Heir to the Sky (26 page)

The Phoenix screeches and flies lower, the edge of the continent dangerously near. The bottom of the island, tangled in roots and dirt, comes into view. “She's going to try and scrape us off,” I shout.

“Come on,” Griffin says, and with his help I rise. We walk carefully along the bony bronze, hunched low so we can grab the ridges as we climb toward her head. The feathers on her wingtips are a pale blue now, almost lavender, and the color is spreading toward her body.

“Griffin,” I say as we climb. “I know how to use her weakness against her. Water won't work, but exhaustion will.”

He turns, his hand grasping the next armored plate. “Come again?”

“When the Phoenix has used up all her strength,” I pant, lifting my leg carefully over the next tall ridge, “she'll burn up to ashes and soot.”

“Then we better be over the continent when it happens,” Griffin says. “Or we'll go down with her.”

The earth is laid out like a painting below us, speeding away at a dizzying pace. We wouldn't pass through the barrier if we fell from here. There'd be nothing to slow us in the air.

The Phoenix hovers directly below Ashra as she flaps her wings. The bottom peak of the continent touches the bronze ridges by her tail in a flurry of sparks. A whole chunk of rock shears off and tumbles toward the shadowlands below. The Phoenix readies herself to ram against Ashra a second time, but we're up near her head now. We brace for the impact, holding on with blistered fingers.

The collision tosses us to the side, but we don't fall. The Phoenix stumbles in midair and flaps her great wings, the blue flame spreading along the sides of her body.

“Come on, girl,” Griffin says, patting the monster on the ridge. “You can fight harder than that!”

She screeches and bumps against the continent again. It wavers in the sky like an upset top. I stare with wide eyes. Is she really capable of capsizing the continent? “Griffin,” I shout, “we have to get her back up!”

“On it,” he says, driving the daggers into a gap between the ridges with his feet. The Phoenix squawks and dives toward the earth and up again, circling around Ashra. The plumes that tuft around the top ridge ignite blue, and then we have a problem.

Griffin's dagger blades turn yellow-white and melt, the metal oozing into a silvery puddle against her plumes. The hilts tumble off the sides of her neck and down to the earth below. Griffin takes a fresh dagger and gently prods the tip into her skin and lifts it up. The end of the blade is warped and melted, gleaming with heat.

He looks at me and I stare back at him. Our steering mechanism is gone. We've lost control.

TWENTY-SIX

“HANG ON,” GRIFFIN
shouts, and we duck as the Phoenix approaches Ashra's rim. From here we can see the forest burning, the crowds shouting and staring and pointing from the village of Ulan. The shining blue crystal of the citadel gleams with reflected firelight as we pass over it. Elisha and my father are down there somewhere in the chaos.

The Phoenix flies over the outlands and past the outcrop of rock that stretches from the side of Ashra—my realm of one, the fireweed drowned out by the raging rains. The thunder and lightning have moved on, but the rains pelt down. The winds are blowing the clouds toward Burumu, and soon we won't have the storm to dampen the Phoenix's strength.

We need to bring her down now.

Griffin grabs the last of his arrows and shoves it firmly into the gap in the ridges. The Phoenix screeches and the arrow lights with instant flame, the arrowhead melting into her skin.

That's it. We're out of weapons.

“Is that all you can do, you roasting chicken?” Griffin shouts. “Come on! I thought you were a beast of legends. You're just someone's dinner caught on fire!”

He's grinning. Has he lost his mind? I doubt the monster understands what he's saying. But she squawks, and blue explodes down the trailing kite feathers of her tail. She might not understand the words, but she understands the tone.

Griffin jumps from side to side on the ridges. “You going to let your prey take you for a ride, are you? Let's hope the dragons and hazus aren't watching. For shame!”

“Stop jumping around!” I shout. “You're going to fall.”

“We have to bring this bird down with us,” he says, his eyes gleaming. And the Phoenix's whole tail and wings are rippling with blinding blue as her beak snaps at Griffin. It's working. I run down the ridges of her back and stomp on them, shouting at the monster with all my might.

“You liar!” I shout, and I'm surprised at the strength of my voice. “We believed in you as the protector. And you're nothing but another stupid sky beast!”

The Phoenix snaps at Griffin and he flips out of the way, steadying himself two ridges behind. The feathers around me are undulating like a lava flow as we jump and shout at the bird.

“I trusted you!” Tears blur in my eyes. I can't tell if they're from the smoldering heat or the frustration and heartbreak, but the world is distorted and hazy, the thick raindrops clinging to my hair and skin. “I was ready to let my life burn for you. But now I'll burn for myself.” I stomp around a bit more, and the Phoenix is circling, distracted, over the gleaming blue crystal of the citadel.

And then there is a roll of repeated thunder, only it's not thunder at all. The airship is rising from the landing pitch into the sky, its metal pipes clanking into place and aimed at the Phoenix.

They fire.

The ammunition smashes into the Phoenix with the weight of iron cannonballs. They melt on impact, falling to the ground half-shaped, but the impact is enough to send the Phoenix spiraling through the sky. Griffin and I hold tight to the ridges as we spin upside down over and over. I can't tell which way is up and which is down, and somewhere in the light and dark and rain and sky there is another volley of fire, and the world ignites in pure, gleaming blue.

The Phoenix lets out a horrible screech that rings in my ears and through my head. She beats her wings furiously as we lurch through the sky. Griffin has been thrown back to the ridge beside me. The beast's plumage is pulsating with blue light, and her flames crackle with electricity. It's like the storm dragon's crystals lighting up. And I know what happened the moment after that.

I grab Griffin's hand and we look at each other, the only constant as the world around us spins and burns. We have to let go and hope there's land underneath. “Time to go,” I say. And he trusts me. We drop from the monster's back.

The world is wind and pelting rain as we fall. But after a few seconds we land on my outcrop, the fireweed trampled underneath us as we roll across the grass. Griffin tumbles past me and over the edge, but our hands are tightly locked and I pull him back up. We lie there gasping while we hear a third volley of ammunition from the airship, whose puttering form is slowly chasing the lurching Phoenix. The beast lets out one last horrible shriek and crashes hard into the side of the continent.

The Phoenix bursts like a star exploding, in a blue-and-silver blast so blinding that the whole world seems to light on fire. Ashra shakes with the fury of an earthquake as it topples from side to side. The blue-and-white burst of light blazes across the visible sky, everything turning to sparks and radiance, like we're inside the shower of a blinding firework.

I can't see anything for a moment, my blistered hands threaded through Griffin's fingers and the soft, waterlogged fireweed. I have to blink five times before the light of the blast dies away. The sparks of the Phoenix are glittering and drifting like the silver stars on Jonash's blade. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

But Ashra is tipping and rumbling underneath us, the whole continent groaning as though it were alive. I look at Griffin to see if he hears it, too. Then I turn from the outcrop to look for the airship, but it's gone. Maybe the blast lit its wobbly linen balloon on fire. In the distance, the blue crystal of the citadel is gleaming with a bright light I've never seen. It isn't reflected sunlight, or the Phoenix's stars. It's lit from within, flashing like a beacon and humming as Ashra shakes.

Then it goes dim, and there's a horrible cracking sound. Ashra shudders and splits, the rocks rending into jagged edges that break apart. The pieces of my world crack and tumble toward the earth.

The continent is falling.

“Griffin!” I shout. We try to stand, but the world is rumbling and collapsing, and we keep stumbling as it shudders. Griffin reaches for me and pulls me close to him, his warm arms around me.

If the world is ending, I'm glad I'm with him.

Ashra crumbles to fragments around us, some pieces falling slower than others. The tiny rock bridge I'd climbed to my outcrop so many times is one of the first to shatter, detaching us from the rest of the continent. We fall sideways onto the grass and manage to rise to our knees, still clasped in each other's arms. We're drenched and sweating, blistered and bruised, but I'll hold on until the very end here on my realm of one—no, my realm of two.

There's a sound like buzzing, a humming sound like millions of red bees or flicker wasps. It's slowing to a drumming, and then the world around us lights in rainbow colors. They dance off Griffin's shell necklace still around my neck. They weave across his face in light and shadow, flickering on his face like the stripes he sometimes paints there. The world is sticky like scarlet honey, and everything has slowed.

“The barrier,” I say.

And then there's a sucking sound, and the world tumbles down into the crater below with an earth-shattering crash.

My world goes black.

* * *

“Kali.” There's a girl's voice in the darkness, a voice I recognize that's calling me. “Kali.” Someone shakes me gently. “Two shining moons, girl, now is no time to snooze.”

I blink, the world slowly coming into view. The clouds above have drifted away, the sunlight streaming down. And there's a familiar face leaning over me, her golden earrings dangling against her long neck.

“Aliyah.”

She smiles, her skin crinkling below her eyes. “You're all right,” she says.

It all comes flooding back to me—the Phoenix. The continent. Griffin. “Where's—”

“Right here,” Griffin says from my right, taking my hand in his. His face is smudged with soot and dried blood, ashes strewn through his tangled brown hair. His fingers are blistered, and there are burns up and down his arms, little diamonds of scalded red skin between the wrapped leather strings and beads.

He's beautiful. He's Griffin, and he's alive.

I sit up slowly, supported by Aliyah's and Griffin's caring hands on my back, and I look around.

The shadowlands below Ashra are gone, filled with shattered fragments and boulders of what was once our home in the sky. In the distance is a crushed silver machine, crumpled over like a giant broken lamppost.

“The Phoenix's last burst of fire overheated the generator,” Griffin says. “Without the generator to keep it afloat, Ashra came down. Burumu, too. The blast was that strong.”

My eyes widen. “Burumu, too?”

“Your soldiers saw it fall from their airship,” Aliyah tells me. “Just before their ship went down.”

The Elite Guard. So they're here, too.

“My father,” I say. “Elisha. Is...is everyone okay?”

Aliyah's smile drops from her lips. I look to Griffin, but he won't meet my eyes.

“Stay optimistic,” Aliyah says. “There are many survivors, and we haven't found everyone yet.” She stands, lifting her behemoth fang staff from the ground and reaching her hand out to me. I rise slowly, Griffin hovering to catch me if I need help. “We did find this,” Aliyah adds, and from her pouch she passes me the garnet-hilted dagger that fell to the earth with a flash.

I flip it over in my hands, the blade dusty with soot and ashes. I brush it off with my hand and return it to its sheath tied around my waist. Then Aliyah passes me a water flask and I drink, and I think how strange it is to be talking with her when I thought I'd never see her again.

The landscape is jagged and uneven, and we make our way slowly. Griffin limps as we walk, but doesn't utter a word of complaint.

“We were on our way to the lava lands after you and Griffin left,” Aliyah tells me. “A storm dragon dug too deep into the roof of the haven, so we had to leave before it broke through. It would be a shame to lose another safe place.”

“Where's Sayra?”

“Tending the wounded,” Aliyah says. “And getting the able-bodied organized into a monster patrol on the perimeter. We don't want any more lost today.”

The thought strikes me like an electric shock. The people of Ashra have been taught to fear the monster-ridden earth. There could be outright panic. And what's more, a gathering of humans will definitely attract monsters. It's only a matter of time before they come.

Ashra and Burumu, gone from the sky. Tash and Lilia will surely help the people of Burumu, though I'm not sure how many they can reach. The continent will fall into the monster-infested ocean, and I don't know if it will float like a raft or crumble, or if the Dark Leviathans will gather and consume it. And Nartu and the Floating Isles, those smaller fragment islands, are so far to the east that they're probably completely unaware of what's happened to us. They'll still be hovering aloft in the sky with their barriers and generators intact.

We walk for nearly half an hour with no one else in sight, picking our way through the jagged boulders and upturned earth along the dirt path Elisha and I once hurried down for the Rending Ceremony. Dragons and hazus soar high above, circling where the continent used to hover among the clouds. It's strange, being on Ashra and on the earth at the same time. The two worlds are one again, colliding the way my world intertwined with Griffin's. And this time Ashra's fate was definitely shaped by the Phoenix, but not in a way anyone expected.

We near the blue crystal of the citadel, now shattered in jagged shards strewn across the ground. It looks like an ancient ruin, like the destroyed houses in the marshlands. The long stone steps are cracked and uneven, the ribs of the library's arched ceilings exposed and the annals strewn about in the rubble. I see a man in a white robe, his gray beard covered in soot. He's piling the dusty red tomes on top of each other with a blank look on his face. It's Elder Aban, and I shout out to him. He stares at me with the same vacant expression, and I realize he's in shock. I wonder if he thought the Phoenix wasn't real all this time, or if he believed in her and can't fathom that she attacked us, or that Ashra fell from the sky. It's not something I can comprehend myself, yet.

I stumble over the rubble toward him.

“Kallima,” he says. “Thank the Phoenix you're safe.”

No thanks to her, I think, but there's no point in aggravating things. “Aban, have you seen my father?”

He blinks slowly and says nothing, as if he's lost his mind. “Your...father,” he says eventually, as if the words have no meaning, as if he's never spoken them before. He says nothing more, but after a moment reaches into the rubble again and scrapes the dust off another of the annals, placing it on top of the tall, wobbly pile he's made.

“Poor soul,” Aliyah says as we turn to leave. “Somewhere between panic and disbelief he's lost himself.”

“He'll be all right,” Griffin says. “The fallen always struggle at first.”

We step through the bones of my destroyed home. I'll never return to my room again, my fireplace crackling with comforting warmth, my blankets snug around me as my father's soft voice murmurs in the hallway. Those blankets are somewhere under the piles of stones, covered in dust and ashes. But the breeze on earth is so warm. It drifts over me with its own comfort.