Phoenix Overture

12

MY MOTHER.

My father.

And now my brother.

Everyone was gone.

Numb. That was what I was.

I could hardly feel the hands that grabbed me, or hear the voices that shouted my name. I was limp as people tugged off my shirt and dragged me toward the lake to dunk me underwater and wash away the acid. My bleeding hand was cleaned and bound, but I didn’t remember by whom.

Stef was there, his broken leg set and braced, and he was given a smooth branch to use as a crutch. Together we approached the decimated camp as firelight exposed the true horror of the battle.

Smoke drifted over the ruins of our camp. Everything was blackened, almost unrecognizable. Fire and acid had burned through the wagons completely; there would be nothing useful scavenged from the wreckage.

Slowly, acid ate away at everything. There’d be nothing left of this battle by morning.

I stood at the edge of the forest, near where Stef’s aunts had found us, and watched as people emerged from the woods, just a few at a time. They wore dazed expressions, looking as lost as I felt.

People formed small groups, huddled together with the same desperation our ancestors must have felt after the Cataclysm. This was our Cataclysm, wrought by dragons.

We’d brought everything we owned here, and the Council had burned everything we’d left behind. That left us here in a strange, cold land, with fewer people, and defenseless against our enemies.

There were more of us than I expected, though. Thousands—tens and hundreds of thousands—had escaped what should have been a massacre.

Maybe the dragons hadn’t intended to destroy us at all. Maybe they’d simply meant to trap us—as their food?

“We’re trapped here forever,” I muttered. “Until we die, too.”

Stef was uncharacteristically still next to me. “I don’t think that will be very long. For me, at least.”

“What do you mean?” When I looked at him, that cocky, self-assured expression he so often wore was gone, replaced by grim resignation.

“If you hadn’t pushed us. If you hadn’t shoved the dragon aside.” He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. I’d never seen Stef look scared, but he did now. “The acid would have splashed right onto us. We’d have been dead instantly.”

I’d lost my brother at only a slightly slower pace, but lost him just the same. Stef was alive, though.

“You saved me,” he said. “But my foot lay in the acid for a second too long. I got my boot off and they threw us in the water quickly enough to save most of my foot, but there’s no way to treat it. They said it’s already infected, and it’s just going to get worse.”

“What does that mean?” I whispered.

Stef clenched his jaw and shook his head.

He was dying, was what he couldn’t bear to say aloud. I’d lost my brother, and soon I would lose my best friend.

“What do we do now?” someone asked as more groups emerged from the forest.

“We do what we came to do.” Meuric strode forward and paused near a body that was slowly dissolving into nothing. He swept his hands upward, toward the wall and tower rising in the north. “We release Janan.”

We’d come all this way to rescue one person, only to lose thousands along the way—and everything else we had ever known.

That was Meuric’s fault, and as far as I cared, Janan could stay locked in that tower forever.

“I hope he’s dead in there,” I muttered.

Stef shot me a look. “What?”

“Janan.” I glared at the tower. “I hope he’s dead in there.”

Stef hesitated, nodded, and didn’t need to ask why I felt that way. “Yeah. I get that.” Grief roughened his voice. “I hope he isn’t, though.”

“Why?”

“I want him to see what he’s done to us. I want him to see what we’ve been through for him.” Stef lifted his eyes to the white prison tower. “What kind of leader allows this to happen to his people? I guess— I guess I feel like he owes us.”

“Well, let’s go see if he’s alive.”

The walk into the prison was excruciating.

Meuric, curiously unhurt after the battle, hurried toward the prison with a small escort of warriors and Councilors, leaving the rest of us to trail behind. There were so many of us, most injured and some unconscious.

In spite of Stef’s broken leg and ruined foot, he and I were among the first to reach the white wall that circled the prison. A giant archway granted entrance.

The wall was thick, heavy enough that not even a dragon or troll would be able to get through, although the archways were certainly big enough to allow their passage. But I pushed those thoughts away as we came through to the other side.

The space was immense.

There were trees and brush, but also large fields of open land that dipped and crested. It was dark here already, thanks to the high walls, but torches had been placed in a line straight to the tower in the center. It seemed far away from here.

“Can you make it?” I asked Stef.

In the dancing firelight, he looked pale. His breath came short and choppy, but he gave a clipped nod and said, “I need to do this.”

Sick with grief, I helped him along, struggling to find a pace he could maintain, but that would keep us from getting trampled, as well. There were only a few dozen people ahead of us, and so many behind.

Even with my help, he was gasping and dripping sweat by the time we reached the base of the tower, a huge cylindrical building made of seamless white stone. It looked big enough to hold the entire Center inside it, and more.

When I dropped my head back, I couldn’t see the top.

“Boys.” A familiar Councilor appeared around the long curve of the tower. Sine. I remembered him from the Center. His gaze flickered to the crutch before settling on Stef’s face. “The inventor, right?”

Stef leaned his weight heavily on me. “And my best friend, Dossam.”

Sine beckoned us back the way he’d come. “This way.”

We started to follow, others close behind. Firelight illuminated the growing crowd of exhausted, injured people. Some were being carried, while others crawled along. The night smelled sharp with blood and rotting and lingering acid.

“We’ve been speaking with Janan,” Sine said.

Had it taken us that long to reach the tower? Maybe. Stef leaned all his weight on the crutch and me; his good foot barely touched the ground, except when we stopped.

“Janan’s alive?” Stef shot me a wary glance.

“He is alive, and he’s been working on our behalf ever since his capture.” Sine led us to a cluster of men and women, all of them with subservient postures as they paid attention to one man.

Janan.

He was small, solidly built, with wild hair that would have earned mockery if he hadn’t been so intimidating. There was just something about him, a way he held himself that made him the leader of this group—of everyone here and everyone who’d lived in the Community before.

Janan turned his eyes on Stef and me, sizing us up in an instant: my hunched shoulders, Stef’s broken leg and acid-eaten foot, and the way both of us kept checking the sky. “Hello, boys. You’ll be among the first to hear the good news.” He surveyed the approaching crowd and turned to Meuric. “Everyone is coming? Even the wounded?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Have the warriors conduct a census.”

“Where did you come from?” Stef asked. “I don’t see a door.”

“There isn’t one. And inside, it is so, so empty.” The way Janan grinned was predatory, like a troll or dragon, and gave me the almost desperate need to run; but I wouldn’t abandon Stef. “I didn’t summon you all to discuss my imprisonment. I summoned you to tell you that I succeeded in my original quest: I have found a way to overcome death.”