by John Tristan
Above them all, Seoras’s wooden face was silent and watchful. Drops of brackish sap leaked from the corners of his green-veined eyes.
Beneath him and the flares of uncanny light, Amon and Caedian looked at one another.
“She meant to kill you,” Caedian said after a while.
Amon bit his lip. “I know.”
“Light in the center,” Seoras’s face whispered above them. “Light at the edges.”
They looked down at Liléan and her attendants, all in a heap.
“I hurt her,” Amon said.
“Yes.”
“What if I killed her?” He did not think he had—not with one punch, not an elf—but what did it matter? The punishment would be the same either way now.
Caedian shook his head. “You haven’t. She’s still breathing.”
“Still.” His eyes flickered upward. “They’ll chase us.”
“Yes.” Caedian met his gaze, and his twisted smile caught Amon’s heart like a vise. “Yes, they’ll chase us.”
“They’ll find us, won’t they?” Amon found his voice was shaking. “Wherever we go, they’ll find us.”
After a long moment of silence, Caedian took a shuddering breath. “Well then. There is only one place we can go, isn’t there?”
Amon’s heart constricted his throat; he shook his head, as if he was shaking off water. The elf could not mean what he was saying, he could not. Caedian was proposing nothing less than his own death. “There is nowhere we can go, Caedian.”
“No one will chase us into the dragonlands.”
Amon let out a laugh that was half sob. “Caedian, you can’t, it’s suicide—”
Caedian laid a quick slap across Amon’s mouth, shutting him up. Its ghost lingered there, stinging like cold fire, like a cruel kiss.
“Would you rather die here?” he asked. “There are only two choices, Amon. You can stay here—stay, and wait to be found and executed—or you can follow me into exile. I will not stay in this city an hour longer than I have to.”
“Caedian,” the wooden face above them said, and the sap-drooling smile turned into a simulacrum of a scream. “Exile,” it parroted, and then it lapsed into a broken elvish whisper.
Prickled flesh rose on Amon’s tensed arms. Caedian was right—Caedian and the sad monstrous effigy of his brother. The City was too small to hide them for long. He’d called exile suicide, but it was no more suicide than staying.
Out in the dragonlands, at least, they could never do to Caedian what they had done to Seoras.
Caedian looked up toward his brother’s distorted wooden face, his own a grimacing mask of pain. Amon put his hand on Caedian’s shoulder and squeezed.
“Caedian.”
He wrenched his eyes away from his brother. They gleamed with tears. Behind them, Liléan moaned and stirred.
“We don’t have much time,” Amon said. “If you want to leave, we have to go now.”
The elf closed his eyes, just for a moment, then nodded. “Then we go.” Without waiting for another word from Amon, he turned away from the death mask of his brother; half running and half stumbling, Amon followed him up into the light.
PART II: THE DRAGONLANDS
Chapter Nineteen
Everyone had lied about what lay beyond the City: that was the first thing Amon came to realize under the open sky. Whether they were deliberate lies or just the distortions of long-cherished mythology, he did not know and did not really care.
The greatest difference from his expectations was the sun. From what Zoran had told him, he’d thought it would near blot out the sky, a great bloody orb full of sinister dragon shadows, looming over the ruined world like an enthroned giant. Instead it hung red and remote, shrouded in rusty clouds as it sank to the horizon, and any dragons moving on its surface were far too distant for Amon to make out.
The second was the air. He had always known that as a halfdead he could breathe it, should he need to, but he had always imagined it thick with miasma and the charnel stench of dragonfire. It wasn’t that he had to gasp for every poisoned breath, as the stories would have it; it was as if there was too much air to breathe, filling his blood with a fizzing, intoxicating brew that made him light-headed and weirdly giddy.
One thing was true, though: the air was poisonous, at least to Caedian.
Since they had left the city behind, near a day ago, his breaths had been getting shorter and more labored step-by-step, his movements sluggish. It was the way that Zoran had moved, just before he’d become too weak to move at all. Caedian was strong, but it could not last. He was dying by stubborn inches.
They had stopped to rest on a black slab of rock in the wasted landscape. Some life clung on here, but it was wan and faded: there were mats of grayish moss on the underside of the rock, and a few clumps of thick, hollow reeds, white and flowerless. Caedian bent down and snapped one of them off in his hand, blowing on the hollow edge and producing a high, eerie whistle.
“We had these in the gardens,” he said. His voice was faint, almost strangled. “But they were green...”
Amon turned to him, his hands gripping hard on the edge of the rock. “Caedian. We need to go back.”
Caedian looked over his shoulder, back in the direction of the Last City. The canopy was visible only as a miragelike stutter in the landscape, hidden from sight by elvish art. “You know that isn’t possible,” he said, almost gently.
Amon looked away. Caedian was at least half right. The way out into the dragonlands had not been guarded—who would want to leave the City, after all, without being sent at swordpoint?—but the way back in would be a different matter. That was if they could even find the doors of exile again, with the canopy conspiring to hide them. “Not for me, maybe,” he said after a while. “For you, they would open the door.”
“And bury me in the Tree, like my brother?” He shook his head. “I did not leave just to save you, Amon.”
Amon said nothing more. He took off his pack and laid it out on the rock. In their flight from the City he hadn’t had time to gather many supplies. Some food, some water, a few scraps of clothes—that was it.
In truth, all the long, furtive way from the Tree to the edge of the Rim he had believed Caedian would stop and turn around—would abandon this mad quest. He’d told him to do so, more than once.
The last time Caedian had turned to him and said, “They would kill you.”
Amon had spread his hands. “I’m already half dead, remember? You have a thousand years yet.”
At that, Caedian had gestured violently toward the pale column of the Tree. “A thousand years of that?”
Now, under the rusty sunset sky, Amon had run out of words to persuade him with. He took a roll of sweet bread from the pack and broke it in half, handing one part to Caedian. The elf took it, but set it down beside him, leaving it uneaten.
“We should find a place to sleep,” Amon said after a while.
Caedian smiled. “This place is as good as any.”
He curled into himself on the rock, hands beneath his head as a pillow. Amon took off his coat and draped it lightly over Caedian’s shoulders; the elf was shivering, though the air was warm with a poison breeze.
“Amon.” Caedian’s voice came halting. “If I die in the night...”
“You won’t,” Amon said. His voice echoed, too loud in the empty silence. “You won’t,” he said again, softer. He tried to put a hand on Caedian’s back, but the elf pulled away from the touch.
Amon hugged his own knees, watching the sunset spread bloody smears across the horizon. They were on a flat plain, a desert plain. In the wavering light the ground was a deep gray, studded here and there with broken black rocks. In the distance he could see a strange red shimmer. Was it the sea, he wondered? A shiver went through him, des
pite the warmth.
To the south, past a long stretch of featureless desert, he could see the shadows of faraway hills. Mountains, even; they seemed big enough for that. In the old armory there had hung maps of the known world, places the dragonhunters would venture toward to gather copper or white sand or ancient artifacts buried beneath the poison earth. He wished he had some with him now, or remembered them better from the few times Zoran had allowed him to peruse them. No one save the elves and dragonhunters looked at those maps. For everyone else the world ended at the Rim of the City, where the canopy of the sky touched the earth.
So they were in a vast emptiness, with nothing save the few provisions they had managed to scrounge in their rushed escape from the City. He could breathe the air, but Caedian was killing himself with every breath, and neither one could last long on the scraps of food and water he had managed to pack while following Caedian on his relentless barge toward exile. They might last a week, or less if they couldn’t find water, if the rain that fell was as poisoned as the stories had it.
Amon put a hand against his mouth to muffle a burst of laughter, wild and not quite sane. All the hope he tried to hold on to seemed to be slipping through his fingers...yet if he had to die, he would at least die out here. Like a dragonhunter.
He had to admit that had a certain crooked charm.
* * *
He woke up, still alive. A warm and silent night had passed him by. He half opened his eyes, not wanting to see the sky above him. The last stars were winking out in the red morning, or hidden behind brown-and-black streaks of cloud.
For a while he didn’t move. He lay on his back, one hand over his heart, and listened to the slow in and out of his own breathing. The taste of the air coated the back of his throat like some exotic medicine, astringent and bittersweet and not quite unpleasant. His stomach was empty and growling, but the sensation seemed somehow faraway, easy to ignore, like a small creature’s useless muttering.
Another sound had been teasing the edge of his hearing since he had come awake, but his own breathing had blotted it out. Now it was niggling at him, trying to get his attention, like something physically yanking at his sleeve.
There were two rhythms of breath in the still air. Caedian had made it through the night.
He turned his head toward the sound. Caedian lay there, his eyes shut, still as a sleeping prince in a fairy tale. His mouth was open, his lips cracked and dry. An almost childish frown creased his face, more of effort than of distress, as if he were in the middle of some difficult task. His breathing had a wheezy, stuttering sound, subtle but insistent.
“Caedian,” Amon said. His voice came out dry and whispery. I need water, he thought; he wondered how much they had left to drink. “Caedian,” he said again, but the elf remained motionless, with only the soft rise and fall of his chest betraying the fact that he was still alive.
Later, he told himself then. Let him sleep.
He sat up and opened his pack, looking at their dwindling supplies. There were two canteens left; he unscrewed the top of one and took a gulp. It was warm and sulfurous, the taste of water stood too long in close air. Despite that, it was the sweetest water he had ever drunk; he had to force himself not to swallow it all down at once.
“Can I—can I have some water?”
Amon turned his head. Caedian was awake; his eyes were half-open and one hand was pressed to his forehead. “Yes,” he said, and he turned himself around, the canteen in his hand. “Here.”
Caedian tried to take it, but his hand was shaking too much. Amon scooted close and put the lip of the canteen to his mouth. He allowed Caedian two sips too many, then pulled the water away and screwed the top back onto the canteen.
“Thirsty,” he said, smacking his lips for more. His voice was hoarse and high.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
There were a few minutes of silence between them. Caedian did not ask for water again.
“We should move on,” Amon said after a while.
“Move on,” Caedian echoed. His eyes were strangely clear. “Yes.”
He got to his hands and knees, panting with effort. Amon averted his eyes, toward the mountains shadowed on the horizon.
“We should head south,” he said. “There are caves in the mountain, Zoran told me. The dragonhunters would go there, sometimes, and...” The words petered out. “We should head south,” he repeated.
“You should head south, Amon.” Caedian was still on hands and knees, his head slack, the white softness of his hair falling to half hide his face. “Go into the wilderness, hunt drakelings, or what you will. You have a chance out here at least.”
“I’m not leaving you.” Amon put an arm around Caedian’s shoulders and helped him to his feet, swearing under his breath. “Come on. Stand up!”
The elf tried for a moment, breathing hard—almost panting—then slid back to his knees, out of Amon’s awkward embrace. Cold sweat beaded on his brow, and the pupils of his eyes looked very small. “You should kill me now. Save us both a measure of trouble.”
“That’s not funny.”
Caedian licked his lips; Amon wondered if the elf’s throat still felt as dry as his. “It wasn’t meant as a joke.” He sighed and laid his head back, staring up at the sky. “I never thought I would see it, not like this. The sun, I mean.”
“I know.”
They sat together in silence, staring into the hypnotic red light of the sky. After a while, the brown clouds that had clustered over the sun multiplied, turning deep and shadowy; the sky was the color of old leaves then. Amon saw flashes of lightning in the distance but heard no thunder.
“Do you think we could have saved him?”
Amon did not need to ask whom Caedian meant. The image of Seoras’s carved wooden face still hung at the back of his mind like a nightmare effigy. He shook his head. “Whatever was done to him...I think he was beyond saving.”
“Yes. Beyond saving.” Caedian’s head drooped, and his breath whistled between his lips. “Just like all of us.”
Amon pressed his fingernails into the hollows of his fists. “Caedian—”
“I thought the Last City was life, the last life in this world,” Caedian went on, not hearing him. “But I was wrong, wasn’t I? It’s already dead. It’s just a corpse that refuses to stop breathing.” He wiped his eyes and marshaled his wheezing breaths. When he looked up at Amon, it was with a kind of supplication. “You know there is no way for me to survive this, Amon. Please. Make it merciful for me.”
Would it be so bad? The thought came as a familiar, insidious whisper, ink-dark and caressing; it rose from the same deep place as his rage, as his desire. You could end his suffering, quick and clean, then end yourself. You could never have lived together, but you could die together. You could have that.
Amon closed his eyes. Opened them again. The world was all rusty shadows and lightning light.
It was almost surprising to find out that he didn’t want to die. He didn’t think Caedian wanted to die either, but he knew that the elf could see no other option. For Caedian it was a choice between a quick death—a mercy killing—and a lingering, painful one, lungs burning and blood poisoned by the air of the dragonlands. He wasn’t a stupid man by far; he knew there was no other way.
“Like hell there isn’t,” Amon muttered, and he got to his feet.
“What are you doing?”
He turned back toward Caedian. “I’m going to save your life.”
Chapter Twenty
Caedian remained where he was, curled on his side on the hard slab of rock. He looked up at Amon with wide, gleaming eyes; his smile was the thin and eerie smile of a dream-poppy smoker. “Come on,” he said. “Wrap those big hands around my neck and squeeze, Vraja. It won’t take long. You can do whatever you want with my body, afterward.”
/> Amon stood still for a moment, fists bunched, counting out his song against sick, rising rage. “I thought that you—that you felt—” He could not choke out the rest of the words; they tasted too bitter in his throat.
“Yes,” Caedian said, very quietly. “But what does that matter now? If you still felt the same, you would do what I ask.”
“I’m not going to kill you.”
Caedian turned on his back, a single hand resting slack on his chest. “Are you going to make me do it myself?”
He turned back to Caedian. “Get up.”
“I can’t, you know I can’t...”
A few steps and he stood beside him. “Get up,” he said, and he reached down to grab Caedian by the arm, hauling him upright with a violent jerk.
Anger flared in Caedian’s purple eyes, and it was the sweetest thing that Amon had ever seen: it was life and defiance, bright as a star. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he snarled.
Amon said nothing. He just lifted him up bodily and put him down hard on the stale soil of the desert plain. Caedian slid down to his knees and stayed there, his shoulders slumping, his face set in a kind of impotent fury. “Are you just going to watch me die then, Amon? Do you care so little about me?”
“No. Like I said...” Amon opened the bags they’d stuffed with the things they had managed to grab and spread them out on the rock slab, sorting through their mingled provisions. “I’m going to try and save your life the best I can.”
Caedian sat on the ground and hugged his knees, watching Amon at his frantic work. “What are you doing?”
Amon didn’t bother to answer. His heart was racing—halfdead or not, he wasn’t used to the air of the dragonlands, to its new composition and new smells. Every breath seemed to fill him to the brim, cramming the entire world into his lungs. Sweat ran down his back in hot torrents, torrents that soon turned cold in the darkening air. Tools, I’ll need tools, he thought, and he fished out a small, sharp knife. It gleamed prettily in the naked light.