Heir to the Sky (16 page)

The water underfoot spreads, and the marsh ahead is a labyrinth of water and land. I can't be sure when I step whether the ground will hold me, or whether it's only an island of floating reeds. And at the end of the maze of water and land paths I can see the base of the mountains rising up.

“One, maybe two days' walk,” Griffin says. “Nearly there. There's a pass up the mountain, so the climbing shouldn't be too rough. But marshlands first.”

I take a step and my boot sinks into ankle-deep marsh water, murky and dark as it soaks into the leather. I'm about to take another step, but Griffin's steady hand wraps around my elbow and I hesitate.

“This way,” he says, “unless you're wanting a bath.”

We tread carefully through the maze of marshland. If a monster swooped down from the sky, we'd be easy picking. We have our karu hoods up just in case, but Griffin says there are lots of monsters here who think karu are just fine to eat, so it's not much help.

By the time the sun is setting, the mountains still seem so far away, bathed in mist and fog that rises up from the marshlands. I'm not sure how we'll make camp in this soggy landscape, but I don't ask. Griffin's face is all concentration, looking carefully at each reed island, trying to figure out if it will hold our weight. He takes one step and the water goes up to his knee, gushing into his leather shoe and soaking his legging dark brown.

The light is slipping from the sky, and we're no closer to a possible rest point. “Griffin,” I say.

“We'll have to keep going,” he says. “You all right to keep walking for a bit?”

It's going to be miles, but there's nothing we can do. “Can't wait,” I say, and he smiles.

“You don't have to be
that
nice. A little complaining's all right.” But when I'm with Griffin, I want to say everything I can to make his heart lighter.

The marshland is thicker here, and our steps are slowed by squelching mud. We hang on to each other to avoid falling into the thick sludge. It's hard enough to see where to step next in the fading light. I wish for a moment I hadn't given the lantern away.

But as the last of the sunlight falls, as the sky turns that deep plum color dotted with gleaming stars, something amazing awakens in the marshlands.

I've seen the rainbow colors of the fireflies in the outlands of Ashra, but I've never seen anything as beautiful as this. The entire marshland begins to glow with incandescent light. Ferns gleam with ghostly, glow-in-the-dark leaves that unfurl in great coils. Fireflies light with luminous blue green that matches the ferns, and the edges of the water glisten with schools of tiny shining fish, thousands of them. It's as if the air and the earth have reversed, as if we're walking through the glitter of luminescent starlight in the skies.

“Soot and ashes,” I whisper, for I've never seen anything like this in my life. High above, the two moons glow, and their reflections dance on the rippling waters of the marsh, but I can barely notice them through this wonderland of lights, swirling around us like twinkling snow.

“The marsh is something at night,” Griffin says, his voice velvet beside me. The lights shine on his face in a dance of gleaming stars, sparkling off the beads laced on his arm and the lustrous shells strung around his neck. “But it's still treacherous to walk, I'm afraid. Stay close.”

He opens his hand, palm outstretched. The motion reminds me suddenly of Jonash offering his arm to me in the firefly-lit outlands, when I had no choice but to accept. Now I have every choice, and I want to take his hand, but the guilt of the parallel memory floods me with shame. I have to tell Griffin that my path isn't mine to choose. I have to tell him before it's too late.

But I can't find the words, not in this land of luminous stars. Instead I thread my fingers through his, and we walk forward carefully, the mud sticking to our boots, the murky water lit with glowing minnows. I want to walk through this dreamscape with him. I want my life to fade away into the shadows so I can have this moment forever.

We walk for another half hour, until my feet ache from the day of wading through mud like gooey honey. I don't feel like I can go on, and from the way Griffin is stumbling, he must feel the same.

“We can stop and rest if you like,” he says, but we may as well be in the middle of an ocean. The paths of reeds have become so thin they're nearly engulfed by the thick curls of water. There's nowhere to sit, and if we're going to stand around like scarecrows in a field, I'd rather keep walking. I tell him so and he laughs, his voice strained and exhausted.

“All right,” he says. “How about one hundred more steps, and then I'll ask you again.”

A smile curves its way onto my lips. “I could do two hundred,” I tease.

“Three hundred, then,” he teases back, the iridescent fireflies strung through his hair like a fairy crown.

He turns, and counts. “One. Two. Three.”

I laugh, following carefully where he walks.

“Four,” he says. We step again.

“Five.”

And then with a horrible splash he's gone, and there's nothing there but the ripple of dark water slicking over his head.

SIXTEEN

“GRIFFIN!” I SHOUT,
staring into the murky water. Panic seizes in my throat and my blood runs cold. I wait for him to surface, sputtering, but he doesn't.

Fireflies circle the ripples lazily. He doesn't come back up.

“Where are you? Answer me!”

The dread overtakes me, the wet and the mud and the dark between the showy lights. Can't he swim? Is he tangled in some reeds at the bottom?

He's running out of time. He can't hold his breath for this long, can he?

I jump in, thinking only how desperately I need to save him. The water rushes over me like a wintry blast, the ripples sealing over my head like a dank tomb. The water is pitch-black down here, cloudy and freezing and incredibly deep. I turn my head slowly, searching for Griffin, but I can't even see the bottom. Here and there the schools of minnow glow, their ghostly radiance shining like search beacons through the muddy water.

I hear the struggle before I see it. Griffin's limbs tear through the water with bubbling fury as I swim toward him. The heavy water pulls my waterlogged dress toward the bottom, and I fight against it to get to Griffin. If I'd been thinking straight, I would've taken it off before leaping in, but all I could think—all I can think—is to save him.

A group of minnows flash like lightning in the sky, and they illuminate the thick curve of something massive in the water. It's coiled around the seabed like a snake, each loop of its body the width of a giant cedar trunk. The scales glitter a cool blue in the minnows' glow, and there are spots of dim blue glowing up the back of the coils. Each light pulses at the end of a long spike, and the spikes are knit together down the monster's spine by stretched, leathery webs of skin.

The water goes dark again, except for the dim blue lights down the monster's back. My body chills with a frost icier than this frigid water. It's a sea serpent, almost as huge as the massive dragon that snatched the cat for its dinner.

We can't fight something like this. It's enormous—how could we even make a scratch?

The schools of fish flash again like lightning, illuminating the endless coils of the serpent. I can see two pairs of wing-like fins near its head, all spikes and ripped, webbed skin and scales. And then I see Griffin, floating directly in front of the serpent's gaping maw. Griffin's hands are shoved against the monster's top lip, pressing its cavernous mouth open, while his feet are wedged between the fangs on its lower jaw that try to snap closed. He struggles against the monster's attempt to chomp him in two. The serpent shakes its open mouth, showers of bubbles and dark water rippling toward me. Its forked tongue darts out, black and leathery. The minnows flash their lights, illuminating the struggle—and then the lights go out, nothing but darkness.

There's no time to let the fear seize me. I'm nearly out of breath, and Griffin's been down here even longer. If I don't act, he'll drown before the monster can take a bite out of him.

I pull my dagger from its sheath, fighting against my heavy skirts as I swim underneath the sea serpent's massive jaw. I shove the dagger into its skin with all the might I can muster. The serpent lets out a shrill sound that echoes through the water at an ear-piercing frequency. It shakes its head back and forth as black blood curls into the water like smoke. It tosses its head above the surface with Griffin still in its mouth before the head comes crashing into the water again. The waves toss me backward, head over feet. I hope the time above water was long enough for Griffin to get in a good breath. I swim to the surface myself and gasp in the muggy marsh air.

Ducking below the water again, I struggle to see the sea serpent in the flashes of light. The monster is writhing around in the water, and Griffin's managed to stab its eye with one of his daggers. Bile and blood stream out of the monster as it screeches, its fin-wings furling and unfurling, its claws slashing the water. I swim toward it again and stab my dagger into its chest, but the scales clink like chain mail, metal on metal; the hit is harmless. The sea serpent turns its head toward me, and while it's distracted Griffin goes for its other eye. It lets out a screech that sets off a tidal wave, and we're both thrown swirling through the water, the bubbles rising around us like a curtain. The minnows flash again, light and dark, and I see the serpent writhing, and then nothing, and then in another position, like a slow flip of illustrations. The glowing minnows dart in and out of its jaws quickly as it chomps and froths the water, looking for its escaped prey.

Griffin grabs my hand and tugs as he swims upward. My skirts slow us down, but we fight the pull with energy we didn't know we had. My heart is pumping and my pulse is throbbing in my ears as our heads break above the water. I gasp in a breath as Griffin presses my hand to a tangle of reeds. He pushes my back to help me climb onto the floating island. My dress is so waterlogged that it feels like an anvil pulling me back into the water. I wonder if I could've climbed the reeds without his help. As soon as I'm up, I turn around to help him onto the island. He sputters a spray of water with every breath, coughing as he kneels on the reeds, the island sinking into the water from our weight.

The sea serpent's head crashes above the surface, his long sleek body uncoiling as he towers above us like a mountain. I hesitate, transfixed with fear.

Griffin nocks an arrow dipped in chimera venom before I even know what's happened. I feel the slight breeze as it zings past my ear. The serpent cries out as the arrow lodges in the soft skin just below its throat. Griffin sends another one airborne, but this one clanks against the thick scales on its chest and tumbles into the water below, where it floats, useless.

He readies a third arrow, pulling back and loosing it so quickly the string sings. This one lodges beside the first in its throat, and the serpent twists its head and shrieks. We put our hands over our ears as the wail forces us to our knees on the reeds.

The serpent crashes below the surface again, the water frothing with foam as it closes over the monster's massive head.

“Come on,” Griffin says, and jumps across to another platform of reeds. It's too dark to hurry, but I follow him. With every step I wait for the reeds to give way, for the icy water to envelop my body. But we never dip deeper than our knees as we struggle forward, our path lit by the eerie marsh lights.

The serpent's head lifts up again, but not as high as before, and now it's behind us. I wonder if the chimera venom is taking hold, if it's slowing him down. Black-tinted water streams out of its eye sockets as if it's crying black tears. But it can't see us, and its screeches can't bounce off the air like they can in the water to find us.

We stumble forward through the mud and the knee-deep water. And then the serpent dips below the surface, and it doesn't rise again.

I keep waiting for it to reappear, to shake the reeds below us as its sharp fangs bite into us. But the bite doesn't come, and soon the marsh is quiet and calm, a complete betrayal to what's lurking beneath the surface.

“You all right?” Griffin pants, and I nod. It's too much effort to respond. My hair is a cold, muddy tangle against my neck. My skirts drag with water and muck, the soaked karu fur tugging at the strings around my neck that choke me. My muscles ache and protest every step, and every breath comes out as a sputtering cough. How much water did I swallow? I wonder.

After a few more minutes, I manage to wheeze, “What...what was that?”

“Dark Leviathan,” he answers. “They're stronger and bigger than the Leviathans in the rivers and lakes. I thought Dark Leviathans only lived in the oceans, but...I guess I was wrong.”

So there are more of them on the earth, no matter what their size or strength. I shudder.

Thunder rolls in the distance, and before we know it, a cool rain is plummeting down on the marshlands. I can't get much more soaked than I am, but I shake in the bitter cold.

We're not counting steps anymore, and I can't see the mountains in the glittering lights around us. I have no idea how long or how far we've walked. It feels like the night's gone on for days. Griffin finally stops in front of me and points to a group of shadows looming on the left.

There are eight or nine thick tree trunks, so large that if we each hugged one side our hands wouldn't even touch. Four of them have rope ladders tossing in the wind and rain, and a fifth has a frayed rope that perhaps was once a ladder, as well. It's hard to see in the strobe of lights, but every ladder leads up to a structure like the one at the beginning of the marsh, each in a different state of disrepair. Some sort of small village had its life here, a group of small tree-dwellers eking out an existence in the marshes.

Griffin leads me to the tree that has the best surviving structure attached. He pulls on the rope ladder to test its strength and then tells me to wait while he checks it out. I nod, unable to answer because my teeth are chattering so badly.

He lifts his foot into the third rung and pulls himself upward, his movements numb and rigid like a doll's. When his right foot goes by, I see the dark ooze of blood that's plastered all over the back of his leg. “Griffin, you're hurt,” I say, but either he can't hear me over the pouring rain or I'm shivering too much for the words to come out coherently. Some of it could be the Dark Leviathan's blood, but there's a slice down the back of his leg that leaches with every step. How has he walked this far on it without me knowing?

He's at the top of the ladder now, and he pulls himself into the structure on his stomach. I wait for a minute, and then his head appears and he shouts at me. I assume he's telling me to climb, so I lift my weary legs and pull myself up with a last effort of strength that I didn't know I had. The rope ladder sways and twists as I try to climb, and the top seems so far away. At last Griffin is grabbing my arms and pulling me through the collapsed doorway of the tiny house, into the tangled branches of this ancient, gnarled tree.

The rain drums against the crumpled roof and leaks through a giant hole in the ceiling, but it's a relief to be able to sit down anywhere, especially in a place that is mostly sheltered from the wind and rain. The back wall is leaning forward, but in one piece, and the other three walls have gaping holes where there were once windows, doors or pieces of wall that were crushed by the caving roof. In the far corner, coated with rainwater, are smashed and cobwebbed basins and jugs of clay, and the splintered pieces of what may have been a chair.

We sit and catch our breath, our karu furs dripping onto the paneled wooden floor. I lean out the doorway and wring my skirts over the edge, and then I collapse backward, staring up at the crooked, unstable roof. I've never felt exhaustion like this. My legs and ribs burn like fire. Neither of us can speak, basking in the refuge of the tiny tree house.

I'm shivering in the cold, and I wrap my arms around myself, but it does little good.

“Here,” Griffin rasps, and his fingers go to the cloak string around my neck. His hands are shaking as he fumbles with the knot. The fur falls from my back like a brick I hadn't realized I was carrying. He unties his own cloak, and smooths it out on the floor to dry. “I'm not sure I can make a fire.”

“The only kindling we have is soaked,” I say, pointing to the wreckage of the wooden chair. We could maybe rip up some floorboards and burn those, but we might set the whole place on fire, or have it collapse in on us.

“It's not long until morning,” he says. “Try and get some rest, and the sun will warm us. The storms here are thunderous, but they're always over quickly.”

I remember the rain on my first night on earth, alone. It did come and go abruptly, and I hope this will be the same.

“Your leg,” I say, remembering.

“I could've lost it, without your help,” he says. He laughs, but it comes out as a sputter. “You must be thinking, ‘some monster hunter he is.'”

I'm not, not at all. That we survived a beast that giant is miraculous, a bounty from the Phoenix herself. I know she fueled the courage in me to swim toward Griffin in the water. I know she gave me the strength to walk all this distance. But then I remember that I can't be sure the Phoenix is watching over us at all, so all I say is, “Without you, I would've been eaten by the chimera.”

“I'm grateful to you, as well,” Griffin says. “You swam right at that Dark Leviathan with your dagger. I've never known such bravery from a fallen. You saved my life.”

His eyes are deep and lovely, even in the darkness surrounded only by the gleaming marshland outside. The hazel of them draws me in like the Phoenix's flame, healing the aching in my ribs and the pain in my legs. I don't feel quite as cold when I look into them. “Can I do anything for your leg?”

He shakes his head. “I think the main thing is to stay off it for a bit,” he says. “It doesn't look that deep, and if I made it this far, then it can't be too serious, right? I'll have a better look in the morning. Rest now.”