Of Dawn and Darkness (The Elder Empire: Sea Book 2)

by Will Wight

  “The arena can keep them,” Calder said. He and Andel had considered and discarded half a dozen different plans for retrieving them, but in the end, it was less dangerous to leave them where they were. They wouldn’t spontaneously explode, and unless someone was stupid enough to light them on fire just to see what would happen, they were no danger to anyone. The risk was that some guard would stumble on them and call off the fight, or increase security. So long as that didn’t happen, they were clear.

  As soon as they bought their tickets and headed into the arena, Calder could tell something was wrong.

  Seven Magisters waited in the arena—one for each section of spectator seating, and one in the Imperial box. They were in the process of attaching small bronze shields to the outside of each section, facing the arena.

  “What are those?” Jerri whispered to him.

  “Invested protections,” Calder whispered back. “They might be Awakened. If they think they have to protect the audience in addition to all the Intent already invested into the arena, then they’re preparing for something big.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’d need to get closer to be sure, which means we’d have to wait until the Magisters are gone.”

  Only the Magisters didn’t leave. Petal scurried down the far staircase, checked both of the primary charges and the two backup charges, and then settled into a nearby seat. Andel grabbed his own seat at the end of the arena, Foster sat directly underneath a guard tower, and Calder and Jerri found seats together next to the victor’s stage.

  When they first arrived, there were only a scattering of other spectators. Two hours later, the stadium looked full. Two hours after that, and Calder realized he’d been wrong before; only now did he understand what ‘full’ really meant. It was somehow even more crowded than it had been the last time he was here, as though they’d squeezed out all the air and replaced it with people.

  At least it wasn’t as hot as it had been last summer, so he didn’t have to bake in the scent of sweat.

  Jerri shot Calder a parting smile as she squeezed past him and a small family to slide into the staircase. The match would start soon, and when it did, she needed to clear the stairs as soon as possible.

  If she didn’t, anyone in the way would die in their explosion.

  Finally, after what felt like a night and a day of waiting, the crier made his way onto the arena sand. At the mere sight of him, the crowd lost all reason, and the coliseum shook with a sound like a berserk beast.

  “LADIES, GENTLEMEN, AND GOOD CITIZENS OF AXCISS!” This time, the crier didn’t only rely on the acoustics of the stadium, but raised an invested horn to his lips. His words boomed out, easily cutting through the noise. “TODAY, WE HAVE A TREAT INDEED FOR YOU! ALL THESE YEARS, YOU’VE SEEN ONE MAN TRIUMPH AGAIN AND AGAIN OVER STAGGERING ODDS! ONE MAN—IZYRIA’S VERY OWN WOODSMAN!”

  At the mention of Urzaia’s name, the crowd erupted again, until it sounded as though Calder stood in the middle of a great battlefield. It did nothing but give him a throbbing headache on top of a night’s worth of exhaustion.

  “BUT I’M AFRAID, GOOD CITIZENS, THAT THE ODDS TODAY ARE TRULY IMPOSSIBLE. FOR TODAY THE WOODSMAN FACES NOT MEN, BUT A CREATURE FROM MYTH AND THE NIGHTMARES OF THE ELDERS THEMSELVES! A TERROR OF THE AION SEA! THE DREADED...CINDERBEAST!”

  As his speech reached a crescendo, the biggest gate onto the sand slid open. Two Greenwardens, robed entirely in verdant leaves, marched out. They each hauled on a leash...attached to a massive Kameira. The Cinderbeast was coal-black, shaped like a hairless bear or a misshapen wolf, with two spiraling onyx horns above its eyes. Its tail, longer than one would expect, lashed like a whip.

  Its eyes were red, swollen orbs, and even from here Calder could practically taste its mad Intent. It growled, scratching at the sand, but its collar was obviously invested. It did not strike at the Greenwardens holding its pair of leashes.

  The crier shouted again, embellishing an entry for Urzaia, but Calder didn’t hear it. Even as Urzaia marched into the light, black axes held high, Calder’s mind was whirling.

  What now?

  The plan called for them to wait for Urzaia’s victory, because after more than five hundred victories in a row, only a fool would bet against one more. Then again, he wasn’t fighting men. He fought some sort of...horned bear creature four times his size. And if it was a Kameira, as Calder was certain it was, then it would have some power over nature. Judging from its name, it might be able to set Urzaia on fire. Waiting for the fight would be ridiculous; they had to rescue Urzaia as soon as possible. So what was the plan? Detonate an extra charge somewhere else, as a distraction, and then get Urzaia up to the victory stage?

  He was still considering his options as the Greenwardens unclipped the Cinderbeast’s collar and hurriedly withdrew. The Kameira glanced from one side to the other, as though trying to figure out if it were really free, and then sniffed at the air. Smoke rose from its nostrils.

  Finally, Calder put the clues together, and the bottom dropped out of his stomach. He’d never felt as stupid as he did in that moment.

  Copper shields in front of the spectators. Magisters standing ready. Smoke drifting from its nostrils. Light and life, they’d called it the Cinderbeast.

  It was going to breathe fire.

  Kameira could use their powers in a thousand different ways; it might summon fire from the heavens, or throw fireballs somehow, but the point was that it set things on fire with its Intent. He was no alchemist, but he knew he didn’t want fire involved in a plan that relied on explosives.

  He shot to his feet, shoving a bigger man down into his seat as he ran forward. He actually punched a boy five years younger in the jaw, feeling terrible about it, but the boy wouldn’t get out of the way. By the time anyone realized what he’d done and got upset about it, he’d already moved on.

  Calder had started out ten yards from the stairs, but he still wasn’t fast enough. The Cinderbeast drew in a deep breath of air, filling its lungs, and exhaled a stream of pure flame.

  The copper shields at the front of the seats lit up as they absorbed excess heat, and the crowd gasped in unison. So the Magisters had done their jobs, and the people were safe. The Greenwardens had done their jobs, and the Cinderbeast hadn’t gone on a berserk rampage. And Urzaia had done his job, because he’d obviously anticipated the fire and had somehow leaped completely over it, in an inhuman jump that would have shocked Calder at any other moment.

  In fact, the only one who had failed to do his job was Calder.

  Because those spare charges, those half a dozen alchemical charges with their unlit fuses, were still below in the arena waiting room. Only two iron grates away from the fire.

  The flame flowed through the grates and into the room like a river, then faded. There was a bare instant, a frozen portrait of time, in which nothing happened. Calder almost started to believe that they were safe, and that he had time to figure out a way to stop this.

  Then the coliseum echoed like a struck drum the size of a city, and smoke billowed out from the grate. It was all the way on the other side of the stadium, but Calder still trembled and lost his balance. The stone cracked all around, a black line racing up the stands.

  And people scurried out of the way like an evacuating anthill as the arena seats slowly, ever so slowly, began to crumble.

  On Calder’s side of the arena, he was in more danger of being crushed as panicked people desperately sought the closest escape—which, in his case, meant straight past him and toward the stairs. But, as the first woman to reach the door to the stairway found out, the entrance was locked. Jerri had sealed it with alchemical resin as soon as she’d managed to clear people out of the stairway.

  So Calder found himself mashed against the base of the victor’s stage, losing breath by the second, as people struggled to smash in the door. The iron-banded wood bowed, and he prayed it would break so that the people behind him would stop pushing.

  Something almost
as good happened—the stone against his face suddenly slammed against him, and a deafening sound set his ears ringing.

  Jerri had detonated the charges.

  He wasn’t sure how she’d done it—he held the matches, and Petal had the backup set—but he almost wept with relief. The people backed off, leaving his lungs room to expand, as they fled from the door as though expecting it to explode.

  In that brief moment of freedom, he glanced at the arena.

  The Cinderbeast was in the stands.

  As half of the arena slowly fell apart, the invested shields had fallen as well. Streams of fire chased spectators away, though they fell well short of the nearest—people had stampeded on instinct after the first explosion.

  Through the fire and crumbling stone, Urzaia Woodsman ran toward the monster. Calder couldn’t see the man’s expression, and certainly couldn’t hear him, but he was sure the Champion was laughing.

  Calder pushed his way back through the crowd, meeting surprisingly little resistance. People were fighting this way, but if he clambered over the seats, no one cared enough to stop him going the wrong way. It was his life to waste.

  When he caught sight of Urzaia again, the gladiator was riding the Cinderbeast’s back like a horseman on an unruly mount. He struck with one of his hatchets, and the impact slammed the Kameira into the stone seats.

  In the back of his mind, Calder wondered at that. When Urzaia fought the Houndmaster, his hatchet had sunk into the man’s chest. Now it was striking with enough impact to drive a giant Kameira into stone. If it could hit that hard before, wouldn’t it have blown the man’s corpse into the stands? And how did Urzaia’s body withstand the opposing force?

  It wasn’t worth considering just now, but as a Reader, Calder was still curious.

  He finally started to slow when he got close to Urzaia. He needed to be nearby when Urzaia was finished to lead the man out before he was recaptured, but Calder wasn’t foolish enough to interfere in a Champion’s fight.

  Which was just as well, because there was nothing he could have done to help.

  The Cinderbeast built up momentum, loping across the back of the stone seats and bucking its head to try and gore the Woodsman. It didn’t come close. When that failed, it swatted at Urzaia with its claws, but the Champion swung around its neck like a monkey on a branch, laughing the entire time.

  When the Kameira blew a burst of fire at nothing in particular, Calder knew it had given up. Urzaia must have sensed the same thing, because he swung himself down and to the Cinderbeast’s side. He steadied himself on the ground, drawing his hatchets back.

  Stone cracked under his feet, and Calder stared. No matter how fast the coliseum was tearing itself apart, the stone shouldn’t have softened. Could the fire have done something? Or maybe the Intent of thousands of desperate people...

  As Urzaia slammed his weapons forward, Calder realized the truth. A handful of separate pieces clicked together in his mind.

  The stone wasn’t that weak, Urzaia was just that heavy.

  Rumor had it that the Sandborn Hydra, a Kameira actually native to the Izyrian desert around this very city, had the Intent to increase or decrease its own weight. The Blackwatch had commissioned some research into its unique properties as part of their work on The Testament, in the hopes of making the ship lighter without compromising hull strength. The research had come to nothing, as no one could locate a Sandborn Hydra for testing.

  But according to legend, the Kameira’s hide was made of gold scales. Urzaia wore a golden hide around his upper arm.

  Come to think of it, the black hatchets were a little obvious for a Soulbound Vessel.

  In the time it took Calder to realize what was happening, Urzaia had slammed both Awakened weapons into the side of the Cinderbeast with the full force of his Soulbound powers. The Kameira’s ribs caved in as though they’d been struck by a falling star, and its huge body blasted away from Urzaia. It scraped rows of stone seats away in its flight, finally slamming against the top section of the arena wall in a spray of dark blood.

  Seconds after its impact, as the dust billowed up and Urzaia calmly walked over to Calder, the entire half of the arena collapsed completely.

  Urzaia said something to Calder and then laughed, but the sound was washed out by the avalanche of crashing stone. Instead of responding, Calder jerked his head and ran for the exits.

  As they got closer and the noise died away, Calder shouted back to him. “Urzaia. How would you like a job? I could use a ship’s guard?”

  The Woodsman made a show of thinking about it for a few seconds, even as he ran. There was a thin sheen of sweat and blood on his skin, but he wasn’t even close to running out of breath. Champions are just...unfair.

  “Guard is boring,” he said at last. “But I am a very good cook.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Bellowing Horror is meant to unnerve the minds of men, for it repeats only the most vile and disturbing bits of our conversation. Yet in the end, the men and I grew fond of the creature, as it caused us no harm and fed on the rats that plagued our vessel.

  —From the original Blackwatch Bestiary of Elders

  The Emperor’s armor was white and smooth, so that it looked like Calder’s chest and limbs were protected by giant eggshells. The plates were joined by chain at the joints, and the entire suit was invested to weigh practically nothing, so at times Calder forgot he was wearing it.

  He extended his senses down into The Testament, steering his ship after the Navigator fleet that carried the army of the Imperialist Guilds. Navigator ships stretched out over the oceans for miles to his left and right, covering the shallow Aion in colored sails and Imperial banners. But every time Calder Read his ship, he had to forcibly ignore his armor. The Emperor had left a mountain of Intent in the suit; this was the same armor he’d worn in the Elder War. As a result, Calder almost lost himself in the armor’s depths each time he Read.

  It was an inconvenience, and one that he was quickly growing sick of. But since he suspected the armor was impenetrable, he would manage. He could withstand a little inconvenience for the sake of invincibility.

  The armor was one of the treasures he’d taken from the Emperor’s armory, over a week ago now. It was the primary reason that General Teach had allowed him to lead the assault on the Gray Island.

  Although “lead” was perhaps too strong of a word. The Testament was lagging behind the rest of the fleet as the Consultants’ island loomed in the distance. The Lyathatan drifted along sluggishly beneath him, barely keeping up with the ship instead of pulling it forward.

  That was one of Teach’s requirements. She’d made him promise to stay in the back, as far from danger as reasonably possible.

  Even if he wasn’t technically in charge of his own mission, at least he looked like an Emperor. Between his armor, the Awakened sword on his hip, the golden crown on his head, and the Imperial flag he was flying, he struck an impressive figure.

  The Gray Island, on the other hand, wasn’t living up to its name. Rather than the towering wall of fog that he’d seen on his last visit, the island was only a little hazy. That meant something significant, he was sure, but he had no idea what. It could mean that the Consultants had abandoned their headquarters, or that they needed to see clearly to aim their cannons. Maybe they’d decided to surrender.

  A harsh cry, like the dying of a violin, sounded from high overhead. A brown lizard twice the size of a horse began to descend on his ship, flapping wings like an oversized bat. Through Kelarac’s mark on his arm, Calder sent his Intent down and into the ship, ordering the Lyathatan to a halt.

  Minutes later, The Testament finally settled, and the Kameira—a replacement for Teach’s dead Windwatcher—came to land on the deck. Jarelys Teach leaped off its back, saluting when she saw Calder.

  Secretly, it alarmed him every time she did that. Some part of him felt like the Emperor was standing just behind him.

  “We have a problem,” she said, and imme
diately Calder’s crew gathered to listen. Foster leaned on a cannon as though he weren’t paying attention, though Andel walked up boldly. Even Petal peeked her head up from below deck, staring from a nest of her frizzy hair.

  At first, Calder glanced around for Jerri and Urzaia before he remembered the truth. It hurt like a fishbone stuck in his throat.

  There were too few of them left.

  “The Consultants have a visitor,” Teach said, as she handed the winged lizard’s reins to Andel. “The Regent of the South.”

  Calder’s blood chilled. Jorin Maze-walker, who some texts called Curse-breaker, didn’t show up in war stories as often as his companions Estyr Six and Loreli. Instead, he had left his marks in other fields: architecture, exploration, cartography, linguistics, and the advancement of Reading as a discipline. He wasn’t credited with the founding of the Magister’s Guild, but his philosophies were instrumental in its creation.

  The legends didn’t say much about his combat potential, but he had lived through the Elder War. He couldn’t be easy to kill. More importantly, he would have been one of the strongest Readers of his day, carrying invested weapons with thousands of years of Intent.

  “You saw him from the air?” Calder had been on the Gray Island not long ago, and the place was a maze. If she’d spotted him from the back of her Kameira, she’d gotten lucky.

  Teach shook her head. “I only had to get close enough. Tyrfang recognizes its creator.”

  Its creator? That confirmed one of Calder’s worst fears about the man. If Jorin had been the one to Awaken Tyrfang in the first place, he would understand everything about it. He’d have some way of matching Teach in battle. “I guess we should count ourselves lucky it wasn’t Estyr Six.”

  Teach neither agreed nor disagreed. “I don’t know Jorin personally, though I’ve met him briefly twice. If he’s not quite Estyr Six or the Emperor, he’s still on their level. I wouldn’t like our odds if we were ambushing him in his sleep, and he’s hardly sleeping.”