Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
“You will free Tallu and Prince Hallu from the fate that binds them?” I demanded.
“I never promised you that,” Spider said. “Let me tell you of fate and of things that the Dragon Monks should never have spoken of.
“The dwarves already told you their story of me, so I will tell you another. Long before any people on this world thought they had the right to decide for themselves, there was fate. The invisible promise of a destiny. And of all the animalia, I was the only one who could see it.” One pair of her hands drew close, lacing together in front of her stomach.
“I could see which of the animalia would win in a conflict, but I could not see the path that took them there. The end result is fixed: the Krustavian dwarves would live in the mountains. The orchards of Forsaith will grow a fruit so sweet that it will save a life. The fairies of Ristorium will once again regain their wings.”
As she spoke, the mist around us took shape: an enormous tree forming and dropping round fruit onto the ground, a dozen waifishly thin people sprouting wings from their back and taking to the air.
“Because I could see the outcome, I could help shape the path they took. I was weaving a tapestry from the thread I had been given, but I could not change the color, nor the amount of it.” She looked at me, her eyes crinkling.
“Imagine being given a destination on the map and being allowed to choose the path you take there.
But I could not change the journey's end.”
I frowned. “Spider weaves fate. That means you could weave a different one for Tallu and Prince Hallu. If his destination is death, make it at the end of a long, fully used life.”
“I have not fashioned the noose around his neck. That was his own bloodline. King turned Emperor Wollu. Emperor Rellu. Emperor Millu. They have cursed their bloodline, as one might poison a stream at its source and kill the cattle down river.” Spider reached out, her fingers ghosting over her own throat.
There was a flash of brilliant gold and I startled, turning to look at Tallu.
A thousand threads wrapped around his neck, sliding into his open mouth.
I could see them in his body, the sharp edges of early death tearing at his lungs and heart.
“No!” I reached for him, but my fingers passed through the threads. “Why can’t I touch them?”
“Because neither you nor I can stop the curse. It is not in our power,” Spider snapped. “We were not given that key.”
“What key?” I demanded.
“The Dragon Monks already gave him the answer when they sealed their fates. They gave Wollu the answer, and he thought it a promise,” Spider said.
“The Imperium’s promise?” I asked. “That House Atobe will unite the continent?”
“That was the second prophecy given to Wollu by the Dragon Seers. They could also see the threads of fate, as they sat in the One Dragon’s Cave, unaware of the fine line they walked.
They were a fly caught in the webs of fate.
They could see the gossamer threads and thought that made them powerful.
Fools. Only I have the ability to weave them.
Only I alone was given that sway.” Spider chuckled.
“And would you like to know what these fools told Wollu—the violent despot who would use any excuse to hold onto his recently gotten power?”
“What?” I whispered.
“They told him, a man desperately afraid that the One Dragon would choose another to lead the Southern Kingdom,” Spider leaned forward, hissing the words. “‘You will not be king for long.’”
Spider laughed, her words carrying it, “That was his prophecy. ‘You will not be king for long.’ And it was true, but only I could see that in telling him, they had woven fate into a different form. This is why humans should never have been given the ability to see the future. Those small flies trapped in their web, those seers drinking their poisoned water and looking into the strings of fate with blind eyes. But who am I to argue with the One Dragon?”
“So Wollu lied? About the promise?” I asked. All of the lives lost to his deception. Every nation that had fallen because one king of a small nation wanted an empire.
“No,” Spider said firmly. “After Wollu, infinitely angry, killed the One Dragon and smashed her eggs, he was given his second prophecy. ‘Your line will unite the continent and be free.’ Of course he would only tell people of that second promise, and even then, leave out half of it. Wollu was not a good, nor an honest, man.”
Tallu was choking on the hundreds of golden threads before my eyes. Blood spilled out of his mouth, more than I had ever seen when he was using electro magic. With a scream, I took him into my arms again, trying desperately to free him.
“Let him go!” I screamed again, trying to grab the threads, trying to get him free.
Spider was suddenly there, her expression grim. A pair of her hands grabbed hold of my face, wrenching my neck until I faced her. “You have been given the greatest gift a human has ever earned since the One Dragon taught the people of this world magic. Use it.”
With a gasp, I reached for ice magic, remembering at the last minute to curb my desperation. I would never show desperation to an acquaintance, a friend I didn’t know.
Heal him. Heal him now.
The want burned inside of me, so clear and pure I could see the glow within my chest. It pulsed, fast and quick, a heartbeat matching my own. Ice raced down my arms, covering Tallu, following the golden threads of fate down his throat and into his chest.
I could see the pulse of light, illuminating him from within. He gasped, and I didn’t let up, pushing more and more wants into it. I pushed all of the want I had been holding back on, all of the desire that I had been holding tight to in our long, endless journey to Tavornai.
“Airón,” Tallu choked out. He spat blood, but then ice covered his mouth and nose and for a moment he wasn’t breathing at all.
I didn’t let up, forcing my mind to stay calm, pushing until finally I felt the crackle of healing inside of him.
He gasped, and I filled every crevice inside of him with ice, packing it in tight, feeling it knit together the parts of him that had torn themselves open, stitched together the frayed bits of his lungs that had been sliced clean by the broken threads of blood monks’ fates.
He leaned against me, burying his head in my neck, and I felt the cold against my throat, burning the skin, but I didn’t stop, didn’t let up until he stopped trembling, going still.
I released the magic, letting it slip free from my fingers. Tallu gasped, but this time all he coughed up was melted water.
He looked at me with wonder. “It doesn’t hurt.”
I tried to smile but found my face wouldn’t make the expression. What good was healing him when the curse would continue its damage, destroying everything I had just fixed. When I turned back to Spider, I glared at her.
“You are the animalia who weaves the webs of fate. You see the future. You can change his.” It was as though the ice I had wielded with my magic had come home, wrapping around my heart.
Around us, the fog shifted, tightening, a brilliant white band that trapped the three of us close together.
“If I had the ability to change fate, do you think I wouldn’t have changed the fate of the One Dragon?
” Spider demanded. “Do you think I would have let the Imperium burn the elder trees that I have watched grow from seeds? They contained all of the memories of every elf I have ever loved. If I could change destiny, I would not waste it on him. I would have saved the things I cared about.”
My shoulders slumped, and I finally, truly, understood that all of it had been for nothing.
“As I said, Wollu was never king for long, although not in the way initially intended, and his line will unite the continent and be free.” Spider stepped back, her arms spreading wide, almost like wings.
“What does that mean?” I asked, confused. “Are you saying, three emperors before Tallu was cursed, Wollu was told of how to break it?”
“I am saying that the moment he smashed the One Dragon’s eggs, the moment he killed the One Dragon, there was only one possible way this could end. Unite the continent, Emperor Tallu, last of the Dragon Chosen, and be free.” Spider looked at him, her fingers twitching in time with her breath.
“You want me to conquer the continent,” Tallu growled. “You want me to be worse than Wollu, because I am not hounded by my greed, instead by cowardice and desperation? I will not shed more blood to prolong my own life. I will not sacrifice anyone for me or my brother.”
“Is that the only way?” Spider asked. “It is clear whose son and grandson and great-grandson you are if that is how your thoughts run.”
“I freely admit it. I am my father’s son.
I bear the blood of elves and blood mages on my hands.
I am the grandson of Emperor Rellu and I looked the other way, the same as he did, when faced with my father’s depravity.
” Tallu looked down, opening his hands wide.
“I am the great-grandson of Emperor Wollu, who killed the One Dragon and put a crown on his head that he did not deserve. I know that my family has the blood of the One Dragon on it. I admit it. I am House Atobe. So do not tell me to take up that mantle when I already wear it.”
Spider bore her teeth, the spaces between them stained dark. She shook her head. Turning, she strode through the fog, parting it before her like the curtains on a play. The fog began to close around us, and I knew if we stayed, we would be stuck.
Grabbing hold of Tallu’s hand, I pulled him through.
“The grief of a boy who became emperor. But you were not borne of Millu’s loins alone. If she had been given that prophecy what would your mother, Empress Tasaro, have done?” Spider’s braid swung like a pendulum.
“I refuse to believe my mother would have done something so monstrous to save her own life.” Tallu’s words were hopeless.
He had spent his whole life deconstructing his family’s evil and now he was told that the only way he could live was to fulfill the destiny of the house he hated.
He slowed, a slight frown on his face. “My mother wouldn’t have heard the words ‘unite’ and assumed it meant conquer. ”
“No,” Spider agreed.
“My mother knew there were more ways to unite a people than to subjugate them. She would have... she would have created a peace, a united continent of alliances and trust.” Tallu turned to me, his expression open as though he had finally freed himself of a prison when I was only beginning to feel the key in the dark.
I saw something red in the distance, and Spider fixed on it, walking with purpose.
“Wait,” I said. “Wait. You mean that four generations of emperors have killed their way across the continent when their fate was to create peace? It will be impossible now! Two of the nations no longer exist. And why would the Dragon Seers give Wollu the answer to a question he hadn’t asked yet?”
“Perhaps the One Dragon cursed them with the sight of all of time. Or, perhaps, the One Dragon told them. Or, perhaps, they did it because only that second prophecy saved them from the same fate as the One Dragon.” Spider shook her head, she held up one hand, and a thousand golden threads dripped from her fingers.
When I looked at them, they looked like the shape of a flower, but when she twisted her hand at an angle, they shifted into the shape of a serpent.
“It is all in the perspective. The threads of fate show themselves in the weaving.”
“It is said that Wollu drank from the waters and saw the truth of what they said.” Tallu frowned, touching his chin, even as he considered something, his eyes unfocused as he stared at the fog. “Wouldn’t he have known that he cursed his own line by doing what he did?”
“Your father also knew what he did to his own son and still killed the blood monks,” Spider said. “Do you understand now?”
“Yes,” Tallu said, relief making him sag. “I can be free.”
Spider hummed and continued heading toward the red shape in the fog.
It slowly formed itself into Empress Koque, her face stained with tears as she stared out at nothing. All at once, she gasped, wiping her face clean.
She frowned, looking around, as though seeing for the first time the fog that enveloped us. “Tallu?”
Tallu’s eyes drifted shut, his shoulders hunching forward.
I knew it was relief, such a great tension that had been lifted from him.
But Koque read something else in the arc of his spine, the way his whole face tensed, wrinkles forming on his forehead when he finally opened his eyes to look at her with an exhaustion beyond his years.
Koque took in his expression quickly, then stepped forward, making sure Spider’s attention was fixed on her. She kept Tallu behind her as though she needed to protect him still.
“I heard the Pirate King visited us. I was sorry to have missed becoming acquainted with you.” She bowed her head, respectful, but not a sign of Spider’s superiority.
Then she blinked, her eyes narrowing as she tracked the four pairs of arms sprouting from Spider’s back.
“Only the Pirate King is not your only title?”
“No.” Spider shook her head. She leaned forward, whispering into Koque’s ear. When she stepped back, she searched Koque’s face, her eyes crinkling sympathetically. “Your son needs you.”
Koque gasped, and stumbled forward, wrapping Tallu in a tight hug. She shushed him, murmuring against his temple.
“What did you tell her?” I asked Spider.
“Tallu is not the only one who has a fate. He is not the only one who deserves to know his.” Spider blinked at me, and the arms that had been framing her like wings slowly melted into each other until she was left with two mortal arms. “Do you want to know yours?”
A pit of terror opened up in my stomach, and I knew that I had no desire to know my own fate. What if we failed to create the right sort of peace, the right sort of alliances? Would my fate be to watch as Tallu slowly died? What if my fate was to be his widower?
Or what if my fate was to betray my family in order to create ‘peace’?
The mists drifted apart, exposing where we stood. We were at the very edge of Tavornai, close to where we had come ashore. An armada was spread before us, a hundred ships, clearly elven and imperial.
“There he is,” Spider said. “The prize you chased over the whole of the continent. Go, claim him and see what becomes of it.”