The Ember Blade

by Chris Wooding

  Aren and Sora stepped out and joined them, and Sora’s eyes widened as she saw the ghost tide for the first time.

  The very sea was aglow. All along the coast, strange aurorae curled and slid like slow ribbons beneath the waves. Where the water met the shore, in the coves and against the cliffs, the glow gathered to a blinding intensity. The docks were ablaze with it, rickety jetties and moored boats made dreamlike, floating in liquid white light.

  Further out were the hull whales, vast barnacled monsters so encrusted they seemed more stone than flesh. They jetted clouds of water, rolled over with a splash of fins. Occasionally one would surge up from below with its mouth agape, scattering the ribbons of light into tiny shreds. Then they’d crash down and sink, and there would be calm, and the ribbons would slowly re-form.

  It was the whales that Aren had heard on his journey here. Great bass creaks deep enough to feel in the breastbone; strange, irregular popping noises; eerie howls and screeches that set his nerves on edge. They were supernatural sounds that brought to mind the wild, ancient places where things from the world of the dead were said to hold sway.

  No wonder the sailors of elder days thought the ghost tide was the spirits of the drowned dead returning to land, herded by Joha’s whales. It was the hope of every Ossian to return to the earth when they died, where the agents of Sarla, Lady of Worms, could break down their bodies and return them to the green cycle of life. Those who went to sea prayed to the Heron King, Aspect of Sea and Sky, to deliver them back to Sarla if they should sink. The ghost tide was proof that their prayers were heeded.

  Aren didn’t believe in the Nine, in Sarla or Joha or any of the rest. He followed the light of the Primus and scoffed at the ignorance of his forefathers. But standing here, faced with this inexplicable majesty, it was hard not to feel the spirits of the old world reaching out to him, or the gods of his homeland like tall shadows at his back.

  He turned to Sora, intending to remark on the view, but the words died in his throat as he saw the tears in her eyes. She reached out, took his face in her cupped hands and brought his lips to hers at last.

  10

  Diligence. Temperance. Dominance.

  The credo of the Sanctorum. Aren gazed across the classroom at the plaque above the blackboard. Diligence. Temperance. Dominance. Persistence and self-control led to victory.

  If only it were that simple with girls.

  The master’s voice had become a background drone to the turmoil in his tired mind. The board was covered with letters and numbers and lines, but Aren had lost their meaning. He tried to pay attention, but his thoughts kept skating away.

  It had been three nights since the ghost tide began. Three nights in which he’d hardly slept, and when he did, he woke violently, his heart pounding. Once, he dreamed the Hollow Man entered his room and stood next to his bed while he lay paralysed. The Hollow Man tipped his head back and the scar at his throat parted like a wet, red mouth. Aren had jerked awake, whimpering like a puppy.

  There had been no word from Sora, and no sign of her in town. The silence worried him. Had he offended her somehow? Had she fallen ill, perhaps? Had her brothers found out about that night?

  He blinked the thought away for the hundredth time. Concentrate, he told himself, and focused on the blackboard again where Master Bilke was pointing his rod at an equation. He was a short, plump Krodan with huge bushy eyebrows and tufts of grey hair that stuck out over his ears, giving him the appearance of an angry owl. The other dozen students were dutifully scratching on their slates. Aren made a half-hearted attempt to look busy, but he found his gaze drifting back to the credo again.

  Diligence. Temperance. Dominance.

  Everything had changed when the ghost tide arrived. His father had been a new man in the morning, as he promised, and for the last few days he’d been as warm and attentive as ever. But Aren wasn’t fooled. It all felt false now, all of it a front. Uncertainty had spread through him, causing him to question things he’d never questioned before.

  Sora, for example. His night with Sora had been everything he wanted. She was dazzled by the ghost tide, and their time together had been full of kisses and professions of desire. Yet after they parted, he was plagued with doubt. They talked of love, marriage and children, but never of concerns, fears or problems. He wanted to know how they’d overcome her family’s opposition to their union. He wanted to make plans for their year apart. But somehow it was never the right time to talk about the difficult realities of their relationship. Somehow she made it that way.

  He was beginning to wonder if Sora was taking all this as seriously as he was. The idea threatened him with such torment that he hardly dared think it.

  ‘Aren!’

  Master Bilke’s voice jolted him back to the moment. With sudden horror, he realised that an answer was expected of him, but he didn’t know the question. The other boys turned towards him one by one as the silence stretched out.

  ‘Well? Stand up!’ said the master. Aren shot to his feet, grateful for a task he could accomplish. Master Bilke tapped his rod against an equation on the blackboard. ‘Solve for b, please.’

  Blood flooded Aren’s face as he stared witlessly at the blackboard. He was lost, and everyone in the room knew it. Some of the students smirked; others wore pity on their faces. He didn’t know which was worse.

  ‘Come along!’ barked Master Bilke. ‘I’ve just told you how to do it!’

  Aren’s mouth was dry. He swallowed, opened it, shut it again. ‘I … Master Bilke I—’ he began, and was saved when the door to the classroom burst open and there was Cade, of all people, sweaty and panting. Aren had never been so pleased to see him.

  ‘How dare you, boy!’ Master Bilke roared, with a face like he was about to expel a pellet. ‘Get out of my classroom!’

  Cade didn’t even glance at him. His eyes found Aren’s, and they were full of fright. ‘You have to come!’ he gasped. ‘They’ve arrested your da!’

  The world closed in on Aren and the heat of humiliation cooled to icy shock. The master, the other students, even Cade faded away to insignificance as the meaning of those words sank in. He scrambled out from behind his desk, fled the classroom and ran for home.

  He remembered little of the journey back. It was as if he’d entered a tunnel, and outside was nothing but a hazy blur, strange noises, shapes without form. All he knew was the motion of his body, the pain in his muscles as he sprinted through streets and down lanes. At one point, he might have heard Cade calling his name as he laboured in pursuit, but there was no question of slowing down for him. His mind was a blare of senseless panic and disbelief. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t real.

  If he could get home, somehow he could sort this out, make it right. He just had to get home.

  There were a dozen townsfolk gathered outside the house when he arrived, Krodan and Ossian both, drawn by neighbourly concern or ghoulish curiosity. They parted for him as he pelted up the drive from the road. Waiting by the front steps was a black carriage drawn by four black horses, with a double-barred cross on the side: the sign of the Iron Hand, the Emperor’s most feared investigators.

  His steps faltered and he stumbled to a halt before it, blanching with dread. The Iron Hand didn’t trouble themselves with minor felonies or local squabbles, they dealt with threats to the Empire. When the Iron Hand took someone away, they didn’t come back.

  A Krodan woman reached out as if to comfort him. Her husband pulled her back, his eyes cold, his expression detached. If the father was an enemy of the Empire, then what of the son? Better to be safe than to be tainted by association.

  At that, Aren gritted his teeth and straightened his spine. Curse them all, then. Curse the faithless who thought his father condemned. They’d be ashamed when this was over, when this misunderstanding was cleared up and justice was done. Randill was a good man and loyal to the Empire. That was as true as the moons in the sky. Whatever had happened here, he was sure his father had done nothing to invite the
wrath of the Iron Hand.

  But maybe he had.

  He dared not follow that thought to its end. Clutching his ribs where a stitch jabbed him, he lurched past the onlookers, up the steps to the porch and inside.

  Nanny Alsa was among the servants gathered fearfully in the corridor. She tried to stop him going into the dining room, but he threw her arm off and pushed past, almost falling through the doorway. Rough hands caught him and he was hoisted to his feet by a man wearing the livery of the Iron Guard, the soldiers of the Iron Hand.

  ‘And you must be Aren,’ said a small, bespectacled man with moist, fleshy lips, in a tone of weary disdain. He wore the long black overcoat and the double-barred cross of a watchman: one of the Emperor’s inquisitors.

  Aren struggled in the soldier’s grip, but he was held fast. The room was busy with armoured men. There was another watchman wearing an identical overcoat, who was otherwise the opposite of his companion: tall and blond, with stern, well-proportioned features and a swimmer’s shoulders. At the centre of it all was his father, grey-faced, manacled, resigned. He had the look of a man who’d arrived at his own grave.

  ‘It’s a mistake! He hasn’t done anything!’ Aren shouted, unable to understand why his father had submitted to this treatment. ‘Get off me!’ He pulled an arm free of the guardsman who held him and was rewarded with a clout round the head, hard enough to rock him. Before he could recover, a second guardsman restrained him and he was held fast.

  ‘Klyssen! Leave him be!’ Randill cried, roused to anger by the sight. ‘He’s no part of this.’

  Klyssen, the first of the two officers, studied Aren with reptilian calm. ‘Thank you for coming, boy. You have saved us the trouble of finding you.’ He motioned to one of the soldiers. ‘Take him.’

  ‘No!’ Randill snapped, desperation in his voice. ‘Your business is with me! Not him!’

  ‘You are a traitor, and he is the son of a traitor,’ Klyssen said coldly. ‘He will be dealt with accordingly.’ He waved at the other watchman. ‘Harte, go with them.’

  The guardsmen began dragging Aren out of the room. ‘Father!’ he screamed, and the sound jolted Randill to action. His eyes hardened, he twisted, and suddenly there was a knife in his man­acled hands, stolen from the sheath of a nearby soldier. Quick as a snake, he plunged it into the throat of the man he’d taken it from. Before anyone could react, he spun and slashed the face of another, opening his cheek to the bone.

  Then everything was chaos, the crash of armour and the ring of drawn blades as the soldiers holding Aren dropped him to the floor and piled in. Aren landed hard, knocking the wind from him, and he struggled to his elbows, gasping. A guardsman reeled back from the fight, a hand to his face, blood seeping through his glove. Nanny Alsa was shrieking out in the corridor. Klyssen, alarmed by the unexpected violence, shrank against the wall of the dining room, keeping well clear.

  Aren saw a blade flicker and another Krodan soldier staggered away, clutching his throat, blood soaking his uniform. For an instant, he was the Hollow Man, a vision of gargling death come to claim him. Then he crashed against the dining-room table and collapsed.

  All at once, the tangle of soldiers parted and Randill was hauled to his feet by Harte, with the point of a knife pressed firmly under his jaw. The watchman stood close behind Randill, his hair mussed and his teeth bared from the savagery of the fight. Guardsmen seized Randill’s arms, but he’d lost his weapon now and wasn’t resisting any more.

  ‘You are a traitor to the Empire and a murderer,’ Harte said. He looked at Klyssen, eyes glittering with defiance. ‘Under the circumstances, I think we can skip the trial.’

  With that, he drove the knife home.

  Aren saw the light in his father’s eyes go out. Randill sighed, one long breath that carried his life with it, and he dropped in a pile of meat and bone at Harte’s feet.

  Aren screamed.

  He was still screaming as they dragged him down the corridor, hurling curses and fighting the whole way. They struck him across the face more than once, but it did nothing to quiet him. Nothing they could do was worse than what had already happened.

  ‘Get off him! You’re killing him! Get off!’

  It was Cade, angry and sweaty and out of breath as he shoved down the corridor past the servants. That broad face loomed in his vision, his cheeks red and his hair damp against his forehead. ‘Aren! What happened? Where are they taking you?’

  Aren stared at him without comprehension. His words were just noises. In the shock of Randill’s death, nothing connected.

  ‘Out of the way, vermin!’ snapped one of the guardsmen. The ostler grabbed Cade by the arm and tried to pull him aside, but Cade’s feet were set and he was rooted like a tree.

  ‘You can’t take him!’ Cade cried, but he was yelling in Ossian and the soldier was yelling in Krodan, and in the heat of the moment neither understood the other.

  ‘Out of the way, I said!’

  ‘He’s done nothing wrong!’ Cade shouted. His protests were cut short as a guardsman slammed the pommel of a sword down on his head, behind his ear, and he crumpled like a sack.

  Aren heard Klyssen’s wet voice from close behind him. ‘Interfering with an overwatchman of the Iron Hand is a crime,’ he said, for the benefit of the witnesses. ‘Take him, too.’

  Aren tried to look over his shoulder as he was dragged out, but he couldn’t see his friend as he was hauled onto the porch. The crowd numbered three dozen or more now. They stared in silence as he was manhandled down the steps, tears and snot and blood across his face, rage and grief written there.

  Then he saw her. And he knew that what he suspected all along was true, why the Iron Hand were here, why his father had died.

  Sora was in the crowd, hands to her face in horror. Standing with her were her brothers and her father, a hawkish man with a stony expression. Her trip to the watchtower had been discovered. Her father had spoken to the governor about the impertinent Ossian boy who was harassing her, and how Randill had failed to control him. They’d trumped up a charge of treason to remove the problem. Suspicion was enough to seize their lands; even a man as rich as Randill could do nothing about it.

  They were only Ossians, after all.

  ‘No more warnings,’ Harald had said. But in the arrogance of love he hadn’t listened.

  The soldiers shoved him inside the black carriage and tipped Cade in alongside him, unconscious, blood splayed across his cheek like a spidery red hand.

  ‘No,’ he whimpered. He shook his head and kept shaking it, his eyes fixed on Cade. ‘No, no, no.’

  But all the denials in the world couldn’t dent the truth. The enormity of what he’d done threatened to swallow him whole.

  It was his fault. All of it.

  The door of the prison carriage slammed closed behind him with a sound like the doom of all dreams.

  11

  Dusk lay red on the hills as the druidess laboured up the grassy rise, her hound loping at her heels. She walked with a splintered staff of lichwood and lightning-glass, planting it in the ground before her, but she was not old, and her legs were strong from the passage of many leagues.

  She wore sturdy boots and scuffed leather trousers. A tatty patchwork cloak made of the stitched-together skins of rabbit, fox and stoat flapped about her as she climbed. She clicked and clattered with charms of bone and wood and metal, and carried a great pack as if it were no weight at all. Her hair was long, black and filthy, falling to either side of an oval face with dark eyes and a serious mouth that turned down at the edges, lending her an air of intensity and purpose. That face was smeared with streaks of stark white and coal black, as if for camouflage, or for war.

  Her name was Vika-Walks-The-Barrows, and she was late.

  The journey had been long and unforeseen diversions had delayed her arrival, Krodans chief among them. They delved deeper into the wild places than ever before. Once, they could have been relied upon to stay near roads and cities, clinging to the appara
tus of order like fearful children to a mother’s apron. They were lost without their rules and routines, and shied away from nature, which didn’t respect their laws. But they’d become bolder in recent years, and she’d encountered them several times on her way through the hinterlands: camps of engineers plotting new roads, workmen building settlements, surveyors scouting for minerals to exploit and forests to log. Her lip curled in anger at the memory.

  Near Salt Fork, she’d unwittingly walked into the path of the Krodan army, marching to quell the rebellion. She’d been forced to hide out for days, moving from place to place while the forests swarmed with scouts and foragers gathering supplies. After the rebellion collapsed, huntsmen were unleashed to seek out fugitives. With them came something else, something that the forest itself recoiled from. Three beings that wore the shape of men, but which were not.

  They almost caught her as she sheltered in an abandoned temple, but the animals warned her of their approach and she fled, leaving her fire behind. Later, she glimpsed them through the trees: one an enormous pile of tarnished black armour with a great hammer in his hands; one ragged and thin, carrying a brutal-looking bow that was all spikes and points; the third cowled and moving like a whisper, with two thin blades in his gloved grip and a metal mask covering his face. The mere sight of them turned her cold, and she stayed well clear.

  It wasn’t her they hunted, thankfully. Their targets were two fugitives from Salt Fork. She didn’t linger to see what happened to them, but she doubted the outcome was good. Instead she was forced to hurry on, through forests still thick with Krodans. At one point, the huntsmen picked up her trail, perhaps believing her a fugitive like the others. It took every trick she knew to throw them off; but she knew a lot of tricks.

  Now, at long last, they’d reached their destination. Too eager to wait, her companion hurried off through the bracken and gorse towards the crest of the rise. She was a shaggy grey wolfhound bitch named Ruck, longer nose to tail than Vika was tall. Vika followed in her wake, full of grave thoughts.