The monster haunts me. Even chained in the black tower, it calls to me. If only I’d known…
~ Last words of King Ormonde before he disappeared
I was going to die. Everyone died—from greedy fingers groping the wrong pocket or from demons or whatever—but it was going to happen to me on this cold, gray morning as soon as Orton’s headthumpers realized they’d charged right past the dead-end alley where I was hiding.
A shame that dead part—me and the alley both—since I had a sweet bun I hadn’t eaten yet. Hoping to lose the headthumpers, I’d run the maze of the market row and grabbed a bun from the last cart along the way. The scent of the summer’s speridia jam drifting from my cloak pocket would be my final, fading memory.
A garbled shout sounded close. That was Orton’s biggest, nastiest headthumper, Tivvo. Hunkering against the brick wall, I dug the bun from my pocket and shoved half in my mouth, letting the rest stopper my heaving breath.
Pure crystal chiming rang through my head, drowning out Tivvo’s rallying cry. Ah, the bun really was so good it sang on my tongue, sweet and tart. No wonder that cartman was charging so much, too much for a pathetic street-sneak such as myself. But his light touch with the flaky dough was matched by my thievingly nimble fingers.
I chewed fast and swallowed faster, a vulgar counterpoint to the music. Then the bun was gone, but the chiming went on, swelling until the music seemed to gild the grime of my hiding place.
At the open end of the alley, a swirl of purest white veiled the gray. A flurry of silkha pennants, high and low, swept past as the sanctified weavings cleared an auric path for some fortune-favored Sevaare scion. For generations the l’Hazan of Sevaare had ruled this lightkeep unchallenged; why their auric paths needed cleansing I had no inkling. Maybe such meticulous attention to their spiritual virtue kept them in power.
That and coin, of course, plus enough demon-fighting fodder to sacrifice at the High Keep’s command.
The procession of white scarves and tolling bells went on and on, and even though the spectacle was delaying my inevitable demise, I shifted impatiently. My thighs cramped, and my backside was chilled from the rough bricks. Winter seemed to be coming too soon this year, leaving town stockpiles as thin as my trousers and tempers even shorter than the days. And now I was out of bun. If Tivvo was going to take my severed head back to Orton, I wanted to leave some disgusting drooled crumbs on his hands.
Beyond the alley mouth, muted colors mixed into the flowing white as people from the market tagged along. Processions always attracted followers seeking to cleanse their own auras in the path of the pennants, but I’d never seen so many struggling to get close. Though I had no claim to auric purity, part of me yearned toward the confusion.
When it came to moments of tumult, trouble claimed me.
In fact, the rapturous ruckus seemed like the perfect place for me. Now was a fine time to fumigate my long-neglected aura—and maybe lose myself in the chaos.
Ignoring the squish of something rotten under the worn heel of my boot, I took half a step toward the procession.
Before my other boot joined the first, a guttural scream ripped across the sky.
The roar was like a century’s worth of thunderstorms, honed to a jagged edge. It pinned me in place more cruelly than Tivvo’s dagger. In its wake, even the chimes shivered to silence.
At the end of the narrow alley, the white pennants wavered and fell as an enormous shadow eclipsed the hazy light. With only that limited view, it took me a moment to make sense of what I was seeing: a monster scrolling across that slice of bleached-bone sky—like a fatal flaw rippling through a holy aura.
The Dragon Prince.
Everyone in the Living Lands owed our existence to the prince and the conquered demonic beast, but I’d never seen the pair myself, not before now. A pall sneaked through my shabby cloak and my more hard-worn composure to trace an icy finger down my spine.
Peering upward, I tried to pinpoint the prince against the black beast, but their flight was too high, the pallid sky too much contrast for my dazzled gaze.
Only the ill-fated prince could safeguard the Living Lands, at the cost of his own unraveling aura. How terrible, and yet glorious. But mostly terrible.
The quavering procession obviously felt the same way. A low moan of entwined fear and awe seeped from the followers, and every eye turned to trace the monster’s arc.
The pause opened a gap across the alley. And there Tivvo was, on the other side of the street, his thick, bald head angled to watch the monster. When he looked down, he’d be staring right at me.
Abandoned on the streets of Sevaare as a child, I’d learned early that pity and piety would not fill my belly nor protect me from the likes of Orton and his headthumpers. Only I alone could do that. Let the doomed prince save our kingdom while I saved myself.
With everyone else distracted by the monster, I squeezed against the alley wall and sidled toward this unexpected opportunity to escape. The early-winter wind fretted at the sagging pennants, disguising my motion. I clutched the rounded bricks at the street corner, considering my path—
Before I could bolt, a door opened in front of me.
Heyo. Maybe there was some truth to this auric purification after all.
The procession, grinding to a halt under the Dragon Prince’s black wings, had left a silverleafed carriage at a standstill just around the corner from where I’d cowered. Though everyone else was watching the Dragon Prince, I found myself staring at the open door—right at Sevaare’s Chosen.
I’d seen her before, one of the middle Sevaare scions. Only from afar, since a nasty urchin such as myself would never be close to Sevaare’s nobility. But at any distance, Lady Dyania l’Hazan a’Sevaare was striking, as all the Chosen had to be. Her skin was the hue of perfectly steeped tea with random pale patches like dreaming clouds; and one of her numerous black braids shone pure white, as if she were partly swaddled in auric pennants she could never remove. When her gaze locked with mine, her one dark eye widened, and wan sunlight flashed in her other colorless iris like the faintest spark of a distant fire.
Poised in the carriage doorway, she sucked in a breath, but the hissed alarm that emerged came from behind her.
“Stop her!”
She tensed, ready to jump to the street, just as the Dragon Prince’s shadow passed beyond us and the procession suddenly remembered it had somewhere to be. When the carriage swayed into motion, the Chosen staggered, batting the flurry of hands that grabbed at her from within. The reaching fingers tangled in her long sleeves, dragging her backward.
With the scrolled handle clenched in her fist, the wide-flung door began to close.
On the other side of the street, Tivvo was still swooning after the Dragon Prince. Beguiled by the haunting augury of violence. In another heartbeat, the carriage would pull away and leave me facing Orton’s headthumper.
I vaulted for the gap.
Squeezing through the door just as it slammed behind me, I stumbled over the Chosen. She sprawled half pinned against the raised bench seat, her two attendants on her. Trying to help her up, I thought at first.
Until the sharp stink of dinzah oil pinched my sinuses.
“Drink or drown, Lady Dyania,” one of the attendants snapped, pressing a thumb-sized ampule of the foul drug against the Chosen’s lips. “Either way, you are not leaving this carriage again until we reach the High Keep.”
The lady gargled, heaving against their combined weight. The smaller attendant tumbled into me and gave a stifled shriek of surprise at my presence, but the larger woman was focused on shoving the ampule past the Chosen’s clenched teeth.
One more helpless lunge and then Lady Dyania sagged, her dark eye and her light one rolling back.
I peered past the smaller attendant. “So? Did she drink or drown?”
Still on her knees, the larger woman whirled around. “Who are you? Get out. Ula, open the door.”
I sucked my eyetooth thoughtfully. “Can’t. Or all will see that you’ve drugged the Chosen One to death. The adoring crowd might rend us to bloody bits, too despoiled even for a demon.”
“Lady Dyania’s not dead.” The littler attendant fisted her hands in her skirt. “Jensim, tell me she’s not dead.”
“She’s not dead.” Jensim glanced sidelong at the Chosen. “But I shouldn’t have had to dose her again so soon.”
My eyebrows jumped all the way up. “Two doses? And still breathing? Wouldn’t have guessed her a dinzah dreamer.” Why would a scion of Sevaare need to dream her way to another path?
Jensim twisted her glare to me. “What would someone like you know about the Chosen?”
“Nothing,” I conceded cheerfully. “Except that you shouldn’t double dose a hostage you might need later.”
“Neh, of course a street-stinking stray would know that.” Ula clutched at Jensim. “If Lady Dyania dies, her brother will kill us.”
“Then he should’ve made sure the first dose would hold until the Feast.”
I’d been musing that they hadn’t objected to my hostage jibe, but… “A Feast?” I gulped the word with more dismay than the Chosen had swallowed the dinzah. “Here? Now?”
Jensim shot me a sour look. “Why else would the Dragon Prince be circling above?”
Other than being shocked to see him, I hadn’t thought any more about it. Why would I? The Dragon Prince wasn’t just literally above me; everything about the creature and the Chosen who fed it was out of my reach.
Not to disparage myself, of course, since my clever reach had kept me alive this long. But the Chosen, the Feast, and the Dragon Prince kept all the Living Lands from decaying into the Lost Lands.
I glanced at the swooned lady. “Then what matter if she dies? The Feast will leave nothing behind.” Kinder to let her heart slow to stillness and let her depart with her soul unravaged rather than become the monster’s auric meal.
Ula scrutinized the lady too. “If she died, we wouldn’t have to go.”
I focused on that last word. “Go? You’re leaving Sevaare?”
Jensim huffed out an irritated breath. “The Chosen is always sent to the High Keep with companions. Ula and me are only here since Lord Arafil wouldn’t let his sister stand for Sevaare alone.”
But in the end, after these two dinzah-wielding jailers had ushered her across the kingdom, the Chosen would face the Dragon Prince by herself. The lady would stand—and fall—alone.
“I’ll go with her.”
The words blurted out of me, like all my best ideas. And my worst ones too.
The attendants blinked at me, almost as blank as their unconscious lady.
Ula shook her head. “Go where?”
“To the High Keep.” I angled cautiously toward the window. While we spoke, the carriage had rolled onward. No sign of headthumpers, but Tivvo was back there, somewhere.
“You?” Jensim laughed out the word.
I curbed my pique. “Yes, I will go with the Chosen.”
If there was one crime Orton wouldn’t condone, it was stealing from him. My explanation that I’d only been borrowing from his untaxed stash of ambra-wine, briefly, wouldn’t mollify him, and the longer I evaded Tivvo, the more irate Orton would be. The High Keep might have other chances for me. And with a fine carriage to carry me there, no less. I’d never again have such an opportunity.
Next to me, Ula opened a cabinet and yanked out a quilted satchel. From other drawers, she took a lovely beaded shawl, a flagon stamped with the mark of Sevaare’s finest distiller—properly taxed—and a pair of woven gauntlets embedded with all the gleaming gemstones of the brightest auras.
Jensim stiffened. “Ula, what are you doing?”
“If someone else has volunteered, there’s no need for me to end up stranded at the High Keep when all’s done.” Wadding a pair of charming soft slippers into her bag, Ula cast a quick glance at me, and I grinned back.
Maybe being a thief wasn’t so bad if auric purity led to a dragon’s maw.
Jensim sputtered. “You can’t—”
Little Ula was having none of it. “If Lord Arafil cared so much, he’d go with his sister hisself.” She glowered. “He didn’t even send one of the lesser cousins for this misfortunate journey. Just us.”
I pursed my lips. “How like a lord, truly.”
Ula went back to stuffing her sack while Jensim wrung her hands. From the window, I noted we’d picked up different followers as we’d crossed the lightkeep, more of the rough folk from nearer the outer boundary wall. They reached for the fluttering pennants, but a guard in a three-wheeled chariot pulled by an armored hart shoved between them and our carriage. The chariot was emblazoned with the interlocked vortix motif of the High Keep.
Of course the High Keep would give Sevaare’s Chosen an honor escort. But the protections on both the chariot and the animal gave me pause. The hartier guard herself was even more imposing, with her armored, muscled body filling the chariot. The pike she hefted flew a pennant of pristine white, but the point glinted sharp as a dragon’s tooth.
Was this an escort or an arrest? Not that it should matter if I got out of Sevaare.
As we reached the outer wall, the huge, reinforced gate was opening. Through it, I caught a glimpse of the road beyond. A dozen conveyances waited, already tethered to the earthbone line. Each carriage was as distinct as Sevaare’s silverleaf, representing all the lightkeeps of the kingdom, even the distant southern deserts of Xabhad.
“Not just a Feast.” Jensim breathed hot on the back of my neck. “It’s a Devouring.”
Not just one Chosen for the Dragon Prince…
“Why?” Ula shrank back. “Why does he need so many?”
Neither I nor Jensim answered. Like everyone in the Living Lands, we knew the costs of keeping the demonic verges closed. But I’d never looked a Chosen in the eyes before.
A Devouring. Maybe just as well Lady Dyania was lost in dinzah dreams.
Jensim grabbed a bag for herself, and the attendants ransacked the carriage until only the least was left of the Chosen’s gifts and grave goods. Not that she would need them for long, if the tragic funerary cavalcade was any indication.
What that meant for the rest of us…
I squelched the worry. If I’d ever dithered about the future, I wouldn’t be here now, would I? I’d have accepted my own tragic fate and given up long ago.
Despite the bold thought, a hard bump of the carriage knocked an oath from me as we linked up with the ice-gray course of earthbone that would carry us to the High Keep. The jolt in my heart was harder and colder.
Though trapped in Sevaare for most of my life, I’d traveled the roads as a small child. Now, being bound to that ghostly glowing line, I wondered how my family had dealt with the dangers beyond lightkeep walls, especially since we hadn’t possessed the blessings to exploit the speed and span of the aurically powered earthbone nor the coin or countenance for the protection of armed guards.
Yearning seized me, as deep in my soul as the earthbone groove in earth. Were my people still out there, circling the roads from lightkeep to vassal town to freehold and back again? Why had they never returned to Sevaare?
Why had they never come back for me?
Maybe I’d finally find out.
A brusque rap on the carriage roused me from my dim memories. Ula squeaked in alarm as I swung open the door.
The hartier guard waited outside. Off the chariot, she was still so tall my vantage within the carriage felt inadequate.
“The cavalcade departs for the High Keep,” she announced in clipped, formal tones. “Will the Chosen speak to Sevaare one last time before we go?”
Ula shouldered past me and jumped down, deftly avoiding the hartier. When the guard half-turned to eye the smaller woman, Jensim slipped by on her other side. The hartier swiveled back, her chin jutting in consternation.
“We have nothing to say,” I told the confused guard with an airy wave to bring her attention back to me even as I half-closed the door against prying eyes. “Take us away.”
From where I perched, I saw Ula embraced by one of the procession followers, a farmer by the looks of him. She was throwing away her position in Sevaare’s noble house for whatever he offered, but it counted as a life, I supposed. Jensim vanished between the fluttering pennants, back to the sheltered confines within the gate. My last glimpse of her was the bag she’d crammed with Lady Dyania’s dowry.
For a moment, my conviction faltered. Was I wrong? Was I conning myself with this promise of another chance?
I clicked my tongue at the hartier the same way I did at the vicious canids that patrolled the lightkeep walls at night. They could sometimes be cozened with sweet words and hunks of raw meat; this one might be trickier.
“A question,” I said. “Will we be long on the road? Will there be anyone else who will, ah, meet with the Chosen along the way?” Such as anyone who might know I shouldn’t be there.
The hartier’s blue eyes clouded with suspicion. But I noted the instant she decided she had other concerns.
“Sevaare was our last stop,” she said brusquely. “And we’ve no reason to tarry along the way.”
Not quite an answer to how long I’d have to maintain this pretense.
As if echoing the urgency, the dragon called again. Without my conscious will, my gaze angled skyward, seeking the source of the cry.
But the dragon was so high it was little more than a mote between my eye and the hidden sun.
When I glanced away, the guard was retreating toward the hart, avoiding the nervous flail of its antlers. “You’ll be left alone.”
I wondered if she meant the Dragon Prince would keep us safe—or if she thought to reassure me we’d be shielded from the demon-beast. Certainly the hart seemed fearful of becoming its next meal. At least it would be quick.
Unlike the eternal doom of the Chosen.
The guard vaulted into her chariot and flicked the reins over the hart, shouting out a command to the rest of the cavalcade. A booming clang added emphasis as the lightkeep gate closed, with us outside.
Blade to bone, what had I gotten myself into this time?
Latching the carriage door behind me, I reflected that I had the width of a kingdom to figure it out.
Starting with the Lady Dyania l’Hazan a’Sevaare. About my age, smaller than I would’ve guessed from a distance, with her aura dimmed. Didn’t scions eat better than street-sneaks? She would have no chance against the demon dragon—or even just a prince.
No sense putting her on the cushioned bench when she’d likely roll right off in her drugged stupor. I wedged her against the seat base, on her side lest she choke on her tongue.
Speaking of eating… As the carriage caught the earthbone flow, I sorted through the goods Jensim and Ula had left behind: some provisions and lesser clothing items, a few toiletries. I put what remained into the cabinet, except for a slice of dried speridia rind sparkling with grains of salt. I’d been on the run from Tivvo and his crew for a while, so I thanked the light for the salty toothsomeness and the bloodless escape.
Neh, bloodless for me anyway.
I nestled my backside deeper into the cushion, braced my boots wide against the sway, and closed my eyes. No doubt the risks might be counted on more than one hand in pursuing this unexpected prospect, and I was leaving the only home I really remembered, but I liked my chances better than I had in a long time.
So why did my ear stay attuned for that distant, piercing lament of a monster?
