by Den Patrick
The swarm of bats swept down from the cliffs and Steiner staggered as the leathery wings buffeted him, stalling his progress. He stumbled as furred bodies impacted on his arms, face, head and chest. The bright sting of ripping claws and sharp teeth made him cry out. He was engulfed in a cloud of them, unsure which way he was headed. And then he was in the water, the chill depths forcing the air from his lungs. The taste of brine invaded his mouth, his legs kicked and thrashed, not knowing which way was up in the darkness. The sea gave way to cold air as he breached the surface, gasping down breaths.
‘Over here!’ said a voice close by. Steiner blinked seawater out of his eyes as Aurelian reached the edge of the pier, an orange glow building at his throat. Steiner dived, forcing cold limbs against the dark water, feeling the swell and chop carry him towards the cliffs. The water became bright, forcing Steiner to redouble his efforts. There could be no going back now. Another burst of flame overhead, illuminating the waters and the rocks beneath. Steiner dared one more breath, snatched from the surface, then dived for his life, away from the novices sent to ambush him.
The darkness might have been total if not for the glittering stones of the quartz cave and the orange glow of the fire pit. Steiner squatted down and poked the coals, shivering violently, but the fire was spent and the cave’s icy chill settled into his bones.
‘Kimi,’ was all he said from between chattering teeth.
The corridor was long, much longer than he remembered. He spent fearful minutes feeling his way along rough stone walls before a glow appeared in the unlit fastness.
‘Kimi?’ he croaked, stumbling towards the light. The heat of the furnaces brushed against him as he trudged on, eyes closed, shivering against clothes scorched yet soaking. On he went until the heat was all around, pressing against him, leeching his strength until he was on his knees. His eyes fluttered open to see Kimi, Tief and Taiga, expressions both stern and shocked.
‘So many cuts,’ breathed Taiga.
‘Let’s get him out of those clothes,’ said Tief. ‘Quick now. He’s dying.’
Kimi said nothing, stepping forward to enfold him in her arms. Steiner closed his eyes.
‘I was so foolish,’ he whispered, thinking of the scrap of parchment. His eyelids fell closed and the motion of Kimi’s long strides was all he knew.
Steiner woke to a silent forge. No din of hammers beating steel, no thump of crates being stacked and loaded, no hiss of metal quenched in water. He curled in a ball on his side, body a dirge of pain. For a time he tried to ignore it, but everything hurt and rolling onto his back only made it worse. He pushed himself up, eyes wide with disbelief, regarding arms swaddled in bandages. Spots of red had bled through, so dark they were almost black on the cream fabric. The light and heat of Kimi’s giant furnace was like the dawn of a summer’s day.
Tief, Taiga and Sundra were all adoze, slumped in a huddle beneath blankets. They sat with their backs to a large crate, arms folded or hands resting in their laps, heads nodding on their chests. Sundra snored quietly, which did much to undo her otherworldly imperiousness. A ghost of a smile crossed Steiner’s lips before weakness insisted he lay down. It was the usual bed of sack cloth, far from the cotton sheets and mattress he had enjoyed in the academy.
‘So, you’ve led us a merry dance,’ said Kimi, her face suddenly very close to his.
‘Do the Yamal dance?’ asked Steiner.
‘Not much,’ admitted Kimi. ‘But it’s an expression I’ve heard Tief use and I’ve always liked it.’
‘Was I any good?’ said Steiner, wincing at the pain in his arms. ‘At this merry dance?’
‘There was plenty of blood, on account of all the cuts. Sundra guessed it for the work of bats. Was she right?’
Steiner nodded.
‘Your back is burned and it will be a long time until your hair grows back. Your clothes are ruined, naturally.’
‘What’s all this? Is he awake?’ Tief pushed himself to his feet with a grunt and took a moment to work the kinks out of his back. ‘We don’t see you for weeks and when you finally turn up you’re half dead. Typical house guest. Never show up unless they need something.’ Tief edged forward and broke into a broad smile. ‘I wasn’t sure we’d ever see you again. Better we see you half dead than not at all, I suppose.’
‘I’m not sure I agree.’
The many cinderwraiths congregated at the edge of the dais in a vigil. Rank after rank of them formed an array of smoky silhouettes, all watching with gently glowing eyes.
‘They’ve been very anxious,’ said Kimi, nodding towards the mass of spirits. Steiner opened his mouth to speak as his eyes fell on Kimi’s shoulder. She was not wearing her customary leather apron and her shoulder was bound up in bandages, much like his own.
‘The soldiers …’ he whispered, reaching out to her. She enfolded his hand in her palm, a gentle smile on her broad face. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Hush now. I started something I couldn’t finish.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘No change there.’
‘I should go,’ said Steiner, ‘before anyone else gets hurt. Shirinov may send more soldiers …’ But the effort required to stand was beyond him. He closed his eyes and lost track of time. Felgenhauer and Maxim stood before him when he blinked awake.
‘You look terrible,’ said the Matriarch-Commissar.
‘Really terrible,’ agreed Maxim. ‘Like dead terrible.’
‘Either I’m dreaming,’ said Steiner, ‘or Sundra gave me a remedy with some vivid side effects.’
‘You are not dreaming,’ said Felgenhauer. ‘Maxim snuck up to inform me of your whereabouts.’
‘You’ve been down here the whole time?’ said Steiner to the boy, aggrieved rather than incredulous.
‘The Matriarch-Commissar said it would be useful to have a pair of eyes in the forge, to make sure no more soldiers came down making trouble.’
Steiner smiled. Of the whimpering boy he’d met in the hold of the Watcher’s Wait there was no sign.
‘You’re a spy.’
‘An observer,’ countered Felgenhauer.
Kimi pressed a damp cloth to Steiner’s forehead.
‘Is Romola …?’
‘Still at anchor,’ said the Matriarch-Commissar, ‘despite Aurelian’s fiery display. What happened?’
‘There were two novices from Academy Zemlya. I think I may have set fire to one of them.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Felgenhauer. ‘Rock does not burn.’
‘And the girl who can summon bats, she was there. That’s how I came by all these cuts.’
‘Academy Vozdukha. Shirinov has been recruiting widely, and from the young and talented.’ Felgenhauer sighed with irritation. ‘Why were you in Temnet Cove? Did you think you could escape?’
‘Can I get a hand here?’ said Steiner, and Kimi helped him to his feet, propping him against the anvil.
‘I received a letter,’ said Steiner, clearing his throat. ‘I had one of the soldiers read it and he said it came from you.’
Felgenhauer took a step closer. ‘What letter?’
Tief shook his head and pressed a hand to his brow. ‘Now you’ve started something.’
‘A letter was pushed under my door. It said I could leave with Romola.’
‘Who forged a letter in my name?’ said Felgenhauer, and a terrible anger sounded in each word.
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Steiner. ‘But I didn’t realize it was a trap until I’d almost sprung it. I’m the living proof of Shirinov’s mistake. That’s why he hates me, and that’s why you’ve kept me so close the last three weeks.’
Felgenhauer had balled her gloved hands into fists. ‘Yes, I admit it. I have been protecting you.’
‘I have to get back to Cinderfell before he does,’ said Steiner. ‘If he can’t kill me he’ll kill my family.’ It was a half a truth, but it hurt to tell a half-lie to Felgenhauer after everything she’d done for him.
‘I am the Matriarch-Commissar of Vladibogdan, Steiner. You know things about
the Empire that people have died for. I cannot send you on your way with my blessing. You must stay here.’
For a second he imagined she might say she was sorry, but the silence stretched out between them and everyone had a look of despondency. For a second they’d all hoped Felgenhauer might let him go.
Steiner grimaced and pushed himself off the anvil. ‘You think I’m going to stand by and watch you let Shirinov hunt down my family. It won’t be long until the next supply ship arrives and he’ll leave.’
‘I’ll forbid him from setting sail.’
‘He’ll disobey you.’ Steiner’s vision swam with darkness, dizzy from losing so much blood, but he forced himself to stand all the same. ‘He’s already bragged about razing Helwick and Cinderfell. It’s only a matter of time until he gets to me too, and then …’ Steiner gestured to the throng of cinderwraiths, all still and ominous, hundreds of unblinking glowing eyes in the darkness. ‘I’ll be like these lost souls.’
‘I can’t allow it, Steiner.’ All sternness was leached from the Matriarch-Commissar’s tone, the words loaded with resignation. ‘You have to stay on Vladibogdan.’
‘Then I’m as a good as dead,’ snarled Steiner.
‘I forbid you from leaving this cavern,’ said the Matriarch-Commissar. ‘Shirinov thinks you’re dead. Let’s not disabuse him of that notion.’ She stepped closer. ‘Stay. Here.’ She punctuated each word with one finger, prodding his chest.
‘I have to get to my sister …’ he said, but Felgenhauer didn’t hear him, she’d already turned on her heel and gestured to Maxim. The boy snatched a worried glance at Steiner and ran to keep up with the Matriarch-Commissar.
‘I have to get back back to Kjellrunn,’ whispered Steiner to Kimi. ‘You can understand that, can’t you?’
Kimi nodded and wrapped an arm about his shoulders.
‘I’d do anything to keep my family safe,’ said Taiga.
‘And what will you do when you reach Cinderfell?’ asked Tief, full of scorn. ‘You can barely stand. You can’t fight the Empire, and they will never stop hunting you and your family.’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ admitted Steiner, ‘but my father will. I can’t stay here while Shirinov plots his next move.
‘Did you hear me?’ said Tief. ‘You can barely stand.’
‘Wrong,’ said Sundra. ‘He can barely stand unaided. There’s no telling what a person can do with the right help.’ The priestess of Frejna approached and Steiner felt a chill of anxiety.
‘Kneel,’ said Sundra. ‘We must invoke the goddess.’
‘But I don’t believe.’
‘Not yet,’ said Sundra. ‘But you will.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Steiner
The death priestesses of the Spriggani are by far the most unnerving people I have ever encountered in any province of Solmindre, almost a match for the horrors of Izhoria. Many are fakers and pretend to powers they do not possess, but some of them are the equal of the highest-ranking Vigilant.
– From the field notes of Hierarch Khigir, Vigilant of the Imperial Synod.
Steiner slipped to his knees before Sundra and let out a long sigh.
‘I’m dead on my feet after all.’
‘You are not dead,’ intoned Sundra as she drew closer.
‘It’s a figure of speech, not be taken …’ Sundra pressed her forehead against his and clasped the sides of his head with both hands. ‘… Uh, literally.’ He swallowed and tried to snatch a glance at Kimi, but his vision was filled with Sundra’s face, from her small and pointed nose, to the delicate and narrow eyes, now closed. Her hands were icy against his ears and her scent teased at his recognition, a scent he’d not sampled in far too long. She smelled like woodlands, she smelled like Kjellrunn.
‘What are we doing, Sundra?’
‘We are shutting up and concentrating.’
Steiner waited, thinking how awkward he must look to Kimi, Tief and Taiga.
‘Yes, yes. You are uncomfortable and this is strange. Try to let go of all these thoughts.’ Her voice was low, the usual note of scolding replaced by something warmer. ‘Let go of the cavern, let go of the island.’ Her voice was barely more than a whisper. ‘Let go of all the tension within. Your shoulders, your neck.’ She drew a deep breath and Steiner found himself doing the same. ‘Your heart.’
Steiner tried as best he could, despite aching knees and the many cuts on his arms and face. Every muscle droned with a dull pain. The image of a woodland in autumn came to mind with a sky of pale blue, a sky the likes of which he had rarely seen in all his years in Cinderfell. The trees reached up with bare branches, imploring the spring to return while a sliver of a stream reflected silver in the sunlight. Sundra’s fragrance was all these things. The gentle sweetness of leaves decomposing, of rich earth churned by hooves, the first scent of rain before it falls, the sharpness in the air before snowfall.
‘I’m in a forest,’ he whispered. And he was, kneeling before Sundra in a nameless woodland beneath a sky he yearned to see.
‘Hush now,’ urged the priestess. ‘The bones whisper your name. I see you. Your burdens are the greater wound, not these trifles playing out across the flesh.’
‘Burdens?’ said Steiner in a whisper.
‘The conflict you feel for your family.’
‘But, there is no conflict,’ replied Steiner. ‘They’re my family. They’re all I have. I’m here to protect Kjellrunn.’
‘So why this heavy burden over your heart? I see it, like a shadow in the morning, like woodsmoke, like darkness.’
‘They sent me here.’ The words were too difficult to say. More vast than the trees standing over him, sharper than the thorns on the bushes, colder than the stream rippling past. ‘My father. He chose Kjell to stay, but not me.’
‘And you miss him?’
‘Of course. I miss working with him, and the smithy, and dinner with Kjell. I miss … all of it.’
‘How much do you miss it?’
‘Bitterly.’
‘This is your problem.’ Sundra turned her back on him and paced some way into the clearing. ‘Nothing flourishes in bitterness. He sent you here to do something Kjellrunn could not.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Steiner, heart heavy in his chest, face flushed with all he held back.
‘Endure, Steiner. He sent you to endure. He sent you to survive that which Kjellrunn could not. Not once have you fallen to an enemy. You may slip and you may stumble but you do not fall. Steiner means stone in the old dialects; as it is so are you. Your father sent you here to endure because he trusted you to do so.’
Steiner drew a shaky breath and thought back to Kjellrunn, how she’d never shown any sign of the arcane, how he’d never witnessed anything untoward. Mainly he thought of how she’d never told him, never shared her secret with him.
‘You are angry with her,’ said Sundra. ‘It is the way of siblings. We nurse grudges and resentments towards our kin while hoping all the while no evil befalls them.’
‘If she were here then I’d still be in Cinderfell …’ His words tailed off as the shame of his admission crushed him.
‘She was not ready to come to the island,’ said Sundra. ‘She would have perished, just as Felgenhauer told you, just as your father told you.’
‘I understand,’ said Steiner. ‘I’ve always understood. I just …’
‘Felt bitter about it,’ said Sundra quietly.
Steiner nodded and felt tears sting the corners of his eyes. He sucked down a breath and tried to stifle the deep well of unhappiness he felt.
A clutch of snowdrops emerged from the earth, bringing hints of green and white to the endless brown and gold of the woods.
‘Good, Steiner, good,’ said Sundra. ‘Let go of your burdens.’
‘She wasn’t ready to come to the island.’ He was so tired, even in this place, it was all he could do to stare at the flowers. ‘My father never put me in danger, he always took the utmost care of me in the
smithy, always made sure Kjellrunn and I had enough to eat when money was scarce.’
More snowdrops pushed their way through the earth, spears of green blooming white at their tips. All around, snowdrops pushed their way through the earth until the woodland was no longer a place of barren decay, but vibrant and lush with the promise of seasons to come.
‘Even when I came to Vladibogdan he gave me a hammer to fight with and sturdy boots.’
Steiner raised his head to see the trees had transformed, splendid in their greenery, the leaves whispering in a susurrus of joy.
‘Hammersmith!’ Steiner opened his eyes, but it was not Sundra that stood before him but Tief. ‘You’ve been kneeling here for half an hour with that damn fool stupid smile on your face. Are you going to come back to the land of the living?’
‘I’d have preferred to stay in the woods.’
‘On that we can agree,’ replied Tief. ‘You’re going to need this.’ He handed Steiner the sledgehammer and Steiner smiled as his fist closed upon the handle.
‘My great-grandfather’s hammer.’
Tief paused a moment and tugged at one ear. ‘Sundra took you to the woods then?’ He looked at Steiner from the corner of his eye.
‘You’ve been there too?’
‘Of course I’ve been there. It’s an echo of where we grew up, where we lived.’
Steiner blinked and looked at Kimi, who knelt beside him.
‘How do you feel?’ she said, taking one of his hands in her own.
‘Well, nothing hurts.’ He began to unwrap the bandages on his arms and found not cuts weeping blood, but faint marks of scarlet.
‘I’m covered in scars,’ he whispered.
‘Frejna is the goddess of death,’ said Sundra from beside Kimi’s anvil, one hand resting on the metal to support herself. Taiga stood close with a hand to her sister’s back. ‘Wounds are one of her provinces, yet she will not take the memory of pain. We all need reminders. You will need to remember this moment if you are to endure as your father wishes.’
Steiner approached the priestess, bending to kiss her softly on each cheek.
‘Yes, yes, enough with that.’ She waved him away. ‘You are chosen, it seems. The bones—’