Phoenix Overture (8 page)

His legs did not come with him.

I gagged and wanted to look away, but even as I started to turn my head, the whites of his eyes flashed in the wan light.

“Sam.” His voice was nothing more than a breath; I had to lean close to hear him. “Help Stef. Be brave.”

“I—”

But the life faded from his eyes, and I didn’t know what I’d been about to say anyway. My chest ached and I couldn’t breathe. Dimly, over the roaring in my ears, I heard Stef screaming for me to look up.

A thunderclap overhead drew my gaze. It was the dragon, circling around to attack again.

Blind with tears and horror, I released my brother’s shoulders and grabbed Stef.

I hauled him up and dragged him several steps, him gasping and sobbing every second of it. A glob of acid exploded behind us, and pinpricks of burning dotted the back of my head and neck. With my bleeding hands and still-shaking arms, I adjusted my grip on Stef and dragged him toward the forest.

“Where’s Fayden?” His voice was rough with pain and fear as we entered the shelter of the forest and fell into his aunts’ arms. “What happened to Fayden?”

The words choked me. “My brother is dead.”

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.”

“SO YOU DIDN’T need to be freed?” I asked.

“I did.” Janan glanced at Meuric, who tucked a small silver box into his pocket. “Meuric obtained what was needed to free me. And I am sure you think he could have brought a smaller group here, to accomplish that. But I wanted
everyone
here.”

“How did you know what Janan wanted, Meuric?” I glanced at the young man, but he just smiled.

“I’ll explain everything when everyone else arrives.” And he did make us wait. Instead of answering our questions, Janan asked about our journey here.

Unable to contain my anger, I snarled, “We lost people. Hundreds. Thousands.” My fists were shaking at my side. “We traveled for months, and people
died
during that journey. People died as soon as we got here. My brother—”

I gasped for breath, struggling against the swarm of dizziness that filled my head. My heart wanted to curl and crumble under the weight of memories.

“I see,” Janan said. “Go on.”

“And now Stef is injured.” I blinked to clear my vision. “We’re all losing people. Because of this. Because of
you
.”

Stef flashed a wary look my way, a reminder that I was speaking to
Janan
. But our leader just nodded, like he cared how deeply we’d all been hurt.

When the crowd began to fill in, I put myself between them and Stef. He was quiet, and breathing hard even though we were standing still.

Help Stef. Be brave,
my brother had said.

The trickle of people began to slow. The numbers had gone from hundreds to thousands, and then so many my mind couldn’t begin to comprehend. Guards pushed through the crowd, dividing people into groups of a hundred so they could be counted. Others placed lit torches all around the area, casting flickering light over the assembly.

Meuric nodded at Stef and me. “In you go, boys. That group.”

With Janan watching from atop a platform someone had constructed for him, Stef and I moved into a crowd of other teenagers. I recognized Cris and Sarit, two girls slightly older than I was, and a girl named Julid who Stef thought was pretty.

“What’s going on?” whispered Julid.

“Everything is about to change,” I answered, because Stef was focused on standing; his fingers dug into my shoulder.

At last, the guards and Councilors finished their census. “A million,” reported Meuric. “There are just over a million of us.”

That was half the number we’d begun with in the Community months ago. Had we really lost so many people?

Janan nodded. “That will do.” He straightened himself on the platform and lifted his voice. “I need everyone to be silent. I need all of you to hear.”

The place within the white walls grew quiet, with only the wind in the trees, and the clap and spew of a geyser beyond the wall. No one moved. I doubted anyone even breathed.

“I left the Community,” Janan began, “to seek eternal life. And I found it. I found a way. But before I could return to you with this knowledge, I was stopped. Captured. Trapped here. Because our enemy does not want us to possess this knowledge.”

The crowd was so quiet.

“Now that you are here, however, we
can
defy death. While I’ve been trapped here by our enemies, I’ve had time to fully comprehend their secrets. Phoenixes live and die and then live again. They exist in a cycle of perpetual reincarnation—rebirth. I’ve learned the truth about immortality and how I can use their magic to make you like phoenixes.” Janan drew a long knife from his belt. It was steel, but in the flickering lights, it looked as though it had been dipped in gold. “And so you will be.”

“We’ll be reincarnated forever?” someone asked. “Like phoenixes?”

Janan shook his head. “Not forever. While you all live your lives, gain knowledge and experience, I will be working on something better.
True
immortality.”

That was impossible. Stef and I exchanged glances, both of us scowling. We lived, we suffered, and we died. That was the truth of our existence.

Still, a sliver of hope pierced me. Stef was dying. We both knew it. If reincarnation
were
possible . . .

“I see your doubts,” Janan went on. “Your uncertainty. So I’ll tell you more: when you’re reborn, you will forget everything from this lifetime.” He gazed around the ragged assembly. “From family to friends to work, you will forget it all. You will have to relearn skills, such as farming and building and fighting. There is no other way. But I beg you: do not look at this as a curse or punishment. See this as an opportunity. You will be new again. You’ll still be yourselves. Your experiences will still be part of you. What you went through to get here—that will not change. Your experiences will be engraved on your souls; there’s nothing anyone can do to change that. But you will not remember that hardship.

“See this as a second chance at life, this one unburdened by the pain and loss you’ve suffered. See this as a gift, a chance to pursue your dreams. You’ll be given dozens of lifetimes, and in the following ones you will retain your memories of those that came before. All of those lives will be enough to hone your skills in whatever you choose to do.”

The crowd was deathly quiet, but I was still shaking my head. Stef was, too. This wasn’t possible.

We would forget this night, the losses, and the long and dangerous journey. But not be free of it. If the experiences didn’t just
go away
, they could still haunt us for eternity. We just wouldn’t know why.

Assuming what he proposed was actually possible. Why did he need us to agree so badly? Why was this so important to him that he had to do everything in his power to convince us of the benefits?

I closed my eyes and breathed. I couldn’t imagine forgetting music, and the way it made my heart soar—made life bearable. Forgetting those moments in the concert hall with the piano, my mother encouraging me to play something. Forgetting the way my brother looked at me when he first heard my music, and the strange kindness he’d shown by taking an instrument for me to bring with us. So I wouldn’t be without music.

How could I agree to let go of those memories?

But to become new again? To forget? It might be a relief. I’d forget the pain of Mother’s loss, and Fayden’s death, and the terror of this short, brutal life. It could be worth it, being reincarnated. Having a chance to live without the burden of these haunting deaths.

If Janan told the truth, I’d have a second chance at life—more and more and more chances. And if Mother was right—if I did have music in my heart—surely I’d find my way back to it. I’d gain not just one lifetime of music, but a hundred. Maybe more.

And Stef . . . Stef might live.

“How?” The question was mine, like part of me thought Janan might actually be able to do this. “What is the cost?” I asked.

Good things always had a cost. My music meant Father hated me, even if he never knew about it. Growing close to my brother meant it hurt so much more when the dragon took him. Gaining a friend in Stef meant that if he died, I would have nothing left at all.

The cost for endless life had to be tremendous.

Janan leveled his gaze on me. His voice was somber. “There is a cost. You’re right. And it is a regrettable one. But you’ll never miss it. You’ll never know of its absence. When you die, I will hold on to your soul. I will ensure you are reborn. In exchange, I will take a new soul—a life never lived.”

My mouth fell open. “And what would you do with them? Those souls?”

Behind me, people shifted and muttered, but Janan raised his hand and the noises ceased. “I will . . . absorb their potential. Consume their power. And when I have enough power, I will return to you.”

He would
eat
them? How could anyone even
think
like that? Like it might be a good way to get
anything
done?

I wanted to be sick.

Stef shook his head, just slightly, and his voice was weak. When he whispered, I had to repeat his words: “This isn’t possible. None of it is. You’re talking about souls and magic, as if it’s anything we can actually touch.”

Janan spread his arms wide. “You live in a world with trolls and dragons and phoenixes—creatures that didn’t exist a hundred years ago. There
is
magic in the world. There’s magic right in front of you. This tower—that wall—wasn’t here until our enemies
created
it. This, what I am proposing, isn’t imaginary. It is real: an equal exchange of energy. Life for life.”

Silence flooded the area, thick and smothering. Undercurrents of fear threaded the crowd, with people shifting their weight, rubbing chills off their skin, and seeking out others’ gazes for comfort or support.

No. This wasn’t real. The imprisonment had driven him crazy. Horribly, disgustingly crazy.

“You must decide soon.” Janan glanced at the sky, and the moon dipping toward the horizon. Morning hovered beyond the snow-capped mountains.

Why was he rushing us?

“What happens if we say no?” The question came from far back in the crowd, barely audible. “What happens if we don’t agree to exchange new souls for ours?”

Janan’s smile was almost compassionate, almost understanding, but there was a hunger in his eyes that betrayed him. “You will not remember the exchange. Nor will the souls taken know what’s happening. They’ll be ignorant. After all, do you remember before you were born?”

I didn’t even remember being a baby, but I’d been alive then. My lack of memory of those years didn’t mean I hadn’t been aware of my own existence.

“But what happens if we say no?” the questioner asked again.

“You know what happens,” Li said, from where he stood on the outskirts of the assembly. “You were given a choice whether or not to leave the Community, those months ago. You all said yes. You took the challenge to come here. Those who did not . . .”

“They were killed.” My voice was heavy and stiff. “You killed them. You set the Community on fire.”

“We showed them mercy,” said Li. “They’d have died without us, but slower and more painfully. We made it quick so they would not suffer.”

“And anyone who says no now would receive the same
merciful
treatment?” I asked.

Someone sobbed. People whispered, “I don’t want to die,” and, “I just can’t.” Muttered debates broke out, filling the prison yard with fear and worry and guilt.

I looked at Stef, the way he slumped. Heat radiated off him, and sweat poured down his face and throat. He was barely conscious. “What do you think?” I asked.

He just groaned.

“Decide now,” shouted Janan. “Either embrace new life, or leave us.”

I straightened and peered across the crowd, watching as a few people walked away. I watched as Li and the other soldiers drew their swords and stabbed.

Screams erupted, but the guards shouted assurances: only those who tried to leave would be killed. Everyone else was safe.

As long as they said yes.

I should have walked away. I should have been that strong.

But I wasn’t. I’d seen the dangers of this world, the monsters both creature and human. I’d seen so much death. Didn’t I deserve a little bit of life now?

Maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe we’d say yes and nothing would happen, and our lives would go back to the terrifying struggle for survival of before. But Janan and his people would allow us to live, because we’d said yes.

We wouldn’t be slaughtered like the few who walked away.

It felt awful, agreeing to something like this, even if it wasn’t real. Even if Janan couldn’t keep his promise, deciding we would allow that kind of horror was just as bad as the crime.

Just as I was about to ask Stef what to do—what he wanted to do—he collapsed. His hand slipped from my shoulder and the crutch went flying. I dropped, too, but too slow to catch him, and he looked up at me with such fear in his eyes. “I don’t want to die, Sam.”

I didn’t want to die, either. Not after I’d finally learned to enjoy life again.

Thunder broke through the cacophony of discussion, of sobbing and uncertainty, and as one, a million people looked to the stars.

Dragons.

They filled the sky with their immense wings.

People shouted and wept, and Janan raised his voice as a door appeared on the side of the tower—a door that hadn’t been there before. “Stay outside if you want to die. But if you want the chance to live, follow me into the tower. I will make you into something new. Something incredible. And all of this terror will be forgotten. Let death be the beginning of new life!”

Some people pushed forward immediately, surging through the small door without a second thought.

Dragon thunder sounded again.

I’d been left behind enough to know the pain of abandonment—to know the all-consuming sorrow of loved ones dying. After everything he’d taken from us, Janan
owed
us a chance to survive.

People were rushing all around me. The crutch was gone, and Stef was barely conscious.

“Hang on,” I breathed, hating myself for what I was agreeing to. But I couldn’t lose Stef. Not if there was a chance to keep my best friend. My heart thrummed as I steeled myself and wrapped my arms around his torso. He screamed when I started to drag him, but I wasn’t strong enough to lift him completely. “I’m sorry.” The words were lost under the din of terror and dragon thunder as I wedged us into the crowd of people trying to get through the door. “I’m sorry.”

Together, Stef and I went into the tower.