Etienne looked away but Tamerlan couldn’t stop. He felt like all his edges were raw.
“And Marielle is in a clock. And the world is still falling apart!”
And he didn’t see a way clear. Didn’t see any reason to keep going when all was lost. Except maybe for her.
“You have to stop smoking that stuff,” Etienne said quietly. He looked stoic and dignified as he watched the horizon before them. “It’s a magic you don’t understand and can’t control.”
“I’ll stop when it’s over. When everything is right again.” Because how else would he fix it? He couldn’t do it on his own – he never could.
Lean into us, Alchemist. We can help you. You don’t need to do it alone. Lila’s words were as enticing as honey.
“It will never be over,” Etienne said with a shudder. “One thing only leads to another. Always. Forever.”
“Then what’s the point? What’s the point of anything?” Tamerlan asked and his words hung in the air like the black smoke above them – just as choking and grim.
“Adventure,” Jhinn said from the back of the boat. Tamerlan had almost forgotten he was there. “It’s all we’re promised in life – an adventure.”
If only life could be so simple.
“I promise,” Etienne said, heavily. “I make my vow to you as Etienne Velendark, formerly the Lord Mythos of Jingen that I will not rest until Marielle Valenspear is out of the clock. I will work with you to accomplish this.”
He leaned forward and seized Tamerlan’s hand. Tamerlan flinched back from a searing heat like fire bursting up his arm. Pain reverberated through him as he tried to pull his hand back. Etienne held it firmly in place, a smile of smug satisfaction on his face.
“I have at least enough power left to do that. We’re bound now, you and I. Dragon help me, but we’re bound.”
“If we’re bound then we’ll find Grandfather Timeless,” Tamerlan said. “We’ll bind his avatar again. And we’ll get Marielle out of the clock. We owe it to her. She’s the only one of us without blood on her hands.”
They broke their handclasp, each looking out over the fiery horizon. Each consumed by his own demons as they made their way up the river, looking for any sign of the Legend they were promise-bound to hunt.
And in the clock, Marielle slept – or didn’t sleep – as time ticked on.
And under the thick, fecund mud of the Dragonblood Plains, the dragons slept – and dreamed – and drew closer to the world of man.
Two Months Later
Drawing Bounds
Night One of Autumngale
2: Rain on the River
Tamerlan
“Those books are going to get wet, boy,” Jhinn said as Tamerlan held his book out from the edge of the tarp, trying to read in the flickering light of the gondola lamp.
“There has to be an answer in here. What is he trying to accomplish? Where is he going?”
“Where does the wind go? What does it want?”
“Maybe there’s a way to trap him. Some way to keep him from slipping through our fingers again.”
Jhinn snorted as he worked his wrench. “You want to trap time? Good luck with that. You know what your Lord Mythos says about that. He says your only chance is to surprise him.”
They had pulled the gondola under the edge of a bridge as the torrent poured down on them and Tamerlan had the tarp pulled over his head as he read, trying to keep the precious books dry, but even with so many precautions it was hard to read without getting raindrops smeared across the ink of the pages.
“Etienne doesn’t know everything,” he muttered.
The drip, drip, drip was a near-constant thing, and the sound of rain on water – while soothing – blocked out everything from the world around them so that it seemed like it was only them and the boat and the bridge and the rain.
“Lord Mythos isn’t going to be happy if he comes to life again and sees you’ve wrecked his books. He told you they were hard to get. He bribed a Librarian to get them. What do you think he bribed her with? He doesn’t look like one to kiss in corners or take a girl down to see the falls.”
Tamerlan’s smile quirked up in one corner of his mouth. Jhinn’s firm belief that anyone not on the water was not real – or was at the very least dead – constantly fascinated him. Waverunner beliefs were simple enough to grasp, but hard to really understand. Or maybe it was just the absolute conviction of those beliefs that was hard to believe. Tamerlan didn’t know anything for sure anymore.
Right now he couldn’t be distracted by that. Etienne had visited the gondola that morning with a new book – the sixth one he’d brought from the Bronzebow Library all the way in Xin. Half the reason they hadn’t caught Grandfather Timeless yet was all these trips of Etienne’s all over the Dragonblood Plains. If he would just stay in Yan with them, they’d be able to search together. Like the other books, he claimed it would have new information they could use to trap Grandfather Timeless.
The Grandfather will not be easily trapped. And certainly not by anything found in a book.
That might have been Lila Cherrylocks. Or maybe Byron Bronzebow. Or maybe it was Tamerlan’s own thoughts. He was having trouble keeping them apart after all these months – not that they didn’t sound different from one another. Their voices simply flowed through his thoughts so constantly that he was barely conscious of them most of the time, speaking into his mind and into his dreams, making judgments, fueling ambitions, but always talking, talking, talking and never giving him a moment of peace. He’d pay all these books and the cloak on his back for just one precious moment of peace.
His hands shook as he turned a page, reading intently and ignoring Jhinn’s chastisements. It was getting harder not to smoke when he didn’t need to. There was a relief in hearing just one voice instead of all of them. It didn’t help that his brain felt sluggish when he wasn’t smoking the spices. He’d started thinking of them just as “Spices” because it made it easier to smoke than when he admitted what he was doing – that he was accessing an ancient, deadly magic that no one should touch.
“If you’re going to ignore warnings, at least tell me what you think I should do now that I’ve fitted the gears together. Is this looking good to you?” Jhinn asked, pointing at his latest creation.
Tamerlan looked up at the device Jhinn was building for his gondola. He’d been working on it for weeks now, slowly making one part after another and always casually asking what Tamerlan thought of it each time. It was growing so large that it was hard for it to fit easily in the gondola with both of them and all the books and the makeshift tent and cookpot, too. The gondola was looking more and more like a family boat all the time.
“It looks good,” Tamerlan said absently. His mind was still working on what he’d just read, and he was barely paying attention as he said, “Maybe add a belt that moves between two pulleys attached to that gear there and that one there. That would mean you could drive the new gear from the motion of the rotary action over here.”
He paused. What had made him say that? But Jhinn was just smiling and nodding encouragingly.
“Good, good,” he said before choosing a wrench from his leather bag and getting back to work.
Tamerlan shook his head. Sometimes it felt like his mind – even his mouth – weren’t his own anymore. It was disconcerting but he’d be more concerned about it if he didn’t have so much already bothering him. He looked back down at the book and at the corner where his hand had been idly sketching with the sharp charcoal Etienne had found for him. He shouldn’t be marking up books. Especially not library books in the rain with a tarp spread over him like a child under the covers.
But there in black and white was her face. Again.
Marielle.
He thought about her so constantly that he drew her face without thinking. He dreamt of her every night. Longing, anguished dreams.
Last night he’d watched her fleeing from an army, only to turn into a tree to hide. The army had lit
the tree on fire and the cracks and pops as it burned sounded like her screaming.
Was his obsession with her guilt or was attachment? Or was it something else entirely? He didn’t even know anymore. All he knew was that he needed to get her out.
Two months and she was still in the clock.
Two months and he still hadn’t caught the Legend who put her there – the Grandfather. Even the voices in his head were growing dumbfounded. Every time he was close, the Grandfather slipped away into the shadows.
They’d chased him from tavern to inn to temple in each of the remaining four cities. And they were no closer to catching him now than they’d been when they left the choking smoke of H’yi.
It was hard to chase the Grandfather. They’d lose his trail for weeks, only to suddenly catch wind of him somewhere. Wherever he was caused a flurry of activity among the Timekeepers – his priests – and that was their only hint most of the time. But they’d arrived at the Sun of Light Temple in Xin last time, only to find it empty and a single Timekeeper priest left to stare blankly as they asked their questions.
That was when Etienne had decided to turn to Yan.
“We haven’t tried there yet,” was his weak reasoning.
Tamerlan blinked, his single working eye squinting at the text again. Maybe this time there would be a key in the book. Someone had to know something about how Grandfather Timeless worked. Someone had to have known him before he was a Legend.
His single eye slid along the line of words and he fought against the irrational fear that one eye meant he was missing something – not seeing something right there. He worried that maybe he’d breezed over something because his single eye was too tired – something important.
He blinked and read the last sentence again.
“For what can stop time? No mortal or Legend can quell the passing of the years or the ravaging of them. For what we build up, time tears down. What we birth, time ages. What we delight in is no more and even the ashes of it fade away. But seize wisdom and learn from understanding. Let it open your eyes to truth and let all your paths be guided by it. Look, wisdom opens the gate and understanding the mountain. Look, they have buried insight under the waters and prudence under the rocks.”
He sighed. This whole book read like that. Sure, it talked about time. And yes, he loved to read this kind of text when he wasn’t desperate for answers. He loved to think about wisdom and philosophy and dream about what could be. But right now, this was worse than useless. There was no key here for trapping the Grandfather. And he was going to have to figure out a trap of some kind. All this stalking and hunting wasn’t doing anything. He was always a dozen steps ahead of them.
Tamerlan opened the other book – the one that kept worrying him but that he kept returning to, over and over, again and again. It was a book entitled Prophecies of the Latter Legends and it spoke in a complicated, vague way that should have annoyed him and yet he resonated with it.
“Beware the Howling Dark. The last remains of the shell of humanity, the last derelict flesh of the forgotten mind. Beware when it steals your voice and covers your desires. Beware when it howls, ever echoing down the chambers of the mind until all is forgotten but dusk and dust. Beware. For many have tried but few have succeeded. Many have crossed the final bridge only to discover there is no way back and that they left themselves on the far side of that great river which is death.”
The Howling Dark worried him. It sounded a bit too much like his mind now that the Legends had taken it over. He turned a page, ignoring the drip of the rain and the click of Jhinn’s tools and the rising scent of algae and water lilies as the rain teased it out.
“Do you think we can trap him, Jhinn? How do you trap a Legend?”
“How did they trap Deathless Pirate?”
Tamerlan shivered, thinking back to when they’d seen his avatar floating under the ocean in a metal cage. “I don’t know, but however they did it, it wasn’t very nice.”
Jhinn shrugged. “Then your solution won’t be very nice. Do you think it needs a device? Like the clock? I could try making a clock when I’m done with this gondola.”
A loud thump brought Tamerlan’s head up in time to see Etienne land on the boat. He’d jumped from the bridge above, rain soaking his cloak and dripping dark hair. The half-light of a stormy day drew his face in stark, haggard lines – he always looked haggard now, more with every snatch of news they received in every city. Tamerlan would have almost felt sorry for him except that the worn look of guilt on his face was deserved. They were brothers in shame. Partners in crime. Twins in unabsolved sin.
“You’re not drawing in the margins again?” Etienne asked, snatching the book from Tamerlan’s hands. “Her again! Always her. Clear your mind, Alchemist! You won’t find the Grandfather when you’re daydreaming.” He threw the book back at Tamerlan and Tamerlan barely caught it.
“I have a lead – a hint of where we can find our quarry,” Etienne said grimly. “Strap on your sword and let’s go.”
“Right now?” Tamerlan blinked in surprise as he carefully wrapped the books back up in oilcloth to protect them.
“You want to wait? You haven’t done enough waiting?” He was on edge, his eyes firing and his words snapping out like whips.
Tamerlan looked around them at the boats huddled together under the bridge in the rain – it was easy to forget they were there when the rain muffled the sounds from boat to boat.
Everyone minded their own business in these moments. They were forced together by weather and geography. No need to make more of it than it was. And yet there was anonymity in numbers. In daylight, moving in the canals would bring notice.
“Waiting is better than being caught by the Harbingers,” Tamerlan said. “I’m telling you, they’re following us. I swear I saw the woman – Liandari? – when I was in the market yesterday. Her eyes are sharp.” It had definitely been her. He’d barely given her the slip once she’d caught sight of him.
“You worry too much about them,” Etienne said. But he looked worried, too. It was hard enough to be hunters without being the hunted, too. And at their last stop, the innkeeper had mentioned someone was looking for them – someone with a sharp sword and coin to spend on information. “We need to go before we lose the trail again. Who knows how long he’ll stay this time?”
And that was as true as breathing.
“What will we do when we find him?” Tamerlan asked as he strapped his swords on. “He’ll only slip away again. We need some kind of trap.”
He slipped his rolls of Spices into his sleeve and tried not to think about all the times that the Legend had given them the slip. It was hard to find and catch a Legend. It was worse when he wasn’t bound by time like they were.
“This time will be different,” Etienne muttered. “We don’t have a trap. We don’t have any allies. All we have is surprise.”
Different, Different. Different.
The voices in Tamerlan’s head were in unison this time. They wanted this too. Or maybe that was him. He couldn’t tell one from another anymore. His hands shook in anticipation.
This time, he’d be ready. This time, he’d catch the Grandfather, no matter what he had to do.
3: Inside the Clock
Marielle
The tick of the universe was in her ears – always.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t been watching or that she hadn’t seen. It was that she was seeing everything, all the time.
Because she was time and when you are time, everything is always happening at once inside you – the roll of the seasons as seen from the stars. The life of a man as seen by the burning cosmos. The rise and fall of generations as seen by the mountains looming above.
Everything.
All the time.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t seeing what was happening to her friends. It was just that it was hard to pick out what was happening now instead of thirty years ago. Or thirty years from now. And that made her head ache because the
future was blurry – like watching the same person overlaid on a scene a hundred different times and all one hundred of that person were doing slightly different things – or vastly different things. When you were talking about hundreds of variations, it went from incremental to enormous in the blink of an eye.
And that was what she’d been doing.
She’d been blinking.
And with every blink, she tried to get closer to the time when she’d been put in the clock.
To now.
To Marielle.
And what if she was too late – if she forgot who she was? She didn’t dare think about that.
4: The Whisper
Tamerlan
Yan City was laid out just like Jingen and Xin had been. Just like H’yi. Just like every city of the Dragonblood Plains. But just like the other cities, it had subtleties of its own. Here, the canals were wider and slower moving. Here there were more oxen pulling carts and more people jammed into the streets. Buildings were higher and more crowded and the people in Yan had an obsession with carefully wrought lanterns and woven rugs. They could be seen hanging in any space available or layered one upon the other on the floors of their dwellings. Hawkers sold them faster than hotcakes on the streets. Surely, everyone must have as many as they could afford. And yet more were being sold all the time.
Tamerlan’s single eye scanned the streets, taking in the sellers of chalk hiding under canopies as the rain poured down. Chalk was an important part of the week-long Autumngale Festival. But getting it wet wouldn’t help anything. And who was going to buy it in Yan City where everyone watched the world with hollow eyes?
“Chalk for the festival? Chalk to win the city?” a hawker cried, holding up a stick of chalk as fat as Tamerlan’s thumb.
One of them looked his way and then quickly looked away again. Tamerlan laughed internally. No, he and Etienne did not look like chalk buyers, did they?
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