‘These entries tell me about the bag, but what happened to the sword blade?’ she asked.
Erin flipped pages over in The New History of Andrakis text. ‘This part here tells what you need to know,’ he said, stopping at a page. ‘It is very long, but if you want to understand the sword you need to read it.’
The vision of the white object just below the clouds coming towards the ruins held Swift’s attention for a long time. She’d seen airbirds floating on hot air above Port of Joy, but the apparition approaching the ancient city enthralled her because of its sheer size. Elongated like a fat sausage, with a black carriage suspended beneath the white fabric, it moved against the breeze until it reached the river near the old imperial palace where it hovered. Squinting because of the distance, she saw ropes drop from the carriage and then men slid down the ropes into the ruin. A few moments later, the gigantic airbird began to settle towards the earth.
For the second day, she had been searching through the city ruins to find some clue as to where the old woman had gone. Wahim, Chase and she had spent the previous night anticipating Meg’s return, but the woman did not reappear. ‘She’s abandoned us,’ Swift told her companions angrily when they woke. ‘I say we get out of this place and go home.’
‘What if she’s in trouble?’ Chase suggested. ‘She could have been captured by the rabbit hunters you saw.’
‘Then she shouldn’t have been out there on her own,’ Swift retorted. In the end, however, she agreed with Wahim and Chase to wait one more day and search for the old woman, but she was seething with so much anger when she left their makeshift base that she warned the other two not to stray far while she went out searching alone. They protested, but she made it clear that she was going alone because she was the only one who could scout efficiently and she had the only weapon.
She’d spent a long time searching among the ruins, so long that it was already midday. Chase and Wahim would be worried that she’d been gone so long, but now the unexpected arrival of the airbird drew her attention and she decided to get closer to the new phenomenon to find out what it meant. Choosing a path that would give her the shortest route back to the Khvech Daas if she needed to retreat, she ran towards the imperial palace.
A hundred paces from the ruin, she spotted people and dropped to the ground to roll behind a wall, her heart racing. Warily, she lifted her head. Kerwyn soldiers stood at attention, red uniforms contrasting sharply against the backdrop of the white airbird fabric augmented with a black dragon silhouette. Every soldier was equipped with a shiny thundermaker. She counted thirty men, plus a leader who strutted along the ranks, giving instructions that she couldn’t quite hear because of the distance. He began dividing them into squads of six, pointing in different directions, and one by one the squads fanned out from the palace. One squad started towards her. She crawled on her belly to a point where she judged she could rise without being seen, and sprinted away from the palace, weaving through the buildings until she reached a street that headed towards the Khvech Daas. Somehow the Kerwyn had found them, but how? She sucked in her breath and ran.
‘How long before they get here?’ Chase asked.
‘Hard to tell,’ Swift said, still breathing hard from her run. ‘If they are thorough, they mightn’t get here until tomorrow or the day after. It’s a big area they are searching.’
‘I’d search the most obvious places first,’ Wahim said. ‘This is one.’
‘I just want to know how they knew we would be here,’ said Swift. ‘We’ve travelled a long way. Who told them?’
‘Meg?’ Chase asked, guessing at his sister’s insinuation. ‘How? And why?’
‘Doesn’t make sense,’ said Wahim. ‘She was the one who brought us here. She could have turned us in when we were at her shop in Port of Joy if she wanted.’
Swift bit her lip and nodded. ‘No. You’re right. So who else knew we were coming here?’
‘No one,’ said Chase, ‘unless—’
‘Passion.’ Wahim’s statement was met with stunned silence.
Chase clenched his fists and groaned. ‘I shouldn’t have left her there. We should have stayed.’
Swift reached for his arm, saying, ‘If we had stayed, we would already be in the Bog Pit. Or worse.’
‘Bastards!’ Chase yelled and kicked the ground. ‘Kerwyn bastards!’
‘Calm down,’ Swift urged, turning him towards her. ‘There’s nothing you can do now. You have to be strong.’
‘My sister!’ Chase moaned and sank to the ground. ‘I should have stayed.’ He curled into a ball and sobbed. Swift and Wahim squatted beside Chase, and as Swift stroked Chase’s heaving shoulder Wahim looked at her and asked, ‘So what will we do?’ His question was answered by a series of distant shots that echoed through the ruins.
Meg closed the book and stared again at the curved symbols on a yellow, stained parchment that had fallen from the book. What she had learned in the readings about the object locked inside the canvas bag made it very clear why the Seers did not want it to be placed in the wrong hands. Wrought by the Elvenaar, the blade imbued with Aelendyell blood and the hilt clustered with chunks of amber from the Genesis Stone, it was a dragon-slaying weapon that gave unlimited magical power to whoever wielded it. Designed to be the nemesis of any creature constructed from or reliant on the amber magic, the sword had decided the outcome of the ancient war between the Dragonlords, the Elvenaar and humans when it was wielded by Aian Abreotan, and a thousand years after Abreotan’s victory, King Dylan used the sword to defeat the last surviving Dragonlord, Mareg Dru’Artha Sutnavanistra. The Demon Horsemen, if A Ahmud Ki was right, were magical constructs created by Mareg and the one weapon that could defeat them was Abreotan’s sword—in the right hands.
But whose hands? she wondered as she stared at the parchment. Who could wield such a weapon? And she pondered another problem. The sword was broken, the blade shattered cataclysmically by Dylan who had believed, wrongly, that it was the only key to Se’Treya. Who could reforge the blade?
‘Did you find your answer?’ Erin asked, entering the chamber.
She looked up and rose from the chair. ‘I know why the canvas bag is so valuable,’ she said. ‘I just don’t know what to do with it.’
Erin cocked an eyebrow and nodded slowly. ‘My sister, Megen, told me once, when I was pondering a question that weighed heavily on me, that I would know the answer when the time came.’ He reached inside his black robe and touched the ridge in his skin under which the amber jewel sat. ‘I made a choice and I have lived with it. It’s the best we can ever hope to do.’
‘Why do you stay down here?’ Meg asked. ‘Why don’t you live outside?’
Erin met her gaze and a thin, paradoxical smile graced his lips. ‘The choice I was asked to make was to either open what the Khvechevik buried here to the world or leave it sealed forever. I inherited one of the amber jewels, like you, and with it I can be the most powerful creature in the world. I can create, dominate, destroy whatever I want. I can be everything that people describe in all these books—omnipotent—a Dragonlord, if I use the term of the ancient people. I can be a god. Every spell ever created, every piece of knowledge, every human heartache and dream—they’re all recorded in this library and with this amber gem I could unlock and unleash all of them. That was my choice. It was my choice to make.’
‘And you chose to seal yourself in,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he replied.
‘Why?’
‘It was the easier choice,’ he said quietly. ‘I didn’t want that responsibility. Other people could see all the power and the adulation I could glean if I unsealed this library and used it to my advantage. All I could see was the misery it would bring—not just to me, but also to everyone around me. “He who has power and does not use it wisely, as it should be used, should not use it at all.” Have you ever read that?’ Meg shook her head. ‘I read it in Jaru’s Gift. Read it if you ever get the chance. I thought about it and decided I was not the person to wie
ld such power. It’s too much for any person, no matter how good their intentions might be. These books are full of stories of people tragically destroyed by their own power. History repeats the lesson over and over. I had a chance to make a choice and I made it. The world outside is not for me. I live here. It is where I will always be.’ He finished, and he seemed to be waiting for her approval.
‘I made the same choice,’ she said. ‘I gave away the amber twice in the vain hope that I could live a normal life, and both times I lost my family because of it. I didn’t see that before. Now I do.’ She touched the amber under her tunic. ‘I’ve run from my responsibility. I’m getting too old to run much further.’ She smiled at Erin. ‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’ he asked.
‘Opening my eyes.’
‘They’re just books,’ he said.
Meg nodded. ‘Yes, but they contain our humanity. When I was allowed to read in the Royal library as a young girl, I couldn’t read enough. I read everything I could. The amber was a blessing. The Seers abandoned me on an island and sent the heretical books with me, but I couldn’t have been given a better gift. I cried when they were burned. I gathered them around me like old friends in my shop in Port of Joy. They’re not just books.’
‘So what will you do, now that you’ve got what you came to find?’
Meg looked at the young man, ageless because of the amber and his choice to create a version of Se’Treya out of the old Khvechevik library, and said, ‘I’ll do what I can do to set things right. It’s the only choice I have left.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
It was very dark when she appeared in the rubble of the Khvech Daas. She was surprised that so much time had passed—a whole day—and surprised that a fire wasn’t lit. Something is wrong, she decided, and suddenly wary she stood stock still and listened. A breeze rustled the surrounding tree canopies, but the city ruin was silent. She almost called out to find where the others were, but she held her tongue and placed her hand over the amber. Her sight shifted into night-vision, a skill that she hadn’t practised for a very long time, and she surveyed the ruin until she located two prone figures at the edge of the bushes. A few paces away from the sleepers, she spotted the third person, Swift, crouched on watch. She took two cautious steps forward, dislodging a fragment of marble, and Swift turned sharply, staring at her. ‘It’s me,’ she said.
Swift hissed, ‘Where have you been?’
Meg approached as quietly as she could and said, ‘I found the library.’
‘Keep your voice down,’ Swift whispered harshly.
‘Why?’
‘Kerwyn.’
‘Where?’
‘Somewhere out there. They came while you were away. Where did you go?’
‘Under the rubble. The library is buried there.’
‘Where did you get in? We couldn’t find any entry.’
‘I used magic,’ Meg replied. ‘There’s no other way in.’
‘Where’s the rat?’
‘She’s staying there.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s a—’
‘Long story, I know,’ Swift cut in. ‘We could use your magic to get us out of here.’
‘Are you sure they’re Kerwyn?’
Swift briefly explained what had unfolded in the afternoon. ‘Chase is not coping,’ she told Meg. ‘He blames himself for leaving Passion.’
‘It might not be her fault. She could still be safe,’ Meg argued.
‘But how else could the Kerwyn have learned where we are? Did you tell anyone else?’
‘No. But it depends on what the Seers know about me now. One soldier escaped in Shesskar-sharel. If they know I’m alive, they’ll send an army here.’
‘Are you that dangerous?’ Swift asked.
Meg left the question unanswered. ‘How long have you been on watch?’
‘Just started. Wahim took the first.’
‘Call me when it’s time to swap. Let Chase sleep longer,’ Meg offered, adding, ‘We’ll work out a plan in the morning.’
It didn’t seem long before Swift was waking her to take her watch and she struggled to keep her eyes open in the darkness. She gazed up at the stars flickering and vanishing behind clouds. She had read, when she was a very young woman in the Royal library, how philosophers speculated that each star was a miniature sun and the universe had hundreds of worlds like her own. If that was true, were there hundreds of Megs out there facing the same questions and futures? And if that was true, were they all fated to make the same decisions, or did each one have the free will to choose to act however she wished? And did that mean that some Megs ended up living different lives entirely to the one she was living?
The rush of the breeze through the vegetation reminded her of the sound of the ocean aboard Captain Marlin’s schooner. She had wasted so much of her life, years in the grip of depression and euphoria, while the generations of Seers kept doggedly pursuing their goal to release the Demon Horsemen. What if they had succeeded while she was wallowing in her misery? Would she have cared or even known, rocking in an ocean of euphoria?
She pondered Erin’s quotation concerning power and the choice to use it. Why was it that so many people who gained power and privilege abused it selfishly? Was it so easy to get drunk on power? When he said that he’d taken the easy choice by abrogating his responsibility and sealing himself in the library, she realised that was exactly what she had done. She had sealed herself in her family, twice, to avoid facing the responsibility that came with the legacy of the amber, and then again in the euphoria at sea, and finally in anonymity as Batty Booker the bookshop owner. She was the only person with the knowledge and the power to stop the Seers before they released the Demon Horsemen and yet she had run from the very task she was fated to fulfil. The running had to end.
She lifted the necklet attached to the amber over her head and loosened the knot to release the sliver and rolled it in her palm, feeling its silky texture. Then she stretched out on the ground, staring up at the stars, and opened her tunic until she could place the amber on her chest and pressed both palms over it. I’ve done this before, she mused whimsically. But can I remember how? She closed her eyes and imagined the gem sinking into her skin. There had been a rhythmic chant to accompany the spell, she remembered, when she had embedded the amber in her chest on the island. That seemed like another lifetime now. The amber responds to your will, she reminded herself. Only the ignorant believe spells can be created from words and movements. Spells are the energy patterns we will into existence, amplified by the amber. She felt the crystal grow warm and remembered there would be brutal pain. And when it came she cried at the stars.
Perched in the Khvech Daas trees on a thick branch that afforded a view, Meg and Swift observed the distant palace ruin. The brittle morning sunlight glittered on the distant river and made the white fabric of the moored flying machine incandescent. ‘It’s a Ranu dragon egg,’ Meg said. ‘You call them airbirds, but these are far more sophisticated than anything the Kerwyn have ever built. Are you sure the soldiers you saw were Kerwyn?’
‘I know a soldier when I see one,’ Swift replied, annoyed that Meg doubted what she’d seen. ‘They’re Kerwyn.’ A shot echoed somewhere to the south, among the ruins.
‘And there were five groups of six fanning out through the city?’
‘Yes, one group heading this way. I thought they would come straight here.’
‘But they’re being very methodical and slow, which means they’re definitely looking for someone.’
‘Us,’ said Swift.
Meg nodded. ‘They don’t want anyone to know about the contents of the bag.’
‘And did you find out what it is?’
‘Yes.’ Another shot reverberated across the city, and another immediately after.
Swift waited for Meg to elaborate, but Meg was silently observing the ruins. ‘So what is it?’ Swift asked.
‘A weapon,’ Meg replied, matter-of-factly. ‘It can destro
y the Demon Horsemen. It was built to slay dragons and Dragonlords.’ Swift stared at her. ‘You don’t believe me,’ Meg said.
‘Dragons?’ Swift quizzed.
‘They were real, a long time ago,’ Meg told her calmly. She sucked in her cheeks and said, ‘Actually, not that long ago. The Khvechevik here in Chuekwer worshipped the Dragonkin, and the last of the Dragonkin was killed just a few hundred years ago.’
Swift shivered. ‘I thought they were fantasy stories.’
‘Most people do. It’s almost impossible to imagine how a creature like a dragon could exist, but they were magical constructs, originally created by the Dragonlords who themselves were self-created magical constructs—Alfyn who abused the Genesis Stone by embedding it within themselves to amplify their magical power.’ She stopped, realising what she’d said. A Ahmud Ki thought I was a Dragonlord when we first met, she remembered. Now I understand. And she felt a pang of regret for having re-embedded the amber.
‘So what will we do?’ Swift asked.
As Meg reordered her thoughts, she glimpsed a red uniform in the ruins, less than a hundred paces from the dry moat surrounding the Khvech Daas, and pointed out the soldier to Swift. They watched five more soldiers come into view, moving slowly through the buildings, carrying shiny weapons. ‘Ranu peacemakers,’ Meg noted and when Swift asked her what she meant she briefly explained the difference between the thundermakers and peacemakers. ‘Fighting isn’t an option,’ she added.
‘We can make a run for it,’ Swift suggested. ‘There’s just enough space for us to make a break into the range to the north.’
‘They’d spot us,’ Meg argued. ‘And if they didn’t, they’d keep hunting for us. They expect to find us here. They’ll keep searching for us until they are absolutely certain we never came here.’
‘What else can we do?’
‘I have an idea,’ said Meg and she began to shimmy down the tree branch.
Prisoner of Fate Page 44