by Jeff Seymour
He wished briefly that he still had Len Heramsun with him—proof that he could at least thwart the will of those who’d summoned the dragon.
But he hadn’t seen the old Aleani since he’d left the volcano. He would have to do this alone.
The dragon wouldn’t care about the town—Emeth’il was a bump on a frog’s ass compared to other settlements in the world. A few thousand Sh’ma fishing the waters of the I’o’ai Nar’olua would glow less brightly with life than half the towns in Eldan. Soulth’il would have been a better target.
The dragon would be there for Tsu’min, and for Tsu’min alone.
Soren drew closer. So did Sherduan. The path he was on ran into another, then another, then another, until the first buildings appeared through the last of the trees.
Soren pulled at the River of Souls and begged it for speed, speed, speed. The town rose around him, gleaming orange in the slanting light on one side of its streets and dripping with purple shadows on the other.
Sherduan’s silhouette blotted out the rising sun, and Emeth’il plunged into darkness.
Soren shivered. The terror of a thousand Sh’ma welled up around him. They stood dumbly in the streets, turning to face the shadow in the west and their own deaths.
When the River pulsed, Soren dropped to his stomach. He heard a sound like the shrieking of a hundred boiling monkeys.
The heat and death of the dragon’s breath sheared through the town over his head. The ground shook. Buildings fell. An enormous body swooped past.
The monster soared over him.
Soren jumped to his feet and began to run again.
Faster, he thought. Faster…
To his right, the dragon wheeled over the sparkling bay to come back for a second pass. Gulls flocked and screamed in the thousands, and Sherduan plunged through them like they were snowflakes.
Soren raced over carts and around screaming Sh’ma already dead whether they knew it or not. A few—a very few—were trying to grab their shocked neighbors and herd them toward the forest, into the buildings, anywhere but out in the open where the dragon could find them and kill them.
It wouldn’t matter.
Only one thing mattered in the dying minutes of Emeth’il, and that was the life of Tsu’min Nar’oth. He formed a deep swell in the River ahead of Soren, like a whale leaving a whirlpool in the ocean as it dove.
Soren was jealous of that power, but he could curb his jealousy to spite the dragon. The world needed Tsu’min Nar’oth, and Soren meant to deliver him.
A wide, semicircular market opened up at the end of the street. He bulled over a quivering Sh’ma and spotted the nar’oth standing atop a large, shit-covered stone.
Tsu’min was facing the pivoting dragon. His eyes glowed brightly enough to rival the sun. The morning light caught the flames of his hair and made them shine.
He looks stronger than he did before, Soren thought. Like the tip of a spear.
Soren had seen the inner workings of the world. He’d stared into the abyss in which Sherduan slept, watched the darkness move and known that there were things in the night he would never fully understand.
The hair still rose on the back of his neck.
A young Sh’ma with long blue hair stood next to Tsu’min, tugging at his sleeve like she was trying to pull him off the platform.
The child, Soren thought. Tyash. His lover reborn.
The dragon’s black maw drew closer. It opened its mouth to breathe.
Soren dug his heels into the stones of the marketplace. The soles of his boots tore, and he skidded to a stop.
Too late.
The River of Souls spun toward Tsu’min and the dragon in enormous, opposite curls—tens of thousands of souls in each.
The dragon breathed.
A formless mass of burning, blue-white souls scorched the air between Sherduan and Tsu’min. The beam of light was so bright it hurt Soren’s eyes, so bright that he knew, knew, that nothing could stand before it.
Except that Tsu’min Nar’oth did.
The curl of souls he’d pulled toward himself coalesced into a barrier in front of him, tiny in size compared to the number of souls within it, and the flood of Sherduan’s rage splashed off of it and into the air like a jet of water striking a rock. Stray souls and scattered light erupted in every direction. One of the shards burned a hole through the chest of a Sh’ma next to Soren. Another handful left pockmarks across the face of a stone wall.
I should duck, Soren thought. I should weave.
But the River wouldn’t respond to him, and ducking seemed ridiculous.
The dragon’s breath poured forth. The barrier scattered it.
And then the light was gone and Sherduan had passed over the square.
Tsu’min and Tyash still stood upon their stone of shit.
It’ll come back, Soren thought. Again and again until everyone here is dead.
Soren lurched back into motion. The flagstones near the platform were blackened and charred, seared so clean by the dragon’s breath that they were slippery. Atop his stone, Tsu’min swayed, grabbed at Tyash’s shoulder, and then toppled over.
The dragon’s scream filled the air. Tyash grabbed Tsu’min and began trying to drag him off the platform.
And then Soren’s feet had carried him through the blackened waste.
He planted one hand on the platform’s lip and jumped, then rolled himself onto the stone. He snatched the unmoving Tsu’min away from Tyash and hoisted him onto his shoulders.
The dragon was wheeling back around already.
Tyash’s eyes shone wide and panicked. Soren’s legs burned. Tsu’min felt remarkably heavy across his shoulders.
Eshan and Crixine’s forms jutted from the shadows on the dragon’s back. The creature opened its mouth to breathe again.
It was too late to run, or to duck, or to hide.
Wait, Soren told himself. The timing would have to be perfect.
The terrible tug of Sherduan’s breath sucked the life from the River. It was all Soren could do to pull a few hundred souls against it and settle them in the rock beneath his feet.
He looked the dragon in its crimson eyes, and he energized the souls and let them burn.
His world exploded in fire and stone.
***
There was a rush of heat. Soren shut his eyes, and the skin seared along the left side of his body. His legs whipped over his head, and his body followed and he was spinning and twirling too fast to think, too fast to breathe. His face hit something cool that gave beneath it. His body followed. And then he was flailing in fast-flowing water.
He jerked his head above the rush and opened his eyes. He’d been thrown clear into the center of the River Soulth’nth, a few hundred yards from the shattered stone in the plaza. His left arm ached like it had been run over by a cart.
The dragon wheeled angrily over the southern edge of the town.
Looking for Tsu’min. Looking for him.
Something orange bobbed in the river a few yards to Soren’s right. He kicked and pulled his way toward it, ignoring the rain of debris from the explosion. He swam, and he reached, and he grabbed hold of the nar’oth for whom he was risking his life.
He jerked Tsu’min’s unconscious head above the water and let him cough and splutter.
Just a little longer, he thought. The dragon fluttered and darted above the town. Just a little longer…
Tsu’min’s coughing settled down. He’d probably cleared most of the river from his lungs.
Tyash burst from the water and struck Soren hard across the face.
He grunted, and her foot came up and pushed against his chest. She grabbed Tsu’min and tried to yank him away.
Cursing, Soren tugged back.
“Na!” Tyash shouted. “Aysh’na ’sha!” She kicked him, again and again, until he grabbed her shoulder and pushed her beneath the surface, switched his grip and held her under by her hair and the collar of her shirt.
She flailed an
d scratched and bit, and he put his foot on her neck and kicked her down and away from him and Tsu’min. Then he took a deep breath, clamped his hand over the mouth and nose of the nar’oth, and dragged at the River of Souls just hard enough to give his legs an extra kick.
He swam for the bottom of the river with Tsu’min tucked against his chest like a huge baby. When he reached the mud and sand, he leveled out and kicked with the current, flicking his legs up and down like a dolphin’s tail and moving fast into the harbor.
Out there in the waves, his chances of surviving nature were slimmest.
So out there, he might have a shot at escaping the dragon’s rage.
Someone fell in behind him. Someone who could soulweave. Someone desperate.
He was certain that if he wasted the breath to look back, he’d find Tyash following him out to sea.
Lovers and idiots, he thought. Lovers and thrice-damned, fucking idiots.
Soren went as far as his lungs could take him, then angled for the surface. He fought the urge to breathe in water. His vision turned starry. He swam for light, for air, for life.
His head broke free of the ocean, and he sucked in a mixed gasp of air and sea spray. He coughed. With one arm, he treaded water. He took his hand from Tsu’min’s mouth and nose.
The nar’oth began to breathe.
Remarkable. He’d felt Tsu’min’s body sucking at his hand, trying to breathe underwater. He’d been almost certain it would succeed and kill itself.
But it hadn’t.
The dragon’s scream rent the sky.
Soren dropped the River of Souls, and his legs immediately felt like ingots of lead. The seas heaved. Nearly a half mile of swells stood between him and the shore. The water was dotted with bobbing ships fleeing the destruction.
In the distance, Sherduan’s black shadow was savaging the glimmering remains of Emeth’il. Fire had engulfed much of the town.
Soren watched a building near the shore crumble and fall into the flames. The sea was dark, swallowed by the shadows of the dragon and the smoke. It was as if time had been turned back. The sun had never risen. Everything was lost in the shadowy gray of the hours before dawn.
For a moment, he felt pity for the town.
No time for that, he told himself.
He hadn’t had time for pity in decades. Not since Lars Dors and the things that had been done to him there.
He kicked onto his back, dragged Tsu’min onto his stomach, and found he wasn’t buoyant enough for the both of them. He had to whip his exhausted legs furiously just to keep their heads above water.
The effort hurt. He couldn’t possibly sustain it. But if he stopped kicking, Tsu’min would sink and drown, and it would all be for nothing.
Something struck the side of his head.
A thousand fiery spots danced in his eyes. Tsu’min disappeared from his hands, and he heard frantic splashing as he tried to get his bearings again. By the time he could see straight, Tyash was on him, her thumbs jammed under his jaw, her fingernails scratching furrows along the back of his skull. She thrust him below the surface, her weight directly on top of him. Flail as he might, he couldn’t get up.
She didn’t drive him too deep. Just a foot or two under the water. Just deep enough to drown him.
But Soren Goldguard knew how to fight in ways no child, even a child of the Sh’ma who might be as old as he was, would be likely to grasp. He rolled into a somersault, ducking his head deeper into the water and away from her hands, then brought his legs up. Grabbed her arm. Wrapped his thighs around her neck and locked his shin behind his knee and began to squeeze.
Like the child she was, she grabbed his legs and tried to dislodge them. In the meantime, they sank deeper into the water, so he sat up, released his legs and grabbed her around the neck with his arms instead. Slipped behind her, kicked them both to the surface where they could breathe.
She sputtered and flailed.
“Mas!” he barked.
Sea water dripped into his eyes. She froze, and he shouted again. “Mas! L’res ’ta! Esh’shou! Oa esh’shou!”
The girl stopped squirming. Her muscles stayed tense, however.
I should just kill her.
Tsu’min would never know. She was endangering their lives, and Soren didn’t have the words in Sh’ma to explain everything that was happening.
He tightened his hold on her neck and began to squeeze.
And then he spotted Tsu’min.
The Sh’ma was floating beside him on a few planks of wood. He’d been dragged onto a makeshift raft that couldn’t have found its way out as far as they were on its own. It looked like it had been torn from the docks, then dragged the half mile into the bay.
Hells, Soren thought.
The girl had brought the raft. She’d saved Tsu’min’s life as surely as he had.
And that meant he owed her.
The sun was still invisible through the smoke above Emeth’il, and the waves undulated in lifeless gray. The roar of the town’s demise mingled with the slap of the water and the whistle of the wind.
Soren took a deep breath and began to speak.
“Tyar,” he said. Friend. “Oa Tsu’min tyar. Oa Oura tyar.” I am Tsu’min’s friend. I am Oura’s friend. He spun so that the girl could see Tsu’min on the pieces of wood. “’Sza guash’ta’tya. Oura neth’ra. Oura neth’ra i’neth.”
Thank you for that. Oura is important. Very important.
The girl was holding his arms more for support than to struggle now. She stared at Tsu’min and took a deep, halting breath.
Great, Soren thought. She’s going to cry.
The sound of explosions ripped over the water. The dragon was tearing new holes through the town.
“Tyare,” whispered the girl in his arms. She touched a finger to her chest. “Oa a ’ta, tyare.”
Friends. You and I are friends.
That was good enough. Soren’s arms and legs had grown tired. In a minute he wouldn’t have the strength to hold her anyway.
“Sh’a’e,” he said.
He let her go, too tired to care where she went, and kicked his legs up and floated by the edge of Tsu’min’s raft. The less he moved, the less likely Sherduan was to find him. The less he lived, the less likely Sherduan was to find him.
Tsu’min was bleeding slowly from his nose. Soren watched the thin red stream trickle down his chin and onto the raft.
He closed his eyes and tried to slow his rapidly beating heart.
Calm, he told himself. Like you told the girl to be. Calm.
The water moved him up and down, and he listened to more than he wanted to hear. The tapping of the waves against the raft was almost pleasant. The rest—the unsteady breathing of the being on which he was pinning all the world’s hopes, and the sobs of a child whose home was burning while she bobbed in the waves with two people she barely knew—was miserable.
Soren floated in unnatural darkness and tried not to hear.
He failed.
Miserably.
FORTY-THREE
Minutes before the destruction of Eldan City
The darkness was as deep as it had ever been.
It wrapped around Ryse’s head, kissed the back of her neck, slipped between her clothes and her skin, flooded the cobblestone street and drowned the tall shadows of Temple Hill. The weight on her shoulders lit her muscles on fire.
Drip.
Drip.
There was nothing dripping, she was pretty sure. She and Ren had closed the wounds they’d opened. But she heard blood falling from her robe onto the stones all the same.
A gentle dragging followed her down the street.
She shuddered and shifted her weight. One of Tomenar’s arms was wrapped over her shoulders, and Ren was supporting his other. Tomenar wasn’t dead—or his body wasn’t anyway—but what she’d done to him was monstrous.
The bond between soul and body is never to be tampered with…
The girl, Cara, was walking be
hind her. There was that. They’d saved her from Aegelden and Tomenar, whoever she was.
You’re a big person, she’d said to Ryse as they limped through the gardens and over the back wall. Soon I will be too.
“Who goes there?” a voice boomed.
Ryse kept her eyes on the street, her feet plodding one after the other. Her body was exhausted. Her mind was slipping. She wanted to curl into a ball and just cry. So much soulweaving. So much struggling. Not long ago she’d been starving. And everything had gone wrong. There was no Twelve left to warn—not anymore. There was no one left to save them.
It had all been for nothing.
“I said, ‘Who goes there?’”
She kept moving, not sure whether the voice was in her mind or the real world. The stones were dark and cold.
The sound of a sword ringing along a scabbard filled the boulevard, and she looked up.
A man stood in the street, a willowy girl in a very fine dress half hidden behind him. He wore the gray livery of House Galeni.
“Give way!” he shouted. He gestured with the sword. “Give way for Lady Misha Galeni!”
Ren shuffled to the other side of the street. Ryse went with him, staring at the man and the girl.
The girl’s eyes were quick and alive, and they glittered in the dim light of the soulwoven street lamps.
Drip.
Drip.
Ryse shivered. Ren grunted. Tomenar’s vacant breathing touched her neck in constant judgment. They moved past the girl and her guardian, who watched, who saw, who knew. She could feel it.
Cara’s feet shuffled along behind.
At least there was that.
***
The dragon struck the city as they crossed the Brightwater on their way back to the slums.
It started with a clap of thunder, and then came a great wind and the scream, that scream she’d heard too many times. She followed the sound and saw a great gouge torn from the glittering gold of Temple Dome. A long, lizardlike shape perched atop its broken-egg silhouette and roared its hatred into the night.
They walked faster, heading toward the slums in silent agreement, as if a hovel in that lonely wasteland could bring them safety. The dragon thrashed through the streets atop the hill. People woke and ran for the gates of the city, terror and shock as plain on their faces as the moon on a cloudless night.