Maybe the dragons hadn’t intended to destroy us at all. Maybe they’d simply meant to trap us—as their food?
“We’re trapped here forever,” I muttered. “Until we die, too.”
Stef was uncharacteristically still next to me. “I don’t think that will be very long. For me, at least.”
“What do you mean?” When I looked at him, that cocky, self-assured expression he so often wore was gone, replaced by grim resignation.
“If you hadn’t pushed us. If you hadn’t shoved the dragon aside.” He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. I’d never seen Stef look scared, but he did now. “The acid would have splashed right onto us. We’d have been dead instantly.”
I’d lost my brother at only a slightly slower pace, but lost him just the same. Stef was alive, though.
“You saved me,” he said. “But my foot lay in the acid for a second too long. I got my boot off and they threw us in the water quickly enough to save most of my foot, but there’s no way to treat it. They said it’s already infected, and it’s just going to get worse.”
“What does that mean?” I whispered.
Stef clenched his jaw and shook his head.
He was dying, was what he couldn’t bear to say aloud. I’d lost my brother, and soon I would lose my best friend.
“What do we do now?” someone asked as more groups emerged from the forest.
“We do what we came to do.” Meuric strode forward and paused near a body that was slowly dissolving into nothing. He swept his hands upward, toward the wall and tower rising in the north. “We release Janan.”
We’d come all this way to rescue one person, only to lose thousands along the way—and everything else we had ever known.
That was Meuric’s fault, and as far as I cared, Janan could stay locked in that tower forever.
“I hope he’s dead in there,” I muttered.
Stef shot me a look. “What?”
“Janan.” I glared at the tower. “I hope he’s dead in there.”
Stef hesitated, nodded, and didn’t need to ask why I felt that way. “Yeah. I get that.” Grief roughened his voice. “I hope he isn’t, though.”
“Why?”
“I want him to see what he’s done to us. I want him to see what we’ve been through for him.” Stef lifted his eyes to the white prison tower. “What kind of leader allows this to happen to his people? I guess— I guess I feel like he owes us.”
“Well, let’s go see if he’s alive.”
The walk into the prison was excruciating.
Meuric, curiously unhurt after the battle, hurried toward the prison with a small escort of warriors and Councilors, leaving the rest of us to trail behind. There were so many of us, most injured and some unconscious.
In spite of Stef’s broken leg and ruined foot, he and I were among the first to reach the white wall that circled the prison. A giant archway granted entrance.
The wall was thick, heavy enough that not even a dragon or troll would be able to get through, although the archways were certainly big enough to allow their passage. But I pushed those thoughts away as we came through to the other side.
The space was immense.
There were trees and brush, but also large fields of open land that dipped and crested. It was dark here already, thanks to the high walls, but torches had been placed in a line straight to the tower in the center. It seemed far away from here.
“Can you make it?” I asked Stef.
In the dancing firelight, he looked pale. His breath came short and choppy, but he gave a clipped nod and said, “I need to do this.”
Sick with grief, I helped him along, struggling to find a pace he could maintain, but that would keep us from getting trampled, as well. There were only a few dozen people ahead of us, and so many behind.
Even with my help, he was gasping and dripping sweat by the time we reached the base of the tower, a huge cylindrical building made of seamless white stone. It looked big enough to hold the entire Center inside it, and more.
When I dropped my head back, I couldn’t see the top.
“Boys.” A familiar Councilor appeared around the long curve of the tower. Sine. I remembered him from the Center. His gaze flickered to the crutch before settling on Stef’s face. “The inventor, right?”
Stef leaned his weight heavily on me. “And my best friend, Dossam.”
Sine beckoned us back the way he’d come. “This way.”
We started to follow, others close behind. Firelight illuminated the growing crowd of exhausted, injured people. Some were being carried, while others crawled along. The night smelled sharp with blood and rotting and lingering acid.
“We’ve been speaking with Janan,” Sine said.
Had it taken us that long to reach the tower? Maybe. Stef leaned all his weight on the crutch and me; his good foot barely touched the ground, except when we stopped.
“Janan’s alive?” Stef shot me a wary glance.
“He is alive, and he’s been working on our behalf ever since his capture.” Sine led us to a cluster of men and women, all of them with subservient postures as they paid attention to one man.
Janan.
He was small, solidly built, with wild hair that would have earned mockery if he hadn’t been so intimidating. There was just something about him, a way he held himself that made him the leader of this group—of everyone here and everyone who’d lived in the Community before.
Janan turned his eyes on Stef and me, sizing us up in an instant: my hunched shoulders, Stef’s broken leg and acid-eaten foot, and the way both of us kept checking the sky. “Hello, boys. You’ll be among the first to hear the good news.” He surveyed the approaching crowd and turned to Meuric. “Everyone is coming? Even the wounded?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Have the warriors conduct a census.”
“Where did you come from?” Stef asked. “I don’t see a door.”
“There isn’t one. And inside, it is so, so empty.” The way Janan grinned was predatory, like a troll or dragon, and gave me the almost desperate need to run; but I wouldn’t abandon Stef. “I didn’t summon you all to discuss my imprisonment. I summoned you to tell you that I succeeded in my original quest: I have found a way to overcome death.”
13
“SO YOU DIDN’T need to be freed?” I asked.
“I did.” Janan glanced at Meuric, who tucked a small silver box into his pocket. “Meuric obtained what was needed to free me. And I am sure you think he could have brought a smaller group here, to accomplish that. But I wanted everyone here.”
“How did you know what Janan wanted, Meuric?” I glanced at the young man, but he just smiled.
“I’ll explain everything when everyone else arrives.” And he did make us wait. Instead of answering our questions, Janan asked about our journey here.
Unable to contain my anger, I snarled, “We lost people. Hundreds. Thousands.” My fists were shaking at my side. “We traveled for months, and people died during that journey. People died as soon as we got here. My brother—”
I gasped for breath, struggling against the swarm of dizziness that filled my head. My heart wanted to curl and crumble under the weight of memories.
“I see,” Janan said. “Go on.”
“And now Stef is injured.” I blinked to clear my vision. “We’re all losing people. Because of this. Because of you.”
Stef flashed a wary look my way, a reminder that I was speaking to Janan. But our leader just nodded, like he cared how deeply we’d all been hurt.
When the crowd began to fill in, I put myself between them and Stef. He was quiet, and breathing hard even though we were standing still.
Help Stef. Be brave, my brother had said.
The trickle of people began to slow. The numbers had gone from hundreds to thousands, and then so many my mind couldn’t begin to comprehend. Guards pushed through the crowd, dividing people into groups of a hundred so they could be counted. Others placed lit torches all around the area, casting flickering light over the assembly.
Meuric nodded at Stef and me. “In you go, boys. That group.”
With Janan watching from atop a platform someone had constructed for him, Stef and I moved into a crowd of other teenagers. I recognized Cris and Sarit, two girls slightly older than I was, and a girl named Julid who Stef thought was pretty.
“What’s going on?” whispered Julid.
“Everything is about to change,” I answered, because Stef was focused on standing; his fingers dug into my shoulder.
At last, the guards and Councilors finished their census. “A million,” reported Meuric. “There are just over a million of us.”
That was half the number we’d begun with in the Community months ago. Had we really lost so many people?
Janan nodded. “That will do.” He straightened himself on the platform and lifted his voice. “I need everyone to be silent. I need all of you to hear.”
The place within the white walls grew quiet, with only the wind in the trees, and the clap and spew of a geyser beyond the wall. No one moved. I doubted anyone even breathed.
“I left the Community,” Janan began, “to seek eternal life. And I found it. I found a way. But before I could return to you with this knowledge, I was stopped. Captured. Trapped here. Because our enemy does not want us to possess this knowledge.”
The crowd was so quiet.
“Now that you are here, however, we can defy death. While I’ve been trapped here by our enemies, I’ve had time to fully comprehend their secrets. Phoenixes live and die and then live again. They exist in a cycle of perpetual reincarnation—rebirth. I’ve learned the truth about immortality and how I can use their magic to make you like phoenixes.” Janan drew a long knife from his belt. It was steel, but in the flickering lights, it looked as though it had been dipped in gold. “And so you will be.”
“We’ll be reincarnated forever?” someone asked. “Like phoenixes?”
Janan shook his head. “Not forever. While you all live your lives, gain knowledge and experience, I will be working on something better. True immortality.”
That was impossible. Stef and I exchanged glances, both of us scowling. We lived, we suffered, and we died. That was the truth of our existence.
Still, a sliver of hope pierced me. Stef was dying. We both knew it. If reincarnation were possible . . .
“I see your doubts,” Janan went on. “Your uncertainty. So I’ll tell you more: when you’re reborn, you will forget everything from this lifetime.” He gazed around the ragged assembly. “From family to friends to work, you will forget it all. You will have to relearn skills, such as farming and building and fighting. There is no other way. But I beg you: do not look at this as a curse or punishment. See this as an opportunity. You will be new again. You’ll still be yourselves. Your experiences will still be part of you. What you went through to get here—that will not change. Your experiences will be engraved on your souls; there’s nothing anyone can do to change that. But you will not remember that hardship.
“See this as a second chance at life, this one unburdened by the pain and loss you’ve suffered. See this as a gift, a chance to pursue your dreams. You’ll be given dozens of lifetimes, and in the following ones you will retain your memories of those that came before. All of those lives will be enough to hone your skills in whatever you choose to do.”
The crowd was deathly quiet, but I was still shaking my head. Stef was, too. This wasn’t possible.
We would forget this night, the losses, and the long and dangerous journey. But not be free of it. If the experiences didn’t just go away, they could still haunt us for eternity. We just wouldn’t know why.