Distant Star (21 page)

Not a building was left that
wasn’t marked, burnt or gouged by impossible powers lost so long ago. Dust lay
inches thick along the roads and walkways. Wreckage and chunks of weatherworn
stone lay within the dust, silent and accusing, covered in a thin layer of
struggling, brown moss. Decaying husks of various metallic machines lay rusting
where they had fallen. Shells of what could’ve been something akin to cars
littered the roads.

I saw no bones.

The bones were the dust I waded
through. The lost lives of 
millions
 in
one, terrible night.

Yet the lights still worked, for
the most part, and even in ruin the city was a wonder. A silent, mournful
wonder.

“Save for the trees…”

More cherry blossoms had grown
here, as well, up through the cracks in the sidewalks and twisting around
streetlamps. The carpet of dust was peppered with soft petal-falls, like drops
of rain against a sandy beach. Hundreds of the pink blossoms lined the streets.
The trees did not grow thickly enough to be called a forest but could claim
such a title eventually, if given enough time.

I was weary from the walk down
the mountain. The only sign of Morpheus Renegade was the fresh path through the
dust ahead of me. The city was massive but silent. I should have been able to
hear his boots clapping against the stone from a mile away. But no,
nada
.

Still, I could feel eyes on the
back of my neck, almost as if I was walking in the Void. Eyes unseen and
unfound. Was I being followed? Impossible, unless Renegade had moved behind me,
and if so, who—or what—was I following through the dust trail?

“Hello?”

Someone laughed. A woman.

The sound hit me like a punch to
the gut. I knew that laugh.

“Oh dear,” I said, and sat down
on a stone bench in an inch of ancient dust. The bench belonged to what could
have been an old Atlantean pub. Even ten thousand years old, I knew a drinking
house when I saw one. “Oh dear, oh dear…”

A whirlwind of vicious light dug
furrows in the ground. A barrage of tiny yet fierce lightning strikes scorched
the stone. Flames ran through the dust, quickly exhausting their fuel. Within
that column of spiraling and wild light a shadowed and terrible form took
shape. A woman emerged from the vortex and stepped lightly across the space
between us on delicate bare feet.

Tal Levy took my hand and brought
it up to her lips, planting a soft kiss on my palm.

She stared at me with eyes the
color of blood.

“Hey there, songbird,” I said. “Of
all the bars in all the world…”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

…Is New Again

Apart from those blood-red eyes,
twin orbs of crimson enchantment, Tal was as beautiful as I remembered. More
so, due to the length and breadth of time that had passed since I’d watched her
die. Her olive skin, her dark hair, her gentle smile upon a face of soft
angles… God, I had
missed
this girl.

“Come close.” She leaned in her
head as she touched my forearm with both her hands. Her touch was
insubstantial, frail and weak, as if she was doing all she could to hold
herself together and tethered to reality. Her touch was almost too much.

I felt her breath, warm and fresh
on my face. The lilt of her voice, the yielding accent of her Israeli
birthplace, was so familiar, but her scent was what made her presence real. A
mix of citrus and primrose. The smell of winter becoming spring.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I am truly
sorry.”

“Oh, don’t you apologize, Declan
Hale. It makes me think you’ve done something wrong.”

“If I could rewrite it. Go back
and change…” A small smile touched my lips. “Well, coulda, woulda, shoulda,
songbird. Our first time would never have been to a Dire Straits song, I’ll
tell you that much.”

“You can’t, and you wouldn’t. We
both know that. I made my choices here, and so did you.”

“It was supposed to be… That
fucking god
tricked
me.” Tears half a
decade old blurred my vision. I blinked them away. “Tal, you still exist.
You’re here. I can find a way to bring you back. The Infernal Clock can grant
eternal life.”

Tal smiled. “Only if there’s a
body, and you’re kneeling in what’s left of mine.”

“No, I don’t accept that. I
refuse
that.”

“Would you bargain again with
Lord Oblivion?” Tal’s smile turned forlorn. “Declan, would you dare? After the
last time? But what have you left to trade, hmm? Certainly not your shadow.
Your soul, perhaps? Damn yourself to grant me something I gladly gave up.”

“I need you with me.”

“You
need
nothing and, to be honest, deserve even less.”

I knew the truth when I heard it.
Tal never lied, not ever, which was what made her so wonderful. Her words
mirrored my thoughts. She knew me so well. I let her frail hand fall and
clenched my fists. “I have a request.”

“That’s why you are still alive
and the armies of Ascension City are not. You never push, do you, Declan? You move
so carefully, with such faux confidence, such dangerous charm. You request when
you could so easily demand.”

“Tal, our choices five years ago
are killing Forget. The Story Thread is unraveling, and travesties from the
Void and beyond are seeping into all worlds. It’s my fault, and I will not
endure another bloodbath. Can you do anything to stop the Degradation?”

“I am the Degradation.” Tal’s
form shimmered and moved around me like a blizzard of living sparks. “My life
force feeds the shield around the Lost City. You would unmake all that I am?”

“I would. Time’s up, honey.
Better a renewed war between the Knights and the Renegades, don’t you think,
than the end of so many worlds?”

Tal snarled and her crimson eyes
flared. She drew a small dagger from her belt and slashed it across my face. I
snapped my head back a moment too late, and the blade cut across my cheek and
along the bridge of my nose. The pain was real enough. Blood ran in rivulets
into my mouth.

“I exist outside of this
world—of all worlds. Your request is denied, Knight. In the words of one
far greater than you:
You shall not pass
.”
Her voice deepened at the last of her words, becoming something far older and
crueler. Perhaps my Tal was here, but she wasn’t alone. Those red eyes…

Oblivion was
watching
, the Voidling had said back in Perth. Another piece of the
puzzle fell into place.

Tal took a deep breath and calmed
herself. She sheathed her tiny, vicious dagger and cupped my bloody cheek.
“There, there now. I’m sorry.” She ran her fingers along the deep cut, and I
felt the skin tingle and stretch. “That’s better.”

The bleeding had stopped. I
pushed her hand aside and felt the skin for myself. The cut was a week old at
least, and was healing. My mind flashed back to my death… I’d had a scar just
like this—recent, raw, but mending.

“How did
you do that?” I asked.

She licked my blood from her
fingers. “Time is… Well, time can be persuaded here. Atlantis exists in a crux,
powered and held by the Infernal Clock, and hidden ten thousand years in the
past.”

“This is the past?”

“One of many, and only a small
shard of the whole.”

“Oh, Tal.” I’d always thought she
was special. “You’re not my Tal anymore. I’m sorry. So, so sorry… last time
counts for all. I give my love to whatever is left of you behind those eyes.”

She giggled. “Depart this place
or perish, Shadowless—”

I drew the sword at my waist, and
it flared to life with ethereal brilliance—the silver light from my Will.
The single, flawless diamond in its hilt shone against the purple sky and
sparkled with radiance found. Tal leapt back but not quickly enough. With a
whimper, I drove my sword into the glimmering ghost and scattered all that she
was, and the eyes of a god, into the ether.

The Roseblade
sang
.

She, whoever she was, would be
back, given the delight I saw in those heart’s-blood orbs.

I didn’t have much time, even in
this land that time forgot.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The Infernal Clock

Five years ago, on the eve of the
Degradation, Tal and I had run these ruined streets together, ahead of the
Knights and the Renegades. We had run hard and fast, desperate to seal away the
chaos we’d found and unleashed.

The Infernal Clock and the
promise of immortality.

The Roseblade that had destroyed
Reach City.

Well, no, that didn’t own the
madness—not even close. I’d destroyed the city by using the Roseblade,
which was a tool of intent, after all. My doing. Eight million dead and a
corner of Forget turned into a horrendous monument to the power found in the
Lost City—all my doing.

The race had been on that night.
Everyone thought I’d left the Roseblade sealed away inside the Degradation
alongside the Infernal Clock. I’d sealed it away all right, inside a simple
chest and given it to Aaron. Half the reason I’d grudgingly accepted my exile
was because the temptation to use the sword again would have been too strong.

I would have cut a vicious,
bloody path through Ascension City and seized the Dragon Throne. As you do when
you’re young, I guess.

As much as I detested Faraday’s
kingship and his laws barring me from Forget, after Nightmare’s Reach I’d been
shaken enough to see that gaining the throne with the Roseblade was insane. I’d
thought Clare was dead, and I’d
known
Tal was dead… no one could have stopped me.

Except myself.

At least I’d forced an end to the
Tome Wars.

I’d buried the damned sword and
accepted Faraday’s exile. Better a defeated fool than a victorious monster.

I couldn’t make up for what I’d
done and the lives I’d destroyed. The Degradation was a mistake, but at the
time, necessary, and here we all were, Knights, Renegades, and my merry band,
fighting over this husk of a city once more.

My face hurt where Tal had cut
me.

Sweet like cinnamon, that one
, I thought
as I ran through the streets paved with dust and strewn with cherry blossom
petals.

Tal’s favorite flower.

Of Morpheus Renegade I had lost
all sign. His footsteps, if indeed they had been his, had petered out. I gazed
up at the mile-high skyscraper, a spire of obsidian rock smoothed and shining
under the twilit sky.
Are you up there,
you bastard?
He would die for what he’d done to Clare, even if I brought
her back with the Clock. He would die for so much more, as well. Some men just
needed killing, and Renegade was long overdue on his butcher’s bill. The weapon
of mass destruction strapped to my waist would see to it, if nothing else. I
patted the Roseblade and headed into the dark, all-consuming tower.
God, I hope it didn’t come to that…

Inside was a large open space of
sharp shadows and little else, at the heart of which rose an impressive set of
steps, spiraling up in loops through the ceiling and into the tower beyond. I
made for that staircase, panting and dreading the climb to come. I would’ve
traded the Roseblade for a sip of liquid courage.

“Last piece of the puzzle,” I
muttered, climbing the mighty spiral staircase. Torches of blue light,
centuries old but inscribed with runes of power, spluttered and died on the
walls as I passed.

My death was falling into place.
I wore the right clothes and bore the correct scarring across my face from
Tal’s handiwork. All I was missing was the gaping wound in my stomach.

A wiser man would’ve been running
in the other direction. But I’d never been mistaken for wise, and what was it
the Historian had said?
You have to be
brave
.

Well, so be it. Although there
was nothing brave about what I had planned for Renegade, when we caught up.

I don’t know how long I climbed
in the dark, but eventually the spiral staircase ended in a wide and gloomy
space, lit only by Atlantis’s terrible sky, the inner curve of the Degradation,
through long-shattered windows. In the center of the room was a high-backed
stone seat, carved from the same rock as the tower. Another throne from another
time.

Now that I was here again, I was
sure of it. Ascension City had been founded on some faint, lost memory of
Atlantis. The blueprints were nearly identical.

Beyond the throne was a final set
of stairs rising up behind a pair of dilapidated and cracked golden gates. Tal
and I had forced our way through those gates once upon a time. At the top of
that staircase we’d found the Roseblade, seen the Infernal Clock, and bartered
with a creature of such power that it could rightly be called a god.

Nothing for it, Dec
.
Keep moving
. Time to put an end to all
the warring and power plays before anybody else died for the ambition of
selfish men.