The Majestic
The smell of the salt and the light sound of the churning sea brought me back. I was tied to the railing on the deck of a ship, sitting in the hot sun of late afternoon and looking down into the deep purple of the Northos. A squinted look up showed the blue sails of the royal transport ship.
"So you're not going to miss it after all," Jhoma despaired somewhere behind me, though I couldn't turn enough to see him. My hands were tied to the railing tight with rope. Rope?
"Where's Khasla?"
"Here, but no help to you if that's what you're after."
"Why not? What did they do?"
"A copper band around my wrist. It prevents me from using my Spark." I looked down around my own wrists and found nothing there.
"You don't have one. You're not a threat." Khasla felt an interesting mix of pride and torment at being the only member of our group with the copper band.
"Can't even escape," Jhoma mumbled loudly, clearly still sore about me leaving them behind. I guess I couldn't blame him, but it wasn't like there had been an alternative.
"Micha?"
"Here." His voice sounded farther away than the others, but at least he was still with us.
"Tototl alive." He sounded afraid and reserved, like a man who knew his fate would come soon.
"What am I going to miss?"
"Nothing now that you're awake. We're almost there," Khasla continued. Since no one seemed keen on offering up any information, I drew a thread to Khasla and got nothing. Apparently his copper bracelet blocked me as well. I sent a thread to Micha instead and found him similarly tied to the rail at the very front of the ship, watching as the docks of Chimalma came into view.
"Why are we going back there?" I asked without thinking.
"To be killed. Obviously," said Jhoma.
I scanned Micha's thoughts and was surprised to see he had watched Khea get boarded onto the same ship. She was there, on that very ship, no more than fifty feet away from me. I couldn't get a read from her thread, but it was comforting to know she was so close. Then again, maybe I didn't want her to be anywhere near me if I was about to be sacrificed.
I twisted and pulled at my wrists to see if I could somehow get loose like I had before, but the ropes were tight enough to be one the verge of cutting off the blood supply rather than offer some chance of getting out. I remembered my last escape attempt and its decidedly-poor outcome, but I only found dried blood stuck to my leg. There was no sign of the injury from the spear.
Less than an hour later, the wind pushed us right up to the docks. Khea was carefully unloaded first, pulled up from the lower deck by the guard with a scar and giving me a sorrowful glance over her shoulder. Her devastating beauty mixed with the anguish of her features hit me like a punch to the gut. The soldier quickly escorted her along the streets to somewhere beyond my sightline; my position toward the rear of the ship only let me watch her for a few hundred feet before she disappeared behind the buildings.
The queen was escorted off the ship next, and I couldn't believe my eyes when she swung her legs over a sand colored horse that could only be Jasper. Someone had gone through a lot of trouble to rescue her from the Turtle. I began to wonder if Obsidian was alive somewhere as well, but seeing as how I would be dead soon, it didn't seem to matter.
Guards came for us next, severing the ropes that held us to the railing and walking us in the direction Khea and the queen had gone. I attempted to ask the guard where he was taking us, though I wasn't surprised when he didn't answer.
As the sun began to set behind the structures of the city, we arrived at our final destination. The center of the city held at least ten thousand chanting, excited people surrounding an ancient, stone tower that stretched high into the sky. It was a building with a design similar to the queen's palace: stairs surrounded each side from the bottom to the very top. A look at the top revealed a small platform where something was sure to happen soon.
One by one the guards pulled us to the base of the tower and secured our rope-bound wrists to a long chain strung between two wooden posts. There were two men there who looked to have fifty or sixty seasons, one of them having a white beard so long it touched the ground where he sat patiently. Khasla and Jhoma were tied next to them, followed by Micha, then me and Tototl at the end. I didn't know what was about to happen, but I had a strong idea I wasn't going to like it. I gave a strong pull on the chain to test it, to look for any sign of weakness that might be exploited to allow us to get free. Sadly, the post never moved.
We stood, attached helplessly to the chain, for a while as the crowd grew even more to fill every space in the square, with Nakbens sitting on roofs and leaning out the windows of the surrounding buildings. As we waited, I noticed there was a space on the front side of the tower that the crowds avoided, and it seemed to give up an orange glow to the storm clouds that were beginning to gather above.
I scanned for a thread I could connect and found a few people with weaker bracelets that stood nearby. It was a large opening, about twenty feet across, that accessed the volcano underneath the city. The orange glow was cast by the magma that had yet to surge out over the ground. It immediately clicked. That's how Xiuhpilli is going to kill us.
Thunder rolled across the square, lightly shaking the ground and getting the attention of the swarm of Chimalmans gathered in the square. A moment later, apparently cued by the thunder or some other signal, the crowd quieted. I realized Xiuhpilli was standing at the top of the tower and shouting to project her words.
"Tonight, our Nakben tribes become stronger than ever before." I could barely see her at the top of the tower that rose up next to me, but could imagine her smug expression as she waited for the cheers to quiet. "Tonight, we unite the hawk and the tiger, the immune and the powerful. Tonight, we produce Tonani!"
The people shouted and hugged each other excitedly, as if it was the best news they'd ever heard.
Just then, a blonde girl with a large, feathered headdress was pulled to the top of the tower to stand next to Xiuhpilli. Khea. An enormous Nakben man followed behind her and looked like he stood at least two feet over her. The tiger.
"First, we make our offerings to Chichiton." The two older men were released from the chain that held us and gingerly pulled up the steps. There were enough steps that I wondered if they even had the strength to make it. The guards were quite gentle and patient considering the circumstances, letting the men take their time. Several minutes later, the two men arrived at the top and kneeled at the front of the platform.
"Chichiton, you make us strong, and we give you our weak." With a hard kick to the back, Xiuhpilli pushed the first man over the edge and didn't wait to watch him fall before kicking the second. Both tumbled down the hundreds of steps before disappearing into the orange glow. It was a horrific site to watch, and even more terrifying considering our vantage point. I never gave much thought to the specifics of my death, but plummeting into a pit of liquid rock was certainly never a consideration.
"Now, the hawk and the tiger." The queen turned to address Khea and the huge man, trying to get them to get closer. Each time the tiger tried to move close to her, she would take a step out of his way and stand to the side of him. They performed the strange dance for a minute before, Xiuhpilli addressed the crowd again.
"The hawk requires another offering." Before the words had even carried across the square, two guards were pulling Khasla from the chain amidst our screams and cries to leave him. He fought with them all the way to the top, almost escaping them once. Of course, there was nowhere to go. Even if he reached the bottom, there were more guards waiting.
I connected Khasla's thread to get an idea of the situation on the platform. How many guards were there, where was Khea, how could he get away. The platform itself was made of the same dark stones as the rest of the tower and lacked any kind of a rail to prevent someone from falling over the edge. Khea huddled nervously in one corner, careful to keep her distance from the tiger, whil
e Xiuhpilli turned towards Khasla.
Pushed to his knees in the same spot as the first two, Khasla maneuvered the ropes enough that he could barely pull off the copper cuff away from his skin just as Xiuhpilli pulled a long hand knife from her sandal. Khasla had no idea, thinking maybe she would just push him like the others and too occupied with his work at the cuff. He didn't realize she would slide her blade neatly between his ribs and puncture his heart until the metal blade protruded from his chest.
"No!" Micha, Jhoma, and I screamed in unison, though the crowds cheered so loud I doubt if anyone heard. If any of us could have gotten out of this, it was Khasla. He could control fire, so death by fire was a little harder to achieve for him. If any of us had a chance of living beyond the next hour, it was him. And he had been the first to die.
Fiery heat radiated from my chest where my brain registered a blade between my ribs. The pain overwhelmed until I struggled to sort out which thoughts were mine and which had been from Khasla's thread. I clutched at my bare chest to remove the blade, only none was there.
A blaze of lightning flew across the sky as Xiuhpilli turned back to Khea, who continued to step away from the tiger. The queen clearly hoped watching her friends be sacrificed would convince the hawk to go along with coupling with the tiger on a platform in front of thousands. I was relieved to see she wasn't giving up, but terrified to know what that meant for the rest of us.
The tiger took a large step towards Khea, but she quickly darted to the side and skirted the edge of the platform. Xiuhpilli moved right into her path and grabbed the meat of her upper arm. Khea shot out her foot in response, striking the queen square on the bone of her lower leg and prompting her swift release.
"The hawk requires another offering." The queen's voice was laced with irritation, though it was hard to tell with the volume from the crowd.
Without hesitation, the soldiers released Jhoma from the chain and all but carried him up the steps to the platform at the top of the tower. He was pushed to his knees, but immediately jumped to his feet again. He thought he could surprise the queen, avoid what had happened to Khasla, but he didn't realize he was only going to meet Xiuhpilli's knife in his gut and fall hundreds of feet into the pit. That time, I had cut the thread soon enough to prevent feeling as if the knife had sunk into my own chest, but it hardly mattered. I had nothing left but pain and fear. Micha didn't scream out; he looked over at me with horrified eyes instead.
I connected his thread, though it was so loud in the square I could scarcely hear my own thoughts-much less someone else's. But Micha had been in my mind long enough that I could sense him regretting Isuet learning that he had died; knowing how close they were-and how sad she would be to lose him-he mirrored my emotions for Khea.
"Lark-"
"Micha, I'm so sorry I left you in Uxmal. I should have taken you with me." It was my last opportunity to tell him how much I hated myself for getting him into this, and how disappointing I had been in terms of getting him out. I was a useless friend to him, and now I had gotten him killed.
"It wouldn't have mattered."
I knew he was right. We were both tied to a chain waiting to be pushed into a pit of lava, but it hardly made me feel better about leaving him behind. I shouldn't have left any of them.
Xiuhpilli turned again to Khea with the knife raised this time, obviously becoming annoyed at the lack of cooperation in front of her people. Even at the large distance, I could see her slicing the air in front of Khea and once seemed to hit the mark, as Khea grabbed her arm and dropped to the stone floor of the platform. The tiger rushed over, but she pushed away and stood to avoid him again. How long can this go on?
"The hawk requires another offering." Xiuhpilli sounded aggravated, but all my thoughts were concentrating on Micha. No. No. No.
Not Micha. Anyone but him. My only real friend. We had been through so much since we met in the back of the cart in the Creekmont. We had the bear. There had to be a way out of this.
Micha fought hard as he was dragged up the steps. His size gave him an advantage, but each guard he pushed off him was just replaced by another. This is actually going to happen. I was going to watch my best friend die. My screams to spare him were lost in the chants from the crowd. I made a last futile effort to pull the rope from the chain, or the chain from the posts, or even the posts from the ground. Anything to save him. Tototl heaved his shoulder into one of the posts, but still it didn't move. There was nothing we could do.
After several arduous minutes, the guards managed to get Micha to the platform and kneeling on the edge. I was surprised to see Khea throw her arms around him, attempting to block the queen from pushing him over. She had known him as long as I had, and they were good friends. She would feel the same when he died.
The tiger effortlessly grabbed her wrists and pulled her back for a moment, long enough for Xiuhpilli to slice her long bladed knife through his neck before watching as his head bounced down the steps followed by the slow rolling of his lifeless body. NO!
Tears burst from my eyes and streamed down my face in an instant. Micha! It had to be a dream. A nightmare I was going to wake from at any moment. My knees gave out below me and I crashed to the ground nearly hitting my head on the stones but barely able to see anything else. My mind replayed the horror of the moment over and over again.
I don't know how long I lay crumpled on the ground, but the next thing I knew the guards were pulling me up the steps as well. All the anger I possessed surged up after watching Micha be killed by the queen we came to warn. I quickly made up my mind. If I accomplished nothing else, I was going to make sure she died before I did.
There was nothing left to do except walk calmly up the mountain of steps, pushing my anguish into a deep and dark place inside and waiting for the right moment to strike. I would take Xiuhpilli out with me, and it would be the last thing I ever did. A few drops of rain found their way to my face as I climbed the stairs, the sky matching my own sense of doom.
At the top of the platform, the ground looked farther than I would have thought. The tiger was as huge as I had suspected, and Khea looked lovely-even with blood streaming down her rope bound arms and her cheeks covered in the trails of her tears.
"Ladybird," I called out to her, ignoring everyone else around me. We were going to have one more moment together. Our eyes locked just as they had at the Moonwater, the last site of her I would ever get.
The guards pushed me onto my knees and walked away. I hoped Xiuhpilli would drag out my sacrifice, knowing I would be the one to make Khea give in, if anyone could at all. The extra few seconds would be all I needed.
When the guards had started down the steps, I quickly spun and stood and found myself face-to-face with the tiger. Just as the queen had said, he was immune to my Spark, but if he was going to protect the queen then he was going to die tonight. I raised my rope-bound hands to his gut as I saw Khea lunging toward Xiuhpilli out of the corner of my eye.
The tiger took the hit but seemed less bothered than I would have hoped. He returned my hits with punches of his own, and I was dismayed to learn he was my even match. He was slow where I was quick, but he was far stronger than me. Unfortunately, I just didn't have time to hash it out to the end. Khea was in danger, and the tiger needed to be dealt with quickly. I made every effort to get it done with.
But he just wouldn't go down. He wouldn't back up, he wouldn't fall from a hit. He was wasting what little time I had left in this life, and I couldn't let him spoil my murderous plan for the queen.
As one of the guards climbed onto the platform, I planted a kick in his chest and turned to hit the tiger again, not noticing how the guard fell into the next guard and knocked them both down the steep steps. The next guard that breached the edge of the platform was struck by a gruesome flash of lightning that was nearly blinding in the otherwise dark and rainy sky.
All my anger at having Khea taken from me, at their plan for her, and Micha's murder boiled up from i
ts deep place and found its way to the surface. The tower itself seemed to shake beneath us, and a moment later I realized it was shaking in earnest. The next guard appeared over the edge of the platform but couldn't get his footing on the rumbling stones. He caught the edge of a stone with his sandal just in time for my punch to land and send him backwards over the edge. He didn't go down on the side with the pit, but the fall would kill him regardless.
The stones that made up the tower began to shake enough to separate, creating wide chasms between them that were deep enough to lose a foot in. I managed to easily dodge the gaps somehow, even as the stones wriggled and bucked beneath my feet. I dropped to a crouch and flung my leg out to drop the tiger to the stone floor, but he merely stumbled back and recovered in an instant.
The tiger wasn't thrown off balance from the shaking, but he was going to die. I could feel the anger and hatred flare up inside me as my time continued waste away. I should be helping Khea. The tiger was a monster I didn't have time for. The sky lit up with blue and purple that mixed with the orange glow of the molten rock in the pit-and the flashes of lightning that struck the sides of the tower-giving an ominous atmosphere to the intense scene.
A second later, the tiger stopped fighting; instead, he stood still and looked down at his hands like he'd never seen them before-then he burst into flame. Not the fabric covering his waist or his hair really, but his skin itself was on fire. He let out a blood curdling scream as he threw his burning arms at his chest trying to put the flames out. The tiger didn't last long; a few seconds later, he dropped to the stone floor in a pile of ash as the flames went out.
I turned to see Khea and the queen holding both pairs of hands around the hilt of the single long-bladed knife, oblivious to the death of the tiger and both trying to keep their footing amidst the rumbling stones. A guard appeared behind me and attempted to hold my arms to my chest, but struggled to get me completely under his control.
"Your tiger is dead," I shouted as I turned to punch the guard square in the face. The revelation had the desired effect: distracting the queen long enough for Khea to forcefully sink the blade into her chest.
The guard stopped to watch Khea kill Xiuhpilli, giving me the chance to push him back just as another bolt of lightning struck down. When the queen lay lifeless on the ground, Khea pulled the long blade out of her chest and drove it in again, over and over, until blood splattered her arms and face.
"Ladybird," I said running over to her. She didn't seem to hear me as she continued the mutilation of the fallen queen.
"Ladybird," I said more quietly the second time, standing behind her with a hand on her shoulder. She turned, suddenly, to look at me with tears streaming down her face. Her hands flew up and wrapped around my neck tightly, and I lifted her off the stones as the world seemed to quiet.
A sharp breath plunged in as I struggled to comprehend that I was actually holding her again; her skin was pressed firmly against mine and the warmth of her flesh radiated through me-just as I had dreamt so many times in the last few weeks. I had to concentrate to remember where we were and what was going on around us. By the time I opened my eyes, I knew it was too late.
Guards began to approach the platform from every side, having an easier time of it since the shaking of the stones had stopped and rain had lessoned considerably. It quickly became clear that we were surrounded. I set Khea back down on the ground, prepared to fight off as many as I could.
I should have known there was no need. She used the bloody blade to cut the ropes from her wrists and pull the copper bands away from her skin, releasing the full range of her abilities.
The guards neared us on all sides but, in a moment of what must have been hallucination, they each stopped to kneel and place their knives on the stone platform.
"What's going on?" I asked her.
"I don't know. I can't read them." Without waiting for an answer, Khea lowered the platform to the ground, crumpling the stone monument like paper. A few guards that had been climbing the tower had only seconds to find a way back down before they were crushed.
Once our feet were firmly planted in the soil, the orange glow of the pit receded, and I knew she had cooled it. I pulled her over to where Tototl was still chained and looking shocked to still be alive.
"My queen," he said when he was free, imitating the kneel the guards had shown.
I opened his thread and found the reason for all the kneeling: Nakben law considers the queen to be the successor, whether by election or combat. Khea had killed Xiuhpilli to save herself, but in the process she had unknowingly declared herself queen of the island nation.
The crowd that had gathered to witness the grand event could only stand in shock as Khea, Tototl, and I made our way back to the docks. Chimalmans kneeled on both sides of the street as we walked for several minutes. Children danced around us in circles through the mud as the rain subsided.
We had only been in the city square for less than an hour, but it had been enough to change our lives completely. I held Khea's hand firmly in mine as we walked to the ship with blue sails and climbed aboard. Tototl selected several guards to operate the royal transport ship and quickly got us underway, for which we were all very thankful.
Khea and I slipped into one of the two rooms below deck and closed the door. At once, her hands flew around my neck again, and, for the first time since the Turtle, I had the opportunity to just stand and appreciate how good it felt to be near her again. I found a cloth and a jug of fresh water to gently wipe away the dried blood that dotted her chest and arms, and even a bit of her face. There was a long slick of dried blood down one arm from the knife wound, but she had healed it since then; the dark mark was all that remained. It took several minutes to get her cleaned up, but it gave me the chance to look at her, at every square inch of her, and take in all I had missed. Her blond hair fell over her otherwise bare chest in a look that I found I liked on her.
"How did you figure out how to block me?" she asked quietly a few minutes later.
"You gave me the ring. I thought that's what it was for."
"But you're not wearing it." I knew the ring couldn't be seen by others, but surely Khea could see it, since she had been the one to charm it. I reached down and pulled it off my hand and set it in her palm.
"How'd you do that?"
"How should I know? You're the one with all the tricks." I teased her as I pushed her back onto the bed and kissed her forehead. I thought back to the tiger bursting into flame and marveled at how she could accomplish it even with the wrist cuffs limiting her Spark.
"I didn't do that to the ring. Or the tiger." She sent me her memory, her version of the events, and it didn't include any attempts to incinerate anyone. Instead, she desperately wanted to use her impeded abilities to prevent anyone else from dying; she had been truly blocked by the copper bands. But if it wasn't her, then who? Surely Khasla didn't come back from the grave to do it.
At the thought of Khasla, I couldn't help but think of Jhoma, and then Micha, to picture his head rolling off his shoulders and plunging into the pit. Fresh tears streamed down my face as the memory resurfaced. I knew that men weren't supposed to cry, to be weak, especially in front of a woman, but the events were too traumatic to be held back. Khea's hands were quickly on my cheeks as she slid her body to lie next to mine and release tears of her own. For a long time, we just cried over the friends we lost and the agony of their deaths.
"Lark, if I could have-"
"I know. It's not your fault." It was Xiuhpilli's fault, and Khea had killed her. There was nothing left for it, except to keep their memories alive and let time heal us.
We just lay in bed for a while longer before she said, "It was you."
"What was?" She sent me my own vision of the tiger bursting into flames and collapsing into a pile of ash.
"Come on. I'm not a Striker." She nodded and smiled at me.
And this, too. Again, she sent me my own memory, this time the
tower shaking and throwing a guard over the side. After that came Micha's memory of removing the bandage from my shoulder, looking at the small scars that had formed in a week, and wondering how I might have healed so quickly. I winced as I remembered how comfortable I had been with Micha's thoughts, and how I would never sense him again.
"Oh, so now I'm a Healer, too?" I was almost laughable, except it made me a little concerned for what had happened to her over the last few weeks.
"Lark Davies, I am not crazy." Oops. I had gotten too used to having my thoughts to myself.
"Then what's your suggestion?"
"Think about it. Do you think our Sparks match?"
"Without a doubt." There was no way I was made to love anyone else in this world, and the only explanation was the Affinity. We were made to be together and there was no arguing it.
"And if I have abilities in many areas-"
"Then you think I do, too?" She nodded a sly smile as I considered the possibility. I had always been skilled at building a fire, and Avis had said I was gifted with languages, but it seemed pretty far-fetched.
"Go ahead. Ask." Of course she knew my misgivings.
Why now? Why was I suddenly able to light a man on fire? I've never been able to do anything like that.
Something made you stronger. Again with the sly smile. Clearly, I was missing something or I was just plain simple.
"Like what?" Instead of answering, she pulled my hand down to rest on the flat of her stomach. It clicked instantly, but I had no words. I was supremely relieved to have Khea back in my life, and now we were going to enrich our lives further. No man had any right to be so lucky.
Hearing my thoughts, she rolled me onto my back and straddled me beneath her. With her hair falling down, her bare chest was revealed in all its perfection and in prime location for me to get a good view. She lowered to meet my lips with hers and deliver a kiss I never thought I'd get the chance to experience again. It was hot, and strong, and sweet, and everything I'd dreamt about.
My hands couldn't help but slide along her smooth skin from her shoulders to the sweet round cheeks barely concealed by the swath of light-blue fabric. We spent the next hour or so lost in our own world, experiencing the touch and the closeness we both thought we'd lost forever.
Instead of going to sleep, we wandered up on deck to find something to eat. She hadn't eaten in two days, and I was going on at least six, though it didn't seem that bad considering. Maybe we were just experts at being hungry or maybe our Sparks let us manage better than most. We sat on deck eating the queen's fruit and cheese, with her back laying against my chest and watching the stars.