It didn’t take long to soar across the city. When they reached the lonely island, Ash landed atop the dilapidated walls. There was a distinct lack of aerial defenses and no patrolling soldiers here.
Before Holt could think about descending, a worried voice shouted from the gate below.
“Honored Rider!” A guard waved up at him. “Beggin’ your pardon but you ought not to go in there.”
Ash flew down and Holt jumped off to meet the guard. He landed hard on the stone bridge – his stronger legs absorbing the shock without pain – and righted himself in a graceful movement.
“There is something inside I must search for,” he said in his best impression of a nobleman’s tongue.
The few men posted there turned to each other. Some bit their lips.
“Far be it from us to question the will of a rider,” the bolder of the guards said. “But it wouldn’t be wise to enter the quarantine zone now.”
Holt waved a hand. “The blight does not concern me.”
The guard gulped. “Honored Rider, the disease is more potent than ever. Almost no one on the island has been symptom free for the required three days to be allowed into the city.”
Osric had said as much. A lump formed in Holt’s throat. If his father was inside, he’d be infected now. Given the increased ferocity of the illness, holding refugees on the quarantine island had become a recipe for disaster.
“I notice there are no defenses,” Holt said. “Are these people simply to die when the fighting starts?”
“They’re dead already, Honored Rider.” The guard’s tone was perfectly level, matter of fact.
“I’m going in anyway. I can help.”
The guards gave him a final imploring look, then stepped aside. The portcullis rose and Holt walked through. Ash followed in his wake and the gate clanged shut behind them.
A scene of misery rushed to meet him. Too many people were crammed into too small an island. They sat on the streets, hung limp and lifeless out of windows, sat in dark doorways with blank expressions. The draining grooves in the cobbled streets flowed with bile, vomit and yellow puss. Holt’s stomach turned thrice over at the smell. Children cried unseen, grown men wept through bloodied, grime covered hands. In a distant corner of the island, a column of smoke carried the memories of the dead up with it.
Ash mewled sadly. “I can hear their hearts beat slowly, but there is little life here.”
Holt stepped lightly forward, his own heart hammering despite his Ascendant body. Through the dragon bond he and Ash tried to find solace in one another. Yet surrounded by this evil it had all the comfort of drinking cold tea.
He recognized no one and kept walking. A woman collapsed ahead of him. Before Holt could arrive, a group of men carried her body away. He didn’t follow.
People stared at him now. His frame was too upright, his skin unmarked, his eyes too bright. Health stood out here. They pointed to Ash, woke sleeping companions to point out the dragon and rider who had arrived.
A shaking old man fell before him. “Have ye come to end our misery, sir?”
Holt trudged past in a daze, only realizing later what the man had asked for. Soon others gathered around them, pressed upon them. Their voices became one lost wail of despair.
“I’ll try to… try to help.” His voice shook with every word. “Father?” He couldn’t see him. “Father!”
Ash beat his wings and growled just enough to ward people away.
“We could try curing them.”
Holt’s mouth went dry. There were just so many people. He and Ash alone couldn’t help them all, could they?
“I need to find him, boy,” Holt said. “Father,” he called out. “Father!”
He pushed through the crowd, his strength and their weakness making it easy but terrible, like wading through a river in which reeds tried to pull him down.
This wasn’t how things were supposed to be. Sidastra was the refuge, the haven for an incursion – all subjects were to come here, be sheltered, draw the swarm and before the city walls it would be smashed. Laid to waste. Lyrics he had known since childhood played again in his mind.
Hear the call and answer swift, Take only what you’d surely miss, Husband, wife, child and kin, Gather now for life to win.
“Father!” he cried again. And again. And again. Until at last, he recognized a man in the doorway of what looked to be a tavern.
“Mr. Weaver,” he called with near jubilation. Someone from the Crag.
He fought his way over.
Mr. Weaver was not well. A pale green crust had formed over his throat.
He squinted, rubbed at one eye and croaked, “Holt Cook?” “Yes. Yes, it’s me—”
“We thought you was dead.”
“My father,” Holt hurried on. “Please tell me—” “Ah now, he’s inside, but—”
“Ash, wait here.”
Holt darted around the weaver and entered the tavern door without a second thought. Inside he found many more faces he knew. Mr. Monger was there, the Potters, old Mr. Cobbler, Mr. Mrs. and Miss Carpenter, the Tanners, even the Oysterers, and countless others besides. It seemed those who had not stayed at Fort Kennet had made it to the city, or the bulk of them had.
Yet signs of the infection were plain. Green veins roved up necks and faces, people scratched at skin already hardening into bug like shells. The air was thick, as thick as the Withering Woods. Dead eyes stared at him.
“Who’s that?” someone asked. “Have they sent us food?”
“It’s Holt Cook.” Gasps of shock followed but were drowned by frightful fits of coughing on all sides.
It was all Holt could do to be heard. “Where’s my father?”
A few managed to raise their hands and point toward a door behind the bar. Holt groaned with realization. Yes, of course his father would be back there. He leapt over the bar and burst through the kitchen door.
Several faces both familiar and strangers at once turned to face him. Kitchenhands, a maid or two and their families, their faces slick with sweat, clinging to one another for support. Someone lay face down on a worktable. And on a chair by the hearth, sitting limp, taking in ragged breaths, was Jonah Cook.
Holt’s own breath stuck in his throat. No. His very worst fear.
“Holt?” Jonah said, barely able to utter the word. He tried to rise, stumbled, clasped a hand to his chest and fell.
Holt came to his senses and bounded forward in time to catch his father, then sunk gently with him to the floor. His father’s pallid head landed in his lap and wavering eyes tried to focus on his son.
“Father—” Holt choked. Jonah was thin. Painfully thin, now, and bald where his hair had been thick.
Frantic, unable to do more than act on instinct, Holt unfastened his father’s baggy, filthy shirt, the better to see how bad the infection was. Of course, he knew how bad it was already. He knew. Gangrenous skin only confirmed it.
Tears blurred his vision. He wanted to say something, anything that might express his regret at leaving, of causing his father so much pain and worry. Yet the words – if any could have expressed it all – eluded him. And what could he say now to make it right?
“I brought your book,” he said thickly. He fumbled with his satchel and withdrew the recipe book. It had suffered on their journey. The corners were bashed, the leather scratched here and there and possibly his own blood had stained a page or two. “I brought it with me.”
Jonah’s lips twitched up, trying to smile.
Nobody else moved, nor said a word. Had the illness already rotted their minds?
“And I can help,” Holt said hurriedly, hating himself for not just doing this straight away. He dropped the book, reached for Ash’s core, drew on the light, gathered it at his palm.
This had to work. This. Had. To. Work.
Holt pressed his hand onto his father’s chest. He pushed the magic out gently, broadly, just as he and Ash had done with the old oak in the forest.
He pushed the magic into his father.
Jonah gasped, seized up. Lunar light lent a new spark to his struggling eyes and for a wonderous moment, Holt thought he had done it. But the light faded. As did the last signs of strength in Jonah’s eyes.
“Magic?” Jonah wheezed.
Holt nodded. “I… I’m a rider now. I saved a dragon.” How could he sum it up any better?
“Did you?” Jonah said, his voice soft, and growing fainter with every word. “Proud of you,” he managed. “Such a kind heart…. Proud of you.”
Holt pulled him up and held him closer. “Father, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m—” His words broke down into incoherence as he sobbed and pressed his face into his father’s bony shoulder, just as he’d done with Brode in the forest. First Brode, now this.
“I’m sorry I left you,” he managed at last.
Jonah let out a rasp of air by way of accepting the apology.
“But I’m here now,” Holt said. “Maybe with proper rest and help you
—”
Jonah shook his head, barely a tilt to either side but it was plain to see.
“Too late… held on to… had to see… you…”
Holt shook his head fiercely. He was barely sixteen. This was not supposed to be happening. The Crag should not have fallen. They should all have been safe there. And why hadn’t his magic worked? It was the old oak in the woods but a thousand times worse.
“I’m not strong enough,” he said aloud. “Hold on. Hold on and I’ll For
—”
“Help the others,” his father whispered. He mumbled more but Holt
could no longer register the words. He placed his ear right over his father’s mouth, so he might hear him.
“I love y—” His father’s last word rolled into one long, final sigh.
Holt’s world stopped. He held his father close, refusing to let go, and mumbling “no” over and over until the word made no sense anymore.
Misery sunk to his soul.
Ash’s wails could be heard from outside, a wounded animal, making the sounds Holt wished he could make but he had not the breath nor wits to do anything but rock, rock and cradle his father’s body.
Burning would be preferable. Cold steel ripping flesh held nothing on this. Pain. Purest, truest, deepest, that which leaves invisible scars never to
heal. The pain which makes death seem preferable.
Holt did not know how long he sat there. Only that after enough time had passed, a few of the braver people in the room crept over to him. They made hushed sounds and tried to pry his father away.
He found his voice then. “No,” he said, light flashing on his palm in warning. They would take his father away and burn him. To that giant smoke pillar on this island without ceremony. “Back,” he warned, and they scuttled away to their corners.
He slumped again. Not knowing what to do.
“Holt.” Ash’s voice was the one balm to his wounds. “Holt, you did all you could.”
“I was too late.” “We were too late.”
“I… I wasn’t strong enough.”
“We weren’t strong enough. This is not your fault.” “I left him.”
“To save me…” Ash said, guilt weighing down his voice as much as it did Holt’s heart. “We have to make it worth it.”
“How?”
“We should cure all those we can.”
His father had told him as much as well. “Help the others,” he had said. “What if I can’t save any?” Holt said aloud, too loud, and too suddenly.
Those scared people in the corner hunched and curled up further.
Ash must have heard Holt shout through two walls for he insisted, “We save any that we can.”
Holt raised his shaking hands.
“Even if we can, how do we choose who lives and dies?” His heart began hammering again. What if Brode had handed him some other egg and Ash had never lived? The sheer randomness of it all was overwhelming.
Chaos. All of it chaos.
A darker thought crept in. Perhaps the strict order of things was the correct way after all. No thinking. No questioning. Simply do as has always been done, as is expected. To question was to open doors that led to more doors. Questioning was chaos.
Holt had brought chaos, and he had been punished for it.
“Get up, Holt,” Ash urged. “You’re my boy, and I am yours. Get up and keep fighting. I’ll fight with you.”
A surge of courage flowed through the bond. Holt gritted his teeth, nodded, and stood up. He looked around the cramped kitchen of the dilapidated inn, struggling to recognize the fearful, sick faces staring back at him.
“I have magic now. It can help if the blight hasn’t taken too strong a hold. Follow me.”
He lifted his father’s body, steadied himself, took a deep breath, and then took his first step. Then another.
As he moved through the people of the Crag, they pressed toward him, but he urged them to be patient and follow him outside.
When he emerged onto the street, it was nearly deserted. A few brave onlookers had gathered, and a small group of children watched Ash from a safe distance. Most of the townsfolk looked too ill to do more than sit and gaze at him. A bold girl reached out, but a sickly parent hobbled over and pulled her back.
“They won’t let me help.”
“They’re afraid,” Holt said. The girl did not look so sick, just a green tinge in one eye. Then, still carrying his father between his arms, he said aloud, “It’s okay. Ash here can help.”
The mother looked uncertain, but she took in his clean clothes, his armor and fine cloth, looked to Ash, then let go of her daughter.
“Raise your hand,” Holt guided her. The little girl did, and Ash gently pressed his snout against her palm, as he’d done with Ceilia Smith.
A flash of light. A shriek from the mother. And the girl was cured. Her infected eye turned violet flecked with silver.
Onlookers began to murmur and whisper in excitement.
“You see,” Ash said, “we can help.”
Holt nodded. He wanted to help but he also didn’t want to let his father
go.
“Give him here, son,” a voice said. Holt turned. It was Mr. Monger. He
and a handful of other able-bodied hands from the Crag looked upon him pityingly. “We’ll take care of him.”
Holt sniffed. “You keep him here. You keep him here so I can take him with me.”
“That’s right,” Mr. Monger said. “We will.”
Ash padded closer and nuzzled into Holt’s side. Holt looked at his father one last time, drew a final shuddering breath, then handed him over. He
turned away at once, the better to get on with what he had to do.
In one hand he gathered lunar power; with the other he patted Ash. “We’ve got work to do, boy.”
