by Jeff Seymour
That was it. That was the problem. If they couldn’t defend the cities, they would lose all ability to defend anything.
But if they couldn’t defend the cities, what could they defend?
“We owe it to our people to seek more information before choosing a course of action. Let us send representatives to Nutharion. Let the Prince of Eldan return to his people and send word of their course. Heramsun counsels more time to make our decision.”
She sat slowly, not shifting her eyes from Quay’s, and he grasped her unsaid message: My husband trusted you. If you want my people to do the same, show them why.
Quay took a deep breath. He remembered the size of the dragon, remembered the weight of it in his mind. He hadn’t hesitated before fleeing from it, even after risking his life trying to stop it from being summoned. Would soldiers manning a catapult on a wall act differently?
They would be defending their homes, he thought.
But the thought felt hollow.
Next to him, Tsu’min had stood unflinching as his plan was debated.
When the king asked if the Sh’ma had anything more to say, Tsu’min responded affirmatively.
For as long as Quay had known him, Tsu’min had worn a jade bead on a strap around his right wrist. As the Assembly watched, he began to unwind that cord.
“Know this,” he began. The strap came free, and the bead disappeared into his hand. “I have brought you this warning because one I loved once loved this place, loved your people.” Tsu’min used the same tone he’d employed in the White Forest, months before. High and haughty. Enough to humble a prince of Eldan. Surely, then, enough to humble an Aleani assemblor.
But the Aleani, surrounded by their families at the heart of their power, didn’t look likely to be humbled.
“If she had lived, she would have stood here, patient and calm, and explained to you why it is that you must do what I ask of you.” Silence hung in the amphitheater. Somewhere over the mountain, a hawk called. “I thought at first that I might do the same.”
Tsu’min held up the bead between his thumb and index finger, and it flashed in the sun. Children, Quay had once heard him call the Aleani. Children to be taught.
The bead flashed back onto the cord, and Tsu’min wound it around his wrist. The energy flowed out of him.
“But I am not Mi’ame,” Tsu’min said. “I am Tsu’min Nar’oth.”
The cord was rewound. Tsu’min strode from the Assembly and said no more.
A cloud moved over the sun.
“The Assembly will now hear a proposal put forth by Quay Eldani, Prince of Eldan.”
Within the shadow and the silence, Quay shivered. He opened his mouth, then faltered.
When Tsu’min spoke of the dragon, he spoke with the knowledge of long experience.
Quay had experience of his own.
The eyes—the dragon’s endless, ever-burning eyes. It had smiled at him. Always, it had smiled at him.
They would never be able to defend themselves against it.
He’d been a fool to believe otherwise.
And he’d known it, somewhere inside of him, all along.
Inferior, he thought. Not because of Tsu’min’s age and experience, but because Tsu’min hadn’t flinched from a truth that Quay had run from.
He looked up to speak, and his words hardened in his throat.
The Aleani faces before him looked confused and angry. They would never accept what they had to do.
Worse, Quay knew he would find the same looks on the faces of the Twelve and the Seven—knew his people would never believe the threat of the dragon was real and never make the sacrifices necessary to save themselves before it was too late.
The wind whistled over the amphitheater. The cloud rolled past, and sunlight shone on the mountain again. Birdsong echoed in the breeze.
Hundreds of miles away, the sun would be rising on Palace Hill over the slums, the Merchant District, the silver ribbon of the Eldwater. It would be shining on everything and everyone Quay loved most—the people whose protection had become the sole purpose of his life.
The twenty-two-year-old Prince of Eldan, standing in the void left by a being of great age and power, knew that the burden of saving the things he loved had fallen to him.
And he wasn’t sure that he could bear it.
ELEVEN
Ninety days before the destruction of Du Fenlan
Zahayr stood on the armlike ridge of a tall, throne-shaped mountain as the sun vanished behind its peak. The sky above the valley erupted in blues and purples and reds. Below him stretched the rigid, cold body of a white and dusty city.
He gripped his staff. Its wood was smooth and old—light brown and dark brown in turns, patterned with endless whorls. It was a gift, a talisman, a good-luck charm, but his dreams had shown him leaving it on the ridge.
The Sleeper squatted next to him in the dimming light. He had started to grow a small patch of brown-red peach fuzz beneath his chin, and he watched the city cautiously, like a hunted animal. He wore the loose-fitting, scratchy brown shirt of Zahayr’s people, but also the trousers that had been drying by his feet when Zahayr had found him. The Waker stood behind him, brown hair streaming over her shoulders, gold eyes glinting in the sun.
The moment was much as he had dreamed it would be, except for the colors. He never dreamed in colors.
The child of his brother, wide-eyed and afraid, scuffed his feet against the ridge, and the Heartspeak sang between them. The child didn’t want Zahayr to leave. His people, left in a valley two days’ walk behind, didn’t want him to leave either, not truly, though they trusted him when he said it was necessary. He handed his staff to the child and passed him the belt from which his knives hung. The boy looked up at him sadly, and Zahayr patted his head and reminded him to take care.
Zahayr shivered. He had seen himself doing much the same in another dream, a far-off dream that ended with him falling from a height from which he was unlikely to survive.
He was still waiting for a dream that occurred after it.
The child touched the shoulder of the Waker, and she smiled at him.
The Sleeper the child did not say farewell to.
There was much to fear in the Sleeper. He had haunted Zahayr’s nights for months—a faceless being of shadow and light whose part in the worldplay had not yet been fixed. He featured prominently in the dream of falling.
Zahayr touched the two red beads that hung in his hair. They were a mark of his gift—he saw the worldplay in his dreams before it happened. That was why the people had given him permission to go to the Aleani and then to his cousins in the west, the tribes whose anger and rage seeped into the Heartspeak even as far away as the Crib.
And now he had come to the city of white bones.
Du Fenlan, the Sleeper and the Waker called it.
He raised his hand and pointed.
“Thehr,” he said. It hurt his jaw and throat to speak, and he wished for the hundredth time that the Sleeper and the Waker could feel the Heartspeak. Their eyes followed his hand. A dome of white stone jutted from the side of the mountain below them, less than a mile away. They would reach it just as sunset descended into dusk. They would clamber silently over its top and drop into its doorway.
There the dream of white bones ended.
The Sleeper swallowed. He’d been to this place before, and the memories were unpleasant to him.
“No one down there will recognize us, Zahayr. I don’t know if we can protect you.”
Zahayr smiled, though the action cracked the skin around his lips. He didn’t tax his throat by speaking. He had a feeling he would need to speak often in the city of white bones.
The Sleeper shook his head. The Waker squeezed his hand, and then the two of them set off, leading Zahayr down from the ridge, toward the end of a dream and the mystery beyond.
***
The worldplay unfolded. In the time it took Zahayr, the Sleeper, and the Waker to descend the ridge, the lig
ht all but disappeared. A brisk, warm wind rose from the valley. It masked the pine haze of the mountains with the scents of a city: bread, ale, sweat, filth, fish, people. Zahayr’s nose twitched.
The three of them slid from the ridge onto the stone bone-roof of the dome. Zahayr followed the Sleeper and the Waker to the dome’s edge and peered over. A tall, fire-haired shadow in a fluttering blue cloak was striding away down a long ramp. Zahayr had seen that shadow in other dreams, at other times. He would meet him much later. Two Aleani watched the shadow go, one on each side of the wide portal the dome concealed. They were clothed in gleaming armor and held long poles with blades fixed at their ends. Zahayr’s heart fluttered, and the response of his people in the hills was immediate—a hundred whispers of fear, anxiety, curiosity, excitement.
Calm, he told himself. For their sake, remain calm. His heart slowed, and so did the rush of the Heartspeak. The Sleeper and the Waker knelt beside him. The stars began to show in the darkening sky.
“You’re sure?” asked the Waker. The light spilling from the bone-house made her face glow. The Sleeper was sweating, pulling at his beard wisps nervously.
“Yhess,” said Zahayr. His heart beat faster again. Soon. It would be soon. A bell chimed within the mountain. The two Aleani standing by the door moved away from it and began a slow march into the city.
“Nhow,” he whispered, and he dropped over the edge, light as a feather. The roof was not high. Ten feet at most. His knees bent. His feet kissed the stone floor. Before him, the bone-house opened into a round room lit by fire held in bronze vessels and an open pit. A strange, backless chair sat empty on a dais at the room’s far end, covered in a rich fabric.
The Sleeper and the Waker dropped noiselessly at Zahayr’s side. He had wondered whether they would. The dream ended when he leaped over the edge, and he had passed into the realm of the unknown. The transition was always a little frightening.
He crept forward on silent feet. An Aleani sat in a low chair facing the fire, his back to Zahayr. He had long brown dreadlocks, and he was smoking a pipe. He looked as though he belonged in this place—to this place, as Zahayr and the others did not.
The Sleeper’s booted foot made a noise on the stone, and the Aleani turned and saw Zahayr. The pipe fell from his hand. In a rack by the wall there were more of the poleblades, and he leaped up and ran to them, shouting, “Syorchuak Van, Syorchuak Van! Rek ardra, Alean! Rek ardra!” He moved with speed and sureness, despite a flowing robe that should have hobbled him. Three quick steps to the rack.
Zahayr had seen this Aleani before, in other dreams. He would come with Zahayr on the journey to the west. He would help bring peace to the Cousins and fold them back into the world they had spurned. They would be friends.
But all that was in the future still.
The Sleeper and the Waker were shouting.
“No! Wait—”
“We come in peace, we mean no harm—”
The robed Aleani reached the rack and withdrew a weapon, then leveled it at Zahayr’s chest. His face fell into deep creases. Other Aleani poured from hallways, raced down staircases with swords or knives or poleblades in their hands.
The Sleeper was cursing. He had pulled his knife, and he was half-crouched, the same as he had been when Zahayr had met him. The Waker had her palms raised and was shouting at the Sleeper to put it away, put it away, they were friends of the Prince of Eldan, they had been here before, they had met with Alphaestus and Ereldite and surely someone could vouch for them if only—
She fell quiet. There were Aleani behind them now as well. A dozen weapons pointed their direction. The Sleeper dropped his knife and spread his hands.
“Len?” the Waker gasped.
The look of the Aleani by the rack became one of confusion.
“Yenor’s eye,” whispered the Sleeper.
Zahayr walked forward, as he had approached the Sleeper, until the point of the robed Aleani’s poleblade touched his chest. The Aleani swept his eyes over Zahayr and the two humans calmly, though Zahayr watched the blood beat fast in his neck and knew how much their appearance had unnerved him.
Zahayr smiled.
The Aleani shook the pole so that the blade scratched him.“Hekuak, Van. Nak yan el ek hekuabch.”
Zahayr stepped back. He let the smile fall from his face, but his heart soared. There were great forces at work in his life indeed.
The Aleani licked his lips. His eyes left Zahayr’s, and he spoke in the language of the humans.
“Girl, you spoke my father’s name. What do you know of him?”
The Waker took a moment to respond. Her voice, when she did, was heavy with sadness. “Len—we—I—”
Another voice broke the silence. A loud voice, accustomed to command.
“Stop!” it shouted.
Zahayr’s eyes picked out a young, dark human man flying toward the stairs in a rush of white cloth, barking as he ran. “Put your weapons down! Down, damn you! Raest!”
The Aleani who would be Zahayr’s friend lowered his poleblade slowly, held it with its blunt end on the floor, and met Zahayr’s eyes once more.
Chosen, Zahayr thought. The Aleani named Raest felt it too, he was certain. He was staring at Zahayr with more curiosity than alarm now, as though he felt he ought to recognize him and could not place the familiarity.
Zahayr wondered if, perhaps, the blood of the Dreamseers ran in his veins too.
“You know these people?” Raest asked the young man, but the man was rushing past him, past Zahayr, toward the Sleeper and the Waker, pulling them to him and pressing his forehead to first one and then the other.
“Cole, Dil,” he whispered. “Yenor’s eye…Yenor’s eye…”
Zahayr turned back to Raest. He extended one hand.
“Mhy name es Zahayr. I hahv cuhm to hehlp,” he said.
The Aleani didn’t take his hand. More people flowed into the room in nightclothes or robes of deep-flower purple. They saw the three humans behind Zahayr embracing, and that was a wonder to them, and they saw him, and that was a second wonder. He left his hand extended. The Sleeper and the Waker stepped forward. Their friend addressed a female Aleani standing on the second level and began to explain many things that did not concern Zahayr.
Raest made no move. He would not take Zahayr’s hand on that night but on a night much later. Zahayr had seen it.
And everywhere, the worldplay continued. Men and women, Sh’ma and Aleani, Wilderlengs and Duennin—they all moved, painting Zahayr’s dreams in vibrant color and hurtling the world into conflicts large and small.
TWELVE
Eighty-nine days before the destruction of Emeth’il
Memories clustered at the edges of Tsu’min’s consciousness like children begging for attention.
He did his best to ignore them.
A barge floated on the moonlit waters of the Deru, waiting to start him on his journey to the furrowed slopes of the volcano Ole’guash’ma. The rest of the na’oth’na would already be there, searching for the three souls—always belonging to living people, because Yenor wanted the world to sacrifice to save itself—around which they would create the body of the white dragon.
They had made a promise, all of them.
He wore the familiar traveling clothes of his people—blue trousers, vest and shirt, black shoulder wrap. Sailors bustled around the barge’s silhouette, loading crates and checking lists and preparing for departure. They were to leave imminently.
“Your name is Eraic.”
He raised his head. The daughter of Len and Lena Heramsun, sent along to chronicle the days to come, stood between him and the barge. She was tall for her people, and strongly built. Her nose sported a small piercing.
“Eraic a’Soulth. The half-blood. Who came here with Mi’ame Greatheart in the time of Eraestus and Meneldite. Whose love was said to light the sky.”
She looked barely out of her childhood. She wore leather trousers and a dark vest of linen that left her arms bare. G
old bracelets encircled her wrists. A heavy cloak flapped from her shoulders. Behind her, a few dozen Aleani milled about, loading the barge.
Tsu’min took a deep, angry breath.
It wasn’t her place to stir memories of Mi’ame in him. No one left in all of Guedin had the right to do that.
Still, if anyone was going to, it would be an Aleani.
Aleana had hosted Tsu’min and Mi’ame during the height of its power, and after the War of Sherduan shattered the region, the survivors had taken things they wanted to remember and ascribed them to him and Mi’ame to give them weight. In their tales he’d grown into a legend.
Not even Eraic a’Soulth could have lived up to those stories.
Tsu’min Nar’oth could do nothing but disappoint.
So Tsu’min had to deal with Maegan Heramsun, a child standing under the moon who thought she was talking to a story. A girl who had no idea the weight of the memories she was invoking. He watched her, and he grew angry, and he made to move past her.
She blocked his way. “The stories say you were filled with joy. That your eyes showed kindness and wisdom and caring.”
He didn’t speak. Instead, he let his eyes meet hers. Someday she would learn that the longer a person lived, the heavier the memories they dragged around became. When Tsu’min had called himself Eraic a’Soulth, he hadn’t learned how to hurt.
That had been a long time ago.
He pushed past Len Heramsun’s child onto the wooden planking of the barge, found his way to a bench and sat down, bunching his wrap around him and staring into the night. The sailors moved quickly, silent shapes in the darkness. He stared past them at the twinkling, diamond profusion of the stars and searched for peace.
“What happened to you?” Maegan asked.
He turned and saw her climbing onto the barge. She stood far from him, with a look in her eyes that swam between sympathy and curiosity.
His anger grew deeper.
The sailors called to one another and took their places at the oars. A shrill whistle pierced the sky. The moorings were cast off, and the barge slid toward the center of the river, where it fell into the current and whistled northward with the waters.