The Scroll of Years: A Gaunt and Bone Novel (37 page)

“We could not abandon Gaunt,” Next One said, and Flybait added, “And we will have satisfaction for our dead friends.” The child-thieves looked like adults now, with less ferocity but more will. The hint of partnership between them was now more than a hint. Bone nodded. He could not deny their right to this battle, even if he wanted to.

But then . . . another hand grasped Bone’s, and Exceedingly Accurate Wu was there, and grasping her hand was the boy Innocence.

“Father?”

Bone had not expected the additional weight and imbalance. He briefly lost his grip and Wu and Innocence tumbled toward the dark pit. Wu grabbed the edge of the natural altar, but Innocence was slipping from her fingers.

Bone swore and splashed down stomach-first at the edge, his arm flashing forward and grabbing Innocence’s hand.

Innocence screamed. So did Gaunt, or maybe that was Bone himself, he wasn’t sure.

“Father! Want to help! Want to
help!
” 

“Don’t thrash, damn it! If you want to help, don’t thrash!”

It was too wet and slippery here; his grip was not tight enough, his own position unsure.

“Bone, I’ll grab you . . .” Gaunt said.

“No—Gaunt! Help Lightning Bug! Only you can do that. The others can grab me, keep me from falling.”

“Don’t
lose
him . . .” she said as she moved off, and he knew this was perhaps the hardest thing she’d ever done, trusting Innocence with him, after all this time. Disorientation whipped his mind, but already he felt the grip of Flybait and Next One, anchoring him. Wu was successfully climbing over the edge, and they had no time for her.

I won’t
, he told Gaunt silently, knowing that losing Innocence could mean losing her. And perhaps himself. He shimmied forward, got another hand around the wide-eyed boy and pulled.

Gaunt reached the fight just as Lightning Bug fell.

Hackwroth, battered but grinning, butted the wulin woman with his head, gutting her upon the jagged shard of magic mirror.

She slid back, dropping a staff, clutching her belly, falling into the shallows beneath one of the ceiling’s openings. Light fell upon her, and its rippling weave upon the waters grew red as a bloody fishnet.

Upon Hackwroth’s shard, images of Lightning Bug’s life shone behind a crimson sheen. She knelt beside various children, finding a Way amidst yelling, laughing, weeping, leaky-nosed chaos. She embraced Tror beside the bamboo supports of their home. She stood beside Walking Stick on a bridge. She burned in a cavern underground, Walking Stick screaming nearby . . .

Gaunt shoved Lightning Bug through the water just before the dragon-fire gouted down into the spot where they’d been.

“Thank you,” Lightning Bug gasped, even as more blood flowed onto her hands.

“I’ll bind you,” Gaunt said, flinging down the pack she’d had three years to prepare.

Hackwroth was hurt, Gaunt saw in snatches as she worked—exhausted from the assault of the Forest and Garden warriors. Yet still he fought. And Walking Stick, seemingly now an ally, was unable to lay a hand upon him.

“Your gambit required a partner,” Hackwroth said.

“I am not defeated,” Walking Stick said, and danced his foe toward the pit. Away from Gaunt.

“He is . . . out of range of his fortune-telling trick,” Lightning Bug said, her belly now covered in a mass of bandages thick as a stand of bamboo. “Have you a throwing dagger? A crossbow?”

“Something better,” Gaunt said.

“You will need to aim it,” said a new voice.

Gaunt turned to see Wu, reaching out her hands in a gesture halfway between “peace” and “gimme.”

“What is she doing here . . . ?” Lightning Bug said.

“I have wronged you, Persimmon Gaunt,” Wu said. “I convinced the self-portrait it was time to plead my case. I brought your child, thinking he would be leverage for my escape. I did not mean to put him in such danger. Let me help. I am Exceedingly Accurate yet.”

Bone raised Innocence carefully up. Closer . . . closer . . .

“Don’t want to be like the girl and the emp’rer,” Innocence told him urgently.

“Very well,” Bone said, having no idea what the boy meant. “You won’t be.”

Then Bone felt the sinking sensation that he’d just forgotten this conversation. He had felt this way before.

Hackwroth . . . Hackwroth is near . . .

Why was Innocence dangling into the pit? He’d just seen the boy within the scroll!

Hackwroth . . . Hackwroth was beside him, fighting off Walking Stick of the Garden, laughing, face covered in blood and laughing.

“What?” cried Flybait.

“Huh?” shouted Next One.

For the thieves of Qiangguo had lost their immediate memories as well.

Imago Bone’s reflexes were up to the task of a cliffside rescue, even having forgotten how exactly he’d gotten to that cliff in the first place. His life was like that.

But the youngsters holding his legs flinched. They let go, and Bone tumbled into the pit.

And Hackwroth laughed . . .

Bone grabbed a ledge (
bless the irregularity of limestone
) which crumbled (
curse the fragility of limestone
), slid and gripped another, whose collapse bought time to seize another, which held.

Somehow he still grasped, in his other hand, the boy.

“Help the barbarian!” Walking Stick snapped at the kids, and they of the Rivers-and-Lakes remembered they were of Qiangguo first, and they obeyed their elder. They strained to reach Bone, both leaning over the brink to grab his arm.

“You are all beaten,” Hackwroth said. “I have foreseen it. Bone and Gaunt I will sift, for such is my contract and my revenge. I may or may not spare the boy. He has been much trouble. Perhaps I will be just too late to save him. The rest of you I may kill or not, as suits my mood. I would withdraw were I you.”

“Imago Bone,” called Walking Stick. “This creature offends me, yet I may not be able to defeat him. What I might be able to do, is preserve your son. He who is more precious to Qiangguo than any jewel.”

“My son?” Bone gasped. From his memory-robbed perspective he’d been walking on the ceiling but a moment ago. “This is my son?”

Bone shifted in the thieves’ grasp. Rocks careened into the abyss.

“Father!” cried Innocence.

“He is your son, and he may yet be the future Emperor. But I swear on the blood of Lightning Bug that I will consider his welfare first, the Empire’s second. I, a Garden warrior, pledge my honor in this.”

“Do it!” Bone cried. “But take the two kids with you. They’ve done enough.”

“No such luck,” Hackwroth said, leaping and landing with a dreadful thud, one foot each upon the backs of Flybait and Next One. Their cries echoed around the cavern and seemed to have no end. What did end was their grip upon Bone.

Bone grabbed furiously at the moist rock, but began an inexorable slide. He saw the two lovers share a look. He had been half of such looks before.

At that moment a firework rocket shot across the cavern and detonated against Hackwroth’s head.

The auditor howled, clutching his burned face. As firecrackers erupted around him, Flybait and Next One struggled to restrain him while still holding Bone, shoving their bodies against Hackwroth’s legs.

Now Walking Stick connected with a series of savage blows to Hackwroth’s middle.

Hackwroth moaned like a beast, and crouched like one. Like a lion with downed prey, his head lunged and grunted, until the shard of magic mirror was thick with Flybait’s blood.

“No!” Next One screamed, distraught and bloodied herself, and she released Bone to clutch at Flybait.

Bone, still gripping Innocence’s hand, toppled into the void.

But Walking Stick saw. The wulin grabbed the scroll from the altar, called, “Farewell, my love,” and leapt.

Unaccountably, the Garden warrior fell faster than Bone, as if propelled by some unseen force. He grabbed Innocence’s left hand, while the right hand was yet upon Bone’s.

“Join me,” Walking Stick said, as they plunged through a dark that seemed endless.

“Take Innocence—” Bone said.

“Father . . .”

“Go!” Bone gasped. “I will take the scroll.”

Walking Stick nodded and the Garden agent and Innocence faded from reality. With a last effort, Walking Stick passed the scroll to Bone. The thief grabbed it even as he plunged into deep water.

Quick as an eel, a current snagged him and pulled him under.

Gaunt saw Bone and Walking Stick fall . . . even as Hackwroth rose.

“Gaunt,” Lightning Bug said, “if the mirror meets the altar—”

She did not truly understand. She did not need to. She needed to act. There was a world of despair, rage, desperation within Persimmon Gaunt, and in that moment it was as though all of it became a searing lump which she swallowed, absorbed, pressed into the muscles of one foot.

Gaunt ran, leaped, and kicked.

Hackwroth—burned, battered, enraged, distracted, shard of magic mirror drenched in blood—sensed her attack, and turned away from Next One to face Gaunt. But whether it was from the exhaustion of battle or the crimson stains upon the mirror, he responded sluggishly. He no longer had the resources to evade her.

His face slammed into the waters of the natural altar.

Blood filled the basin. Images shifted within.

Hackwroth staggered backward, dripping, head washed clean of blood. It occurred to Gaunt that with Hackwroth’s enhanced perceptions, he of all men had now best perceived a dragon’s thoughts. His eyes bulged, and he sank to his knees.

“What can be gridded, accounted, controlled,” he whispered, “is a paucity. The regular and linear is but a simplified example of the churning tumult that is the whole. The future is not one of clean lines but of chaos . . .”

The cavern shook, much harder than before. The images within the pool now showed a thing that filled Gaunt with terror and wonder.

Within the waters she saw the island crumble and a green, winged form rise from within it, a shape composed of branches and leaves and soil, dark wings like a forest’s shade. She saw the Eastern dragon embrace a fire-breathing Western dragon far smaller than itself. She saw the red dragon explode from within, a burst of incandescent energies; and the green dragon roar into flame and collapse upon the ruin of her isle. And then she saw the explosion that flung skyward a luminous dragon egg like the inverse of a falling star, and a volcano rising from where its parents had been.

“Dragon,” she said, “this will kill us . . .” She looked into the dark depths where she dared hope Bone and Innocence still lived.

I must answer the call
, whispered a voice from all around.
For within the mind of Hackwroth I perceived the converging worldliness of three sets of lovers, Flybait and Next One, Lightning Bug and Walking Stick, Persimmon Gaunt and Imago Bone. I cannot but echo such love, even I, a dragon. I will not be denied. Flee now.

“Not without—!”

The pit below leads to waters flowing to the ocean. Soon my substance will splinter, and there will be great gaps leading to the sea. I will see to it, while I have mind to spare. Go!

Lightning Bug was beside her then, staggering, but standing, leaning against Wu. “I have skills. I can guide you . . .”