He pulled her up from the ground violently, shoving her in front of him. She fought against his grip, her hands – slick with blood – fighting for purchase and finding nothing.
It was no use.
Tamerlan was already much stronger than she was, but possessed by Ram he was Legendary. He slammed her against the bone cage, and she saw stars as the back of her skull hit the bone with force. She blinked them back, retching as she tried to catch a breath that wasn’t full of the smell of death.
Something caught her wrist, dragging it up to head-level and pinning it in place. She felt a sudden pressure and then she was caught – her hand tied to the cage with a blood-soaked leather belt. She barely had time to cry out before her other hand was imprisoned against the cage.
“These things take time – but the crueler the victim is treated, the quicker it happens,” Ram the Hunter said with Tamerlan’s lips. “We found that out the hard way. Fortunately, we know how to do this fast when we have to. And since you just woke this dragon – we have to do it right now. Let’s see what depths of cruelty we can descend to, hmm? At least you’ll have one thing to hope in – we’ll have to do it fast.”
She felt her eyes trying to roll back into her head. Felt her brain trying desperately to be anywhere but here. But there was nowhere else to be.
Tamerlan grabbed her leather vest and sliced the straps of the buckles holding it closed one by one, wrenching it open and exposing the pale skin beneath.
“Fast requires a lot of blood, too.” He said it so factually, like he was reciting the Laws of Jingen and not describing the gruesome way he was about to murder her.
Her breath was spiraling out of control coming far too fast. She knew that, but she couldn’t slow it down. The end was coming.
Tamerlan’s face swam into view again and he had a curved dagger in his hand – possibly taken from one of the fallen Retribution.
“It’s a pity it had to go this way. I wanted to use you to bind one of the already free dragons and now I have to waste you to bind this one.” He shook his head like a patient teacher working with a misbehaving child.
And then his face took on a strange expression and he slumped to the ground.
18: Son of Mer
Jhinn
The Retribution guard stood there, tense, one hand on the gondola, shock etched into his face as the last of his fellows fell to the ground. They could see it all happening through the doorway into the hall like a tiny but grisly street performance.
Jhinn gripped an oar in his hands, the blood draining from his face as one guard after another fell.
“You have to go help them!” he told the guard beside his boat.
“I was ordered here.”
Of course. He gritted his teeth in frustration.
Why did he put any trust in the Retribution? Heretics were all the same – too cowardly to stick to principle. Too weak to hold to anything. They’d snap and like a broken sail rope and leave everything flapping in the wind the one time you relied on them. He clenched his teeth and watched as Tamerlan reached into the cage.
Beneath his boat, he felt the earth begin to tremble – or rather, the dragon Choan.
Sweat was forming along his brow and spine, despite the fact that he felt cold in the winter air.
“You must,” he snapped at the guard. “You’re here to defend this place, aren’t you? Well, go defend it!”
“The avatar is already slain, fanatic,” the guard said, disdain in his eyes as he watched Jhinn. He stepped into the gondola with authority. “You will take me out of this city on your boat or I will take this boat from you.”
He would be no help at all.
Jhinn felt his mind turning like the oiled gears he’d used to make the motor. He could feel his options clicking into place. If he let this guard do as he wanted, they would abandon Marielle to her fate and with her, the fate of the dragons and his people. But he had no way to compel the guard. No way to save her or stop Tamerlan except to go in there himself. And no way to get there without dying – without standing on the land. With the Maid Chaos’s people, they had carried him. His feet had never touched land. But this was different. He’d have to step willingly onto the ground.
He swallowed.
His people needed Marielle. She, alone, could speak to the dragons and ask them to bear his people up the waterfall. That had been his plan all along. To ask the dragons to help them rise up the mountain to escape with the dragons through the portal to the worlds beyond. If they couldn’t convince them, then they couldn’t ascend high enough to get to the portal at all. They would either be stranded here or break their vows and faithfulness.
And the only way to keep them all from heresy was if he stepped into it himself.
He wiped a hand across his brow. It had barely been a second since the guard spoke and yet it felt like hours as he weighed his choices. What would it mean if he chose to break his faithfulness for the sake of his people? Wouldn’t that make him just as bad as the heretic in his boat right now?
No, because at least he was not a coward.
He clenched his jaw harder, but inside, his heart was breaking. He already knew what he needed to do.
And he hated himself already for the choice he was going to make. He hated himself because it felt like this act somehow undid all the other times he’d been faithful at great cost. Like he was denying everything he’d ever believed or hoped for in the acknowledgment that what was going on in that hall was real – wasn’t just an illusion in the land of the dead – and that he could and should affect it with his choices.
He didn’t realize he was crying until his eyes grew glassy and his grip shifted on the oar.
“We’re going to fulfill my orders,” the guard said, gesturing toward where his commander lay dead on the ground of the hall. He paused for a moment, as if with regret, and Jhinn swung.
His oar cracked the man in the back of the skull, sending him sprawling across the bow of the gondola. Like a shot, Jhinn leapt from the gondola, tears streaming down his face as he ran. His lungs screamed in protest – and no wonder! – as he sped through the land of the dead, abandoning himself and everything he’d ever been in one moment of insane dedication.
There were weapons scattered across the floor, but he clung to the oar as his bare feet slipped through the blood and skidded across the flagstones. Tamerlan didn’t even turn as Jhinn raised the oar and smacked him in the back of the skull.
Had he killed his friend? He didn’t dare check.
He rushed to Marielle, keeping his expression blank and his focus certain as he struggled to release the belts holding her in place.
“Jhinn!” her voice was half speech and half sob. “What have you done? You’re on the land!”
“Come on,” he said, stumbling over his own words as he tried to explain. “I need you to ask this dragon to bear my people up the waterfall. They have no way to go up it on their own.”
“Tamerlan,” Marelle reached for him, beginning to bend, but Jhinn grabbed her by the waist and pulled her away roughly.
“It’s still Ram in there. He still wants you dead,” he barked, dragging her across the flagstone. “Are you listening? I need you to talk to the dragon. Now. While he’s close. While you can.”
Of course she was upset. But if she didn’t listen then his heresy was for nothing. He was already trembling at the possibility.
“You don’t know that he’s still possessed by Ram!” Marielle protested. “We can’t leave him here!”
“He was about to eviscerate you,” Jhinn said patiently, pulling her roughly through the carnage as he dragged her to the gondola. She was taller than him, and more muscled, but his will was stronger right now. “Listen to yourself! We must slay the last avatars. And we can’t do that with him along with us. He understands. He told me so.”
“I – ” Her voice broke. They were leaving bloody footprints on clean flagstones by the time she recovered her voice. “We can tie him up. We can ke
ep him bound. Surely that’s better.”
Beneath them, the ground began to shift.
“No time,” Jhinn gasped, pulling her harder. “Please Marielle, please listen.”
“I can’t abandon him!” her cry was nearly a wail.
He stopped, turning her so he could shake her by the shoulders. “Look at me! I’m standing on ground! I am one of the dead! I have abandoned everything.”
She sucked back a sob, making a hiccupping noise as it stuck in her throat, her gaze trailing down and then back up and then gasping as if she was just now coming to her senses.
His own cheeks were hot with the tears that streamed down them. Hot with the betrayals he was committing.
“Why – ?”
He made his words slow. Clearly, emotions had clouded her mind. “I need you to talk to the dragon. I know you can. Ask Choan to ferry my people up the waterfall.”
She gasped.
“Please,” he added.
Her gaze strayed to Tamerlan and her face was agonized as the ground bucked under them again.
Jhinn growled in the back of his throat, grabbed her around the waist and propelled her toward the gondola.
He lifted her and threw her into it as soon as they were close enough. The ripple through the flagstones buckled his knees but he recovered enough to jump after her, checking the pulse of the guard of the before he scrambled to his seat at the pedals and untied the boat. The man was still alive. Jhinn grimaced at the thought of saving an enemy over the friend who was unconscious back in that Hall. But did he have any right to hate this heretic so much when he was now a heretic, too?
The thought was like a knife to his heart.
He began pedaling as soon as his feet could find the pedals, frantically exiting the palace. He had a long way to go to get out of there and experience had taught him that dragons rose quickly when they awoke.
Marielle was silent, staring with empty eyes at the doorway to the hall in the palace. Even after they’d left the palace, she still stared in that direction as if by her focus and grief she could bring back the dead and make her husband sane again, as if she could erase the past.
She should know that was impossible. She should forget what happened in the lands of the dead as Jhinn did and cling only to life on the water.
He flinched at the thought.
Could he think that way anymore? Now that he was a heretic? Now that he had betrayed everything?
He could still feel the awful hardness of the stone beneath his feet – the deadness of it, the stillness of it. It had no life – not like the water. And he’d abandoned faithfulness to the water for something that was slipping through his fingers.
“Please,” he begged aloud.
“He says he’ll do it,” Marielle said from where she sat, her hollow eye still staring at the spot from which they’d fled. Her voice just as hollow as that eye. “He’ll bear your people up the waterfall.”
Jhinn gasped. Hope filled him for a moment – golden and fresh as a sunrise.
She turned her dead eye on him. “I didn’t know I could talk to the dragons down here. How did you know?”
He shrugged. “I just thought it would make sense that you could, since you could talk to the dragons up on the mountains.”
“And you didn’t think you should share this theory with me?” Her voice sounded dead.
“I did share it with you,” he said, pedaling as fast as he could. Why were they fighting about this now? When they had to flee the city? Was this about Tamerlan?
“But not before hundreds of innocent people died as Xin lifted into the air. Didn’t you think that maybe we could have asked him to take his time and kill fewer people?” Her tone was deadly cold.
He froze. He hadn’t thought of that. As far as he knew, his people had all left that city. He’d worked hard to get them out. He hadn’t given any thought at all to those in the dead lands.
“You let them die for nothing,” she said, her voice hollow.
“I walked on the ground to save you,” Jhinn reminded her.
“You walked on the ground to save your people, not me.” Her voice was harsh. “And what about Tamerlan?”
“He was going to kill you. He killed all those guards.”
She looked away, conceding his point. So why didn’t it make him feel any better? He had a bitter taste in his mouth and when he tried to clench his jaw against it, he bit his own cheek and tasted blood. Blood like the salt in the water, salt and water and life and blood. His mind was skipping along thought like a flat stone flung across the canal.
He was dead now. Dead and alive again. Or maybe just dead. He didn’t know which and the uncertainty was much worse than any accusations Marielle might fling at him.
But there were two avatars left to slay. And he would slay them, even if the act finished the job of damning him forever.
19: Regrets and Guilt
Marielle
She had thought that the pain of the Windrose was as bad a pain as a human could suffer – that the pull of it in her chest was the strongest tug imaginable. She had been wrong. The agony that filled her now dwarfed that. She’d take that former pain gladly in place of this. The tug of the Windrose had been like a fishing line compared to the ship’s cable that tore at her heart with every inch they moved from the palace. He was in there. Unconscious. Vulnerable. He would die taken completely by the Legends, helpless, suffering and there was nothing she could do to save him or to stop it.
She wished she could argue with Jhinn to turn him around, wished she could believe that would be the right thing to do. But she knew it wouldn’t be.
May I rise now, human? Choan asked her.
No, he must not rise yet.
Bitterness laced her thoughts. Why hadn’t she thought to ask Xin to wait? Why hadn’t Jhinn told her that she could? She would hate him for all eternity for letting her take innocent lives when she could have saved them. Hate him forever for callously abandoning her beloved Tamerlan when he needed them the most.
She shot a burning gaze at Jhinn but he ignored her, pedaling as hard as he could. She hadn’t told him that she asked Choan to wait for them to leave. Why make his life easier after he had destroyed hers?
A tiny part of her mind was reminding her that he’d also saved her life. Ram was about to execute her in the most horrific way possible. And he’d broken vows and creeds to stop that.
But even that was not enough to quell her heartbreak.
She moved to the man unconscious in the hull, turning him to a more comfortable position and gently dabbing away the blood on the back of his head. She’d almost forgotten about her own injuries, but when she was done binding his head, she bound the wounds on her hand. They would all heal. It was the wounds inside that would not.
Oddly, the Windrose had stopped burning, as if even that had given up on her.
She took off her ruined leather vest and dropped it into the water and then tried to clean her fur cloak and hair.
“You can get pretty later. After we’ve fled the city,” Jhinn growled.
“You sound like Etienne,” Marielle said frostily. “I’m just trying to wash the gore off my body is that so awful?”
He made a growling sound and she thought he might snap back but the man in the boat awoke with a startled cry.
“Where are you taking me?” He sounded dazed.
“Out of the city,” Jhinn said. “Or were you looking forward to riding the dragon into the night?”
“Maybe you should,” Marielle said. “He’ll take you straight to your home between the worlds.”
Jhinn spat.
“Or doesn’t that matter to you anymore?”
Jhinn’s face went pale. “I may not be welcome. I am one of the dead now.”
“You’re back on the water,” Marielle said. “Doesn’t that make you reborn?”
“It doesn’t work like that. They sank my mother in the river for nonsense like that. Do you know what it’s like to grow up the s
on of a heretic?”
“My mother was a prostitute,” Marielle said frostily. She wanted to fight someone. She wanted to fight anyone. “I suppose it was much the same.”
“I doubt it. Prostitution is legal in Jingen – or was before it was destroyed. Heresy is not legal among the Waverunners.”
“You stepped onto the land,” the guard said, startling them both. “You’re a child of Queen Mer and yet you walked on the land.”
“Yes,” Jhinn snapped. His patience was a thin thing and Marielle felt her lips compressing as she watched him fray before her eyes. “What of it?”
“He will open the Bridge and in that day, it is only the Heir of Queen Mer who may close it again. In retribution, the heir of Queen Mer will lay waste to the Legends and return the dragons to their place and they will be quelled forever, their fury kept at bay for all eternity.”
“What’s that nonsense?” Jhinn asked. His face grew darker as the locks came into sight. They were almost out of the city.
I am rising now. You are almost to the river.
She felt the water tremble as the Harbinger said in awe, “The last prophecy of Queen Mer. You are fulfilling it in our time!”
“Hang on to the sides!” Marielle called. There was no time to dig into prophecies. The dragon was about to rise.
She’d been through this before. But it never got easier. The current grew stronger as the water level swelled and the dragon’s head rose above the city.
Beside her, the guard began to scream and then they were airborne, shooting over the lock and landing awkwardly in the pool below, only to shoot the next lock, too.
“Almost there,” Jhinn said, as if to himself. “Almost there.”
They were in the bay with the ships deemed too unseaworthy to sail when the wings began to lift, and the dragon took to the sky. The sucking hole left behind dragged them backward into the muddy swirl of water and for long minutes it was all they could do to fight the current with motor and oars.
Bridge of Legends- The Complete Series Page 90