King Abelmeyer swung his sword, a devastating overhand strike toward Grandfather Timeless. Tamerlan felt his mental teeth gritting against the blow. But the sword plunged through his ethereal body, sweeping out the other side and sending Tamerlan tottering forward, off balance.
“I’m not all the way here, yet!” Grandfather Time screeched. “You can’t – ”
Abelmeyer reached out, grabbing the Legend by his golden waistcoat and pulling him in close so he could speak right into his face.
“What comes out can go back in,” he said, fist quivering with emotion. “That clock is your prison, and your term is not yet served.”
The man cackled. “I broke the binding when I put a substitute in the clock. To put me back, you’d need to bind me again. And what will you bind me with? The Eye is on her neck!”
“If I take it off,” Abelmeyer growled, “I can use it to bind you.”
“And let that dragon go free?” the Grandfather’s eyes twinkled. He found this amusing? Playing with the fates of innocents?
Of course, he does. He’s the villain in this story.
How did Abelmeyer know?
He’s one of the villains in every story. Tell me, boy. What can steal your love and happiness? Only time and death. He paused. I can only bind one thing at a time with my Eye and if I use it to bind him again, the dragon will go free.
“It was never in your nature to let cities burn,” the Grandfather said, slipping out of Abelmeyer’s hold and leaping away. Abelmeyer swiped for him, but he was too fast. He scrambled down the steps, leaping over Etienne as the Lord Mythos was still recovering, his head in his hands, blood flowing from bite marks down his arm.
With a roar of frustration, Abelmeyer spun, cutting Tamerlan’s palm on the tip of his own sword and pressing his palm to the clock.
You are Dragonblooded. I feel your blood pulsing in your veins. It sings to me.
A horrifying thought.
We offer your blood to keep the clock door open a few moments longer.
Would that free her? Would it free Marielle?
Nothing can free her now. She is the substitute. You can’t trade her for another person, only for the true thing - the Grandfather.
Then why hadn’t the Grandfather kept the Eye? Why leave it here?
He can’t use it again. He doesn’t have what it requires, so he leaves it here to delay us.
Abelmeyer stepped inside the clock, sword still raised.
Marielle flickered into view and then flickered away again like the flame of a candle flickering – frozen in a horrified scream. Tamerlan’s heart froze in his chest, his breath catching. He couldn’t leave her like that. Not Marielle. She was the best of them all, the most worthy of life.
Not Marielle!
Abelmeyer snatched the Eye from around her neck and stepped back but Tamerlan reached out with his hand to stroke the side of her face and Abelmeyer let him. One flickering caress and then she was gone again. He felt a lurch in his chest.
He couldn’t leave her like this.
Abelmeyer spun them around and leapt back out of the clock, letting the door close behind him. The door of the clock shut with the finality of a sepulchre.
No! They couldn’t leave her! Tamlerlan shook himself mentally. It wasn’t leaving Marielle – not forever. They had to get to the Grandfather and bind him with the Eye.
People were stumbling up the steps now as the fire in the Church of the Clock claimed more of the ancient building. The dome collapsed in a roar behind them as a priest stumbled forward, falling to his knees beside them, his eyes on the clock.
“He wasn’t supposed to actually be real,” he said, his voice hollow.
“Then why did you worship him?” Abelmeyer spat. Why was he wasting time? They needed to run through the crowd. They needed to chase the Grandfather!
It’s never the wrong time to set someone straight.
Etienne was also on his feet, climbing the steps in a daze. Tamerlan recognized that lost look. He’d seen it in the mirror.
Etienne sounded numb as he spoke. “He was supposed to help me set time backward. We were going to restore Jingen. Return to a time before the dragon rose up.”
Abelmeyer glanced up at the face of the clock. The hands had returned to normal, ticking the minutes and seconds at their normal speed.
“Things that happen, stay happened,” he said grimly. “There are no second chances.”
“We need to get her out of the clock,” Etienne said, his voice catching. “I never meant ... I thought ...”
“No,” Abelmeyer said quietly. “The Eye can only bind one thing at a time.”
Tamerlan reached down and picked up the yellow thing she had been holding. A single shell. Abelmeyer let him have that much control. Let him put it in his pouch. Let him shed a single tear before he spoke again with Tamerlan’s voice.
“The clock has her now. She can only come out if she is replaced by the Grandfather again.”
“Then we chase him down,” Etienne said grimly.
Of course they would. They would put him back in the clock!
Abelmeyer looked up to the sky where the dragon wheeled again. Around them, screams filled the air. The fires were spreading. Buildings were collapsing. Flames wreathed the city as the buckets of water were no longer enough.
Abelmeyer’s voice roared through his mind. You’d let the dragon burn these innocents to save one person? You’d trade all their lives for hers?
Horror gripped Tamerlan’s heart. That was the choice he made last time – though he didn’t know it at the time. That was the burden he already bore. Marielle had said it was the wrong decision. She’d said he shouldn’t have saved her. And he already had thousands of lives to atone for.
And yet – and yet he wanted to do it all again. He wanted to free her from the clock.
He wanted to, but he couldn’t.
With a wrench that shook him to the core, he pulled his gaze away, looking to the sky where the dragon was just a silhouette across the sun. From this height at the Temple District, he saw it wheeling over the farm fields to the south-east where the Cerulean parted into the North and South branches.
Jingen had to be stopped. Whatever it took.
Good boy. And now we will require a little more of your blood, hmm?
“We will choose the dragon,” he said aloud as if the declaration was needed.
Abelmeyer threw the chain over his neck, letting the Eye fall to his chest. This close, the flaw in the stone did look like an eye winking at him.
It was my eye before I gave it up for this purpose.
The thought of that made Tamerlan’s stomach heave.
Sacrifice. To use it, a similar sacrifice will be required of you.
Wait.
No.
No, no, no!
Realization of what King Abelmeyer meant filled him immediately.
If you want to use the eye, you have to give an eye.
No!
Panic shot up through him like icy daggers, sinking into his spine, his heart, his brain.
Does this mean you have changed your mind?
He shook himself. He had so much to redeem himself for. No sacrifice was too great ... was it?
“I’ll do it.” He’d been allowed his own voice to say those words, though it quavered with fear even as he said them.
Would the King gouge it out right here and now? Would he do it with the sword? Plunge it into Tamelerlan’s eye and –?
His thoughts cut off as the vision from one of his eyes winked out, like a blown out candle. He gasped.
It’s magic. You won’t have to lose the physical eye. Not like I did.
Half of his sight was gone.
And just like that, the far-away dragon dropped from the sky.
Around him, the breath in a thousand throats caught as the people of the city watched the dragon fall in the golden light of morning. He hit the earth so hard that the city shook beneath their feet, the half-burned buildin
gs around them collapsing with a boom.
Earth and vegetation shot up into the air around the fallen dragon and Tamerlan felt an ache in his chest as he saw the dragon fall.
It had worked.
H’yi was saved – mostly.
There would still be fires to put out. Still rebuilding to accomplish. But most of the city still stood, and the dragon did not. How long would he sleep?
With what I’ve done? As long as he is bound by the Eye. Keep it close.
He tucked it into his shirt, carefully hiding it from sight.
As his hand left the chain, he felt the Legend fade from his mind.
With a choked cry, Tamerlan slumped against the clock, his forehead against the glass. He’d made the right choice, hadn’t he? This time he’d made the right choice.
Then why did it feel like the wrong one? Why did it feel like he’d sold Marielle’s soul and his along with it?
The vision of his single eye was making him dizzy. He closed it, gritting his teeth and hammering at the door, but all the blood of his hands did not open the door. Not even when he beat against it until every knuckle was a bloody pulp and the tracks of his blood ran down the front of the clock like spatters of rain.
Maybe it needed Grandfather Timeless there, too. But now he had nothing to bind the Legend with and no way to free Marielle.
Tears tracked down his face as he screamed her name, battering the door of the clock with his fists.
Epilogue
Tamerlan
“Tamerlan,” a gentle voice said eventually, pulling him away from the clock. “I don’t think you can get in that way.”
The Lord Mythos sounded tired as he pulled Tamerlan away and helped him sit on the edge of the stairs.
“You chose the dragon,” he said and there was no emotion in his dead voice as he said. “I would have done the same thing.”
Tamerlan choked down a sob. He wanted to smoke again and let a Legend take him, but there was never a happy ending when they did.
“I don’t have bandages here,” Etienne said after a while. They were both still bleeding – Tamerlan from the wound on his hand. Etienne from the bites on his arm. “Let’s find you somewhere safe. Did the boy with the gondola come with you?”
“Yes,” Tamerlan said weakly, turning his head to look at the clock. Everything looked strange through just one eye.
“Come on. Let’s find him.”
Tamerlan sheathed his sword – it took two tries – and then Etienne led him down the steps and through the crowd.
The people had gathered in the streets and anyone not desperately fighting the fires stared into the distance where the dragon had fallen as if they still couldn’t believe it.
As they walked down the steps, the sky opened, and rain began to fall – torrents of it. It washed over the Clock of Ages. It poured in sheets over the fires. It soaked every soul to the bone in seconds, running in black rivulets of ash and soot down the streets and over the edges into the canals.
On Spellend, the day when all were washed clean, the water poured over H’yi, washing away the fury of the dragon, the blood of the Dragonblooded on the Clock of Ages, and the fear they’d all felt as the dragon destroyed H’yi. It washed over the devastation and frantic searchers in Xin. It poured over the tumbled ruins of Jingen. It flowed out down the rivers and into the sea, rippling out to the waiting ships of The Retribution. It soaked the fallen dragon in the crater he’d made in the earth.
No drop of salvation touched Marielle in her clock. No cleansing flood covered her.
And wet though he was on the outside, Tamerlan knew that the forgiveness of the heavens was not for him. He knew that he could never be washed clean. Not until the Legend was back in the clock. Not until the woman he cared about was free again. Not until he’d paid more than just the sight of one eye to save them all.
Autumngale
Book Three
“And in those days brother fought against brother and father against son as the factions fought for control of the cities until one voice rose up and calmed them all. One voice could be heard ringing out over the people – the voice of Mer. And she became our Queen, the savior of our lives.”
– Legends of the Dragonblooded
“The Ancient Legends, bane of man, riders of dragons, Emperors of sky and stars – they had to be stopped. They had to be contained. We were willing to give anything to stop them – our blood, our bones, our children.”
– Ancient text found on a scrap of parchment from the Time Before.
“And the voices called to him. And the pillars of the earth shook. And sanity found no place in the world beyond. For the Legends were reborn and their fate overtook them. The ancient ones rose again, the skies burned and the water was licked up before them. And they named him death – the stealer of life, the murderer of hope the destruction of our souls.
– Songs of the Retribution
1: Burning City
Tamerlan
Tamerlan clutched Abelmeyer’s Eye to his chest, his own single eye studying Etienne’s face as Jhinn steered their gondola out of H’yi to the Cerulean river. The other man was sober – grim in the flickering light and shadows of the dying flames.
The clock still stood – unaffected by the fires – prison, sanctuary, and trap. And back there at the heart of H’yi, in its depths, Marielle flickered in and out of life – a half-living ghost.
Tamerlan choked down what he thought might be a sob. This wasn’t a time for tears. And what Marielle needed right now wasn’t a tearful boy. She needed a tragedy-hardened man ready to fight for her.
He coughed on the smoke clouds they drifted through – relieved it was only the smoke of a burning city and not the smoke that altered everything.
Black clouds surrounded them, blocking out the drifting boats of survivors coughing and hacking on the choked rivers. He thought he saw a man collapse in a boat further down the river – saw the others in his boat scrambling to his aid. It was hard to tell in all the smoke and chaos. There would be more deaths as people fled. There was too much smoke to get a clean breath.
This was a time to face grim reality, though his single eye wasn’t ready to face anything.
He’d made a choice back on Summernight to save Marielle and doom everyone else, and he’d been watching the horrific consequences of that choice play out ever since. When he had the same choice to make all over again on Dawnspell, he’d tried to find redemption by choosing the other option – dooming her to save everyone. It should have felt like he’d done the right thing. It should have felt like redemption.
Instead, it was ashes and bitterness in his mouth.
Whatever he did now would have to be different. It would have to heal and not destroy. He would have to find some third option.
He coughed on the billowing smoke, leaning down to wet his neck scarf in the river water to tie around his nose and mouth like Etienne had. It took two tries to gauge his swipe at the water correctly. It was going to take time to get used to losing vision in one eye.
Smoke seemed fitting. It was as opaque as his situation. It choked out life just like his decisions did. It felt as insubstantial as his demons.
He needed guidance.
The world spun as he tried to adjust to his one working eye. He blinked, trying to clear his vision. It would never be fully clear again. And even that didn’t seem like full payment for all he’d done. If he hadn’t asked Marielle to scent for him, she wouldn’t be in the clock.
And the dragon would still rage across the earth, Abelmeyer reminded him. He was still there – still haunting Tamerlan’s mind.
And your pretty behind would be as dead as everything else on the Dragonblood Plains. That was Lila haunting him, too.
“We’ll get her out,” Etienne said, looking at the clock in the distance. Soon, the sight of it would be lost in the smoke. His hands were shaking. And no wonder. His crimes were as full and deep as Tamerlan’s now. Without him, the Legend Grandfather Timeless
would still be in the clock. And Marielle would not be.
“Promise me,” Tamerlan said through gritted teeth. Redemption wasn’t possible anymore. Forgiveness was not something he’d ever taste. But he could at least be faithful in this one thing. “Promise me that you will not rest until she’s out of the clock – that you’ll work with me to free her.”
Etienne looked up at the clouds of black smoke swirling above them. “There are things – plans – things I need to do to help my people.”
“You’re the one who freed the Legend,” Tamerlan said through gritted teeth. “You opened the Bridge of Legends and let him out.”
Etienne looked back at him, fury in his eyes. “With that recipe of yours. With that mixture of yours. One breath of smoke and he took me completely – held me for days to do his bidding. Is that your magic, Tamerlan? Possession by spirits?”
“Not spirits,” Tamerlan said, tightly. “Legends. And I can control it.”
Etienne’s laugh was harsh. “No one can control it, Tamerlan. It controls you. It’s an evil thing. A thing that should not be touched.”
He stole magic from the dragon, day after day – that’s where his power came from before you took it from him. That didn’t seem to trouble him, but one brush with the Grandfather and he’s done with magic? Lila sounded disbelieving. Hypocrite.
Dragon. Dragon. Dragon. Even with the dragon stopped, Ram was still just an insane echo constantly ranting in the back of Tamerlan’s mind.
“Like the magic you siphoned from the dragon before he fled?” Tamerlan asked.
“Dragon’s spit! It’s not the same. It was never for me.”
“Neither was this!”
“It was always for the good of others.”
Tamerlan’s replies were getting louder. “What did you think this was for?”
“Chasing goals for yourself is easy. Trying to do good for a whole population is a lot harder!”
“Do you think it was easy to go against a whole city to save my sister? Did you think it was easy to halt a dragon in the sky? Do you think it’s easy to lose an eye? Oh, it’s still there – but it doesn’t see. I gave that up to stop him – to stop you.”
Bridge of Legends- The Complete Series Page 42