The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn

  The dragon suddenly turned, his long head snapping sideways toward a brave battalion of soldiers that had been creeping forward. Grotenisk leveled his face toward them, dropping his hooked jaw right against the road.

  The soldiers immediately engaged, hurling spears and shooting bolts from heavy crossbows. The dragon waited a moment, letting the sharp projectiles wash over him. The bolts pierced his nose between those impenetrable scales. One spear found its mark, lodging in a soft spot beneath the creature’s blind eye.

  The attacks triggered no response from Grotenisk. Like a Moonsick human, Ard knew he could feel no pain. The sound of ringing metal echoed as the soldiers drew their swords.

  Grotenisk lashed out.

  He devoured the first two soldiers in a single bite, dismembered parts falling in a rain of blood to the street. The next man he smashed with his mighty chin, shattering bones with the weight of his massive head. The final two soldiers were making a hasty retreat when Grotenisk released a plume of fire with as little effort as a child blowing out a candle.

  The fire peeled out, precise, targeted. It struck the fleeing soldiers with such a blast that they were both thrown forward. The dragon held a stream of flames upon their downed bodies as they writhed and screamed. When at last they were still, the incinerating subsided and Grotenisk’s head swiveled back around, the spear hanging limply from his bloody eye.

  “Beast!” cried a voice from behind Ard. He glanced back at Oriar, who stood with broadsword extended in challenge. “Your destruction tonight is over! Behold, my Paladin Visitant comes to save us all!”

  The man on the landing dropped his head, eyes squinting shut again. But Ard remained unseen in the cloud of Shadow Grit.

  Captain Oriar. The Folly of Beripent. His bravado against the dragon was misplaced. The Grit had already been detonated. No verbal summoning would call forth a Paladin Visitant.

  As long as Ard remained hidden within the cloud of blackness, Oriar would fail. He would flee, and Grotenisk would lay waste to the Old Palace. His fires would rage on. There were still so many people destined to die from Grotenisk’s destruction.

  The dragon himself would kill a thousand people tonight. Ard couldn’t put out the fires with his presence, but he could stop the monster.

  A thousand deaths.

  Ardor Benn could prevent those. He could make Oriar a success. All he had to do was shout the dragon’s name. Ard’s voice, out of sync with this time, would be picked up by the dragon’s enhanced hearing, and Grotenisk would wither in flames. Captain Oriar would be a worthy hero. But with that, the timeline would reset, extinguishing everyone and everything in Ard’s world. He couldn’t let that happen.

  A thousand deaths now for millions of lives later.

  Ard told himself that these people were already dead. The five soldiers Grotenisk had just obliterated had already died two hundred and fifty-two years ago. Things couldn’t be changed. They shouldn’t be changed. This was supposed to happen.

  But his justifications felt empty upon hearing the chorus of screams ringing through the city. These people were dying now, for the first time. Ard had the power to help them. To stop any further desolation. But that was not why he had come. He must let them die again, in the exact same manner as they had in the history books. It was the only way to preserve the future timeline. To preserve the good that existed in the world that Ard had left.

  I’m sorry, Ard thought as Grotenisk advanced.

  Oriar stumbled backward as the dragon reared up, drawing a huge breath of air that caused his broad chest to expand to a terrifying size. This was it. This was the blast that would fertilize the egg hiding at the base of the stairs. The only problem was, the same rush of fire would no doubt incinerate Ard.

  His hand flashed to his belt, unclipping the two remaining Grit pots. Ard dropped into a crouch on the stairs, slamming the ceramic pots against the stone between his feet. Two detonation clouds formed simultaneously, both of them just large enough to surround Ard’s crouched figure, leaving the gelatinous egg unprotected on the steps in front of him.

  The first was Barrier Grit. The cage that formed around him was tight, making Ard feel claustrophobic as he couldn’t stand up within its confines. The Barrier Grit would protect him against Grotenisk’s flames, but not the heat of the fire. He had essentially created an inescapable oven in which any exposure to Grotenisk’s fury would bake him.

  That was why the second pot contained Compounded Cold Grit. The temperature within the cloud plummeted instantly as the Grit ignited. Ard gasped, a sharp intake of breath at the nip of iciness against his skin. It was strange to see his flesh aflame with the power of a Paladin Visitant, and yet feel so cold.

  The Grit clouds were layered around him, a complex interweave of the best defenses Ard could hope for. The largest was the Visitant Grit that both he and Oriar had detonated, though done at different times. Within that cloud was the blast of Shadow Grit, still concealing him and the unfertilized egg from the eyes of anyone living in the past. And within the Shadow Grit, Ard himself was hunched under a protective cloud of Barrier Grit and surrounded by a blast of Compounded Cold.

  The bull dragon dropped once more onto his forelegs, and with the impact of touching down, released a tremendous gush of flames from deep within his scaly body. The fire rushed forward like a living thing, swirling and leaping its way up the palace steps.

  Ard flinched, his eyes shutting though he knew the fire could not pass through the outer edge of the Barrier cloud. The temperature began to increase until sweat formed on Ard’s forehead despite the active Cold Grit.

  After a second, he dared to open his eyes. Encased within his cloud of safety, Ard was at the heart of a fiery storm. Reds and yellows, with streaks of blues, greens, and whites, surrounded him on all sides. It was a tapestry of color, heat, and destruction, woven before his very eyes while he crouched unnoticed at its heart.

  It was bright. So bright he could barely keep his eyes open. Ard peered downward, desperate to see how the gelatinous egg was faring in this oppressive fire. If it were anything else, he would have expected it to burn to cinders, reduced to ash. But Grotenisk’s fire was precisely what this egg needed to spring alive and flourish.

  He resisted the urge to cry out, though he doubted his voice could be heard in the torrent of flame. Then suddenly, the fury was past. The brightness of the fire gave way to the darkness of night, leaving Ard blinking madly as his eyes adjusted. Half-blinded, he saw Grotenisk leap forward, wings unfurling just enough to bear him up the palace steps.

  The beast landed behind Ard, the serpentine tail draping across the stairs, hardly more than arm’s reach from where Ard was crouched. There was a cracking of timber and stone as the dragon began to force his massive figure into the Old Palace.

  Oriar was gone, retreated inside the building. He would survive the night, though his future was grim due to the negative response he’d receive for failing with the Grit.

  Little did history know that Oriar was no failure. A Paladin Visitant had indeed come to his detonation. He had not saved them from Grotenisk the Destroyer. But in a way, Grotenisk’s destruction of the past would save all mankind in the future.

  Something changed suddenly. It was still dark around Ard, but the fires in the streets winked out abruptly. The buildings were gone, replaced with dark trees. And the frightening dragon vanished along with the palace he was destroying.

  There were still shouts around him, a skirmish of bodies in the darkness. Ard couldn’t see clearly from where he crouched on the steps, and he couldn’t stand due to the frigid Barrier still shrouding him.

  “Ardor!”

  His name! Someone had shouted his name. The cry could only mean one thing. He had returned to the present. And the present still knew him!

  The speaker was Quarrah Khai, racing to the steps as a full-scale battle waged behind her. Sparks, what was Quarrah doing here?

  She paused beside an object that Ard first mistook for a sculp
ted stone. It was round, oblong, and perfectly smooth. In the flickering torchlight, he saw the amber color, a glossy sheen to its surface.

  It was the egg. No longer gelatinous, but fertilized into an exterior shell, a nearly indestructible cradle of life.

  He wanted to reach out and touch it, but his detonation clouds still held him prisoner—an egg of his own.

  “I don’t understand …” Quarrah muttered.

  “We have to move the egg,” Ard said, impatient for the Grit to burn out around him. “We have to get it out of the Char. Away from these people.”

  “Lyndel is fetching the wagon.” Quarrah seemed distanced from him. As if it wasn’t just the Barrier cloud separating them.

  “Quarrah, I shouldn’t have sent you away.” Ard’s jaw shivered at the pocket of cold that enveloped him. “I should have told you what I was doing tonight.”

  “It’s who you are.” Quarrah looked small next to the massive fertilized egg, as though four of her could have fit comfortably within that mighty shell.

  “It’s not who I want to be,” Ard said. “I need you.”

  “You need me to do what?” Quarrah replied flatly.

  “It’s not like that …” Ard tried. Sparks, they didn’t have time for this conversation now. Couldn’t Quarrah see how he felt for her? His feelings weren’t part of any clever game or ruse.

  Lyndel suddenly appeared, leading the horse and wagon with the Drift crate. “Ardor!” she called. “My people cannot hold much longer.”

  “We have to get the egg away from the Char,” Ard replied. “We have to get it as far away from the city as we can.”

  “We have to get it to Pekal,” Quarrah whispered.

  Ard shook his head. “That’s not up to us.”

  “What do you mean?” Quarrah cried. “Who else is going to do it?”

  “We just have to get it out into the fields.” Ard needed to tell her everything. Quarrah deserved to know. But there would be time enough for that conversation on the wagon ride out of Beripent.

  “Quarrah,” Lyndel called. “Give me help.” The priestess had positioned the Drift crate beside the fertilized egg, hatch open to receive it. A pot shattered on the ground, and Ard saw a detonation cloud envelop the solid egg.

  Quarrah grunted in frustration and turned away from Ard to help Lyndel with the precious load. Ard watched helplessly from his confines, his breath coming out in frosty plumes as he shivered against the Compounded Cold Grit.

  Something slapped against the Barrier cloud behind him, causing Ard to whirl on his knees. A familiar face was peering in at him, hands pressed against the Barrier’s solid perimeter, as though attempting to push it aside.

  “Sparks, Elbrig!” Ard cried. “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”

  “It was easy,” the man replied. “I followed the sounds of utter chaos.”

  Elbrig was dressed in the manner that Ard was most familiar with—the appearance he had used when tutoring Ard to become Dale Hizror. Had Elbrig come to help the Trothians fight?

  “We did it, Elbrig,” Ard whispered. “Do you see that?” He gestured toward the fertilized dragon egg that Quarrah and Lyndel were sliding into the Drift crate.

  “I’ve come to tell you something,” Elbrig replied.

  “That’s a dragon egg,” Ard persisted. “A fertilized bull. Do you realize what this means?”

  “Listen to me, Ardy!” Elbrig’s voice was stern. “There’s something you need to know. Something very important.”

  What could possibly be more important than securing the egg to the back of the wagon? Ard was becoming accustomed to mind-boggling revelations. After what he’d learned about Moonsickness, the Homeland, and the Paladin Visitants, what could Elbrig Taut possibly say to Ardor Benn that would even give him pause?

  “Raekon is alive.”

  Ard’s Barrier cloud burned out, but he didn’t move. The Compounded Cold Grit expired, but he still felt frozen. Elbrig’s words rattled in Ard’s head.

  “What?” he finally mustered.

  “Raekon Dorrel is alive,” Elbrig repeated. “The king must have found a way to preserve his life after you left the reception hall. He’s being kept in the palace dungeon.”

  “What?” Ard muttered again. Surely this was some deception. “You’re certain it was him?”

  “Pah!” Elbrig scoffed. “I’d know that big oaf anywhere. He’s one of a kind.”

  Ard was shaking, his face suddenly wet with tears. Could this be true? What reason would Elbrig have to lie to him?

  “What can we do?” Ard could barely form the words.

  “He’s under heavy guard,” Elbrig replied. “It’ll be nearly impossible to extract him. He’s still very weak.”

  Ard let out a choked sob, overwhelmed by the sudden elation that swept him up as a rising tide. It was like coming up for air after a dive that had nearly drowned him. For a second, Ard forgot about timelines, dragon eggs, and the fate of all mankind. He let himself hover in a moment of relief and euphoria. Then he came down, his mind racing, spinning, his focus kicking in and the fervor within him burning fiercely.

  Plans. He needed a plan to rescue his friend before it was too late. If Pethredote had saved Raek from the brink of death, it was probably because he wanted to question him about the Visitant Grit. Raek’s usefulness would run out if the king got word of Ard’s detonation tonight.

  Ard glanced over at Quarrah and Lyndel. The two women had successfully loaded the cargo, and they were just checking the straps to make sure the Drift crate would ride safely on the wagon.

  It suddenly became perfectly clear what Ard needed to do. Like all his best ideas, it took the threads of multiple problems and wove them into one simple solution.

  King Pethredote.

  Justice.

  The egg.

  Raekon Dorrel.

  The plan was sheer recklessness—risky and ultimately selfish. But wasn’t this kind of plan Ardor Benn’s specialty? He shut his eyes, thinking through every angle, chasing down every possible variable. Yes, it was a gamble, but sparks, if it worked—and it would work …

  Ard looked at Elbrig Taut. “I need you to do something for me.”

  The disguise manager raised an eyebrow. “You’ve got that brazen look in your eye, Ardy. You won’t be any good to Raekon if you’re dead. And there’s no way you can get into the palace alone.”

  “I won’t be alone.” Ardor Benn glanced skyward, into the dark night. “She’s coming.”

  I write this blindly. In terms of both eyesight and faith. Would that I could see what impact my actions will have.

  CHAPTER

  43

  Quarrah had heard Ard explain some pretty outlandish things … but this was beyond compare. Traveling through time?

  Ard had told her everything that he’d learned from King Pethredote as they drove the wagon out of the Char. He paused only once to ignite more Drift Grit in the crate to reduce the weight of the payload.

  Quarrah couldn’t wrap her mind around it. On its own, the concept of time travel was complex, convoluted. And Ard had managed to take it one step further by cheating time itself. He had obviously succeeded. Had the timeline been reset, as Pethredote cautioned, none of this would be happening. History would have unraveled differently, and Quarrah might never have crossed paths with Ardor Benn.

  Would that have been a better life for her? Perhaps in that life, she would have had parents to care for her. Perhaps in that life, she would have found joy in more wholesome things, and her thrill for thieving would never have flourished.

  “And the egg?” Quarrah asked, as Ard drew the wagon to a halt in the dark street. “Why do we need to get it out of the city?”

  “We don’t.”

  “But you said—”

  “Plans change,” he cut her off. “This is as far as we’re taking the egg.”

  They were in the middle of a Beripent neighborhood in the Western Quarter. Regulators would definitely be patrolling
this area. They couldn’t leave it here!

  “We have to get it back to Pekal,” Quarrah insisted. “So it can hatch.”

  Ard shook his head. “The sows have a sense. A maternal sense,” he began. “When one of her eggs is fertilized, she knows it. She traverses Pekal to find the spot where the bull fertilized it. And when she does, she takes the egg to a nest and nurtures it until the hatchling emerges.”

  Quarrah stared at Ard in the dark street, the horse stamping its hooves on the cobblestones behind her. “You think she’s coming here?” she whispered. “The mother. You think she’ll leave Pekal to get her egg from Beripent?”

  She glanced back at the Drift crate lashed to the wagon. She now understood Ard’s original urgency to get the egg out of the city. Sparks, if the sow dragon was really coming, her arrival would turn this city upside down. But why had Ard changed his plan?

  “It’s forty-five miles from Pekal to Beripent,” Ard explained. “Pekal itself is twice that far across. If a sow can sense her egg over that distance, then she should be able to span the InterIsland Waters.”

  “Forty-five miles,” Quarrah muttered. “How fast does a dragon fly?”

  “Fast. It’s impossible to know how long it will take her instinctual sense to kick in,” said Ard. “But I imagine she’ll be here within the hour.”

  “Then why are we leaving it here?” Quarrah cried. “We need to let the mother take it back to Pekal. This thing has to hatch, Ard. Otherwise, everything we did will have been in vain.”

  “I know,” said Ard. “But I have one more card up my sleeve.”

  “This …” Quarrah leapt from the driving bench to land face-to-face with him on the street. “This is the problem.” She jabbed him in the chest with two fingers. “You’ve done this since the moment I met you, Ardor Benn. All I can figure is that it gives you some twisted sense of pleasure to feel like the only person who knows what’s going on.”