Golden (16 page)

N
AT
WALKED
TO
THE
SUFFER
ING
CREATURE
and stroked its neck and removed the iron chains, letting them clatter.
Easy,
she sent, soothing the drakon.
Easy. She is gone. We are free.

The drakon bowed and Nat walked to the place where its shoulder met its neck. She nuzzled upon the creature's shoulders. She was whole at last, bonded once more to the creature, and she had Wes to thank for that.

“Eliza?” she asked when she saw Wes.

He shook his head.

“I'm sorry,” she said, and she was. She knew that the loss was a blow, no matter what kind of person Eliza had become. She ached for him, for what he had had to do. He had killed his own blood for her.

“She died in peace. She came back to me, in the end. She wasn't . . . Lady Algeana anymore.”

Nat nodded, knowing there were no words that would make the grief easier, but she could offer comfort and succor nonetheless. “Come,” she said, opening her arms to him.

He fell into them, putting almost all of his weight on her, but she stood firm, holding him, wrapping her arms around him so that his grief flowed out and into her, so that they shared it, so that he knew that he was safe, that he was loved.

Her shoulder became wet with his tears, and she was crying as well. Eliza's was not the first death and would not be the last.

After a long silence, he rocked back on to his feet and pulled away slightly. “Is Mainas all right?”

“The drakon will heal.”

“And you?”

“I can bear the pain.”

“But you don't have to bear it alone,” he said.

She was silent.

He put his arms around her once more and put his mouth next to her ear. “I was thinking about what Emrys said. About the sacrifice that's part of the spell,” he said.

She tensed, wondering what he was going to say next. It was not what she expected.

“I know what it is,” he said. “It's me. That's why you pushed me away. Because you thought you could make me leave you.”

It appeared she was the only one who had been in denial about what the sacrifice entailed. “How long have you known?”

“When you stopped talking to me,” he said. “I knew there had to be a good reason. And there could only be one reason for it. You're trying to keep me alive. Because you can't live a second without me.”

“Cocky boy,” she whispered, but she was smiling even as she said it.

He tightened his hold on her as the drakon lifted its wings and flapped toward the sky. “I wanted you to tell me yourself. But you really are stubborn. So I have no choice but to tell you now.”

“Tell me what?” she asked, as they flew from the ruins, looking down on the devastated cityscape below.

“I'm not leaving you. Ever. I'm right here. Whatever that spell wants, whatever it needs, I'm here. If you die, I die with you. You're only trying to save me somehow and that's not going to work. We're in this together. I share your burden. I've seen the weight you carry. You can't do it alone.”

Nat let the tears flow down her cheeks, letting the wind carry them. “But you'll die,” she whispered, shaking in his arms.

Wes leaned even closer, so that his lips were against her wet cheek now, and he knew she was crying. “If that's what you need from me,” he said.

“Ryan,” she said. “I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't let you die. I won't.” She was sobbing now, her shoulders shaking. “I wanted you to think I didn't love you, so you would leave me. But I love you so much. I can't let you go.”

Wes kissed the tears as they fell. “You don't have to let go. You can't anyway. I'll be there till the end. Remember my promise? I'm never leaving you.”

Even as they stood at the edge of the precipice, she felt a lightness and joy to know she wasn't alone. She had Mainas. She had Wes. Their friends were still alive and would help them secure the tower.

“I knew you never stopped loving me,” he said, his voice as shaky as hers. She twisted around so that she faced him, raising her chin so that he leaned down and they shared a brief but sweet kiss.

“I'm sorry we wasted that time apart,” she said.

“I'm sorry, too.” He cleared his throat. “But there's no time to dwell on that now. I spoke to Shakes and Liannan. They've reached New Dead City. Avo's troops have surrounded the tower. They're going to blast it with nukes to try to get inside,” he said.

“Let's go then.” Nat lifted her foot, placed it upon the drakon's spine, and swung up onto its back. The scales felt warm beneath her, like coal rustling in a fire. The sound of the scales moving across one another was soothing, familiar. She was back where she belonged. She offered him her hand and he took it, swinging to sit behind her.

They flew away while, below, Apis gave one last sigh and collapsed completely. Its walls caved in, one after another, falling upon each other, shooting up towers of dust and sand that the drakon deftly avoided.

“I'm scared, Wes. I don't know what's going to happen, but I know it's not going to be good.”

He murmured into her hair. “Emrys said there was always hope. I'm going to cling to it.”

Hope was a thread as fine as drakonscale. Nat decided she would do the same.

RING AND TOWER

There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met

To view the last of me, a living frame

For one more picture! In a sheet of flame

I saw them and I knew them all. And yet

Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,

And blew
“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.”

—ROBERT BROWNING

Go then, there are other worlds than these.

—STEPHEN KING,
THE DARK TOWER, BOOK I: THE GUNSLINGER

W
HEN
THE
ICE
C
AME
,
THE
COASTS
WERE
the first to fall. The waters rose, claiming the coastal lands, drenching the streets with black water, making the cities uninhabitable. New Dead City was devastated. The city that never slept entered a long hibernation. It forgot about its past. Names faded and the city became one more ruin in a world full of ruins. The Gray Tower was one of those ruins, those places that had lost their names. It was once called by another name, a building of the Empire State. This had been a great metropolis once, from the time before, a magnificent skyline of glistening towers of steel and glass. Its citizens fretted over what to eat and what to wear. They worried over luxuries. War had come to the city once before, leveling two of its marvelous towers to dust, but the city had recovered, had built new towers, more towers, until this one was just a tower in a city full of them. Now those towers were rotted. Some were collapsed; none stood intact. Though broken in places, the Gray Tower stood above the rest. Almost everything around it had fallen, making it appear as if the tower were some last holdout against the end of the world. It looked as if it were waiting, holding on until someone arrived to claim the power within it.

In the dead of the night, Wes and Nat came to the city. In a swirling cloud of energy, they appeared above the dark waters of the Atlantic. They were perched atop the drakon's back, clinging to each other. There were only a few passages that connected the Gray Lands to Vallonis, but a door from Vallonis could take you anywhere in the Gray Lands. So they had used one such door to bring them here, to the doorstep of the tower.

Wes had half expected to see a few lights in New Dead City or a fire burning behind a broken window, but the city was quiet, dead like its name. The once-glittering towers were caked in soot and grime. The streets that had glowed with light were now dark. Only the snow and ice gave off the occasional shimmer.

Shakes had told them to meet on the sixteenth floor of a building twenty streets south of the Gray Tower. Wes saw the great tower and counted the dark streets till he found the one Shakes had identified. Its sign read M
ANHATTAN
P
ENTHOUSE
. They circled once in the darkness, looking for a place to land, but found none. Even if they could land here, there was nowhere to hide the drakon, so Mainas took them to an edge of the city where they left him in an abandoned warehouse. Wes and Nat made their way back on foot, navigating the streets, bounding over piles of snow and ice, dodging the broken cars that hid within the piles of white.

Through a great hole in one of its walls, they slipped inside and on the sixteenth floor, they found a broken window that let them keep watch on the streets below while they waited for Shakes to arrive.

An hour passed, maybe two, and the sky turned a deep shade of purple. Wes motioned to Nat when saw signs of movement in the distance.

“Do you see them?” she asked, joining him at the window.

There was movement in the street corner below, three shapes flitting between the shadows.

“I think so,” he said, pointing. “Isn't that Brendon?” The smallman zigzagged through a street full of rusted taxicabs. Shakes was next, then Liannan.

After a few minutes, they heard the clatter of footsteps up the stairway and the door opened.

Brendon was the first to reach them. He was winded and out of breath, but still had a grin on his face.

Wes was glad to see the smallman happy.

“Mainas?” Brendon asked as he reached Wes and Nat.

Wes nodded, yes. Nat had got her drakon back. It would be ready to fight when the time came.

“Close by,” said Nat. “Don't worry.”

Wes gave Brendon a warm slap on the shoulder as Liannan and Shakes appeared in the doorway. There were both dressed in rags. They had posed as homeless marauders, hiding among the gangs that still populated the devastated city.

After the greetings and the hugs, and a chance for everyone to shake off the snow, Shakes led them to the makeshift war room and Liannan unrolled the map.

It was a map of the old underground railway, the subway, it was called.

There were lines drawn on the map in various colors. Each one represented a train line and the tunnel it traveled. The green and the yellow lines ran closest to the tower.

“They've blocked the green line,” said Liannan. “They're using it to house troops and supplies, but the yellow is open. We'll enter at the station here.” She pointed to a spot she had already circled. “We will follow the tunnel to here.” She indicated a second spot, higher up on the map. “The road collapsed at this intersection, exposing the tracks to the sky,” she said, pointing to the place where the yellow line intersected a street named Thirty-Third. “We can climb out of the underground here to avoid the checkpoint they've set up at the street named Thirty-Fourth.”

“So the street names are all numbers?” asked Shakes jokingly. “Guess they weren't too creative back then.”

“Great input, Shakes.” Wes shook his head. “Any other little gems you can share with us?”

“Just trying to liven things up. Life's been a bit dreary lately.”

“Can I continue?” Liannan asked, as she gave Shakes a glare that made the boy shut his mouth.

“Keep going, Liannan,” Wes said. “Tell us about the army.”

“We tracked them to here,” Liannan said, pointing to the east side of the map. She was talking about Avo's soldiers. “They were launching missiles at Eliza as she flew toward the tower. We were sure the drakon would set the tower afire, but at the last moment, it turned away and disappeared.”

“I called it to me,” said Nat with a smile.

“Just in time; she was about to roast us,” Shakes said with a smile.

“What about Avo?” asked Wes.

“Yeah, that icehole's here. But he can't get inside. The mist is impenetrable. We think he's going to nuke the place as soon as his drones get their new warheads,” said Shakes. “We saw some technicians refitting the drones for what we guessed were nukes.”

“So while we have time, we need to hit it. Tomorrow we'll take a team over here,” Liannan said, pointing to a place on the east side of the tower, far away from the subway line at the street called Thirty-Third. “Draw their fire, distract them while a small strike team heads up to the tower without anyone noticing. Before Avo destroys everything.”

“Strike team?” Nat asked.

“Me and Wes,” said Brendon proudly.

“Seriously?” Wes looked sideways at the smallman. “I didn't know you were ‘strike team' material.”

“Oh, I don't plan on fighting, that's your job. I'll open the doors, but you'll have to do the rest.” Brendon said, his fists raised in a boxer's stance.

Wes shrugged. He knew what Brendon meant when he said, “You'll have to do the rest.” Wes would need to take on the tower's magic—the mist or whatever it was—that had held back Eliza. He would need to defeat the tower's magic. The thought made his stomach churn. He would have to succeed where she had failed. Eliza was stronger than all of them put together, but the tower had defeated her.
How much hope do I have?

“Anything else?” Nat asked.

“There's a few details, but we can go over those later,” Liannan said. “I think Shakes here is going to tear his hair out if we don't give him something to eat.”

There was a tin can, half rusted, balanced above a fire. Brendon was cooking. Warm smoke drifted up from the flames. Black beans. Not his favorite, not even close to a pizza squeezer, but at least they would eat. Shakes held Liannan. Nat sat close to Wes. Everyone was quiet at first, maybe a little nervous. The air held an edge. Would this be the last time they would all sit together? No one wanted to say it, but Wes gathered that everyone felt the same way. No one wanted to say good-bye. Couldn't they all just stay here like this? Warm and together?

Brendon pulled the can from the fire and everyone shared what was in it. Liannan sang a song; Shakes looked at her, dreamy. Her voice echoed in the open space, filling the air with its warmth. Shakes hummed along. In between choruses Liannan talked about their wedding, what she would wear and how they would say their vows. She spoke at length about the sylph culture and the simple vows they exchanged, the handmade rings. Shakes nodded quietly. There was pain on his face. The more she said, the more it hurt, Wes knew. It wasn't that he didn't want a wedding. It was that Shakes finally knew it was just a fantasy. They would never make it to that wedding. None of them would.

Especially since Nat did not deny what he had guessed about the spell and the sacrifice. They would not survive the morrow.

“Come on,” Nat said, taking his hand. “It's late.”

“Where are we going?” he asked.

She showed him.

The building they had camped in was an old hotel, a grand one, and after the ice some of the rooms were still intact. She opened the door to a suite that rivaled New Vegas's best high-roller palaces. The room had two levels and curtains that stretched from floor to ceiling, marble floors that were as black as night. Tall glasses and a bottle of wine waited on a table next the door, looking expectant, as if someone had anticipated their arrival.

Maybe someone had.

Brendon
, Wes thought,
it had to be
.

Wes closed the door behind him, and watched as she walked over to the bed and began to unbutton her jacket. He did the same and removed his shoes and socks, tossed them to the side. But when Nat began to hitch her shirt up he shook his head and walked over.

He stood in front of her. “Let me,” he said. He wanted to tell her he'd been dreaming of this moment. “You know, Nat . . . it isn't just Shakes who wants a wedding.” He had dreams for them, too. He was going to save up for a ring. He was going to ask her to be his.

“I'm already yours,” she whispered, as if she had read his mind. “There is no need to ask.”

He helped her out of her shirt, out of her camisole, and she did the same, unbuttoning his shirt so that they were both bare in the moonlight.

“You're so beautiful,” he whispered, tentatively putting a hand on her skin.

“So are you,” she said, her hands fluttering over his chest, skimming over the muscles in his torso, making his breath catch. Fire, her touch was fire.

“I wanted you the minute I saw you in the casino, even when you stole my chips,” he murmured, tracing a line from her neck to her chest, and growled when she trembled under his hand in response.

They fell to the bed, and he bent over her, a hand on her belt, tugging. “Is this okay?” he asked. “Are you sure?”

In answer, she wrapped her hand around his, helped him unbuckle and undress her some more. Then she leaned over and did the same to him, pulling off his belt with a smile. She pulled him down to her, and he followed eagerly as they kissed. When she rolled her tongue and bit his lip, teasing him, he found he couldn't hold back any longer.

Their bodies joined together, her hands running down his back, her legs entwined over his, and they moved in a rhythm that started sweet and slow and built steadily until they were both frantic and breathless; and when she screamed her joy, he covered his mouth with hers, every sense of his afire until he, too, was crying her name and shaking in her arms.

They would not have tomorrow, but they would have tonight, they would have this.

Wes thanked whatever luck he had that he had lived to this day.