The Last Lies of Ardor Benn

by Tyler Whitesides

  “Oh, good,” Raek said, letting go of his sword. “You met San Green.”

  “It’s all right, Moh,” Nemery said in Trothian. “You remember Ardor Benn’s companion, Raekon Dorrel?”

  Mohdek lowered his knife, but he didn’t release his hold on San. The young man looked terrified. He was probably just a couple of years older than Nemery, but there was a softness to his features that Pekal had taken from her a long time ago.

  “What are they doing here?” Mohdek asked her.

  “They want us to guide them to the summit,” she replied, their conversation still in Trothian.

  Mohdek scoffed. “What kind of saps does Ardor Benn think we—”

  “Raek said they came on their own,” Nemery interrupted him. “Against Ardor’s wishes.”

  “And you believe him?” Mohdek asked.

  Nemery nodded. “I do.”

  Mohdek finally let go of San, pushing him forward. The man stumbled under the weight of his backpack, but didn’t go down.

  “You’re the one who rescued my friend,” San said, staring straight at Nemery. She couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement.

  “Lomaya Vans,” Nemery affirmed. “She had a lot of good things to say about you.” She paused. “Raek told me what happened. I’m sorry.”

  “Garifus has to be stopped,” San hissed.

  “That’s why you’re here?” Mohdek asked him. “For revenge?”

  “I don’t know what I could do against someone like Garifus.” San blinked away tears, steeling himself as he gestured at Raek. “I’m here with him. I figure what he’s doing is pretty important if he was willing to turn on his partner for it.”

  Ah. So San Green corroborated Raek’s story. Either that made it true, or the two of them had discussed it before entering Bo’s Glen. But she was inclined to believe him even more than Raekon. San didn’t have the look of a liar about him.

  “How do you intend to defeat Garifus once you catch up to him?” Mohdek asked.

  “I’m with San on that one,” said Raek. “I’m not sure we can hold a candle to him. Garifus has plans after his followers transform. He blabbed all about them on the docks in Beripent. And he’s more powerful than ever, now that he’s tinkered with time itself.”

  “What are you talking about?” Nemery shook her head.

  “It’s a lot to wrap your head around,” he said. “Luckily, we have several days of hiking ahead of us. I should be able to catch you up on everything by the time we reach the summit.”

  “We’re not going to the summit,” Nemery insisted.

  “Garifus is planning to kill the dragons,” Raek said bluntly. “That’s his big plan. Destroy the dragons and everyone in the Greater Chain gets Moonsick.”

  “Which will allow him to transform everyone with massive controlled detonations of Transformation Grit,” added San.

  A sudden wave of terror gripped Nemery’s insides. It was the kind of fear that quickly turned to panic if left unchecked. The kind she had felt first on this island, when that branch had punctured her leg during the dragon fight years ago. She’d felt it again when her Harvesting party had been taken by Sovereign soldiers, and again when their ship had been scuttled off the Dronodanian coast.

  She glanced at Mohdek, finding the comfort and strength she needed to control that terror before it transformed. But even he looked shaken, his blue face blanched, dark vibrating eyes staring out through the trees.

  The idea of the entire world overcome with Moonsickness was upsetting enough, but Nemery was stuck on what would have to happen first.

  “Nobody’s going to touch my dragons,” she whispered.

  “Then I assume you’ll be heading up?” Raek asked.

  “Fine,” she said after a moment of final deliberation. “We hit the cultist camps along the way. The fewer that make it to the top, the fewer the Glassminds. The better chance the dragons will have at defending against them.” She stepped between Raek and San, picking up her bow and quiver from the spot where she’d leaned them against a tree trunk. “I expect the two of you to keep up.”

  “I can go hours when I’m full of Heg,” Raek said.

  Nemery shared a concerned glance with Mohdek. They were becoming regular summit guides at this point. First a desperate father, and now a Health Grit addict?

  Raek picked up his pack. “Lead the way, Salafan.”

  I have been a mighty dragon, commanding respect from everyone in the room. But inside I often feel like little more than a Karvan lizard with claws of thin foil.

  CHAPTER

  29

  Quarrah sprang awake with a gasp.

  No, this wasn’t waking up. It was something less natural. Coming to.

  Stasis Grit.

  She was still sitting on the couch in the Be’Igoth, but… what the blazes had happened here? The place was completely ransacked! Cabinets were open, some of the doors broken off their hinges, contents scattered across the floor. One of Raek’s Grit Mixing tables was completely overturned, expensive equipment bent and ruined.

  The wooden floor in front of her had been hacked apart, boards splintered to make a jagged hole to the hidden bath below. Across from her, the green armchair remained upright with the trapdoor latched. Ard was still seated there, his legs crossed, hands resting loosely on the arms.

  Had he done this? At least he hadn’t run. Quarrah wouldn’t have blamed him after being cooped up in the soakhouse for a full week. But Ard probably realized there was nowhere to go. Every Regulator in the city was looking for them, and there wasn’t enough time to reach Pekal’s summit with only two days until the Moon Passing.

  “What happened?” she asked softly into the quiet room. Based on the waning of the Light Grit, she guessed she’d been out for at least half an hour. Ard didn’t respond. Sparks, he didn’t even move!

  “Ard!” she said a little more forcefully. She leaned forward, squinting through the dimness just in time to see a Grit cloud wink out around Ard’s head. He gasped, lurching up from the armchair and nearly tumbling headfirst into the hole in the floor.

  “Hedge!” he barked. “I saw him! He was here!” Ard spun around, scanning the wrecked room for their enemy.

  “I think he’s long gone,” Quarrah said. The question was, why hadn’t the King Poacher killed them? He’d obviously been successful at taking them by surprise.

  Ard yanked up on the armchair, releasing the trapdoor. Quarrah followed him down, feet crunching on broken glass as she landed in the empty bath. A couple of very dim Prolonged Light Grit detonations still illuminated the area, showing the full amount of damage Hedge Marsool had done.

  Packaged sawdust from their Grit storage boxes was littered across the floor, pieces of broken clay in the mix. Shards of shattered glass twinkled in the low light. Some of the boxes had been reduced to kindling. Others lay upended or tilted on their sides.

  It had been bold of Hedge to trash their Grit supply like this, considering that a single spark could have sent the whole Be’Igoth up in a ball of flames. That was the very reason Raek had always insisted on storing the Slagstone fragments far away from the prepared, packed Grit.

  As she surveilled the damage, Quarrah’s heart stopped when she realized what all this meant. She crossed to the few boxes that were still intact, scanning them, pushing them aside, hoping that the worst had not happened. But Ard’s attention was elsewhere.

  “Thank the Homeland!” he cried from across the empty bath. “He didn’t find the books.”

  Why would Hedge care about those stupid books? They’d been a way for Ard to pass the time, locked away in the empty bath, but did he really think they were that important? The past had already happened. Why did it matter if Ard wrote down every little detail of how it was supposed to happen?

  Quarrah finally saw what she’d been looking for. And it made her heart plummet.

  “The Transformation Grit,” she whispered. The empty storage box was in her hands, one side broken from being hurle
d across the bath. The four vials Raek had left behind for Motherwatch were gone—either shattered to bits or stolen by the King Poacher.

  “Why?” Ard muttered, moving to her side. “Why would Raek tell Hedge to do this?”

  “Raek?” Quarrah cried. “You’re seriously blaming Raek for this?”

  “He’s going to be the Glassmind that sends the Urgings,” Ard explained. “He must have gone off the books, because I’m definitely not going to write about this.”

  “Just because you’re Urging him doesn’t make Hedge Marsool your puppet,” Quarrah said. “He can still act on his own.” Why did there have to be time travel? The world was complicated enough when time moved in only one direction.

  “It’ll work out, though, right?” Ard was trying to calm himself now. “We know it has to work out because… it already happened.”

  “What about Motherwatch?” Quarrah dropped the empty box of Transformation Grit. “We don’t know how that turns out.”

  Ard clenched his jaw. “Tell me again why the only two people who know how to make that stuff literally took a hike?”

  “They’re not the only ones.” Quarrah sucked in a hopeful breath at the thought. “Raek left the formula.” She rose suddenly, jumping to catch the dangling armchair and hoisting herself out of the large bath.

  Please be there, she thought frantically, realizing anew the awful state of disarray in the upper portion of the Be’Igoth. Gratefully, the cabinet where she had put the written formula was still standing. Quarrah nearly ripped the small door off its hinges, reaching blindly to the uppermost shelf. Her fingers brushed the envelope and she pulled it down, hands trembling as she withdrew the single piece of paper.

  Praise the Homeland—or the gods… Or whatever deserved praising. The formula for Transformation Grit, scribed in Raek’s careful hand, had gone untouched by Hedge and his goons.

  Glancing over the instructions, Quarrah realized that this was a task far out of her comfort zone. Using scales to measure the powdered Grit was simple, but steeping this list of herbs and bark just long enough for the liquid to reach a balance level of negative flat five… Where was she even supposed to find these ingredients?

  She turned her attention back to the Mixing table lying on its side, some of the jars and canisters having rolled clear across the room.

  Powdered dragon teeth.

  That was the source material for Transformation Grit, and Raek had said they had only a little left. Her heart lurching in her chest, she picked up the nearest canister, checking the label chalked onto the side.

  COMMON STONE: PROLONGING GRIT

  She dropped that canister, a mere dusting of powder still inside, and moved to the next one on the floor.

  COPPER: HEAT GRIT

  QUARTZITE: COMPOUNDING GRIT

  MARBLE: GATHER GRIT

  Her eye caught the canister across the room, the label only half visible. But the letters she could see were enough.

  DRAGON TOOTH: TRANSFORMATION GRIT

  She dropped to one knee, anxiously reaching out to pick up the lidless container, tipping it upright to peer inside.

  Empty.

  She tapped the bottom of the dented metal canister against the floor, hoping to gather what little might remain. But there was only enough to make her fingertips dusty as she swiped them desperately along the inside.

  A sudden hopelessness reached out of the empty canister, seizing her by the throat and making it hard to swallow. There would be no more Metamorphosis Grit. In two nights, Motherwatch would get Moonsick and they would have no way to complete the transformation. She would become a mad beast, filled with a violent rage like Grotenisk of old.

  “Quarrah,” Ard whispered.

  In her haste to find the formula, she hadn’t even seen him crawl up through the trapdoor. Now he was standing beside the Be’Igoth exit, his face drained of color. A single piece of paper was staked to the inside of the door.

  She stood slowly, the empty dragon tooth canister hanging limply at her side. There was writing on the page, but without her spectacles, she had no hope of reading it from this distance. She moved closer to Ard, who seemed to be reading it again and again as if expecting the message to change.

  Finally, he read the words aloud. “I know where you’re keeping her.”

  Ard reached up and pulled the small knife from the door, the page fluttering to the floor. He turned to Quarrah, face lined with distress.

  “Hedge is going after Motherwatch.”

  The thundering hooves of their stolen horses mimicked the relentless pounding of thoughts in Ard’s head. They left Beripent on the southern road, making all haste for the Pale Tors.

  How had Hedge Marsool discovered Motherwatch’s hiding place? Ard hadn’t even made it that far in the instruction books he was writing. If it was an Urging from the future, it wouldn’t have come from Raek. Was another Glassmind trying to manipulate Hedge to work against him?

  Urgings aside, Jaig Jasperson could have spilled the beans to the King Poacher. Ard had never trusted that double-dealing middleman. There would be a steep price to pay if anything happened to that dragon.

  Well outside of town, they passed the abandoned granary where Ard had once posed as a ringmaster for a Karvan lizard fight. His days of such straightforward, entertaining ruses seemed long behind him, replaced with little more than an ongoing struggle to stay ahead and stay alive.

  Ardor Benn felt his life unraveling, relationships too badly frayed to salvage with a simple stitch. He was tired, but too stubborn to sleep. Hoarse, but opposed to whispering. He didn’t like what he was doing—or even what he had become. Part of him screamed in frustration, Why won’t you change? But he was incapable of that. Incapable, or unwilling.

  He needed a transformation.

  If he were honest with himself, this, above all other reasons, was why he had been so desperate to go to the summit. Maybe Garifus’s claims of perfection had gotten into his head, because Ard felt limited by his current state. As if his mind had already reached capacity, but he didn’t know if its contents were good enough.

  It was why, deep down, he was no longer mad at Raek for taking his place. His friend’s discontentment in life was as visible as the scarred metal protruding from his chest. Even as obvious as that should have been, Ard had missed it, caught up in his own deeper dissatisfactions.

  He was no longer mad at Quarrah for locking him in the Be’Igoth, either. He had fumed for the first three days, trapped under the floor, surviving on stale rations. But his perspective had shifted by the time Quarrah had let him up. He understood why his companions had done what they’d done.

  Ard led his horse off the road, slowing to a walk as they took a dusty single-file trail leading into the Pale Tors. The area ahead was an undeveloped section of rolling hills punctuated by crags of white rocks. Not true mountains—those only existed on Pekal, but the Pale Tors area was some of the highest terrain in the Greater Chain.

  Trails were well worn through the Tors, but they weren’t typically traveled by the lawful types. It was an area known among the criminal networks as a good place to stash things or take shelter when the heat was on from the Regulation.

  “Keep an eye out,” Ard cautioned. “Jasperson’s king of the Tors now.”

  “Just because he has a dragon?” Quarrah asked. “I should hope he’s been keeping that discreet.”

  “It’s not the dragon that’s put him on top,” said Ard. “It’s what I paid him to store her here. Raek said Jasperson hired enough thugs to drive out the competition. By now, he’ll have claimed their stashes and sold the goods to generate even more wealth. See?”

  Ard pointed ahead as a squat, surly-looking Lander slipped out from behind the nearest rock, a pair of Rollers held at the ready. On either side of the trail, Ard saw the glint of metal as more guns nosed through cracks between rocks. Evidence of Jasperson’s new empire.

  “This here area be closed to common traffic,” the man on the trail said.
>
  “Glad to hear that,” Ard replied. “Because my companion and I are anything but common. We’re here to see Vethrey.”

  The man’s demeanor changed at hearing the dragon’s name. “Leave the horses.”

  “Vethrey?” Quarrah whispered as she dismounted.

  “That’s the password we’ve been using with Jasperson,” Ard explained.

  “Should you really be so straightforward with something so important?”

  “Straightforward?” Ard cried. “It’s the Trothian translation of a dragon’s name that a girl and her boyfriend made up in the wilds of Pekal.”

  “It’s the fulfillment of prophesy,” hissed Quarrah.

  “Well, I didn’t know that at the time I used it as a password,” said Ard. “But it’s not like people are going to recognize it.”

  Quarrah huffed, lashing her reins around a protruding nub of rock.

  They followed their guide through the craggy landscape for at least twenty minutes. After their third turn, Ard was hopelessly lost and stopped paying any attention to their route. Especially since Quarrah was beside him. He was sure she was marking the path in her mind, noting how to retrace their steps and get out.

  “Jas!” shouted their guide. “Ya gots company what knows the password!”

  A hut came into view, a series of canvas tarps strung between rocks, supported by a framework of timbers. A man was exiting the structure through a tent flap. Though it had been years since Ard had seen him, he recognized Jaig Jasperson immediately.

  He was shirtless, and Ard noticed that the dark skin of his chest was marred with a fresh tattoo, still too scabby to recognize the design. The man had prominent ears, and both lobes were pierced, golden studs peeking out through a mess of curly black hair. His feet were bare, but there was a pair of simple shoes in his hand as if he’d been in the act of putting them on when his name was called.

  Jaig’s face lit up when he saw Ard, and he broke into a good-natured chuckle. “Well, if it isn’t the grand founder of my little kingdom in the rocks,” he said. “Ardor Benn!”

  “Good to see you again, Jaig, old boy,” Ard greeted him. He resisted the urge to draw a gun and demand to know if Hedge Marsool had been around. But that would only tip his hand. Better to play this off as a routine check-in. At least it would give Ard a chance to read the situation.