Is it? You saw Deathless Pirate’s avatar trapped in the cage, didn’t you?
At the mention of his name the pirate roared in Tamerlan’s mind. Trapped! Trapped under the briny sea!
He was going to go mad with all these voices in his head.
Grandfather Timeless has an avatar, too. We all do. They were sealed up by Queen Mer’s people. Trapped in objects or prisons. But if Grandfather Timeless’s avatar was free, then who knows what he could do.
Perhaps he could turn back time. Perhaps he could undo mistakes.
I’m telling you, Byron insisted. Things done, stay done. It’s madness to think otherwise.
“I’m not mad,” Tamerlan said aloud.
“But you sure sound like you are when you talk to yourself like that,” Jhinn said.
Tamerlan shook himself, swallowing down a curse. Marielle was asleep in the bottom of the boat again. All this scenting was wearing her out. Only Jhinn had seen his slip.
“Did I say that out loud?” he asked.
“Sure. Not that listening to the spirits talk to you isn’t entertaining, but do you think you should encourage them like that?” Jhinn asked. “I think madness will follow you if you walk that road.”
He was right. Tamerlan needed to solve this conundrum without the Legends.
You need us. Lila insisted.
Dragon. Dragon. Dragon.
And encouraging them wasn’t helping.
With effort, he forced them from his mind.
They found a restaurant barge just before dark, and though it would only sell honey cakes and wafers on Dawnspell, they loaded up on them and ate. Tamerlan let the sweetness of the honeycakes fill him as Jhinn looked for a good spot to tie the boat along the edge of the river.
“We can’t make H’yi tonight – if that’s where he’s going. The scent is cold. The night is falling. Our best bet is to wait here,” Jhinn said practically as the gondola slid through reeds as tall as they were. “We can eat. We can rest. Maybe in the morning, we will find something new.”
Tamerlan nodded tiredly.
“Unless you want to try another way?” Jhinn let the words hang in the air, his gaze resting on the small leather pouch he’d given Tamerlan earlier in the day. It contained more of his mixture rolled in paper – at least thirty little paper sticks of it. He could be possessed by a Legend every night for a month with those! He’d tried to hand the bag back, but Jhinn had insisted.
“It’s yours,” he’d said. “I just rolled them up to pass the time.”
“I think rest is a good idea,” Tamerlan said firmly.
Jhinn was already dragging blankets out of his waterproof boat trailer when Marielle spoke into the night.
“I shouldn’t have left them. They needed me and I just went running off like a puppy with a fresh scent.”
“The Harbingers?” Tamerlan guessed. “They’ll be fine. They’re fierce warriors. Besides, if Etienne is up to what I think he’s up to, then you’ll be glad that you took the chance to stop him.”
“Why do I keep losing his scent?” she muttered as if to herself.
“Because he has tricks up his sleeve that we can’t even imagine,” Tamerlan said. “We’ll pick it up again. This can’t last forever.”
It was amazing it had lasted this long, honestly. After all, he’d only had one good fire with his recipe. They only ever lasted a few hours for Tamerlan.
Except, the recipe didn’t have quantities. Tamerlan had just followed his instinct when he combined the ingredients. How had Etienne mixed the ingredients? Tamerlan hadn’t stopped to ask that question. He hadn’t asked how the other man made the formula. The man who had scrawled on the page had failed. And Tamerlan had assumed that when he tried, he’d only succeeded as a matter of lucking out. But what if Etienne had the same luck – but better? What if he’d stumbled on a more potent formula for the recipe? What if he was ... better than Tamerlan?
Tamerlan swallowed, hoping he was wrong. Hoping he was just being paranoid, but as they settled in for sleep in the rocking boat against the river bank, he found it hard to rest. Somewhere out there, someone smarter than him was using his magic. And he’d learned the hard way that being intelligent was no shield at all against evil. On the contrary, it seemed to only amplify the destruction that could be caused.
30: In the Dark of Night
Marielle
THE MAGIC HAD BEEN too powerful. All day, the power of it had assaulted her mind, laying her out on the bottom of the boat sometimes, so that her companions thought she was sleeping when in fact she was struggling to clear her migraine for long enough to be able to smell again.
When the trail was cold it wasn’t so bad – then she only smelled the residue on Tamerlan, but the golden scent of her overpowering attraction to him made the scent of magic so much worse so that every vibration of his voice sent thrills through her like electric shocks. Every casual glance of his in her direction left little shivers pulsing through her. Her own response only amplified the scent so that it spun ever upward in a spiral lifting to the heavens even while she was sure it was actually plunging her toward hell.
She knew what he was. By the admission of his own lips – his own curving, half-smiling lips – he was guilty of the blood of innocents. Anything that drew her closer to him could only break her heart – and yet she was still drawn. Breath by breath, moment by moment she was drawn. The close confines of the boat made it worse. The way he kept watching her as if he were admiring the way she could Scent made it worse. The way Jhinn smirked when he caught her looking at Tamerlan made it worse. Everything made it worse.
And when they hit those pockets of scent – those moments when she could smell Etienne swirling in the madness of magic and something else – something older than the dragon and just as powerful – something that wanted to eat her alive. When she smelled those, then the pain that filled her head was almost more than she could take, but her lungs wouldn’t stop gulping the magic in, breath after breath until her head was light and she felt as if she might faint.
Twice she’d had to slump to the bottom of the boat, recovering as her head swirled with magic. But her ears still worked even if she appeared to be asleep. She’d hear Tamerlan’s mad ranting and Jhinn’s talk of spirits. And she felt nervous about that.
And even more nervous as the tattoo over her heart throbbed stronger and stronger the further she went from Liandari and Anglarok. She shouldn’t have left them without word of where she was going. She shouldn’t have kept Anglarok in the dark. She should have come clean to them about what she’d seen on that illuminated page. Perhaps, if they were searching for the Bridge of Legends then they might know how to stop this flood of evil spirits entering the world. After all, it was why they were here.
She huddled in her corner of the boat and tried to sleep as the velvet darkness closed in around the gondola. Jhinn had lit the lamp hanging from the ferro at the front of the gondola, but around the tiny pool of light lurked darkness on every side. The bobbing lights of glowbugs in the distance, the soothing calls of birds back and forth, the chatter of frogs, and the chirping of insects were not enough to set her at ease. Not even when her Scenting told her there was nothing nearby in any direction except for river and mud and natural creatures.
She sucked in a deep breath and tried to sleep, curling into her blankets. Tried to ignore the scent of Jhinn – familiar and easy. Tried to ignore the scent of Tamerlan – overwhelmingly tempting, especially now as the sweat of his hard work dried in the balmy warm wind, drawing up his physical musk and stirring it into the golden scent of attraction. He was forbidden fruit. The one apple in the orchard no human should touch. The one sword that if drawn from the stone would ignite a war to kill them all. So why did he smell so delectable?
She reached into her belt pouch, reminding herself that the small conch shell was still there. Her link to sanity. Her link to another way, if she could just keep reaching for it instead of giving into temptation.
; She must have fallen asleep drinking in that forbidden scent because she woke to rough fabric wrapping around her face. She tried to scream, but a hand clamped tightly over her mouth and nose. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t smell who was attacking her. She tried to gasp in a breath, but the hand was too strong. Worse, there was something on it – or on a rag it was holding – something that smelled suspiciously like aniseed oil. Her eyes teared up and her head began to whirl as she began to slip away from consciousness. She felt her body being lifted up and carried, but she heard nothing. No sound to alert her friends to what had happened. No tell-tale cry of someone waking in the night to enemies. Nothing.
Her head spun from lack of oxygen and the overpowering scent and she balled her fists, fighting against her attacker, but her punches were weak, her strength fading. Suddenly, the hand shifted, covering only her mouth and she sucked in a deep breath through dank wool. It wasn’t helping. It wasn’t clearing her mind fast enough.
Through the smell of aniseed she thought she might b smelling Etienne – mandarin oranges and cloves. But it was tangled up in the fierce turquoise and gold of magic and ... something else and so much aniseed that she wanted to be sick. And the voice that whispered to her wasn’t Etienne’s at all.
“Sleep, little child. For this night is written as the night of your capture and the beginning of your doom.”
Her heart was in overdrive. He must be joking if he thought she would sleep! She would fight until the oxygen stole from her lungs. A fresh cloth was applied to her nose – a larger does than before. Her thoughts faded as she spun to blackness.
She woke to inky darkness.
Woke to wind whipping around her as she jostled step after step in the most awkward position. Her hands and feet were bound and she was slung over someone’s back, her legs tied tightly around his waist. His hip bones dug into her thighs with every step and his bony shoulder blade crashed into her cheek. There was a glow that barely lit the grass around them.
“Awake little child? I sent you back into your sleep and then we leapt forward here. I can’t jump far, but I can still jump a little and this body is fine and fit.”
She hated the wheedling high-pitched tone that wavered in the middle of sentences, like an old man trying to be cunning but forgetting what the secret was that he was supposed to keep hidden.
“Did we walk all night?” she asked, as he strode through river reeds. They stroked her hanging hair and slipped across her smooth cheeks with a whish whish sound.
“Not yet. Time is running out. We must hurry. The boat is lost, but the will stays strong!”
Then it was almost Spellbreak. The last day of Dawnspell. If only this spell could be broken and whatever had seized Etienne could be forced to let him go. If only she could escape his clutches somehow.
“What do you want with me?” she asked boldly.
“Your blood, little child.”
She shuddered. It always came back to blood.
“Any Dragonblooded will do, but you are the one he knows about. And you weren’t far away. That makes you perfect. We won’t take it all. Just a drop. Just a drop. It’s only as a back up in case the plan doesn’t work.”
“That’s what they all say,” Marielle said bitterly. “’It’s only as a back up,’ they say and then they chain you to feed a dragon.”
He laughed a horrible wheezing laugh like a man on his last legs – not at all like Etienne. “We won’t be feeding any dragons today. But yes, your life might be required. It usually is.”
She could smell his certainty. And she could smell that there was no pity mixed in it. No regret. No hope for her at all.
“Oh, don’t sulk. Some lives are worth less than others. I’ve seen yours written out and it’s not all that spectacular. You won’t be missing much. In fact, you might even thank me because I’ll give you something in return.”
“Oh yeah? Are you going to give me your life?”
This time his wheezing laugh was so deep it bent him double. “I almost like you.”
His scent said otherwise. He was just as indifferent toward her as he’d been before she spoke
“But no, I’ll be keeping my life. Enough of that has been stolen already. Yes, I’ll be keeping that. But I’ll give you my immortality.”
“Just like that?”
This time the wheezing went on and on and on.
“You say that like you think it’s a gift,” he choked out eventually. “Instead of the curse it really is. Wait until you’ve stood frozen in a clock for a thousand years, conscious, thinking, but frozen in place. So bored you would chew through your own mind just to be free, like a trapped animal will chew off its own leg. Just wait for that. Then you can thank me for your immortality.”
“I’d ask you to put me down, but why make your job easier?” Marielle said.
“I’d ask you to stop with the barbed comments,” he wheezed, “but then how would I have my fun?”
Marielle gritted her teeth as they trudged on. Already the hours seemed endless, and she wasn’t even stuck in a clock yet. She wondered if Etienne had any power at all under the grip of this spirit – Grandfather Timeless, if Tamerlan was right – or if he was as helpless as she was in the thrall of this horrific Legend.
31: Desperate Times
Tamerlan
TAMERLAN’S DREAMS HAD been nothing but nightmares. He’d tossed and sweated through dreams of Marielle in trouble. The last dream had been the worst. He’d been too late in the Grand Hall and they’d slit her throat right in front of him. As her scarlet blood fountained onto the scales of the dragon his own sister had laughed, clapping her hands in delight.
Tamerlan woke with his hands balled in fists, his teeth on edge. But it hadn’t happened that way. Others had died while he’d saved her life. The dream made it all feel so fresh – like he was reliving it again. And this time with a different decision. But choosing the other option didn’t make him feel less guilty. It didn’t still the angry voices in his head. He woke to dry lips and aching muscles and a strange dull orange glow in the sky. And then silence.
He sat up.
Marielle’s place in the boat was empty, her blanket gone. Orange light danced across the empty place where she should be sleeping. He looked to Jhinn. The other boy was wide-eyed as he struggled to sit up. He licked his lips nervously.
“You didn’t hear her leave?” he asked.
“No,” Tamerlan breathed.
“She had no reason to go on her own?”
“No,” Tamerlan agreed. But without her, they had no Scenter, and no way to track her or anyone else. “She must have been taken.”
But who would have taken her?
Grandfather Timeless can have an interesting perspective on morality, Lila said in his mind.
A thief thought that his morality wasn’t up to snuff?
It’s easy to mistake writing people’s fates for being the one with the authority to change their fates. We used to have names for him. The Grandfather. The Fatemaker.
He sounded charming. But where would he be taking Marielle?
To the clock. To his avatar.
“Are you worried about that light?” Jhinn asked mildly, pointing to the orange glow in the sky to the north.
“It looks like a big fire. Like a city burning,” Tamerlan said, running his hand through his hair. What now? How could he track Grandfather Timeless and Marielle without her ability to Scent and with Jhinn confined to the boat?
“I think it’s H’yi. The glow is in the right direction.” Jhinn coughed. “I hate to say this.”
Tamerlan watched a smirk form on his friend’s face in the faint glow of the distant fire.
“Somehow, I doubt that.”
“You need to smoke your stuff. You need to call the spirits to help. We aren’t far from the city but with it on fire and our Scenter gone, it’s the only chance of catching up.”
Tamerlan gritted his teeth. “I said I’d never do that again.”
“An
d yet, you did it to steal the amulet.”
“In a controlled environment! When I knew you could shut things down if they got out of hand!”
Jhinn laughed. “Yeah. Like I could have beaten that Pirate spirit if he attacked me. No. Not even with the sword. But you came out of that unscathed.” He paused. “Except for the part where you nearly drowned.”
Tamerlan cleared his throat. Why did it feel like there was a ball lodged in it?
“Come on. Just a little bit,” Jhinn urged. “Keep the roll up in your hand and refresh it when you need to.”
“I won’t do that. I won’t be able to get my own body back.”
“Okay, then keep the pouch of them handy. If you run out of spirit, just smoke again and you’ll be back. I don’t think you’re going to have trouble finding a fire to light it with.”
Tamerlan nodded. They were already settling at the oars and pushing off. He shivered in the night as they sped into the darkness, the bobbing light of the lantern on the ferro lighting the way.
“Do you think the dragon is back?” Jhinn asked, just as a gust of wind rocked their gondola to the side.
A shadow crossed the moon. It was the shape of a dragon.
They rowed harder.
They hadn’t rowed far when the first boats came into view, heading downriver with the current.
“Turn around,” the boatman called from a family boat racing by. “Save yourselves before it’s too late!”
A moment later a barge passed.
“You’re going the wrong way!” the barge master shouted. “Turn around.”
And then they were weaving through a steady stream of boats – family boats stuffed with tired people calling out to them to flee, barges laden with goods or wild-eyed people, even gondolas packed with passengers and all of them calling to them.
“Flee while you can! The city burns! H’yi burns!”
At the next bend in the river, it was obvious why. Smoke wreathed H’yi – glowing orange in the night as flames leapt up. Anyone could be forgiven for thinking the whole city was ablaze. But as Tamerlan peered into the smoke, he thought that it was only a few buildings right now – some of the larger ones, certainly, but only about a half-dozen.
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