These are the threads that are woven.
This is the path that is laid.
Here is the hedron I’m holding.
Do I stand fast or cast it away?
~ A gambler’s lament
AND IF KALIMA hadn’t claimed the peak of the holy spire as the sanctum for her traitorous secrets, we might’ve been crushed. But as the mountain shook itself to death, there wasn’t much left above us.
I cowered over Aric as the night broke all around us, revealed by the crumbling walls.
Higher still, the obsidian tower swayed in the darkness like a terrible shadowed serpent threatening to strike.
“Oh no,” I moaned as I tugged at him, knowing I was hurting him but with no other choice. “I truly have to get you out of here, now.”
As if my words had called it, a huge, pale tentacle glistening with an oily slime humped up from the remains of the haloric pool. It unfurled against the black sky, like a single finger delving into an empty pocket.
The levaimyth rising… I gawped in horror—
As a spear of obsidian, bigger than any of the ruins left in Velderrey, sheared away from the black tower and tumbled toward us. Shards of glass spraying, the stone crashed into the levaimyth’s searching tentacle, and the monster screamed like a thousand dulcichordias ripped apart.
I wrapped one arm over my head but couldn’t block out the sound, nor the keening answer of a thousand demons in demented response.
The horde was coming.
Bare to the night, Aric and I hung on to each other—me with my shoulder wedged under his as I tried to drag him away—while more of the bone-white, ice-white, scar-white tentacles writhed from the hole. The pointed tips slammed down into the stones, anchoring in the broken rock around us as if it would rip the world asunder, an oozing, necrotic monstrousness. Scuttling up from beneath it, a handful of demons boiled over the rubble rim of the pool, shrieking and gibbering, and more were behind them.
Had all the High Keep fighters died? Were all the Chosen Ones drained dry of blood and aura? Though it was our death coming, I couldn’t stop glancing back.
And so I almost missed another arrow of obsidian coming at us. I gasped and threw my other arm over Aric, as if that would save us—
And the dragon backwinged to alight beside us.
For half a moment, I wondered if she would blast us both with her annihilating breath. Maybe she had come to welcome the levaimyth?
But no, she just glared at me balefully, as if this were all my fault. I’d never been more grateful for the stink of cold, black stone.
“Come on.” Finding some reserve of panicked strength, I heaved Aric to his feet. “We are leaving, both of us—all three of us.”
It took what was left of my strength and my panic and then some to haul him to the dragon while she shifted impatiently. Her flank and shoulder were scored with ugly gashes, and there were more ragged tears in her wings, from the obsidian that must’ve pierced her when her lair collapsed. I shouldn’t feel sympathy for a demon, but…
The heavy iron collar was still clamped around her sinuous neck, and a length of the chain that had confined her in her aerie clanked around her claws. The links were warped, as if a relentless force had misshapen the metal. Not crushed by falling rock. Twisted until it burst.
We didn’t have time for me to contemplate what that meant.
“No harness straps,” I muttered. “If only Nars was here.” I was not going to be thwarted by a few missing threads. If Zik could weave beauty from nothing, I could knot together some irregular rigging for a surly demon dragon. I glanced around wildly. Ah, and there conveniently was the numinlor’s forgotten scarf.
Neh, not forgotten, exactly.
Repressing the memory of Claeve’s sword through her heart, though she’d tried the same on Aric and so deserved nothing better, I grabbed the scarf. It was so long, so much invaluable thread—and tough too as I tugged it between my grubby hands.
Aric was leaning heavily against the dragon. More than leaning, he was completely sagging. Only the awkward crook of her leathery wing held him upright, and his head lolled against her hunched, torn shoulder.
I bit my lip. “Aric.”
He angled his head to face my direction. “Fei, I can’t…”
“You must.” I looked at the dragon, and she rolled her shattered glass eye back at me. “She won’t take me if you don’t come along for the ride.”
Somehow, I levered him up to her back between her wings, wedging him between the scaly ridges down her spine.
“She won’t be able to fly,” he said.
“She just needs to soar a little bit, get us over the demons, past the walls.” I had some vague idea that if we could make it to the valley, brave Nars the hart would be waiting for us. That was how it worked in the tavern songs anyway.
That Aric didn’t argue with me or even scoff felt bad.
But when I stepped away to knot the scarf through the dragon’s collar, he grabbed my hand. Oh, there was no strength or warmth left in his grasp. “Don’t you send me away alone,” he rasped.
“I would never.” For a moment, I held him with all the power he lacked.
Hastily I finished my weaving—Zik would be not impressed—and boosted myself up behind him. I’d barely wrapped my arms around him when the dragon bolted into the air.
My head rocked back and I would’ve tumbled off her tail if Aric hadn’t found some reserve of vigor to clench my linked hands over his belly. Still, I was knocked akimbo, giving me a sidelong view of the levaimyth reaching for the sky—reaching for us.
The dragon screamed a challenge, banking hard.
“Don’t go back now!” I shouted at her, kicking my heel into her flank like she was a dark and wicked burden beast.
She shrieked again but straightened out, taking us higher with three mighty beats of her wings.
But I felt the hitch in each stroke, hampered by our legs interfering. We couldn’t go far.
And Aric wouldn’t last that long anyway.
Every part of me was shuddering, not from cold or even the close call. I was going to lose him. My arms weren’t strong enough to hold him, not even with the knotted silkha.
“The verge is widening,” Aric said.
I peered past him. “You can see again?”
“The dragon’s eyes.”
Hope rushed through me, unencumbered by any weight of reality. “Your wounds…”
“Still bleeding.” His voice was so gentle. “She is a demon, Fei. She can’t heal me.”
I gritted my teeth. “I’ve seen your scars. You said she kept you alive.”
“Those were demon afflicted. This…was not.”
After all he’d sacrificed, a poison of purity would kill him. Unfair, unfair, I wanted to rage.
From our helpless vantage, we could see not just the verge in the remnants of the white tower, but the remnants of the High Keep’s valiant defenders as well.
“There’s the king!” I cried. “He’s not dead.” Wielding a much reduced faction of fighters behind him—and there were some in the much besmirched white of the Chosen too—Mikhalthe hefted a long pike flagged with the vortix motif. With the wind of flight in my ears, I couldn’t hear him, but judging by the waving of the flag, he was exhorting his people to fight on, still. Blade to bone, there was a reason he was king.
“Claeve must’ve left that battle when Kalima went to empty the last of the luminarci into the levaimyth.”
“Coward, just as I said,” I muttered. “Where is he now? Does the dragon see him anywhere?”
“There are demons everywhere.” He wavered a little. “The horde is too much. There’s nothing we can do.”
Nothing, as the demon in poor Gryner had whispered not so long ago.
“There’s always something,” I said. “I’ve always found something.”
Aric’s arm tightened over my grip on him, and now my hands were warm, too warm. From his blood, I guessed with despair. “The towers of the High Keep have fallen into the Lost Lands. A monster beyond even Ormonde’s reckoning rises. We are going to lose everything.”
The silkha bit between my fingers. “Aric…”
“I must,” he said. “You know that.”
I gritted my teeth. “I’m just a street-sneak. I know nothing.”
“Not that you’ll admit to, no.” He tilted his head back to rest against my shoulder.
And I had to cradle my face in the crook of his neck, letting his hair whip around me like a delicate scourge. “Why?”
“Auric power might seal a verge. But even with the dragon, I never saw anything like this. The only trick we know is the one Kalima gave us.”
“Sacrificing you? No.” I growled the word in his ear. “You can’t let her win.”
“Kalima poisoned me not to kill me but to send me to the levaimyth.”
“Because she hated you.”
“True. But as much as she hated me, I still believe she served the Living Lands. And she believed I had a part in this. And so I must.”
“No, you’ve given enough already.”
“My little thief, you should know better than to count what is enough. You changed me, made me believe broken doesn’t means unwanted.”
He tilted to kiss me, and it felt like the dragon swooped beneath us. Not that I cared what happened down there, not now.
“Don’t,” I whispered. “Don’t leave me. Please.”
“I wouldn’t. Except to save the world for you. But no matter what happens, I will always be with you.”
“It’s not like a song. It’s not the same, and you know it.”
“But it’s all we have.”
My tears were cold and bitter beyond the wind. “Aric…”
“Ormonde loved this kingdom enough to overpower a demon dragon,” he whispered. “I would let the kingdom burn for you. But then where would you sneak about? What dark and quiet nights would remain, what towers where you might unlock every door? Like the one to my heart.” He kissed me again. “I never wanted a kingdom, never even sought my freedom. Fei, I only ever wanted you. But I love you enough that I will stop the levaimyth from rising.”
Choked with tears and objections, I could not answer.
He released my hands to press his palm into the dragon’s wither. “Guard my treasure, monster. Body and aura, she is mine.”
Under his touch, she wheeled hard, as if her wingtip might cut a hole in the air. We circled the verge, which had widened in just the few moments we’d hesitated. Tentacles and some spreading algaeic slime reached like a drowned hand across the tower ruins. For all the nightmares depicted in his library, Ormonde had fought nothing like this.
I held Aric’s blackened hand. “You need a weapon.”
“I am the weapon.”
I grimaced. “Don’t be poetic. Take my knife.”
“Your ancestor’s blade. I can’t—”
“I want you to take it, so you have something down there.”
“An animdao blade is like the heart of its bearer.”
“Yes,” I whispered. “I want you to take my heart.”
His last kiss was just a whisper of sensation, not even a memory of a dream. I put the animdao blade in his aura-burned hand. Though it couldn’t hurt him any more compared to his other wounds, letting go felt as if I was cutting out my heart. Neh, once again, I’d brought such troubles upon myself.
Then he fell.
No, worse, he leaped. He cut himself free of the silkha and plunged, once fancy boots first, toward the monster.
My heart went with him.
The dragon cried out, a terrible sound echoing in the empty place in me. She spun a wild circle, and for a moment I thought she would follow him down.
For another moment, I wanted her to, so badly.
He fell like a dark star, and maybe it was the dragon’s sight, but I swore his aura streamed behind him like wings, darker yet.
The scabrous flesh where he landed looked thick and slick, like raw meat, but his boots punched down. The levaimyth snarl-squealed, tentacles flailing, and Aric ducked low, my blade in his hand.
He stabbed once, not so deep since it wasn’t a big knife, but again I caught an uncanny flash in my vision as he plunged his aura-burned hand within.
For a heartbeat, the levaimyth froze, those eerily white tentacles piercing straight up, like mocking bones of the white tower.
And the gathered horde shrilled, one voice of violence and death. The dragon screamed above them all.
From on the wing, I had a glimpse of the High Keep army dropping to their knees, dirty faces contorting at the sound of yearning oblivion.
The levaimyth fought back.
Tentacles and terror. Slime and shrieking. I wanted to bury my face in the filthy silkha wrapped in my fists, but I would not look away from Aric.
No longer the dragon’s bond, not ever a true prince, he should have been mine. Instead, he was the Living Land’s hero.
As the levaimyth spasmed around him, he stood still, my blade and his hand buried in the monster. The horde poured inward, swarming the broken stone at the edge of the verge. They would overcome Aric…
I pounded my fist on the dragon’s shoulder, slicing the meat of my hand on her sharp scales. “Don’t let them touch him,” I begged her. “Save him.”
With a roar, she spiraled down, and I could only cling to her with both hands, my blood spattering over Aric’s. Her annihilating lamentation of nothingness cleared a swath through the horde, but there were so many, too many.
And nothing touched the levaimyth.
Another pass, and another, I screamed with her, as if my fear and fury mattered. To my tear-streaked gaze, a silent storm of auric lightning blazed around us, and for a suspended moment, I thought…
But no. It meant nothing. Not fear and fury, not hoping, not love.
Still, the savagery of our battle melted the mountain itself, obsidian and white glaze dissolving into a viscous slurry that poured into the cracks. Auric power spun with it, a whirlpool of Chosen bloodfire and dreadmarked tatters. The levaimyth’s cry was apocalyptic, and I too would’ve fallen to my knees—if I wasn’t flying.
It wasn’t for naught after all! We were sealing the verge!
As the monster—not my monster—thrashed, I urged the dragon in another circle, laying auric waste and wafting rubble with every wingbeat. Molten earthbone surged down from all sides, swamping the levaimyth, and the stench of its burning slime gagged me, despite the winter wind. The tentacles flinched away from the waves, withdrawing. Ormonde himself would’ve cheered, and surely we’d have our own scroll in some library somewhere.
So close. The verge healed like a terrible wound, veins of black and white tracing the mountain, some of the wreckage still marked with remnants of the old runes.
Amid the ruin, Aric drove the monster deeper, forcing it back.
As it sank, the slag of obsidian earthbone began to congeal over the retreating tentacles, leaving Aric adrift on a hump of levaimyth island. He straightened, yanking his hand and my blade from the still pulsing flesh of the monster. He tilted his head back, following the dragon’s flight, and my heart soared as I urged her into a falling circle.
“Aric,” I called. “I’m coming! Hold on!”
The dragon trumpeted, a victorious sound reflecting my cry, and I reached down past the slash of her wings where he would reach back for me…
And my grasping fingers found nothing.
As her wing flashed upward, I caught a glimpse of his face, his black hair blown back in the wind of her passage. His eyes were closed.
“Aric!”
Rearing back, he raised the animdao knife to the sky. Then he dropped to one knee, hard and fast, plunging the blade deep, so deep, his blackened hand disappearing into the levaimyth’s writhing mass.
It heaved, slamming against the caving walls and clotting deluge of rock and aura.
Too late.
Its brutal paroxysm lifted Aric just enough that it seemed somehow, by some miracle, I or the dragon might still reach him. But as it fled below with a last shriek, the levaimyth wrapped a tentacle around him, dragging him down beneath the lapping surge of congealing earthbone.
With a scream of my own, I slammed my fists into the dragon again, forcing her into a descent she followed with deadly ecstasy. We would break the mountain itself with our fall, anything to get him back.
As we dove, the harmonic undulation of earthbone washed back toward the center where a faint glimmer caught my eye. My wish, my hope, my love…
The swells came together, tangled, hardening impossibly fast into a knot of stone—
And as the waves crashed together, a blowback of auric power punched us across the night sky.
The world went black. I had no breath left to scream, and the dragon’s wings shredded with demonic ichor as we tumbled. We would fall. We would die where Aric was entombed…
But still I hung on grimly, and the dragon clawed at the air with her failing wings.
So we fell but not fatally.
We slammed into the earth hard enough that I heard something crack. Maybe me, maybe the dragon. Maybe the mountain.
Silence. No demonic gibbering. No wounded cries. Not even a breath of wind.
For a time, I lay unmoving, staring up, wondering if I was dead now. But it was just the gloom of night and thick, choking smoke. Through those shadows, stars pricked the darker sky.
I hated that glimpse of pure, distant light.
Painfully, I turned my head. The dragon was crumpled in a graceless heap. But demons couldn’t die.
Unlike princes, even dreadmarked ones.
More painfully, I dragged myself across the stones where we’d splattered ourselves. I had to focus only on each handhold ahead of me: a chunk of obsidian swirled with white glaze, a shattered tile melted into rock.
Then the handholds disappeared and it was only a pool of unmarked earthbone, going nowhere, and I had to inch along with what strength remained to me.
Not much.
The waves of auric might that had blown the dragon out of the sky were gone, leaving only translucent ripples beneath me. I peered frantically through the obscuring strata. Would I see a tentacle, writhing? Would I see Aric, locked within and despairing?
My heart bled with terror worse than my fingertips torn by obsidian. And still I groped my way along. But there was nothing to see.
He was gone.
Even as I collapsed, spent, my hand kept stretching out, longing.
To close around another edge, dull enough not to cut me.
I raised my head wearily to stare at the animdao blade. This was not what I wanted.
From the bolster, in the once-empty bezel, a faint glimmer winked at me. Had I seen it from the dragon’s flight?
Drawing the knife closer, I looked into the dark cabochon. Not obsidian, something harder. But still, it was cracked. The flaw across its face caught a stray flare of light, like a sidelong look from a scarred eye, mocking me.
I wanted to smash it.
We’d done it. We’d saved the Living Lands.
And it was not enough.