Tamerlan paused, the muscle in his jaw jumping as he considered what to do. “And if I take him away from here and offer you our sincerest apologies?”
The blacksmith muttered something, snatching the coins away and Tamerlan hustled his friend out the door. Dathan stumbled as he walked. He was mumbling as they went.
“I just hate feeling like I’m nothing. Hate feeling like I owe everyone and can never get out of it. I was sold. Sold like a pig for market. I’ll be paying that back all my life to get free. All my life.”
“I know,” Tamerlan said, wrapping an arm around him to support his friend. Compassion bloomed around him in puffs of lavender scent.
“You, too. Sold. You can’t go anywhere you want or do anything. You’ve got to work for the guild ‘till they’re paid their price. All your life.”
“I know.”
“What are we if we can be bought and sold? What are we?”
“We’re friends,” Tamerlan said mildly. “Or at least I think we are.”
“You’re a good friend, Tam,” Dathan said thickly. “That was six month’s pay you gave for me. How are you going to buy anything extra now? You’ll have to live off guild bread and clothes from the lost bin.”
“I’ll live. And so will you. As long as you don’t bother any more blacksmiths.”
And that was why she was drawn to him. His sweet heart. His innocent love of beauty. His immediate willingness to open his heart and help a friend. He wasn’t like her. He didn’t think about right or wrong. But he cared about people.
She saw him. The real him. And it was hard to be against someone who you could really see.
She spun away from the intensity of the scene before her, following the thread back, back, back to the present. This time, she wouldn’t let the king spin her away from the scent of warm honey and cinnamon.
20: Isle of Mer
Tamerlan
This place has changed, Abelmeyer said as they left the small rowboat from the barge. He was as tense as Tamerlan, every muscle bulging and ready for action. The smell of salt and wild winds swirled around them.
In the dark, the Isle of Mer was hard to make out beyond jagged rocks and an unforgiving coastline, but Abelmeyer seemed to remember it. The burden of being driven by someone else was wearing on Tamerlan, but that hadn’t stopped him from smoking again a few hours ago, nursing the paper roll of spice as he leaned over the rail of the barge. Oddly, it seemed that it required his volition to do that. Abelmeyer hadn’t been able to do it himself.
He hated that he was doing this. It felt like a kind of surrender to let the Legend take over his whole self. And he was letting him. That much was obvious. It wasn’t Abelmeyer who drew out the Spice and lit it and smoked. That had been Tamerlan – his only act of free will since he’d given over his body hours ago, but it was still his. And somehow that made it worse.
It was his choice.
But what other choice did he have? He’d tried to save Marielle in Jingen, only to have the city destroyed beneath them. He’d tried to redeem himself by saving H’yi and stopping the dragon the next time – and that had mired her in eternal imprisonment. She’d been right about that. He couldn’t redeem himself. He wasn’t even trying to anymore. He just didn’t want anyone else to suffer because of his choices. Not Marielle. Not Jhinn. Not anyone. And that meant smoking. It meant turning over his body to the Legends and letting them do all the things he was powerless to do on his own. Was that surrender, or was that volition?
Anglarok kept glancing over at him with suspicion in his eyes. Could he smell the magic as Tamerlan drew it in?
It turned his stomach to think about all the ways this could go wrong. But if he didn’t take the gamble, then nothing would go right, either. He would just have to hope – with what little hope he had left – that he could turn this around and somehow undo some of the tragedies he’d woven.
Sweat beaded on his forehead from the strain of his thoughts and his belly twisted with the sharp pains of a mind troubled by worry.
You destroy yourself from within. Learn to accept what can’t be changed. We are your only hope to turn this around. The more you fight us, the harder it will be to fix your mistakes.
It would certainly be easier just to accept it all and surrender.
You can trust me to guide you.
And Abelmeyer hadn’t done anything wrong in his body. He’d helped him stop the dragon Jingen. He’d made a pact with the Harbingers rather than destroying them.
Yes.
So why did Tamerlan feel more and more knotted up inside as the hours of his possession passed?
Be calm. We are almost at our goal.
The passage on the ship had been uneventful. It should have been terrifying. The ships loomed high and sleek on either side as they passed between them. Tamerlan had been shocked at their size and height – like giants looming in the water- far taller than most buildings in the Five Cities – and carried together on the peaks of each foaming wave. Their hulls were outlined by strings of lights in the night. Calls, bells, and whistles spoke of a precise schedule and a disciplined crew.
He’d been surprised by the air of alertness on the ships. Despite the darkness of night, they seemed ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice.
“Are they always like that? Ready to pounce?” he had asked the Harbingers.
Liandari had answered him. “They are ships of Queen Mer’s Retribution. We are proudly ready for anything.”
Of course they were.
Anglarok’s nose wrinkled as he scented from the rail, but he had watched in silence as they slid between the high ships. Tamerlan felt a creeping sensation as he played with the roll of Spice between his lips. There was something going on with these ships. They were not just waiting at anchor that night. There was a feeling about them like they were going to move. He didn’t believe that they were always like this. And he didn’t believe that they usually let barges slip between them with so little fuss. The ships had waved the barge through without even an inspection.
He had drummed his fingers on the rail, deep in speculation.
Etienne came to stand beside Tamerlan with a furrowed brow. He had a lit lantern which he held high in one hand while the book Tamerlan had found in the palace library of Yan was held in the other hand. He’d asked for it an hour before and his eyes had been glued to the pages ever since.
“Did you read something that troubled you?” Abelmeyer asked in Tamerlan’s voice as he puffed out smoke.
“Filthy habit,” Anglarok muttered. If he had any idea what Tamerlan was doing ... but fortunately he didn’t. If he smelled magic, he still wouldn’t know what Tamerlan was doing with it.
Etienne’s lips thinned as he pressed them together. He gave Tamerlan the same look every time he glanced at him. Etienne clearly didn’t like interacting with the Legends. But would he prefer that he had just regular Tamerlan the apprentice swordsman at his side or the great King Abelmeyer at his side?
Don’t let his reluctance trouble you. He doesn’t know what a great gift you give him.
“The section with Queen Mer was not the only section he looked at in this book.”
“How do you know?” Tamerlan asked.
“I read the rest of the book – something you should have done.”
“Just explain, if you please,” Abelmeyer said crisply with Tamerlan’s voice.
“The section about Byron Bronzebow has a burn along the side of one of the pages – like it was held too close to a candle flame. A librarian would never do that. Only a person flipping through a book illicitly in the dead of the night would do that.”
“Why is there a section about Byron Bronzebow in a book entitled Queen Mer and the Sea?” King Abelmeyer’s voice sounded taut. Why was he so anxious about Bronzebow?
“It mentions off-hand that there was a tribute to him set up after the death of the queen and that there are similarities to their graves.”
Tamerlan felt his hand tighte
n on the rail of the ship. What had Abelmeyer so upset? His knuckles were white.
“We’ll worry about that once we’ve checked on the Isle of Mer,” his voice said. But there seemed to be some added weight to Abelmeyer’s words – like he was choking on them. “One thing at a time. Always, one thing at a time...”
He sounded crazier than Tamerlan felt and Tamerlan was the one with a whole party of Legends on his mind.
I am not crazy.
And now here they were, hours later, stepping out onto the Isle and it worried Tamerlan that he could feel Abelmeyer’s heart racing in his chest like it was trying to outrun his feet.
We’re here for the Grandfather. Be ready.
It felt so personal to Abelmeyer.
Isn’t it personal to you? We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.
That was true.
“Prepare yourselves,” Abelmeyer said, holding a lantern high above his head as they leapt from the rowboat the moment it was close enough to the beach.
Down the beach, a small sailed craft leaned precariously where it was anchored out from the shore. Waves had beat it into water too shallow for it. No one stood on the small deck. Etienne had been right. The Grandfather had brought a craft of his own.
That was never in question.
It was for Tamerlan. He didn’t share Abelmeyer’s unshakable confidence. Besides, what kept him from simply vanishing and appearing like he did last time Tamerlan tried to grab him?
That takes an enormous amount of energy and power. Without the reservoirs of the clock to draw on, he is limited in how often he can do that. Why waste it on the mundane?
“I smell trouble,” Anglarok said and he held his harpoon at the ready while Liandari drew her blade.
The idea of them behind him with blades made Tamerlan’s skin crawl, but Abelmeyer was unaffected, drawing his own sword and holding the lantern higher as they climbed up and around the jagged rocks.
“There’s a shrine here somewhere,” Etienne said, looking at the book in his own lantern’s light.
“More than a shrine,” Abelemeyer said calmly, but there was a sharp frost to his tone that puzzled Tamerlan. Had he and Queen Mer been friends?
Of course not.
Then why the horror tinging his tone?
Some things should never be done. And yet – sometimes they have to be.
The clock. The dragon. Marielle. That was his list.
We all have a list.
They clambered around a black rock that jutted up to the sky like a broken incisor, and then around two more. They seemed almost like a double-spiked crown.
“Inside the Crown of Mer,” Etienne read from his book. “The arms of her ancients are frozen. They reach for the sky in horror at what was done to their Queen.”
“Does anyone come here?” Abelmeyer asked quietly.
“Of course not,” Etienne replied. “It is forbidden. The island is cursed.”
And that didn’t worry him? He was as mad as Tamerlan was!
There was blood on the rock in front of Abelmeyer. Someone must have cut themselves on the broken shards.
“So that boat had to be the Grandfather’s then,” Abelmeyer said. “But whose blood is this?”
They turned the corner and if Tamerlan had his own body he would have been biting back a scream. As it was, Etienne gasped and Liandari’s jaw clicked as if she had shut her mouth hard over some response.
“Mer’s spit!” Anglarok gasped.
This was the shrine.
It was set in a gap in the spiky black rocks. Arms had been carved reaching up into the sky – arms of the largest squid a person could imagine. Though if the book was to be believed they weren’t carved at all, but frozen there - reaching in wavy desperation toward the sky.
“The Kratoen,” Abelmeyer breathed, awe in his voice.
But the others weren’t looking at the kratoen. They were looking at the dead girl hanging from a rope tied roughly to one of the arms, head down, her blood still dripping out of her into a sticky pool on the floor. She was the age of Marielle – or Amaryllis. Had she been as foolish as his sister, trusting the Grandfather only to have her blood spill on the rocks?
Tamerlan’s soul shivered. This was what Etienne was going to do to Marielle. What he’d done to other young girls before. He shot a glance at the other man, but Etienne’s face was stony and expressionless.
“Just your type of party, isn’t it?” he said.
Etienne’s dark look spoke volumes in the light of the lanterns.
“Do you see what it opened?”
And he was right, of course. The blood was pouring into a small channel cut into the rock. And a clam-shell had been opened high above them – so high that whatever it might contain could not be seen from here. Steps led up to the opening. And on the steps, footprints were smeared in fresh blood.
Abelmeyer craned his neck, but he would have to climb the steps to see what was going on in the clamshell.
Beneath them, the ground trembled. Was it Tamerlan’s imagination, or had one of those tentacles moved slightly? Abelmeyer swallowed, but he strode toward the steps without hesitation.
“Now we prove we are heroes,” he whispered to the others. “Stab your knife through your courage and pin it in place lest it vanish with the meeting of blades.”
Before they could answer, he was sprinting up the steps, sword in hand, lantern held high, ready to take on whatever he found there.
21: King Abelmeyer
Tamerlan
He stumbled at the top of the stairs, sword tip wavering. Was he shaking? King Abelmeyer shouldn’t shake. He shouldn’t stumble. Tamerlan was trying to see what had thrown him, but the King’s eyes were looking everywhere else.
They were in a massive, black clamshell with runes carved along the rim. White pearls crunched underfoot – more pearls than he could have imagined. You could buy that whole Retribution fleet with this many pearls. You could buy a nation. They twisted under his feet, making ankles and calves work doubly hard to keep his footing.
All around them, music filled the air. An ethereal, haunting tune sung from unseen lips.
Abelemeyer – hands shaking, sweat dripping into Tamerlan’s eyes – finally looked back toward the center of the shell, where the Grandfather stood wearing a tall top hat and long open coat. He was grinning triumphantly and draped in his arms was the ethereal half-there, half-not corpse of a woman. Her long hair fell around her, tangling in shells and chunks of coral like seaweed. Her blank eyes stared. But falling from her slashed throat was not blood – but more ghostly white pearls.
Not a living woman then – but what?
An avatar.
Her crown fell from her head, bouncing over the pearls and clattering to the edge of the shell at the same time that Liandari lunged forward toward the Grandfather.
“Defend yourself, Legend, or taste my blade!” she cried.
Shaking himself, Abelmeyer sprang forward, too, his sword darting toward the Grandfather like the tongue of a snake.
They needed to use the Eye to trap him. Now!
Laughter rolled over them from the mouth of the Grandfather as the music swirling around them began to fade.
He dropped the corpse of the avatar, dodging backward to put his back at the hinge of the shell. So little care! As if she did not matter.
Undaunted, Liandari leapt over the dead avatar, ignoring her too-pale skin and open mouth. But Abelemeyer couldn’t step over her. Tamerlan felt him trying to move his feet, struggling against the impossibility of it.
Use the Eye! Tamerlan’s thoughts were a scream.
Abelmeyer’s gaze was fixed on the woman. The avatar.
Queen Mer.
Was it possible to kill an avatar? To destroy a Legend forever?
Yes!
And with that panicked cry, Abelmeyer fled his mind like a retreating army. And with him left the knowledge needed to use the Eye to trap the Grandfather.
With a roar, Tamerlan leapt ove
r the cold form of the Legend queen. He wasn’t spooked by the death of the dead. He wasn’t worried that he might be mortal – he always had been. He shoved the cacophonous voices from his mind as the Legends’ voices poured into his mind.
Dead? She can’t be dead!
Have you seen her? Where is she?
Mer? Mer!
Abelmeyer, explain what you saw. Quickly!
Someone grab the boy again!
He mentally shoved them aside with a roar, slashing his sword toward the Grandfather as he battled Liandari blow for blow. The Grandfather laughed, turning Tamerlan’s blade aside easily. Why had Abelmeyer fled at just the moment that he needed him?
“Two against one, is it? And yet you have no idea. I set you free. I kill your killers, destroy your destroyers. I release you from their power. Bow to me, fools!”
He sounded insane.
But who was Tamerlan to speak of insane? He could barely think with all the voices in his mind.
Why did you let go of him!
Fool!
You’ll ruin us all!
Who was the fool? What were they talking about?
Etienne and Anglarok’s voices rang out with concern, but he couldn’t focus on that. The Grandfather was winning. He was going to beat Liandari at swordplay even though she darted and rolled like a ship on the sea, quick as a darting fish, but skillful as the fisherman. She sucked him into a false thrust, only to slide to the side, ducking under his guard and striking out with her knife. But beautiful and capable as her fighting was, she was not fast enough. Each blow just missed the Grandfather. When she moved to strike, he simply wasn’t there.
Someone needed to grab him before he darted away. Like he had all those times before. Maybe they couldn’t use the Eye to trap him, but they could hold him physically.
Tamerlan clenched his jaw, dropped his sword to the ground and leapt forward in the air, arms out, reaching for the Grandfather. All the Legends in his mind were screaming at him. His own fear was screaming at him. But someone had to stop that maniac. Now. Before he destroyed the whole world.
He felt cloth in his hands. Smelled the spice on the Grandfather’s breath. Saw the gleam in his eye.
Bridge of Legends- The Complete Series Page 52