Her tone in Tamerlan’s head was steel and then someone – he didn’t know which of them – began to scream in the background. He felt the blood draining from his face as he shook his head, trying to make the internal screaming stop.
It was hard to go insane and know it at the same time. Harder still when you didn’t know if it was your insanity or someone else’s.
“We want the same thing, Marielle,” Tamerlan said as gently as he could while trying to keep the pain of the endless screaming from showing on his face. “Thank you for finding us the furs. Do you think you could help us find what happened to Jhinn?”
He reached down and picked up the second cloak from the ground. If they found Jhinn, he would be cold.
She looked up at the sky, worry painting her face. They were all nervous about the night. Last night had been like a glimpse of hell. No one wanted that again.
“I think there’s enough daylight,” she said uncertainly. “And we owe him that.”
Etienne nodded eagerly, as if he was grateful to focus on something else. Was it possible that he heard the screaming, too?
He held out his hand to Tamerlan. “Peace? At least until we find a way to quell the dragons forever?”
Tamerlan nodded tightly, but he took Etienne’s smaller hand in his giving him a firm handshake. “You know I want that.”
Marielle had already risen up on her tiptoes, nose in the air and eyes closed. She stood motionless for long minutes like that while Tamerlan’s gaze traced the shape of her nose, the curve of her cheeks, the way that her stray hairs swirled in the frigid air.
The chances of any of them living through this mess – surviving a flight on the back of a dragon – were incredibly slim. He wanted to enjoy every moment of life left with her, even if each tiny joy was laced with vibrant pain and dull sorrow.
And the acid feeling of madness washing through his brain.
He could never afford to forget what he was now.
“This way,” she said, striding forward over the shaking streets as they followed her.
Tamerlan kept his eyes on her, admiring her certainty as she moved, enjoying her brisk movements and quick steps.
“There are others in the ruins,” Etienne said quietly. “I see movements sometimes.”
Tamerlan swallowed. It didn’t help to hear the other man confirm his suspicions. It made it worse, somehow.
“Not just Anglarok and Liandari,” he agreed. “But even if it was just them, we can’t leave them alone to ravage the city. You saw what Anglarok wrote in his blood. He needs help.”
He shivered.
“Why not?” Etienne said tiredly.
“I remember what it was like to live like a passenger in my own mind – to watch my hands kill and torture and be unable to look away. It was living hell.”
“They won’t do that. They’ll just kill the dragon.”
“Can they kill it?”
“Ask Ram. You’re the one with him in your head.”
They won’t. They can’t.
“He doesn’t think they can,” Tamerlan said reluctantly. “Though he’s not much of one for explaining himself.”
Etienne snorted. “Neither is the Grandfather. He issues orders. He lets me know what he has in store for me. He doesn’t explain the whys behind any of it.”
They were following Marielle as she set off across the city, nose in the air, face concentrated as she scented for something very specific – their friend Jhinn. Tamerlan didn’t want to think about what would happen if they found Jhinn anywhere except on the water – or if they didn’t find him at all. What had happened to him in the chaos? It seemed like such a bitter thing that his religion demand that he stay afloat at all times. If he found himself on land – and how could he not in this city? – it would be worse than death for him. Tamerlan swallowed, trying to turn his mind to anything else.
“And that brings up another problem,” Tamerlan said. “If the Grandfather is back in the clock, why isn’t H’yi on the ground? I thought that he was the avatar keeping this dragon here.”
“Apparently not.”
“Then who is it? We need to know that.”
Etienne nodded.
“Choan was Maid Chaos until she was killed and this new Legend created,” Marielle said in a distracted voice. Tamerlan started. She’d been listening? He thought she was too absorbed in the hunt. What else had she noticed? Did she know ... did she know he was losing his mind? “Xin was bound by Deathless Pirate. An oddly sacrificial choice for a pirate, don’t you think? But he’s an odd pirate.”
Tamerlan exchanged a brief look with Etienne. The other man shook his head quickly. He didn’t know all of this, either. Marielle kept talking as she led them carefully over a narrow, shaking bridge. Masonry fell in chunks from it as they scurried across. Tamerlan swallowed as they smacked against the dry canal below. There was no water there. There was no water, anywhere. His throat was parched at the mere thought.
“Jingen was bound by Byron Bronzebow – sort of. That bond weakened over time though I don’t know why. Jingen should not have been able to rise when I was spared death, only to wake up. And yet, the dragon rose. Byron showed no hesitation when asked. He was always interested in defending the weak. Maybe he was made a Legend in a different way. And Yan was sealed by King Abelmeyer.”
“And H’yi?” Etienne asked, tension in his voice.
“H’yi was bound by the Grandfather.”
“Then why isn’t it working?” Etienne asked angrily. “We put him back in the clock. That should keep him sealed. There’s no reason for him to rise!”
“Do you think – ” Tamerlan began but he hesitated. It was only a guess. And a silly one at that. It didn’t make logical sense. But did any of this.
“Spit it out,” Etienne said.
Tamerlan cleared his throat. They were climbing up the Dragon’s spine now to the base of his neck and the wobbling of his movements seemed even greater here. Tamerlan’s stomach lurched with every tilt of the land beneath his feet. Could there really be more people in the city? What did they think of all of this?
“Do you think that when the Legends leapt out of the clock and took over Liandari and Anglarok that perhaps they broke that pact? That somehow that nullified the hold the clock had on the dragon?”
Etienne shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“What does make sense?” Tamerlan asked.
“Water!” Marielle’s voice was thick with excitement. “I can smell it just up ahead!
3: So Little Water
Marielle
Water always smelled so ... alive. It was easy to see why Queen Mer’s people revered it. It smelled like life – fecund, thriving life. Even here in the middle of a city that was mostly charcoal, the water was alive.
If Marielle was being honest, the charcoal of the city had been a welcome relief. There was nothing like charcoal to clean the air of scent and her sensitive nose – freshly freed from the clock – was grateful to be able to settle back into constant scenting with a bit of a reprieve.
But at this moment it didn’t feel like any relief at all. She could smell the water up ahead, but there was a lot more she was smelling, too.
Fear and desperation pulsed through the air in waves of ginger and acid. The lightning blue of the fear tinging the orange desperation in veins of blue. Her teeth were set on edge immediately, but she couldn’t keep her feet from hurrying after it.
She could smell Anglarok in the middle of the street as if he was still there. The smell of insanity weaving through his scent was familiar – Legend. And there were more people scents. At least a dozen. They crisscrossed over and through each other. And they were layered up and over as if some of these people had come here multiple times. Interesting. And a little terrifying.
“Ready yourselves,” she breathed, grateful when she heard the sounds of drawn swords behind her. Good. They might need them.
There was the sound of a tiny trickle of wate
r and other sounds – something dull like mud being slapped into place by the handful and the lapping of waves against something wooden.
And everywhere the scent of fear and a scant overtone of smoky red violence. She held her breath as they turned the corner and then sighed with relief when she was hit full-on with the strawberry scent of genius.
“Jhinn!” she called aloud before she’d even seen him, but her eyes found him before anything else.
He was standing with his head tilted slightly as if he was listening to something, but he straightened, wide-eyed at her call. He was in his small boat and his boat was in a fountain pool in the middle of a square. It was large for a fountain pool and the only water Marielle had yet seen – but it was hardly anything to float a gondola on. It was maybe ten times in circumference as the length of the small boat and the edges of the fountain were chipped and broken. It was clear to see that Jhinn was trying to dam it up with debris and mud – but he could only reach what was accessible from leaning outside his small boat.
“You live,” he said with a grin as they rounded the corner. Even now, even with despair rolling off him in dark puffs of cloud, even now he smiled. “I knew you would live. I knew this couldn’t be the end.”
But as he looked around him and up at the constantly moving starry sky, his eyes were full of anxiety. Marielle swallowed. What had she expected? Right now, Jhinn was like a man clutching a barrel in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight.
“It’s not the end,” Tamerlan said warmly, rushing to where Jhinn was and levering a huge timber up to help shore up a woven wall of sticks and mud.
“It’s not full yet, but if I can dam it, then when it rains – if it rains – I can catch water,” Jhinn said, laughing as he spoke as if it was the most obvious thing in the world and also as if it were the most ridiculous. “I think it’s the only water around. Anglarok came here, but though he watched me like a seagull eyeing a scrap, he only stopped to lap water and then he was gone. Liandari was not far behind, but she was not herself and she barely glanced at me before filling a water skin and then slipping away.”
He didn’t stop working, even when Tamerlan put a friendly hand on his shoulder. He looked feverish and pale – as if he thought he could work hard enough to keep all the water contained. Marielle watched him carefully. Was he going mad, too, or was he simply a realist? That water in his pool would not last long. Especially if it were the only water source for the whole city.
“The walls need to be high,” he said feverishly as he piled more debris on them. “Every time the dragon wheels, a little water sloshes out. If I can just keep it in – just work hard enough to keep it in.”
“How can we help?” Tamerlan asked. “Do you need supplies?”
Jhinn shook his head but it kept shaking for too long as if he was hung up on the thought. “Pitch maybe, if you find it. But would that have survived the fire? Wood to heat it. I don’t know, I don’t know.”
He looked up from his work with wild eyes and Marielle could almost sense his thoughts from the scent of fear that permeated them with spikes of electric blue.
“You must be cold,” Tamerlan said, offering Jhinn the dark cloak. He had to adjust it over his friend’s shoulders and fasten the pin. Jhinn wouldn’t stop for long enough to do it himself. And that was why she loved Tamerlan. He thought about whether his friend was cold. He tried to help, even if there was nothing he could do. “Listen. I got you into this mess. I’ll get you out.”
He made crazy, unkeepable promises.
“You can’t get me out,” Jhinn said, looking up for a fraction of a second to meet Tamerlan’s eyes. “Even if the dragon sets down somewhere, there won’t be any guarantee that there is water near. Even if there is water near, I’m in the middle of a city. The canals are empty. There’s no way out.”
“You could leave the boat,” Etienne said, but his tone was obvious – he didn’t really believe that Jhinn would leave.
“To leave is death,” Jhinn said. “You know that. I couldn’t have set a better trap if I’d thought on it for a month.”
“How far will you go for your beliefs? For a religion that can’t possibly be true?” There was no fire in Etienne’s words, though the smell of pity wafted off them.
“It’s true, it’s true,” Jhinn said, balling his hands into fists and hitting them against his forehead. “Even if it drives me mad, it’s true.”
“Mad?” Tamerlan asked softly, his eyes deep wells of blue compassion. He knew madness if anyone did. Marielle’s lip trembled a little at the thought. She could see the confirmation in his eyes – smell it in the elderberry of his scent.
“I swear I saw my brother in the shadows,” Jhinn said with an eerie tone. “Is that not madness?”
Marielle leaned on the barrier as she tried to get a better look at his face, but she had to pull her hand away almost immediately. The edge of the pool was slick with a fine coating of ice. It took her a moment to see that the edges of the pool were rimmed with a delicate trim of ice, too. It was getting colder.
If this pond froze over – she’d heard that could happen in cold places – then what would happen to Jhinn?
“Did your brother live in H’yi?” Tamerlan asked.
“My brother has been one of the dead for a very long time,” Jhinn said and almost without warning, Tamerlan lunged forward and grabbed him in a sudden hug. Jhinn looked surprised, but he patted Tamerlan’s shoulder distractedly.
He pulled back as quickly as it had started. “I’ll find a way, Jhinn. I’ll get you out of here somehow. And on water. You won’t pay with your life for what I did.”
“I don’t blame you, Tam,” he said quietly. It was strange how easily they communicated, as if they could read each other’s thoughts. Maybe it was their long months of working together, their similar pasts, their genius minds that worked in opposite but similar ways. “But you should know everything got soaked in the turmoil. I have your spice – what’s left of it, but it’s soaked through.”
Tamerlan nodded. “I have six rolls left.”
“Then use them wisely.”
“If I find pitch, I’ll bring it. What else do you need?”
“I don’t dare light a fire. Not in here. Not with the chance of burning my boat. Unless you find a metal brazier. I could use that. A fire would be nice,” he said. “And food. If you find any – ”
“Of course.”
They clasped hands and then Tamerlan turned to Etienne and Marielle. “Food first or do we chase one of the Legends – and if so, which one?”
“Anglarok,” Marielle said without even waiting. “He asked for help. Liandari doesn’t want help. So, let’s go free him.”
“I doubt we’ll be able to free him,” Tamerlan said, looking in the distance, but it was obvious that he wanted to, that he agreed with her that they should at least try.
“We can free him,” Etienne said firmly. “Just not in the way we might like. Lead on, Marielle. Show us to your mentor.”
Marielle felt her cheeks flushing. If it came to a choice between being an avatar or dying, which would Anglarok choose? It worried her to think that he might not be able to tell them – that they might have to choose for him. She knew what she would choose, what Etienne would choose, what Tamerlan would choose, but her feet felt heavy at the worry that Anglarok might choose differently. Maybe he would rather live- even if it was a life possessed. But if that was true, would he have written the message in his own blood?
A chill swept over her that had nothing to do with the aching cold of the air. This city was haunted by more than the dead of the fire or the ruins of the city’s dreams. It was haunted now by those who shouldn’t live at all – by the Legends.
Maybe Tamerlan was right. Maybe the Legends really were the true enemy.
4: On a Whiff of Madness
Tamerlan
There had to be a way to save Jhinn if Tamerlan could only think of it. It was a puzzle like any other. He just had to wor
k it through as he strode through the cinder-land that was once the city of H’yi.
He played it out in his mind. Jhinn had to stay in the gondola. Jhinn had to stay on water. He couldn’t stay in the pond forever. There was no other water that they knew about in the city. That was all established fact. Staying here, like a rat stuck in a single hole – well, that wasn’t a future. That wasn’t survivable, never mind livable. Not a valid solution. So, what was a valid solution?
Tamerlan was the one who brought him here, it was up to Tamerlan to find him a way out.
Somehow.
He chewed his lip, deep in thought as he followed Marielle alongside Etienne.
The two of them held back a little, trying not to muddy the air so that they didn’t get in the way of her scenting. It was hard to hang that far back. Especially since he couldn’t help but imagine a thousand ways that she could be swept away from them before they could get to her.
But was that real, or was it the madness? He was worried that the line between the two was beginning to blur. And yet, he couldn’t help the ache that formed in his chest when she was three paces ahead of them, couldn’t help the way his gaze constantly sought her, the way his feet always turned toward her, ready to move at her call, ready to jump at her command. Somehow, he’d become hers over the past few months – as much hers as her belt knife or that yellow shell she had received from the Retribution.
“The dragon has to set down soon. It’s been a night and a day. Nothing can fly for that long,” Etienne said from beside him.
“I would have thought you would know more about dragons,” Tamerlan said. “After all, you were the Lord Mythos. You kept one trapped beneath us for most of your life. You stole his magic a trickle at a time. Do you know nothing about the dragon – what he eats, how he sleeps, how long he will fly?”
“I know how to bind it,” Etienne said tightly. “Or at least how to keep it bound. I know how to siphon off magic – just enough to use but not enough to kill it.”
Bridge of Legends- The Complete Series Page 62