by John Tristan
It really is so small. The thought seemed only half his own; it was tinged with the voices of others, laced with Zoran’s fading growl and Caedian’s faint, mournful amusement, and something of the dragon’s wordless contempt. So small, in such an empty world.
Except that the world wasn’t empty, of course. He had seen the ancient maps, had read Emil’s books over Caedian’s shoulder. The world was vast, and if the City had survived and Esper had survived, who could say that they were the last? Had anyone even looked, save the dragons? They were nothing but fire and bloodlust. Even the elves admitted that much—the destruction of Dragonfall had been a chaos, a directionless burning, not a campaign of war. And yet they believed they were the only ones?
Amon hauled himself one foot farther, then another, then another. Somewhere along the way he had stopped being tired; his halfdead body—his dragonblooded body—had found some hidden store of energy from the same deep well where it drew its rage. Eventually the world turned from vertical to horizontal. His head spun with momentary dizziness. He had reached the City’s apex—the top of the Tree.
Then he saw it, just a few minutes’ distance from him: a gash in the canopy, not just one of the wide slashes left on the way up but a ragged hole sawed into the leaves. “Caedian!” His voice was ragged, near inaudible. He drank in the rain and tried again, but there was no response. So, crawling, dragging himself along by his sword, he slowly made his way to the hole in the canopy.
When he came to the edge, he saw the Tree below him, reaching down a dizzying way toward the ground. Heavy glowing fruit the size of drakelings hung in the branches, and pale white ones among the leaves: wooden fruit, crypt fruit. Below them there were pale semicircles, like carved moons. They were balconies, he realized, jutting out from the elf quarters that dotted the long trunk of the Tree. He heard nothing save rain and silence; his skin crawled.
There! There, on one of those jutting balconies, he saw him: dark gray skin like stone in the greenish-blue light, white hair plastered to his face with rain. The gouge he had cut in the canopy let the rain of the dragonlands into the Tree; it dripped down in cold gouts, slicking smooth bark that had never been touched by rain before.
“Caedian!”
The figure stopped its movement and looked up. His face was just visible in the flickering light, a weird, flat mask with dark holes for eyes. A flare of feeling went up in Amon’s heart, roaring like fire. It was Caedian, there was no question of that.
“Cae!”
He sheathed his sword, shuffled to the edge and then, heedless, flung himself over. His body knew just how to move. He twisted to the right—jerked out his hands—and then rain-slickened leaves were in his grip and he was sinking downward in a slow fall. When the balcony was below him, he let go and fell the rest of the way down until coming to a half rolling stop at Caedian’s feet.
His body was bruised and trembling but still coiled with that buzzing energy—distantly, he knew that he would pay the price for all this later if he lived, that he was drawing from a well that would eventually run dry. For now there was no time to think on that. For now he only looked up at Caedian and smiled.
For a moment there was nothing in his glass-and-ink eyes, not even recognition. Then, slowly, the mask of his face cracked and he went to his knees.
“This is a dream.” The elf said it slowly, like a man moving underwater. “It has to be.”
Amon reached up with his gauntleted hand and pulled Caedian into a bruising kiss. A moment later he released him; they were both panting for breath. “Does this feel like a dream to you?”
“I left you—” He swallowed. “I left you to live, Amon.”
“Well.” He shrugged. “I don’t want to live without you.” It came out almost jaunty, a throwaway joke of a truth, and Amon couldn’t help but grin.
One corner of Caedian’s mouth quirked. “You may not be able to save us this time.”
“When are you going to understand that I won’t stop trying?”
Caedian let out an inarticulate cry—a cry that was at least half frustration—and kissed him again. All his sorrow, all his rage and all his need seemed to come to a singular point, caught hot and alive between their mouths, and he drank in Amon’s kiss as though it was water in the wastes.
“You should have stayed,” he said. “You should have let me make that bargain.”
“You should have given me a choice.”
He shook his head. “You’re—”
“A fool,” he said, and he stroked his fingers along Caedian’s jaw. “I know.”
He closed his eyes a moment; now his smile was real. “We are both fools.”
White lightning flashed through the sky, a counterpoint to the blue and green of the lightvines. Amon heard other voices then, shouting over the rain—the elves had noticed what had been done to their canopy. They were gathering on the balconies below them, some in bare scraps of clothing and some in gleaming white armor. He grabbed on to Caedian’s arm and pulled himself to his feet. “They know we’re here.”
“Yes.” He smiled up at the gash he had cut in the canopy. It was bleeding liquid light. “Hard for them not to notice, really.”
“Great Mother, Cae...” He shook his head. “You couldn’t find an easier way in?”
“I couldn’t,” he said, voice almost inaudible in the roar of the rainstorm above them and the frantic shouts below. “And I couldn’t give up.”
Amon took Caedian’s free hand and raised it to his mouth, pressing a gentle kiss to its palm. “I know,” he said, and he did know. He had not stopped, on his way through the wasteland.
The doors on the balcony opened then, and Amon steeled himself for the attack—for the flight of a bolt or the rush of swords.
Instead, barefoot and elegant in a long white gown, lightstaff in hand, Liléan stepped out into the rain.
Chapter Thirty-Six
She shook her head sadly, and from what Amon could tell that sadness was entirely unfeigned. “I had hoped you would return from wherever you had run to,” she said, “but not like this. Great Mother, Caedian, do you know what you have done?”
“More than you know,” he said, but there was a catch in his voice—a waver in his confidence. He was backing away from her, into the shadows. He had not expected to see her, Amon thought. Not like this.
“The Tree will repair itself,” she said, “if it gets the grace to. If we aren’t all burned to cinders or eaten up in one gulp of an elder dragon’s mouth before it has the chance!” She said something in elvish, reaching out her hand.
“No,” he said. “Don’t you dare, don’t you speak our family tongue to me! You lost that right, and the right to call yourself my mother.”
“For what? Protecting the City? Protecting our way of life? Making sure uncounted people do not die a quick death? Caedian, you have been a child and it is enough. You cannot destroy everything we are for the sake of a...a tantrum!”
All while they were talking Amon had kept silent, his eyes flickering between the other balconies and the door behind Liléan. If this had been Esper, they would have been dead already, he thought, speared through by crossbow bolts or decapitated by a quick movement of an adamantine sword. The elves, even the ones in armor, were only watching—them or the tears in the canopy. Watching and waiting, with dazed looks in their bright, beautiful eyes. Was this what it did, a thousand years without a threat, a thousand years in their closed world?
“I am only here to destroy what should not be,” he said. “I am here to set my brother free.”
“Caedian.”
She took a step closer, arms open—though she kept a tight grip on her lightstaff. Amon raised his sword; Caedian left his dragging point-first along the ground. It was the same sword he had killed the dragon with, a black needle.
“Caedian,” s
he said again. Were there tears shimmering in her leaf-green eyes, or was it only rain? “You have to understand what is at stake. If the City falls, our history and our ways fall with it. We have worked so hard to ensure it never happens again.”
Caedian stared at her. “Again?”
“As it once was, so it shall be,” she said, and Amon stiffened. Emil had spoken the same words, an intonation or a prayer. Again, he thought, and he looked up at the storm-rent sky.
“If we were simply waiting until the world entire was consumed, do you think we would choose to sacrifice our children, our very blood? The last time the dragons razed this world so much was lost, Caedian. Not mere lives, but laws and languages. We will not let it happen again. We will wait out the storm any way we can.” She took another step forward and extended her bare hand. Some of the rain dripped onto her open palm. “Come back to me, beloved. Please, see what we have done here, what we have made. You could live long enough to see the naked sun again!”
“Can’t you see? I’m not going to live even half as long as you.” He stepped into the light and lifted his head, showing his gray skin, his blackened eyes. “I am halfdead now.”
She winced, as if she had been slapped; it was the most emotion that Amon had ever seen her show. “Oh, my beloved...”
He cut her off—almost literally, sweeping the black needle of his sword in the air between them. “So there we are. I can no longer even be part of your world.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, “there are ways you could be cured, Caedian. We have not lived through so many mortal generations without knowing our own bodies very well. Put down your sword, come to me and we will use all of our art to heal you.”
There was a momentary flicker in his eyes, a kind of lightning. The sword lowered. “And what of Seoras, Mother?”
“Seoras serves the Tree.” She drew back her shoulders; her lightstaff shone like starlight in the rain. “But...if you wish it, if that is the price you ask, then he will be set free of his duty.”
“The price I ask.” His voice had gone very quiet, now—Amon had to strain to hear. “What of the others?”
“The others?” She shook her head. “Seoras is different—he is new to his duty—but they no longer exist, Caedian. They are part of the soul of the Tree now. You may as well ask that I remove a singular and special drop of water from a lake.”
“And what of Amon?”
The question thrummed between them like a struck string.
“You cannot let yourself be swayed by transient things,” she said after a while. Her grip on the lightstaff moved and resettled; rain had puddled beneath her bare feet. “Enough damage has been done to the City and the Tree already without allowing a halfdead to spread elvish secrets.”
Amon laughed, a rough and grating sound. “The secret that this has happened before, you mean? Or the secret of what keeps this City living? How long will it be until you’ll need human blood to water its roots—or has that happened already, long ago?”
She ignored him—to her, he did not seem to exist at all. Her clear, luminous eyes were fixed on her son, her hand still extended. “You are the last of my blood, my beloved son. In the end, that is all that matters here.”
Caedian’s smile was almost gentle, the bright purple of his eyes flashing in the stormy light. “Blood,” he said, “is not all that matters. For one, my lady, there is love.”
She nodded, as if she had been half expecting him to answer thus. “Then you have put yourself beyond our world indeed. You are a wound, just as the wounds you have inflicted on the Tree.” She drew her offered hand back and gripped her lightstaff like a club. “A wound, and my responsibility.”
Her voice was almost regretful—but when she moved she did it with blinding speed. The lightstaff blurred in the dark; Amon wasn’t fast enough to intercept it.
Caedian was though. He brought his sword up and met the staff, sliding the blade along its edge until its hilt caught against the staff and he was face-to-face with his mother. “You would kill me?”
“I would end your threat to our City.”
He snarled. “I could care less about your City. I am here for my brother.”
She stepped back in a graceful arc and swept the lightstaff high. She caught Caedian’s shoulder; he let out a breathless cry and staggered backward. Amon was moving then, as if something had been holding him back and just let go. He was roaring, rage-blind, the sword on his back forgotten—he was going after her with his fists, spiked gauntlet on one hand.
She turned on her heel and swept the lightstaff up. The glowing end flared and blinded him; the next moment it had driven hard into his jaw. He reeled, arms flailing wide to try to keep his balance. She followed her strike with another to his solar plexus, and he went facedown onto the hard wood of the balcony.
He lay there, dazed and aching. How had she moved so fast? Even dragons didn’t move so fast.
“Such a pity,” she said. Her voice seemed to be coming from very far away. There were sounds—harsh, thumping sounds of wood against flesh—but Amon’s head was spinning and he could not drag himself back to his feet. “I had thought you and your brother had such potential. That you both proved yourself so wanting, so essentially flawed, speaks to a defect in my bloodline, or that of the sire I chose for you. Either way, I do not think I shall have children again.”
Amon had managed to draw himself up on one elbow. His sword was on his back—all he had to do was reach for it. Liléan saw him move and whirled back around, extending one bare foot in a sharp kick to his temple. His skull rang with it and he fell back again. She moved too fast; she was too strong. He let out a sob and tried to crawl toward the gray-and-white blur of Caedian’s form—he was kneeling on the balcony, the sword knocked from his hand.
“At the least there is vigor in you.” She made a soft huffing noise. “Tainted blood or not, you will feed the Tree well. So there is that consolation for you, Caedian. You failed in life, but you have a use, after all.”
“No.” Somehow Amon was back on his feet, though the world swayed and swelled with sickening colors of pain. He reached back for his sword, for its heavy feel in his hand. “No! I won’t let you!”
She made that huffing noise again—it was a kind of sigh—and turned toward him. “Oh, you again? You halfdead are resilient.” The lightstaff was in her hands, raised just a little, and the light at the end had turned dragon’s-eye red and malignant. She planned to drive that staff and its killing light right into his skull, he thought, and she had the strength to do it. To shatter bone and leave him a broken mess.
“No.”
It was not him who had spoken, this time. It was Caedian, and more than Caedian—his voice had taken on a kind of resonant echo, as if he was speaking from the depth of Esper’s caves. The red light of Liléan’s staff faded back to star-white, and she turned around, oddly slow after her lightning movement.
Caedian was standing haloed by lightvines and leaves. His eyes were not just bright but near to glowing in their light. The sword was back in his hand, a great dark needle. There was no wind in the City, but somehow the leaves behind him were rustling, the lightvines moving back and forth as if caught in a swaying breeze. One was wrapped around his neck like a bright collar.
“Caedian—”
“No.” He held his sword level with her heart. “You will not do this, Mother.”
She sucked in a breath. “It’s not possible, it’s—”
Light flashed through the City. For a moment night became day, the canopy turning the bright leaf-green of high noon, and Liléan hissed and shielded her eyes. The bright collar at Caedian’s neck twitched with living light. “You will not have him.”
The entire world flickered in mad color, green and dragon-red and lightning-white, and Caedian was moving faster than Amon’s eye could track, and
the next moment his sword had pierced through Liléan’s breastbone and was protruding between her vertebrae, a very dark needle tipped with blood.
He drew the sword away. Somewhere, someone was screaming. Liléan touched her chest; her fingers came away red with blood. She gasped a breath; there was an awful whistling sound. Without another word she slid down. The lightstaff fell from her fingers and went dim.
“Mother.” A complex sequence of feelings passed over Caedian’s face, and for a moment the bright collar of the lightvine tightened around his throat. “I am sorry.”
“I cannot die.” Her voice was thin and almost shrill. “There—there has to be continuity.”
Then she fell, facedown, onto the rain-slickened balcony.
There were shouts and footsteps below them, but Amon barely heard them. He took a step closer to Caedian—to the strange, light-haloed not-quite-Caedian who had rammed a sword through his mother’s sternum. “Cae?”
He shook his head, very slowly. “Not quite.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Amon sucked in a breath. “Seoras.”
He nodded. The leaves of the Tree drooped and rustled around them. “Thank you,” he said. “For saving him. For saving me.”
“Saving you?” Amon choked out something like a laugh; Liléan’s kick had bruised him badly, and it still felt hard to breathe. “I never even—we couldn’t—”
Caedian—no, Seoras—slid close, carried on a litter of lightvines, and put a single finger to Amon’s lips. “Shh. There is not much time.” He smiled, and there was light between his teeth. “We have...work to do.”
The vines were wrapping around Amon as well now, almost gently, and lifting him off of his feet. The balcony was below them then; the canopy flickered green and gold and night-blue.