. Didn’t they realize that pain and mutilation weren’t just things that happened to other people?
Tamerlan rushed toward the guards – the seconds seeming to take as long as drawn out minutes.
By the second bong his sword arm was raised and the unprotected neck of the guard – still fumbling for his sword – filled Tamerlan’s vision. He wanted to screw his eyes shut. He wanted to stop, but his body moved on its own, slashing across the guard’s exposed neck, parting the flesh in a way too gruesome for words. Bodies were meant to be whole and strong – vessels for the spirits they housed. They were not meant to be torn like rags.
By the third bong, he was sailing over the dead guard, like a grasshopper in midsummer, landing in a perfectly-balanced crouch on the other side and sliding under the boar’s tooth sword position of the guard who brandished his sword with a grim face. His sword slipped up under it like a darting snake, flicking out to sever the artery in the man’s leg.
As blood spurted across Tamerlan and the floor and the surrounding guards, the clock bonged a fourth time and now there were five opponents, sliding over the arterial blood, leaving curving red trails where their feet skidded over polished marble. These guards weren’t surprised anymore. They weren’t fumbling. Their nods and finger gestures spoke of discipline and team training.
It was time to die. Tamerlan didn’t mind so much. After all, Amaryllis was safe. And he had sins to pay for. Perhaps, in death, there might be mercy.
Be a man. Cowards shame us all.
Encouraging words. This Legend sure had a sweet spirit.
It does me good to once again dance with death.
The fifth bong rang in Tamerlan’s ears, almost drowning out the continued screams of the fleeing crowd. By the sound of things, people were getting hurt in the madness. He hoped his father was protecting Amaryllis. He hoped that the Legend didn’t make him turn on them.
Not with a dragon near.
He kept saying that like it was true.
The nearest soldier lunged at them – clearly a feint and yet they had to dodge. If it had been Tamerlan controlling his body, he would have dodged the first blow only to be speared by the sudden jab from the left that one of the other soldiers executed with the slick precision of training. But it wasn’t Tamerlan fighting. It was this Legend. And he chose to leap straight into the air – so much higher and faster than Tamerlan could even imagine. He leapt above both feints, spinning in the air with a muscle-popping maneuver that made the Tamerlan inside Tamerlan gasp, and then landing nearly on top of one of the guards.
He leaned forward and bit, chomping down hard on the man’s nose and while the Legend’s jaw locked, twisting and pulling like a fighting dog, the Tamerlan inside screamed and screamed.
He tried to pull away, tried to close his eyes, but he already knew it wasn’t going to protect his mind from the acid horror eating away at his sanity.
On the sixth bong, the Legend spat the nose out of his mouth, turning from the agonized cries of his victim and spun, taking in the scene around him. Tamerlan didn’t know what he was looking at – what was important enough in his mind to warrant note, to react, to plan for.
But what Tamerlan did see, changed everything.
They were strapping a Lady Sacrifice to that torture chair anyway. It wasn’t Amaryllis of the dark eyes and bright gold hair. It was a woman with long dark hair, deep purple eyes, and tears streaming down her cheeks. Her huge eyes seemed to plead with him for help. He knew that face.
Marielle.
They were going to kill the Scenter who had saved his life.
Bong.
The Legend spun him into a complicated spin, scooping up a second sword as he moved and wind-milling between the guards with lightning-fast strikes so that they fell so close on each other’s heels that they seemed to die in a single stroke.
Perhaps, perhaps this bloodthirsty monster could be convinced to save Marielle.
The woman in white? Are they offering her to the dragon?
The voice seemed as disturbed as Tamerlan at the thought.
Yes! That was exactly what they were planning to do.
Bong
They finished fastening her last strap around her foot, tying her dress to the strap – strange that they still cared about how things looked with the crowd stampeding away like frightened animals. Her heavy boots, strapped in the chair, looked odd with her filmy white dress.
The Legend leapt to one side, narrowly dodging an attack and then spinning in a complicated defense that slapped the sword from a guard’s hand with one sword while he ran the second sword under the arm of another guard.
Tamerlan barely noticed the moans and cries of the fallen men anymore. They were all someone’s sweetheart or husband, son or father, brother or friend. And he took their lives like a child ripping daisies from the grass and he threw them away just as carelessly.
Bong.
But if they could just save Marielle...
I do not wish to see her die.
They’d have to hurry. There were only three more strikes and then it would be midnight and they would slit her throat.
The Lord Mythos gripped a ha
ndle at the top of the ribcage-like chair and then with a powerful pull, he turned the whole chair on a wheel so that Marielle hung upside down, her mouth open in a cry of terror and her long hair falling to the floor.
Bong.
The Legend swung away from the last soldier. When had they killed the others? Tamerlan must have been distracted. He dodged the guard’s blow, kicking out with his foot and connecting solidly with the man’s knee as they ran by. The crunch of his breaking leg was loud enough to be heard even in this chaos.
Bong.
They leapt the rest of the way to the chair in a single bound.
No one stands in the way of Ram the Hunter.
Ram? Ram the insane? The Legend who was not to be spoken of? The dragon hunter?
He reached out, snatching the knife from Lord Mythos’s hand with Tamerlan’s left hand and grabbing a lunging red-haired guard by the throat with the other hand.
Insane? I don’t think so. Everything I do makes perfect sense to me.
He broke the redhead’s neck with a crack.
36: Flight from the Seven Suns
Marielle
MARIELLE FELT THICK bands of magic rising up from the floor, reaching for her. She could smell them – their intoxicating scent a mix of such strong lilac and vanilla mixed with a cedar musk that she could smell nothing else. They drew her so that even while she knew they were deadly, she wanted them to take hold of her.
She thought she might be screaming, but she didn’t know anymore if she was screaming from fear, or rage, or from desperate desire to be swallowed up by the reaching magic.
Her pulse pounded in her head as it hung down, close to the drain, close to where her blood would leak out and satisfy the magic. Were those other screams she heard? Probably not. She was probably just drifting so far on the intoxication of the magic scent that she was hearing her own screams. So drunk on it, that she thought she even heard the clash of steel on steel and roaring battle cries.
Perhaps, this was what death felt like. Perhaps it wasn’t a quiet slip into another world, but a riotous roar as the life rushed out of you.
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