The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn

by Tyler Whitesides

  Lyndel spoke for a moment to Darbu and another robust Trothian who stood nearby. The two men stepped forward and seized the carrying poles of the Drift crate, easily lifting it with the weightless detonation still burning inside. Lyndel directed them to wait beside the cordon chains at the bottom of the Old Palace Steps.

  Ard directed the wagon away and the crowd shuffled backward, clearing a wide arena for Lyndel, Ard, and the two Trothians holding the Drift crate.

  Lyndel began to speak in Trothian. Ard wasn’t catching a word of it, but her speech was obviously having a powerful effect on the Trothians present. Murmured translations spread to the Lander sympathizers in the crowd, but Ard was too far away to hear.

  He scanned the dark trees at the edge of Oriar’s Square. By now, the Regulators would surely have been alerted to the gathering. To strike against a crowd so large, the Reggies would need significant reinforcements. Once they arrived, the fight would begin. But Ard only needed about ten minutes.

  Lyndel finished her speech, pointing back at the Old Palace Steps. The Trothian rebels broke into a cry of determination.

  “What did you tell them?” Ard asked.

  “I spoke to them of the Kram Udal,” said Lyndel.

  “You told them there would be a Paladin Visitant?” Ard cried.

  “There will be,” Lyndel replied. “But my people know they will not see him. I told them to stay clear of the blast cloud and protect the detonation from the Regulators at all costs.”

  “Thank them for me,” Ard whispered. He unhitched the chain that cordoned off the Old Palace Steps and dropped it to the packed dirt at his feet. Lyndel instructed Darbu and his companion to move the Drift crate into position at the bottom of the stairs.

  Ard pulled open the hatch, and the gelatinous egg slid out of the box with a squelching sound, striking the hard ground and sliding until it came to rest against the bottom stair of the ruined Old Palace Steps. Accompanying the soft golden egg was a pungent smell. A smell that transported Ard back to the mountains of Pekal. An odor he had only smelled at frightening proximity to a dragon or something left behind by one.

  There was an array of gasps from those in the crowd close enough to see what had just arrived. The Light clouds glimmered against the gelatinous egg, the full spectrum of colors dancing in rainbow-like patterns through the amber translucent orb. It wobbled against the stone stair, firm enough to hold its shape, but soft enough to jiggle like lard.

  Lyndel said something to Darbu and the other Trothian, who promptly carried the empty Drift crate away. Then the priestess turned to face Ard, her steel-gray eyes quivering as she studied him.

  “May you return to us again, Ardor Benn.”

  She handed him the keg of Visitant Grit and dashed through the clearing to be greeted by the anxious crowd.

  Ard was alone beside the unfertilized bull egg, the ring of spectators anxiously looking on but obediently maintaining a wide berth. He strode up the Old Palace Steps, stopping just five stairs above the gelatinous egg.

  The ruins rose some thirty steps more before ending at a crumbled platform. The history books claimed that Oriar himself had stood there, detonating a hopeful blast of Visitant Grit to defend the city against a rampant Grotenisk.

  Now standing just yards from the site of that historic failure, the only thing separating Ard from Oriar was two hundred and fifty-two years. And those were years that could be instantly bridged by a second detonation of Visitant Grit in this very place.

  Ard cast a quick glance over the steps. Anything within the radius of the Visitant cloud would be transported back in time with him. He had to make sure there would be no accidental stowaways—just himself and the unfertilized dragon egg.

  The soft amber egg had finally settled. It needed the fire of a bull dragon to harden that shell. To activate the potential life inside that gooey orb. And Ard was about to deliver that egg to the one moment in time where he was sure that dragon fire had pervaded.

  Grotenisk would fertilize this egg. And when the Visitant cloud burned out, Ard would return to the present day with a rebirth for the dragon race. That was the payout. But the ruse was still to be run. A ruse on history. A ruse on time itself.

  Ard believed it would work. Isless Vesta’s lyrics that Dale Hizror had used for the cantata confirmed it. Ard could almost hear Quarrah’s off-tune voice rehearsing in the bakery’s upper room.

  The midnight blast enveloped Oriar. But he was left alone. No Paladin Visitant was his rearguard. No flaming form to bring the dragon low. Just a cloud of darkest night where the bright warrior should have been.

  Shadow Grit.

  Ard unclipped the first Grit pot from his belt and dashed it against the stone steps at his feet. The cloud instantly formed around him, the detonation encompassing himself and the gelatinous egg. This was the trick. And like the best of all ruses, it was a simple solution to circumvent the most complex issue.

  Ard and the egg were now completely concealed in a cloud of impenetrable blackness. He could see out with perfect clarity, but gauging by the gasp of the onlooking crowd, Ard had seemed to suddenly disappear in the darkness.

  The timeline would only reset if things in the past were altered—if lives were lost, or if Oriar was hailed a hero. But under the cloak of Shadow Grit, no one on that fell night long ago would ever see Ard—the Paladin Visitant who actually came. Oriar would continue to be the failure that history had made him. If all went right, nothing from the past would change, so the timeline would remain intact. But Grotenisk’s centuries-old fertilizing fire would save the future from the ravages of Moonsickness.

  A gunshot sounded through the Char, and Ard looked up to see the back of the Trothian crowd erupt into chaos.

  The Regulators.

  As cowardly as it felt to flee now that a conflict was breaking out, Ard knew it was time to detonate the Visitant Grit. He had a date with history. And if everything went as planned, he was about to come face-to-face with a very angry dragon.

  Ard crouched on the stair, placing the keg beside him. He reached his finger through the pin-trigger and pulled sharply upward. He heard the Slagstone ignitor grinding inside. He didn’t see the sparks, but he felt the rush of detonation as the cloud surrounded him.

  In the blink of an eye, Ard was ablaze. He still crouched on the Old Palace Steps, but they were no longer ruins.

  He had traveled through time, and in so doing, had become the most powerful being ever to exist. Ardor Benn was a Paladin Visitant. He could wreak death and destruction with a single word.

  Quarrah sprinted through the trees, leaves and twigs lashing at her, slowing her down. She had left the beaten pathways of the Char to cut a more direct route to Oriar’s Square.

  Blazing Ard! What was he thinking? Had he been planning to do this behind her back all along? Had she played right into his rusing little hands by agreeing to check on Nemery Baggish?

  And what kind of plan was this, anyway, taking the egg to the Char? Putting it on display in front of hundreds of people! It was her egg, spark it all! Getting cut out, after everything Quarrah had risked to steal it …

  She was lucky to have figured out what was going on at all. After unsuccessfully checking the neighborhood where she thought Nemery lived, Quarrah had been cutting across the Char to search the Southern Quarter.

  On a back trail, some hundred yards out from the Square, Quarrah had seen the bright detonation of Light Grit. With the caution of a practiced thief, Quarrah had drawn her spyglass. She’d seen the large crowd of armed Trothians, but Quarrah focused on the figures at the center of the crowded Square. She might not have known it was Ard from such a distance, but the wagon and Drift crate were an instant giveaway.

  There was a gunshot, and Quarrah dropped to a crouch in the bushes beside the footpath. She really wasn’t equipped for a fight. Her belt was stocked with only a few useful items—Light Grit, Drift Grit, and a single small pot of Barrier Grit.

  Quarrah rose from the bushes, teet
h grinding in frustration. She sprinted down the narrow dirt path toward the crowded Square. Sounds of conflict were increasing by the footstep. Another gunshot. Shouts and screams. What the blazes was Ard doing down there?

  In the darkness, Quarrah didn’t see the trail that merged with hers. She nearly stumbled into a pair of Regulators running the same direction she was. Quarrah reeled back as the two shouted in surprise. One of them fired a Roller, and Quarrah heard the ball tear into the brush behind her.

  Frantic, Quarrah dropped to her knees, hand plunging into her belt for the Barrier Grit. She hurled the pot, but it didn’t strike the trail with enough force. The clay might have cracked, but the pot didn’t shatter in a way to spark the Slagstone.

  “Sparks,” Quarrah muttered, the irony of her expletive woefully apparent. She scrambled on hands and knees into the brush before realizing that the Reggies had moved on, careless to pursue her while the real conflict raged at the Square.

  Too afraid to rejoin the footpath, Quarrah scooped up the failed pot and moved at a cautious pace until at last she emerged into the open Square.

  The place was a war zone!

  Regulators pressed in from various points, but the Trothians repelled them. Quarrah saw muzzle flashes as guns rang out, swords and daggers gleaming in the bright clouds of Light Grit. There were already bodies on the ground!

  Some of the Regulators took shots into the crowd, assured to strike someone in the tight throng. But the Trothians had detonated bunkers of Barrier Grit around the perimeter, popping around the impenetrable domes to fire off their own rounds.

  Regulators scrambled for cover, shouting commands to one another. This skirmish was only going to escalate. So close to the palace, the Reggies would have a steady stream of reinforcements coming fast.

  The horrific scene seemed to seize Quarrah by the throat and steal her breath. She knew she should leave. Turn away from the Square and escape the Char as quickly as her lithe legs would carry her.

  But Ard was here. And she had to know what that blazing fool was doing with her dragon egg!

  Quarrah sprinted from the cover of the trees toward the crowd of angry Trothians, hurling the cracked pot of Barrier Grit behind her. It detonated this time, at least creating some sort of cover. She ran with her head bowed, hands up, hoping desperately that the mob would recognize her as a sympathizer. Miraculously, she reached the line of Trothians, dark blue hands pulling her roughly into the crowd.

  The woman next to her screamed, and Quarrah felt a spray of blood speckle the back of her neck as the stranger fell soundlessly to the stones. Quarrah fell, too, from the shock of the scene. On hands and knees beside the corpse, she tried not to wretch. Quarrah crawled deeper into the crowd, someone stepping on her knuckles before hands pulled her upright again, taking shelter behind a Barrier bunker.

  At last, Quarrah broke into the inner ring of the Square. There was nothing here but the Old Palace Steps, the Trothian mob tactically positioned around it in a defensive perimeter.

  Quarrah glanced at the historic ruins, but they were dark. So dark that the steps seemed untouched by the glow from the nearby Light clouds. Quarrah squinted. There was a hazy quality to the air. Some sort of detonation, though it was impossible to tell what type of Grit from here. Well, Quarrah would just have to step into that detonation cloud and find out.

  She was halfway to the Old Palace Steps when someone called her name from the crowd.

  “Quarrah Khai!”

  She ground to a stop, whirling to find the speaker.

  It was Lyndel. She had a long dagger in one hand and a Roller in the other. Her long braids spilled over her bare blue shoulders, and the light spilled across her face.

  “Where’s Ardor?” Quarrah shouted as Lyndel reached her.

  “You must come away from the steps,” said Lyndel.

  “Where is he?”

  Lyndel pointed to the Old Palace Steps. “He has detonated the Visitant Grit.”

  Quarrah swiveled to study the empty cloud around the ruined stairs. That was the Visitant cloud? Ard had already detonated it without even telling her? There was no Paladin Visitant standing in fiery glory. There was nothing but blackness on the steps.

  “He failed?” Quarrah cried.

  “It is far more complicated than that,” said Lyndel. “You must stay clear of the detonation.”

  “You knew he was coming here tonight?” Quarrah felt the betrayal intensifying. Ard had trusted Lyndel over her? It was obvious. The Trothians and their sympathizers were a respectable force. Ard must have been planning this for days.

  “He cares for you,” Lyndel said.

  Quarrah drew a deep breath. There was no time for this conversation right now. If Ard truly cared for her, as he’d led her to believe, then he wouldn’t have sent her away. He would have told her what he was doing.

  “He said you would be a distraction to him,” uttered Lyndel.

  “Distraction?” Quarrah laughed bitterly. “Like I might get hurt?”

  Azania and the bulk of the ruse aside, Quarrah had stowed away, to and from Pekal, on the king’s own Harvesting ship. She had stolen the gelatinous egg and pulled it with bleeding hands down the mountain. She had killed Ulusal. She’d done it all on her own. And Ard didn’t want her to be a distraction?

  Quarrah felt as though a fire had been lit beneath her cheeks. Both hands clenched into tight fists.

  “Please,” Lyndel urged. “Ardor Benn is doing what he must to save us all.”

  “Right,” Quarrah said sarcastically. Even old Lyndel seemed to have fallen under his manipulative spell. “We’re talking about Ard. Don’t act like he’s some hero!”

  “Not a hero.” Lyndel glanced toward the cloud of Visitant Grit around the steps. “He is a Paladin Visitant.”

  Ard stood slowly. His skin appeared to be on fire, but he felt no pain. The flames upon his flesh were merely a response to the time travel. The air here, hazy with Grit from Oriar’s detonation, was touching his skin. On contact with a flesh-and-blood figure from the future, the airborne Grit from the past was consumed in fire.

  The gelatinous egg resting against the bottom step also blazed like a bonfire, burning up the Grit that was out of sync with its own time.

  He had done it! Ard had actually succeeded in using the Visitant Grit to launch himself backward through time, though he only had about ten minutes before the cloud burned out. Pethredote’s secret had been wholly accurate, and Ard now felt a sudden surge of confidence that the rest of this ruse might actually work.

  Like the surroundings he had left, it was night. Very dark—a historical fact that Ard was relying on, so his cloud of Shadow Grit would go unnoticed. There was so much to take in. So much that seemed familiar, and yet wildly different.

  This was the site of Oriar’s Square at the heart of the Char. But the Char was a preserved piece of land set aside to celebrate the regrowth following Grotenisk’s destruction. Destruction that was happening this very night.

  From Ard’s view on the lower steps, countless buildings were collapsing, flames leaping higher than a tree could grow. Human figures streaked through the fiery chaos, screaming and dying, looking small and insignificant against a backdrop of so much red and yellow.

  The stairs upon which Ard now stood had not yet been attacked. The platform above did not crumble away into nothing, but instead comprised a beautiful landing before a set of regal doors leading into the massive palace.

  Standing on that landing was a man in a decorated breastplate, a broadsword in his gloved hand.

  Captain Oriar.

  It had to be, standing at the palace entrance exactly as history had described him. His face was downcast, eyes closed in preparation for the appearance of a Paladin Visitant. He was muttering something, though Ard could not hear the words over the sounds of wreckage in the city. Ard’s sudden presence in the past meant that Oriar had already detonated his infamously failed pot of Visitant Grit.

  Ard’s detonation would
have transported him back to the very moment that Oriar’s Grit ignited, linking the two events geographically through time. Ard saw bits of shattered ceramic on the steps below the hopeful Oriar.

  Presumably, Oriar’s detonation had occurred just a few yards above Ard. The centers of both blasts had not been in the exact same place, so Oriar’s cloud and Ard’s cloud were probably not lined up perfectly. But this was good. Ard and the egg were close enough that the overlapping portion of the Visitant cloud transported them through time. Any closer and Oriar might have appeared inside the Shadow Grit detonation, burning up at Ard’s presence.

  The hero on the landing risked an outward glance, paling to find that no Paladin Vistant had appeared. Oriar gazed down the palace steps, eyes full of hope, staring directly through the space where Ard was shrouded in blackness.

  There was a rush of wind and Oriar’s attention was drawn out over the burning city. Ard spun on the step, knowing full well what had commanded Oriar’s gaze.

  It was Grotenisk.

  The dragon landed in a flurry of wings that fed the flames behind him like a giant bellows. His tail snaked down the burning street behind him, and leathery wings folded inward as stout hind legs supported his body. Grotenisk dropped forward onto powerful forelegs, his massive talons crushing stone and churning soil.

  The dragon’s eyes were like pools of blood—crimson spheres as large as wagon wheels. There was a madness behind those eyes, a desperate and violent frenzy. Grotenisk snorted, smoke curling from his black-pit nostrils. He opened his mouth as if to bellow, but only a noiseless gust escaped his throat, the air shimmering with heat waves.

  By the Homeland, Ard thought. Halavend was right about everything. Grotenisk was clearly suffering from the same symptoms that plagued a Moonsick human. The bull dragon razing the city was not born a violent monster. His captive life away from Pekal had deprived him of the Red Moon’s rays. The same rays that poisoned humans clearly sustained these mighty beasts.

  How did the historians miss this? Perhaps the facts were lost in the chaos of the night. Or perhaps no one wanted to see Moonsickness in a dragon. Admitting to Grotenisk’s true condition would, in the same hand, imply that his violent behavior was helplessly involuntary. Then the finger of blame could only be pointed to King Kerith and the people who’d made Grotenisk this way.