Vial of Tears, page 24
She’d been home.
Môt’s voice oozed through the walls, and in an instant, Sam realized where she’d landed. She was backstage. Rugzā lay at her feet, and she picked it up and tucked it under her belt. Following Môt’s voice, she walked through a damp hallway until it ended, and she was able to peer around a wall to see onstage. To her right, a ladder went up and out of the amphitheater—a ladder to freedom. She was tempted to climb it, but she needed to get Rima first.
“Come now.” Môt was beckoning to Rima. He turned to the audience and held out his arms. “I should like to get to the kiss!”
The audience was wilder than ever. “There was a passage!” a woman screamed. “Eshmun found a doorway!” Meanwhile, a man jumped onto the stage and thrust his hips back and forth, humping the air, his tongue lapping. A guard shoved him off the stage back into the crowd, where several men were chanting loudly, “Take her, take her, take her!” For a moment, Sam thought that the dusky sky above was finally turning black, that nightfall was coming on. But then she realized it was only her; she needed to breathe or she would pass out. Little stars orbited through her vision.
She’d been home!
She blinked and steadied herself.
Rima stood with her shoulders slumped in defeat, her terrified face wet with tears. Sam gripped the sword. Like she always did with Dad’s Swiss Army knife, she held it up to her lips and kissed it for good luck.
“Can you kill a god?” she asked. “Are you Wrath? If you are, it’s time.”
Before her eyes, the blade suddenly extended and widened, shimmering like liquid mercury. Gasping for a breath, Sam held it away from her, the weight of it almost too much to bear. It slipped to the ground, nearly stabbing her foot as she stifled a scream. Heart pounding, she took it by the hilt, struggling to hold it at hip level.
She looked out onto the stage once more. There was the shapeshifter in his white robe, ready to declare Rima the wife of Môt. Sam’s eyes went to his gnarly hands, and then she saw him react to something unseen: He flinched, sidestepping away from Rima and Môt. The slightest shadow of fear crossed his face, and in an instant he deftly morphed from young man to rat creature, shedding his robe and turban and scurrying toward Sam. For a heart-jolting moment, she thought he’d seen her. But then he suddenly stopped and clawed at the floor; a trapdoor opened and he was gone, vanished into some sort of underground crawlway.
It all happened so fast. While her eyes had been on his escape, a roar had risen from the audience. Sam took a small step forward to see what was happening—and gasped as a huge shape stalked onto the stage.
Teth!
He pounded toward Môt, hurtling at him with a look of sheer hatred. In his huge hands he wielded a massive black sword made of stone rather than metal. Its polished blade flashed as he raised it high over his head. The entire audience was on its feet, pointing, but Môt mistook their bellowing and screaming for applause. He bowed.
Finally he must have felt Teth upon him. He spun to face him, pulling his own weapon from its sheath. It was too late.
“Revenge!” Teth thundered.
Teth’s sword met with Môt’s body, but the blade instantly turned green with fire. It burned like a match and fell to the stage in a pile of ash, while Teth was left holding nothing but the hilt.
Môt laughed wickedly and then, like a dragon, he breathed a stream of flame at Teth. Teth’s beard caught fire and he fumbled backward to his knees, pawing at his face. Môt exhaled again, which ignited Teth’s sleeve.
“Teth!” Sam screamed.
She summoned every ounce of strength she had and ran onto the stage, carrying the sword ahead of her. Teth’s face bloomed with astonishment; Môt’s darkened with fear. She pointed the blade at him clumsily, struggling to wield the enormous weapon.
But Rugzā seemed to know its target. It lightened, lifting in Sam’s hands. She swung at Môt and the blade made an airy, beautiful whistling sound, even as it split Môt’s torso cleanly in two.
His body fell in half onto the stage, Rima let out a bloodcurdling scream, and all hell broke loose.
The elephant crashed off the stage and charged through the amphitheater, trumpeting, crushing benches into rubble under its feet, and spearing men with its tusks. The crowd screamed and wailed. Sam stood, holding the sword in both hands, frozen with shock at what she’d done. Behind Teth, an army of Sidonians in their long tunics, along with many ḥayuta, rushed into the fray, pouring down the aisles. Three gray-skinned men stampeded across the stage, sprouting rhinoceros horns as they went.
Sam frantically looked for Rima. She was right here a second ago!
“You will suffer,” Teth growled at the dying Môt, “as she did!” He took Rugzā from Sam, raised the blade, and sliced through Môt’s ankles, leaving his feet detached on the stage.
“Eshmun,” Môt sputtered, blood spilling out of him. He looked down at his severed lower half. His voice was a gravelly whisper. “Where are you, my nephew? Put your… hands on me. Mend me.”
“You ordered the murder of Meem,” Teth said. His hair was burned, his beady eyes charged with fury. He turned to slice through a dozen panicked rat creatures with one swing of Rugzā, sending their flesh in splatters across the wedding bed. He triumphantly thrust a fist to his chest, his bear canines long and sharp. “There will be no healing.”
Where is Rima?
Daggers flashed and women screamed. Rats screeched and men bellowed. Sam scanned the stage and finally found her sister in the clutches of the guard with the whip. He was clawing at her, tearing at her dress.
“No!” Sam shrieked.
She didn’t think. The next moment Môt’s abandoned weapon was in her hands. And then she was driving the sword between the guard’s shoulder blades.
He reeled around to face her, and she kicked him in the groin. He sank to his knees, cursing. “You little whore.”
Sam leaned over to whisper in his ear. “Go to hell.” And then she kicked his chest, making him topple backward onto the ground.
“Sam!” Rima cried. “You’re here? But… you went up in the tornado!”
“I’m back,” Sam said.
“I think you just…” Rima looked at the crumpled guard. “You killed him!”
“Had to,” Sam said, her chest exploding with adrenaline. She felt like she might throw up. “He would’ve…” She didn’t want to finish the sentence. “We have to get out of here.” She grabbed Rima’s arm while a groundswell of shouting erupted near the back row of benches. Across the amphitheater, she saw them coming in, one after another.
Lions.
Ribs showing through their patchy fur, teeth bared, they could only have been the caged lions Sam had seen when she’d descended the spiral staircase. Someone had released them. And like Teth, they seemed to have one thing on their minds: revenge. They darted past Teth’s crew of Sidonian men and ḥayuta, intent only on the prison guards. Sam threw her hands over her face as a lion leaped and took a guard by his shoulder, the man’s white eyes globes of terror. When she looked again, the man’s arm was on the ground next to him as the lion dragged him by the feet.
“This way!” Sam screamed, but Rima couldn’t get past Môt, who was still gurgling. “Let’s go,” Sam urged, but Rima stood frozen, her mouth open.
Môt’s contorted face looked greener than ever, his eyes turning slowly from side to side. His tall golden hat lay at his side. Dark blood had made a puddle all around him.
“Rima!” Sam said. “Come on! Rhaṭ!”
She pulled her sister by the arm until she found the stone ladder, camouflaged so well it was nearly invisible. “There!” she cried. Rima climbed first and Sam followed. She gripped rung after rung, kicking a rat creature as it clawed at her feet. It tore her ankle bells away, and then her old shoes. Her bare toes curled on the stone as she climbed, wiry whiskers on her heels. “Hurry!” She pushed on Rima’s thighs, terrified that the rat would sink its teeth into her. With a grunt, she kicked as hard as she could, catching the creature across its snout and sending it into the air. It plummeted to the stage below, where a lion eagerly scooped it up.
“One of Teth’s men must have let the lions out,” Sam said when they finally got to the top. Below on the wedding bed, a lion was making a feast of two guards, gnawing their limp bodies.
“It must have been her,” Rima said. She pointed toward the rear of the arena, where the stone benches had been crushed to pieces by the elephant. Sam squinted to see.
There was the girl she had helped rescue earlier in the dungeons. The sweet-faced ḥayuta, who Sam thought might have been a cat. With a raised fist, she rode the back of a lion, seemingly directing their charge. She was still wearing the blanket Sam had given her.
“They’re only going after the prison guards,” Sam noted. “The people who caged them.”
“Maybe those lions are her family,” Rima offered.
Teth was still wielding Rugzā, his roars lifting as dozens of ruḥā began ascending, floating up from the amphitheater like a flock of crows. At Môt’s severed feet, a swirling green abyss had formed, bubbling like a cauldron. Hell was opening up.
“Look,” Sam said. The guard she’d stabbed was turning dark, and for a moment she thought his ruḥā was separating from his body. But instead his corpse twisted and broke into tiny pieces, which rose up off the ground, a swarm.
“What is that?” Rima asked.
“I think… they’re flies,” Sam said. “Thousands of flies.”
They buzzed toward the seething hellhole and dove down into it, the sound of screaming and suffering rising up. It was deafening, the shrieks of heartbreak, wickedness, agony, despair. Sam pressed her ears closed, felt her mind turn cold. She saw herself falling. She wanted to. One step and she could throw herself over the edge, to break open, to see how hollow she was.
She opened her fist. The black lines had spread down her palm and into the veins in her wrist. Darkness was pushing its way into her blood. It would pump all the way to her heart.
Snap out of it! Look away!
Sam tore the necklace of dark flowers from her neck and hurled it over the edge. She hooked an arm around Rima and shook her. “Get back,” she said. “It’s reeling us in.”
Rima nodded, hard, and closed her eyes.
When Sam turned to stand, she found Eshmun just behind her. “You’re here!” she gasped. “Where’s Mr. Koplow?”
“Who?” He shook his head. No time for questions. “Quickly.”
Sam grabbed Rima’s hand and they followed, hurrying past the opening in the earth that held the spiral staircase; through the vine gate that had burned to ashes; and beyond the fields of tannîyn, where the ground was stirring.
The ground was stirring.
“Eshmun!” Sam cried, wanting him to stop so she could show him. She slowed and stared. Rootlike claws were flexing open and closed. They began to push up toward the sky, freeing scaly bodies from the soil. The farmer was nowhere to be seen.
Eshmun and Rima were sprinting ahead toward the marketplace. Sam ran to catch up, finding when she reached town that the caged monkeys had been released and were running wild, leaping from head to head, tearing at hair and ears and noses.
Sam grabbed Rima’s hand again as they struggled to keep pace with Eshmun, who darted through a pack of glassy-eyed men who were looting the tents. They stuffed food into their mouths and pockets, smashed pots and vials of stinking liquids. The marketplace smelled like a chemical spill and Sam’s lungs burned with every breath.
“Eshmun,” she gasped, losing sight of him. She tripped over a skull, her bare toes meeting bone. A crippling wave of pain made her falter and then fall to her knees. But Rima was still running, so she forced herself to stand and sprint to catch up. From the corner of her eye, she could see a band of rat creatures scurrying across the tops of the tents and lean-tos, making the roofs pitch and sway.
A wall came crashing down behind them, Sam shoving Rima out of the way. Kition was collapsing. They had to find their way to Teth’s or Eshmun’s boat, to any boat moored in the harbor.
“It’s coming for me again,” Rima said, cupping her hands over her ears. It was unmistakable: the telltale shrieking. “Sam!”
Trembling, Sam looked up. The clouds were an ominous shade of green. There was not just one tannîyn—there were many, circling, assessing their targets. Six of them. Six. Two were small, as though freshly hatched from the earth, but the others were as large as the one that had followed them into the mountains. Sam pressed her hands to her ears as they shrieked again, their voices like a hundred knives being sharpened upon stones.
Teth’s men answered with a roar of their own. Sam spun to find two dozen of them, wearing metal helmets and breastplates. They knelt with bows and arrows, about to fire.
Sam caught sight of Eshmun ahead, where he’d halted, waiting, to wave her toward him. But then he disappeared again behind a cart full of hides and hooves.
“Eshmun!” she yelled, just as the first tannîyn descended.
Sam hooked her arm through Rima’s and they dove under a tipped lean-to, peering out as the tannîyn careened through the marketplace. It shredded rooftops with its talons, upending a wagon full of wooden statues, sending them skittering through the street like frightened animals.
To Sam’s right, an abandoned bow and a single arrow of Kition make lay on the ground. She grabbed them and knelt to take aim, sweat half blinding her. She nocked. She sighted. She drew a breath.
A moment later, Rima screamed at the sky. “They shot it! It’s falling!”
There was a horrific boom and then a cloud of dust. And then it was silent.
Sam held her breath for a very long minute, until Rima finally tugged on her dress, staring at her. “You shot it?”
“I think that was my arrow, yeah,” Sam said with an astonished grin, still holding on to the bow. “Girl Scouts. Archery badge. Plus a few lessons from Dad.”
The massive tannîyn lay crookedly across the road; its body had flattened everything underneath it. Its tail still twitched, threatening anyone who came too close. Sam glanced up at the other tannîyn, still silently circling above. Waiting.
Eshmun leaned over the injured tannîyn, which had taken Sam’s well-placed arrow to the neck, and put his hands on it.
“Is he crazy? What is he doing?” Rima asked, her voice strident.
“I don’t know,” Sam said, but a moment later she did.
The wound diminished under Eshmun’s touch. Blood stopped coursing out of the tannîyn’s neck. It fluttered its wings, sending another marketplace tent to the ground. The arrow slipped out, falling benignly at Eshmun’s feet. He kept his hands steady, his eyes closed in concentration. Radiating beneath his fingertips, a glow spread across the tannîyn’s body, turning it from reptilian green to bright gold, shimmering as Eshmun’s magic spread. A gasp rippled through the small crowd that had gathered.
Sam eyed the sickly sky and the remaining five tannîyn assessing their next strike. One had dropped below the others. “Hurry, Eshmun,” she whispered as he pulled his hands away. The beast was now pure white. Its face was placid, benign; the evil flash in its eyes was gone.
“Get on,” Eshmun said, turning to face them. His face was soaked with tears.
“What?” Sam asked.
“Mount it,” he said.
“Are you kidding me?” Rima shrieked. “It has”—she glared at Eshmun and pointed—“scales and teeth. It has wings!”
“Exactly,” Eshmun said. He wiped the tears from his face and ran his hands across the wounds on his chest, making them disappear.
Sam glanced up. Another tannîyn had dropped to a lower altitude and had tightened its circle of flight. The two of them were homing in. An abandoned quiver full of black-fletched arrows lay on the ground. Sam slung it across her back.
“Sit in the middle,” Sam said to Rima. Teth’s men had reloaded their bows and were aiming them skyward. “Hurry.”
“You want me to ride a dragon?” Rima asked, her voice cracking. “With the dick who brought us here in the first place?”
“Yes,” Sam said, though her own voice was quavering. She flashed Rima a weak smile. “It’s our only choice.”
Eshmun had already straddled the white tannîyn’s back, and Rima reluctantly climbed on, clutching his waist. Sam sat behind her sister and reached across her to hug Eshmun’s waist as well, pressing Rima tight in-between them. She wasn’t about to lose her grip on her sister, not again. The tannîyn’s scales were firm and sticky, softer than Sam imagined. She squeezed her thighs tight against its warm body and took a breath.
“Ready?” Eshmun asked.
“No!” Rima screamed.
The white tannîyn took three long strides and with one powerful flap of its wings, they were airborne. Rima howled. “I hate this place!”
In a matter of seconds, they’d left Kition’s shoreline behind and were soaring over the sea. Sam let out a surprised laugh. “In the name of the gods!” she cried out.
Gliding close to the surface of the water, the tannîyn flew steady and strong. Sam felt as if she could stretch out her bare toes and touch the water, the way she sometimes let her fingers trail along Glen Lake when she was fishing.
She looked over her shoulder at the island’s profile fading behind her, and her heart jolted. “Three tannîyn!” she screamed.
They were in pursuit, their faces drawn into evil grins. Soon, one of them pulled in front, gaining on them—it flew as if it had been shot from a cannon, it was so much faster than the others. It raced underneath their white tannîyn and then doubled back, speeding toward them head-on.
“It’s going to crash into us!” Rima screamed.
It was using itself as a missile. Sam pulled an arrow from her quiver and aimed for its head. But their white tannîyn jerked higher and then lower, making Sam’s shot sail wildly off target.
She pulled another arrow taut, squeezed her legs achingly hard to keep her balance, sighted the other tannîyn as it sped over the waves, and let the arrow go.
The shot flew straight and fast and nipped the tannîyn’s right wing, making it flap crookedly. It began to drop, passing just below them. Then the beast flipped sideways, falling into the sea with a crash of white waves.
