Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Lefe? Where’s Lefe?” a woman is calling out. “Lefe!”
“Lakon! Where are you?” a man shouts. “Has anyone seen him?”
It’s chaos. The humans crawl across the floor, shoving one another, searching for people they know. Cage-mates, most probably. Probably also fellow villagers or townspeople. Familiar people they care about.
The room stinks of stale sweat, urine, and despair.
Finally, after a lot more jostling and shouting, the exhausted humans grow quieter and huddle together for warmth.
It’s dim in here, the only light coming through a high window. I make out dirty, gaunt faces, eyes filled with anguish.
Twelve young men and twelve young women.
A world of fear and pain.
Then they start to pray. I should have expected it, but I’m still startled when the whispers start.
“By all the gods and revered heroes,” one of them is whispering, “Persephatta and Marsyas, Elissa and Aides.”
“Remember Penrick Adrius Frost and Ewfellyn Gillen,” another one picks up the thread of the prayer, “who fell for us.”
“Remember Rheanon Aethre and Katri Margery,” a third says, “may they forever be revered.”
I start. Wait… I hadn’t expected to hear certain names spoken out loud. Never expected people to get them all wrong, either. Surely, it hasn’t been all that long since?—
“Who are you?” a timid voice beside me asks, causing me to turn. “Haven’t seen you before. You weren’t in my cage.”
She’s mousy and cute, with short brown hair and large, dark eyes. Her dress was blue once, but it’s now drenched in muck, the sleeves half-torn and the bodice hanging loose as if she’s lost weight.
She probably has.
Anger rises in me, and I try to swallow it back down.
Rae , I mouth my new name, pointing at my chest. Rae.
“That your name? Why don’t—Oh, can’t you speak?”
I shake my head.
“My younger sister can’t hear or speak.” Her mouth trembles. “Oh gods, I’ll never see her again, will I?”
A distant boom jolts us.
“It’s just thunder,” someone says.
“That’s when the Eosphors in the sky beat their bronze wings,” the girl beside me whispers.
Silence spreads.
Being with these people stirs up old memories, memories I’ve fought to bury along with my family, my parents, and my little brother. It’s a bad idea, remembering. Forgetting, locking up the bright images and sounds, the bright, painful feelings, is the only way to keep fighting, or else that flame in me that’s urging me forward will gutter out.
“When the old dragon falls through the sky, and a soul thought lost returns to life, watch for the signs in the shifting stars,” the man to my right says, his voice sonorous and low. “A new order will come.”
“He has a name written on his chest,” a woman behind me murmurs. “And the dragon will stand on the sand of the seashore as the vault of the sky opens to another world.”
I shiver. Now they are reciting scraps of the old prophecies, bits and pieces, snatches and snippets, and hearing the disjointed parts somehow makes them sound more ominous and real.
“What will I do?” the girl beside me whispers, a sob catching in her voice. “How will I survive the games? I can’t even run very well. I don’t know how to swim. I’ll die.”
I should be annoyed with her, with her tears, her fears, but another feeling snags inside my chest. The injustice of it. The indignation on her behalf.
She shouldn’t be here.
None of these people should.
The soft weeping and moaning filling the air are justified. These people have suffered and are about to suffer more. They didn’t ask for this.
“May the dragons look over us,” the man is now saying, “may Athdara save us.”
I turn to stare at him. He looks… serene. Calm. Does he even know what Athdara has done? That he chose to increase the number of victims? He sounds as if he’s in awe of him, of the fae man who’s been hunting humans and killing them.
It makes me feel sick.
The girl beside me says in a shaky voice, “They say that if you control the big dragons, the Great Dara, command them to fly anti-clockwise around the Pillar, its rotations will slow, and a gate will open to the other worlds. That’s part of the prophecy.”
I frown. Who cares about the prophecy now? The games are about to start.
“It’s a long prophecy, and it’s a promise of salvation for us all.” For the first time, a faint smile breaks over her face. “I’m Lynn, by the way.”
A long prophecy? Why do I only know a few lines of it? And who says it speaks of salvation?
What else don’t I know? My chest squeezes. I need to be prepared, but nobody told me about this, about?—
The door creaks open, a tall figure filling the opening. The light catches on long, pale hair spilling over broad shoulders.
“There you are,” Tru says. “You got swept along with the tide, didn’t you? Come along.”
Without glancing back at Lynn, I scramble to my feet. Hesitate. Where will he take me? No, I need to stay with the human contestants.
“Hurry up.” He grabs my arm when I don’t move, hauls me out of the building, and slams the door shut. “There are enough sacrifices for the festival. We don’t need one more.”
How can I ask him about a way to join the trials? One of the other humans has to leave instead of me.
“Visit the temple, if you must, pay your respects to Anafia, but be quick about it,” he says as he leads me through a wide street, his hand still clamped on my arm. “Then you’ll have to wait for a boat to get back to the coast. It won’t be easy, especially with the way you look. If we clean you up, it may be?—”
No. I dig my heels in and resist his pull. I lift my hand to my neck and scrub at the symbol I painted there. I’m not leaving. No!
But he’s much stronger than me and hauls me along toward a taller, narrower building jutting up over the others, by the rocky shore, with arched windows and a domed roof. It faces the Sea Palace across the narrow strait.
The temple.
Lit up with torches, a crowd standing at its gates, it echoes with a low chant that burrows into my bones.
Magic.
I’m not surprised to see the priest officiating is a telchin, just like Arkin or Tru said the other day. He’s a sorcerer, a peculiar being with the appearance of a human man, tasked with guarding the liminal passages between worlds. Clad in long white robes, he’s tall and muscular, with long gray hair and beard. The air pulsing around him is the only indication he’s not a mortal.
A different crowd is gathered across the strait, on the Sea Palace Island: the fae highborn. The glimpses I caught of them on their tall boats didn’t do them justice. Dressed in shades of yellow silk and satin to honor the king, crowned with headdresses glowing with gold and gems, they look like a field of precious marigolds blooming against the palace.
They are standing on the large terrace, close to the edge, as if they have no fear of everything that’s lurking in the sea.
But now I know why. The telchin’s power protects them.
Telchins are ancient beings. They don’t seem to age, and they all look the same. It’s very… disconcerting. This one looks just like the telchin I remember once visiting our local temple when I was a child, a very long time ago.
As I watch, he lifts his hands, a ponderous gesture, and the chanting stops.
To our left are the islets surrounding the arena, a small tower on each one of them like a beacon, probably where the fires burned last night. I can’t see anything but water inside the arena. Are they just going to throw everyone into the sea?
That would be a Death Game, for sure, but it would be too simple for such a high-brow gathering. The fae are a brutal military race, and yet…
“Now, be still,” Tru says, still gripping me hard. “Don’t move from the spot. The ceremony is starting. You can pay your respects inside the Temple afterward, and I’ll make sure you get on a boat later.”
Damn. It’s not his fault; he doesn’t know why I’m here, but now I have to factor him in my plans. I’ll have to escape his steel hold, while also deciding how to insert myself into the games.
A few feet away, I make out Arkin and Neere, as well as the female guard who hated my guts, and a few others I saw on the first barge.
“Honored be the graceful dead of every world.” The telchin’s voice booms, shaking us all. “The heroes and heroines of old, those who crossed the gates to save others, selfless and brave. King Marsyas, Queen Persephona, King Aides, Queen Elleora, your names are remembered.”
Then the telchin points up, and a bright light streaks across the sky. I catch my breath. Is it an Eosphor? They fall sometimes, or so I was told. The enormous winged beings, so alien, made of metal and gems, sometimes lose their grip on the firmament and crash to the ground, their pieces scattering.
But how could the telchin time it so perfectly, or cause its fall?
It can’t be an Eosphor, I decide, as more lights streak across the firmament. Dawn has long broken, but as the glowing orbs fall into the sea, it’s like another daybreak.
Just magic. Illusions and delusions.
The crowds cheer.
The streaking lights illuminate the palace, dropping around it like tears, and on the top balcony, I think I see a lone figure with a golden crown tall like a tower, mirroring every flash and flare.
The fae king?
Nice light show. I shift on my bare feet, antsy as it ends. It annoys me somehow that it’s all an empty act to amuse the aristocracy. Using such power for trinkets, for nonsense.
Hurting and killing people like it means nothing. Like it’s all a little game to pass the time.
“Athdara!” the telchin roars then, and Athdara steps forward, as if appearing out of thin air. “Welcome back to the Nightgold Court.”
I stare at the dragon speaker, like everyone else, and my breath catches again. Why does my breath catch every time I see him? Such a seductive man, a pretty vessel full of power and malice.
“My friends call me Jai.”
“Our champion has done well,” the telchin says. “The convoy has arrived safely. The gods will be pleased to receive this offering. Twenty-four sacrifices this year!” The fae crowd roars. “To celebrate three hundred years since the last Reversal and the passage of the fae through the dark gates into this world, to conquer and adapt, to bespell and make this world theirs.”
I turn my gaze to the telchin, who still looks like he’s beckoning at Athdara, even though the dark-haired fae man is standing right in front of him, only a few paces away.
This isn’t how priests talk, I think. They are always cryptic, and their speeches disjointed as they look back and forth into time, as they see through the Nine Worlds and behind the veil of fate. This telchin speaks like any one of us would, like one of the fae would, praising campaigns and invasions, praising the conquerors. He’s yet another playing in the fae king’s hands, furthering his strategy, and echoing his philosophy.
“Bring the humans!” the telchin cries, lifting his hands again for dramatic effect, and the torches on both islands flicker, the flames swaying.
More parlor tricks. I’m starting to think he’s no telchin at all, just a fae or human disguised as one.
Tru curses softly, stepping closer to me, as the humans are led into the courtyard of the Temple, growling and snarling like rabid dogs, and just as filthy.
Who knows how long the journey through the villages and towns lasted, until Athdara rounded up all of them, and how long the sailing over the flat lagoons and swamps took until I joined them? They are underfed, some almost skeletal, bent, and half-crippled by their stay in the cages.
They are a pitiful sight. Will any of them make it to the end of the first round? It looks doubtful.
Cold grips my chest when Lynn, the girl who’d sat beside me, drops to her knees and starts to shake. “I don’t want to die,” she whispers over and over, her thin body shaking. “I don’t want to die.”
That’s the problem with letting any emotion take over, letting any connection form. I look at her, and I think of my little brother, and…
… and I know in my heart exactly what I have to do.
This is the solution. The only way to keep the number unchanged while entering the trials. Of course.
I will take her place.
Stepping forward, I march right to the front of the human group. There, I grab her arm, pull her to her feet, and shove her sharply to the side.
And I step in her place, pulling my shoulders back and lifting my chin.
See? I am taking her place. The numbers won’t change.
The telchin watches this happen in silence. The humans start to whisper among themselves.
“What are you doing?” one of them hisses at me. “Are you nuts?”
I bang a fist against my chest, keeping my eyes on the priest. Me. Take me.
The clamor among the humans rises, and the fae across the water are stirring, too, pointing and talking among themselves.
Here I am, bringing some excitement to your boring, bloody festival. Rejoice.
Athdara slowly turns around, his dark gaze piercing me. His brows knot together. “What is going on? Tru, she isn’t supposed to be there. Didn’t I tell you to take her away?”
He told Tru to take me away? That’s news to me. Its impact is surprisingly heavy, considering the circumstances. And I have no idea how to interpret it.
But Tru doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak a word.
“She is offering herself,” the telchin says. “She has the right.”
“No,” Athdara says, his voice low. “She can’t do that.”
“Why not?” The telchin watches him like a hawk. “Name your reasons, and we shall consider them.”
But Athdara only glares.
Tru looks away.
And the telchin says nothing more.
“Rae.” Athdara comes to stand in front of me, and his proximity is a punch to my chest. I raise my head to meet his gaze because I refuse to be intimidated by his height, and that’s a mistake, because what I see in those dark eyes…
Anger, incredulity… and fear.
Am I misreading him? This can’t be right.
“Don’t do this.” His voice is a low growl. “Don’t. Step away. Take a boat and go back to the land. Save yourself.”
I shake my head. No.
Gods, his eyes. As my eyes and hair are pale, his are dark like the night and just as deep. “You will die here. You can’t?—”
To stop him from saying more, I poke him in the chest. His very hard, muscular chest, even without his armor, and my finger trails down to his stomach—also very hard, the inner voice supplies cheerfully, hard like a rock?—
He grabs my hand as if he’s about to drag me away from the Temple, despite the glare I’m sending his way, but the telchin is making his way to us, placing himself in our path.
“You cannot remove her now, son,” he booms. “Not without a valid reason. She made her choice.”
“No.” Athdara’s black hair flies as he looks around wildly, as if hoping for… for what? A fight? A commotion? A miracle?
Arkin and Tru step toward us, but they look worried.
“Let her be,” Arkin hisses. “You can’t break the rules. It’s a done deed.”
“The telchin said so,” Tru adds. “You’ll anger the gods. Stop.”
Yes , I think, glaring at Athdara. I made my choice. Back off.
“I won’t,” he growls, his eyes flashing, and a flare of heat goes through me. Through my chest, through my head. I clutch at my heart, wondering what that was.
He glares right back at me, as if I’ve done something wrong. He, the fae male who gathered up all these miserable people and delivered them to the Temple and the king with a bow on top. How dare he judge me.
His long lashes lower after a small eternity, and he sighs. When I try to pull my hand free of his, he resists.
“Athdara,” the telchin beckons again, “come. We have much to do. Much to prepare.”
But Athdara ignores him. He’s still gazing down at me. “Why are you doing this?”
I press my lips together in a flat line and lift my chin. My business. Not yours.
This time, when I pull my hand, he releases me, and turns toward the humans.
“You.” He marches up to a young human man. “I want your place.”
The youth stares at him. “But?—”
“Move.”
What in the hells is he doing now? I step toward him, but Tru shakes his head forbiddingly. The message is clear. Don’t interfere.
Athdara drags a hand over his face. Makes a show of speaking slowly and clearly. “For those listening, I am asking you if you would give me your place in the games. Yes, or no?”
“Yes,” the young man says slowly. “Yes, I would. Why?—?”
“Good.” Athdara grabs his arm and hauls him to the side, sending him stumbling toward the docks.
Then he steps into the now vacant spot and folds his powerful arms over his black-clad chest, hair whipping in the rising wind, his jaw hard.
“Athdara—” the telchin starts.
“Here we are. I’ve taken his place. Now,” he says, “we’re set to start.”
A brouhaha rises from the crowd across the strait. Whistling, booing, screaming. I still don’t know what exactly just happened. I realize my mouth is hanging open.
The telchin is watching him, his gaze narrow, a calculating glint in his dark eyes.
“So it is done,” he finally says. “You have chosen your course.”
“I have,” Athdara says, looking unperturbed, though on closer inspection, a muscle is feathering on his jaw, and a vein is beating fast in his corded neck. A sheen of sweat gleams on his brow.
He’s not as unaffected as he pretends to be.
“So be it, Athdara Two-souled,” the telchin says. “You know your magic will be restricted by the water, and other means will be used to reduce your power. If you want to become a pawn in the game of the gods, you need to diminish yourself.”
“I know.”
What does that mean?
“Well, isn’t this interesting,” Neere says, scowling. “Not a good look, the dragon speaker joining the humans. I bet the king will love it… Joking. He’ll be furious.”
“Don’t joke about this,” Tru says, his face pale. “Nothing like it has ever happened before. What was he thinking?”
“Told you he’s crazy,” Arkin mutters.
No, no. This isn’t making any sense. I grab Tru and shake him. What is Athdara doing?
“I would think it’s obvious,” Tru spits out the words, yanking his arm out of my grip. “He has joined the games as a contestant. The King’s Sword, entering the games. Unbelievable.”
But he can’t enter the games! I mouth. He has magic. Magic isn’t allowed.
“His magic doesn’t work in the water,” Arkin says. “And he will be drained of it beforehand to even the field for the other contestants.”
But… I cast about for another reason he can’t do this. He… he’s fae.
“No, he’s not,” Tru says, and sounds truly sad.
What? I’m staring at Athdara—Jai, whatever—as he gathers back his wild black hair, twisting it and tying it off his forehead with a leather band, and for the first time, I see his ears.
Not pointed. They aren’t pointed. They are rounded, like mine.
Human.
Athdara is human.
My hands are twisting together, and I make myself stop. A human in the service of the fae king. A powerful human. That’s as rare as finding an entire dragon skeleton on the plains.
But why? Why is he doing this?
“We should have seen this coming,” Arkin mutters.
“Should we? Don’t tell me this is about what I think it is,” Tru snarls.
Neere huffs. “Are you seriously doubting it? You saw him earlier. He’s fascinated.”
About what?
Neere turns and stomps away, while Tru and Arkin just shrug and sigh, leaving me to wonder what I’m missing.