Heir to the Sky (25 page)

The Phoenix opens her beak widely, her feathers flapping in rippling waves as she soars through the sky toward Jonash. He spreads his arms, a smile on his face. He reaches a hand out to catch hold of the flaming plumes on the back of her neck, but he never gets that far.

She snaps him in her beak as he shrieks. She shakes him back and forth, lifting her sharp talons up to his struggling form.

The world is devoured in panic and flame.

I scream. Griffin grabs me and holds me to his chest, turning me away from the nightmarish scene. Jonash screams again and then is silent, and I manage to pull away from Griffin in time to see the starry blue scimitar splash into the lake below.

The tears flood my eyes as the Phoenix circles over the lake, screeching as her giant wings flap gales of hot wind against us.

And then the Phoenix stops circling and sets her wings flat and tilted forward. Lightning streaks in the sky behind her, and she is closer now, diving toward us, her beak open and her eyes wild.

And I only have a moment to realize that Griffin is right before we turn to run.

This is not the Phoenix I've prayed to, the one romanticized over hundreds of years of tradition and storytelling.

This is an ancient sky beast, one so powerful that she was said to have rent the floating continents from the very earth, leaving craters of shadow and death behind in her wake.

She is a monster on an epic scale, larger than one ever faced before.

A monster is a monster. And she will do what monsters do.

She will kill us.

TWENTY-FIVE

THE WORLD BUBBLES
with heat as we run, the air wavy and streaked like a mirage. We dive for the tree line as the Phoenix swoops over us and into the sky again. The air is heavy with the smell of burning wood as we look up. The trees above us are lit with flames, all burning down around us. Birds and pikas are scattering with a flurry of squawks and chatters as the Phoenix makes a wide loop around the edge of the continent.

This can't be happening. The Phoenix was the defender of the floating lands, but she's lighting them on fire like she doesn't care.

And I remember then, looking at Griffin's grim face as we hurry back to the lake—she doesn't care. She's a monster, and we're prey, and that's it.

We have to stop her, and I can't let my upbringing hinder me. I can't revere her, I can't hesitate, or all of Ashra will go up in flames.

“What do we do?” I shout to Griffin. The only monster I've ever seen that nearly rivaled the Phoenix's size was the dragon that carried off the striped cat.

“Same as any other monster,” Griffin yells back over the thunder and winds. “Find its weakness and bring it down.”

The Phoenix is on fire as she flaps her wings, rounding the distant cloud of mist at the northern waterfall. “Water, right?” Water puts out a fire. But the Phoenix was sleeping inside Lake Agur, and she only made the water bubble and boil. It's not enough to extinguish her flames.

There's no time for Griffin to answer, because she's swooping again. Griffin has one of his venom-tipped arrows nocked, and he looses it at the Phoenix's chest. It lodges in the feathers and promptly burns up like a stick of kindling. I don't know how long the chimera venom stays potent, but I doubt it's strong enough for a tiny dose like that to affect such a huge sky beast.

The Phoenix opens her beak and lets out a deafening screech. I clasp my hands over my ears, unsure which way to run. The forest is burning, and large branches snap off with ancient groans, blocking the way back to the citadel. We could run into the eastern forest, but we won't make the edge before she reaches us.

“Come on!” Griffin shouts, and he wades into the water toward the flaming monster. The water feels thick as honey around my calves as I force myself to run faster toward the center. Just as the Phoenix swoops over us, we plunge under the cover of the lake's surface. It's barely deep enough, and as she passes, the water splatters like scalding tea across my back. I cry out, my shout nothing but bubbles in the warm water. I splash upright and Griffin's already there, another arrow flying toward the Phoenix. There are only a handful of them left in his quiver, and I'm not sure what else to do.

“Can we drown her somehow?” I ask. “Put out the flames?” Then the rains finally break loose from the slate clouds and pound the lake's surface around us. They rise like steam off the Phoenix's back, and her feathers tinge with blue, the color of an even hotter flame. She's compensating for the rain, I think, so it won't put out her fire.

“Maybe her wings are like the Benu's,” Griffin says. “Maybe they won't burn us.” He has a dagger in his hand now, his eye on the monster as she curves gracefully through the sky.

“They're not,” I shout back, my own dagger held upright for whatever good it will do. “They boiled the lake and singed my back. They're hot.”

“But that part,” he says, pointing at the Phoenix's back. There's that long line of ridges down her spine, chinked together like scalloped plates of armor. They end near a tuft of yellow feathers on the top of her head, and they're the only part of her that doesn't seem to be on fire. They look like they're made of shining bronze, and I doubt we could stick a dagger in. Even if we could, it would be like a pinprick to a beast like that.

“I'm going to jump on,” Griffin says.

I can't have heard him right. “What?”

“Next time she swoops by,” he says. “We're no use down here on the ground. Use a monster's abilities against it, right?”

“But you'll get burned!”

“We'll see,” he says, and the mass of light is coming toward us again as the rain pounds and steams off her back.

I brace myself. He's right—there's nowhere to go but up.

She opens her beak and screeches, diving toward us with her claws and wings outstretched. Every nerve in my body pulses with a panicked scream to run, but I fight it and brace myself.

I'm the heir of the Phoenix. I will break her.

Griffin and I wait until she's so close that she can't alter her course. Then we spread apart just enough to avoid her oncoming claws. We both reach for the tufts of fiery yellow plumes that cover the skin where her wings meet her body. I grab tight with both hands. The weight of her knocks me off my feet, but I hang on with all my might as I lift with her into the sky. The skin on my fingers is burning and peeling, the Phoenix tilting her black oily eye to stare at me. Griffin is on the other wing and has already pulled himself up onto the ridge just behind her head. He braces his legs and reaches for me, but his hand is too far away. My brain shrieks at me as my fingers blister and scald under the feathers, like I'm grasping a blazing hot pan handle. I can't hold on—I let go and fall through the air, tumbling down toward the lake below. I plunge down in a flurry of foam, bubbles fizzing in my ears as I swim toward the surface. The lake water is still warm, but it soothes my burned hand as the skin peels away before my eyes. I come gasping to the surface, my dagger still in my other hand. High above the Phoenix is soaring with Griffin on its back. He's like an insect on her spine, but he's hanging on to the ridges tightly as he crouches behind the tall back of one of the plates. They're not scalding, then, or he would've jumped down by now. I hear a cry from the Phoenix. Has he stabbed her? I can't see anything over the thick curtain of rain.

The current of the water is strong and pulling, but at least I'm not weighted down by the dress I wore in the marshlands. I kick toward the shore, the rain pelting down around me. But I'm not getting closer to the shore. In fact, the edge of the lake is getting farther away.

I clamp down on the dagger with my teeth so both hands are free, and I swim with all my might toward the edge. I don't understand. I've crossed this lake hundreds of times before. Am I too exhausted from fighting the Phoenix? My heart is thrashing against my ribs and my blood pulses like it's on fire, but it only makes me feel more alive, more desperate.

Then I hear the rush of water, and I realize the problem. I've dropped into the lake too close to the waterfall. When she arose, the tidal wave must have broken away the crust of earth and turned it into a roaring flood of water. The current is pulling me to the edge of the continent. I'm going to go over, to fall back down to the earth.

I thrash my legs through the water, my arms crashing through the surf. But the shore keeps shrinking away from me. Mouthfuls of water splash in with every heaving breath, and I cough and sputter, lungs burning. I know now about the barrier surrounding Ashra. I know if I fall I will likely survive. But if I fall without Griffin, if I break a leg or an arm or pass out, I will be easy pickings for any monsters prowling below. If I fall now, unless Griffin can take out the Phoenix, Ashra will burn and the people will die. Ashra will burn to ashes, its namesake, like the Phoenix burned before it.

The current batters my shoulder against a sharp rock and I cry out, spinning helplessly through the water. I feel blood oozing down my back, sticky and cold as it spills into the frothing waves. Thick brambles of entangled vines stretch out over the rocks, and I grab at them with blistered fingers. Their thorns stick into my skin, but they hold as the current grasps at my tired legs. I'm safe for a moment, and I hold on with every fiber in my being.

And then the thought strikes me. The words of the annals that Elder Aban reads from every year at the Rending Ceremony. The Phoenix burned herself up in her effort to rend Ashra from the earth and throw it into the sky. Water will not douse her flames, but if she overexerts herself as she did then, wouldn't she turn to ash and soot? Already her flames are heating up, her plumage no longer the first brilliant yellow we saw but flaming in reds and oranges, her back tinting blue where the rain is hitting her.

We can't douse her flame, but we can burn her out.

I have to tell Griffin. I have to let him know how we can defeat her. He knew all the weaknesses of the monsters on the earth, but I'm the one who knows the Phoenix's weakness. This time I'm the one who knows what to do.

My muscles burn as I grip the vines stretched over the rocks. I'm not sure I have the strength to pull myself out of the water, or whether the vines will hold my weight. I kick against the current and pull myself up to see over the boulder. Flames lick the far ends of the vines—the whole shore is on fire. The rain beats down on the smoldering foliage, producing a thick layer of smoke that spreads over the rocks like gray mist. Climbing up isn't an option. I hang on to the vines as the water pelts my skin, not sure what to do next or where to go.

“Kali!” Griffin's voice shouts over the storm in a faraway cry. “Kali!”

I see the Phoenix high above, Griffin crouched on its back. She's in the eastern sky above the lake, and Griffin is holding tightly to the bronze plate with one hand and waving with the other. “Wait!” I think he shouts, but I can't be sure.

Wait? It's not like I can do anything else.

But I see him reach into his dagger belt and take out a blade. He sticks it deep between the ridged plates and the Phoenix lets out a screech, turning her head to snap at him with her golden beak. The feathers at the tips of her wings flare blue as she lowers in the sky. Griffin drives in another dagger with his foot, and the Phoenix turns her head to the other side, shrieking at him. They dip below the edge of the continent and out of sight.

A moment later I see her wings flapping, and they surface just to the northeastern edge of the waterfall. And I know what Griffin's doing.

If I can let go at the right time, he's going to try to catch me.

If I miss, I'll plummet back down to the earth, my future uncertain.

It's a huge risk. But my fingers ache and sting tangled in the briars. I can't hold on much longer, and I can't climb up to the burning shoreline. There's nothing to do but go over the edge of the waterfall.

I watch the Phoenix approaching. She tries to fly away from the edge of the continent, but Griffin uses the daggers he's driven into the ridge to steer her down and around. I can't believe he can command a monster that big. He must have struck nerves in her spine or something—either way, she looks irritated and unhappy, completely distracted.

I look at the misty edge of the falls, bordered by outcrops of sharp rock. I have to time it carefully. There's only one chance.

They're close now. Griffin shouts at me before they duck out of sight, but I can barely hear him over the roar of the storm and the waterfall. Did he say five? Or dive? Or maybe something else? Five seconds sounds about right to time the fall.

There's no time to think. My grip won't hold out for them to make another loop around me. I squeeze my eyes shut and count down the last three seconds. Then I open my eyes and let go.

The vines thread through my open fingers as the current pulls me to the edge. I hold my dagger in front as a feeble attempt to ward off sharp rocks. The spray from the waterfall is so thick I can barely see, the water roaring in my ears.

And then I'm swept over the side and I'm falling, the earth dark and far below the storm clouds. But there's a gleaming light down there, too. The Phoenix with Griffin on its back, and he's looking up.

My mouth fills with frothy water, the spray all around me. But the light is hurtling toward me, and I have to get this right or it's all over.

I land against something hard and uncomfortably warm. It's a bronze ridge near the Phoenix's tail. I grab with all my might as the waterfall tries to sweep me off. My dagger clanks against the side of the armored plate and tumbles toward the earth. Another flap of the monster's wings and the waterfall is gone, but the rain is still pounding away, and my hands are throbbing and aching. I scramble to get my legs up the side, but the heat of its feathers scalds my soles through the thin palm branch sandals.

Then two strong arms grab mine, and Griffin's face is above me. He's shouting something, but I'm so tired and panicked that I can't make it out. He heaves me up onto the bronze ridge as the Phoenix flaps up and down, the motion jerking us both around like a kite in a storm. Far below I see a flash of brilliant light—my dagger hitting the barrier and setting off a pulse.

Griffin's strong grip holds me steady as I pull one leg over the ridge. I'm on my stomach, both hands on the plate like the front of a saddle from those long-ago horses. Griffin slumps back, and we can both finally breathe.