Iron Will

by James Maxwell

  Zedo had said that the use of her power would lead to visions. The citizens of Xanthos and Phalesia were safe, but soon the armies would march. Chloe had a part to play. She had inherited the Oracle’s powers, and something had happened to her when she’d saved Dion from Palemon’s blade and she had seen the Aleuthean sorceress Tamis learn about the flaw in Nisos’s magic.

  Now she wanted to force another vision. It was too dangerous to travel to Athos, but if the Oracle’s abilities were truly inside her, she should be able to harness them. She might see the past and understand how to break the spell holding slaves in dragon form. If she instead saw the future, she might save lives.

  Chloe now let her thoughts fade away. With her eyes still open, she breathed slowly in and out, allowing a calm, meditative state to descend on her. Immediately she was keenly aware of the power within. It was low, burning like a bonfire that had been left to die down but had so much heat in the coals it would burn forever.

  She watched the play of the sunlight on the gold and finally summoned her courage and rested two fingertips on the medallion.

  A tongue of flame in her mind shot up, bright yellow, matching the tone of the gold. With the sun shining overhead, it wasn’t difficult to spark the flame with thoughts of light, but she needed to make sure that unlike the sun there was no warmth; it was pure incandescence.

  The power welled within her and traveled out, channeled through her body. Her fingers tingled.

  The medallion began to glow.

  At first the shine was subtle, but it grew brighter as she summoned still more power and felt it flow through her fingertips into the gold. Soon the metal radiated a bright light to rival the sun.

  Chloe closed her eyes.

  Her breath caught. She could see, even with her eyes closed. The scene was the same: a grassy hilltop with a thin stream winding around its base, under a cluster of high peaks.

  But there were huge differences.

  There were houses and roads on the lower ground, and people mending red-tiled roofs and driving horses and carts. From her perch she saw that a wooden bridge crossed the stream, and that most of the surrounding forest was gone. Some of the people were stockier than others and wore Galean clothing – tunics and chitons, sandals and woolen caps – but a few wore deerskin and had silver hair. The houses were of a style seen anywhere in Xanthos or Phalesia. A silver-haired young woman laughed with a stocky bearded man as they crossed the bridge. No one wore a necklace.

  Chloe opened her eyes, almost expecting to see that her surroundings had changed. Yet everything was as it had been. Birds called to one another; the stream bubbled merrily on its way; trees swayed in the warm breeze. She was alone.

  She didn’t understand what she had just seen, but it wasn’t something that could help her. The medallion’s golden light had faded; the power inside her had died down.

  She decided to try again, and now she intentionally turned her thoughts to the coming battle. Summoning the power of the materia, she channeled it through her fingers and the metal glowed, brighter and brighter until it hurt for her to look at it.

  She closed her eyes.

  Once more she was looking at the same surroundings. But this time the landscape was exactly as she had just seen it with her own eyes. Her perception was just a little different, as if she were standing rather than sitting.

  There was a uniformed man in front of her, his body slightly hazy. Seeing the long black hair tied behind his head and pale-blue eyes, Chloe recognized Captain Dimitros. He was talking. Initially his words were muffled, but they became louder and clearer when she focused on them.

  ‘. . . still no sign of King Dion,’ he was saying. ‘When can we expect him to return?’

  His body wavered, becoming hazy again, and then disappearing altogether. Chloe’s concentration was broken when the part of her outside the vision heard a voice calling her name. She opened her eyes.

  In the real world this time, Captain Dimitros was walking up the hill. Chloe climbed to her feet. He came to a halt in the exact same place he had been standing in her vision. She knew what his next words were going to be.

  ‘Consul Gaius would like to see you,’ he said.

  Chloe made a sound of surprise. ‘Weren’t you . . . Weren’t you about to ask me about King Dion?’

  He tilted his head, puzzled. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Chloe suddenly remembered something the Oracle had said: the presence of eldren interfered with the ability to see the future. And here she was, in the heart of Sindara.

  She sighed. ‘What does the consul want?’

  ‘He is asking about King Dion. There is still no sign of him.’

  ‘I would be surprised if he returned so quickly. The Aleuthean Sea is far from here. But let’s go see Gaius.’

  Chloe pondered as she followed the Phalesian captain.

  The Oracle had said there were countless paths that the future might take. Chloe had just seen a glimpse, something close to the future, but not the way it would actually happen.

  She was far from understanding her own abilities.

  40

  The deeper shades of the Aleuthean Sea surrounded a section that was far paler, with mysterious symmetrical shapes under the surface and white lines making up the occasional grid. The areas of lighter color meant the water was shallower, and in places the terrain was high enough to burst through the surface and form sharp islands: the Lost Souls.

  Dion gazed down from his lofty height. He soared over the sunken city and continued on, approaching a promontory jutting out from the mainland: Cape Cush.

  He remembered the spell Zara and her sorcerers had used to part the sea and search for relics. Widow’s Peak was still the closest of the Lost Souls to the mainland, and he could see it now, an isle with a sharp cliff on one side and a gentle slope leading to lapping water on the other.

  He considered the task ahead of him. There was one monument in ancient Aleuthea that was famed more than any other, spoken about in every tale. He had seen it with his own eyes, revealed when the ancient city had been exposed, close to what must have once been Aleuthea’s coast. It still stood proud and tall despite the ravages of its time submerged.

  The Lighthouse.

  The stories said that its golden light had shone for miles in every direction as it swept over the sea. Chloe had the idea when one of the consuls said something to her about a guiding light. If the tales were true, there was only one way that the Lighthouse could have projected such a powerful beam.

  There must be a relic of solid gold housed at the top of the Lighthouse. Any other metal would have long since corroded, but gold was impervious to the effects of salt water. An artifact that powerful might be used as a weapon.

  Dion tucked in his wings and sped down to the surface, wind whistling past him as he plummeted. He was already imagining a new form, and he changed his shape even as he smashed into the water with force.

  For a moment his vision was obscured by the spray of salt water. He felt his body stretching and elongating. His wings shrank almost to nothing, becoming tiny guiding fins. The sweeping protuberances behind his angular head thinned and expanded until a fanlike frill girded his neck. His tail grew in size until it was a fat paddle, his main means of propulsion through the water. His diamond scales were still black, but his head was somewhere between fish and reptile; he was now a mighty serpent.

  Eyes made for the water opened, and suddenly he was swimming through the sea, writhing as his tail thrust him forward. He saw as clearly as he normally could in open air, but still there were bubbles rising every time he moved, and the element he found himself in was a blue shade that grew darker the farther his gaze traveled down to the sea bed.

  He had entered the water a few hundred paces from Widow’s Peak. Immediately he saw the sunken city of Aleuthea, spread out below him. Some parts of it were deep, others just thirty or forty feet below the surface. It was bizarre, gazing at a city underwater that he had previously exp
lored in the open air. A jagged gouge ran through the streets, and the structures near the tear were jumbles of stone blocks, but distant places were clearly houses and roads, temples and statue gardens. He even recognized some of the features: the arch standing over the avenue that Palemon’s men had climbed; the bath house where he had hidden with Chloe; and of course the Great Tower, above a set of broken steps, so tall that its top nearly brushed the surface.

  Fish swam through the archways and darted into the houses. A fat shark slunk lazily along one of the roads. Multicolored plants clung to the stone, swaying in the current.

  Dion tore his gaze away. He kicked his tail and put on a burst of speed. He swam away from the Great Tower and focused his attention on another tower that came into focus as he approached.

  Standing apart from the surrounding structures, in a part of the city that was deeper than the Great Tower, the Lighthouse was a hundred paces from the edge of a sheer cliff that dropped into a deep trench. This tower was square-sided, but surprisingly lean, shaped like an obelisk.

  As he neared, Dion was now close enough to estimate the Lighthouse’s height. It was far taller than the Great Tower, which wasn’t a small structure. He saw a circular room perched on top.

  He was eager to look at it, but his lungs were straining after so much time underwater, and he was forced to shoot up to the surface, releasing breath and spray through his nostrils and sucking in a series of gasps of air. He prepared himself and then dived down again. This time he immediately headed for the Lighthouse.

  As he swam deeper, he reminded himself that only he could do this. An eldran like Liana or Zachary might be more accomplished in the water, but they would never be able to touch the gold. Only an eldran could reach the Lighthouse, but if there was pure metal, only a human could carry it away.

  He sped directly for the lean tower until he could make out the green slime covering what had once been white stone. Drawing even with its top, he circled the room at its summit, craning his neck to peer inside. Thin columns of stone supported the roof, leaving gaping windows that were open to the elements. Tendrils of ocean growth hung like curtains, obscuring the interior, but then he caught a glimpse of something inside and stopped.

  Hovering in the water, he gazed into the circular room. He thrust his tail just a little, pushing himself forward enough to poke his head through the seaweed.

  He saw a stone pedestal in the room’s center, like a washbasin supported on a thin stand. Atop the pedestal was a sphere, the size of a man’s head and etched with strange patterns. It was dull, but only because it was in a dark space beneath the sea. A thrill coursed through him. There was no doubt that the orb was made of gold.

  He rose to the surface once more to take another breath, then dived down again. This time when he swam to the room on top of the Lighthouse, he kicked his tail hard until he was moving with speed. He sped for the structure, preparing himself, and then, just as he passed it, he smashed his tail against the stone, at the area he was interested in, as hard as he could.

  It was difficult to gauge how much strength to use and he was prepared for resistance. But the tower’s walls had been weakened by its time underwater, or perhaps it was fragile to start with.

  A great splintering crack sounded through the water. The top of the tower disintegrated. Shards of stone erupted in all directions. Like a boulder flung by a catapult, the golden orb shot out, traveling for a distance before its weight dragged it down and it began to plummet.

  Dion was prepared, but compared to his own size the orb was small, and he almost didn’t see it. By the time he’d figured out where it was, it was sinking out past the Lighthouse, where the cliff loomed over a deep trench.

  If he couldn’t catch up to it, he might lose it forever.

  He kicked furiously, sending water swirling around his tail as he shot forward. He kept his eyes fixed firmly on the golden sphere, which was just a small circle in his vision, difficult to make out against the darkness of the trench. Walls closed on him as he dived down into the abyss. He felt the extra pressure of deep water on his body. His chest heaved, desperate for fresh air.

  He lost the orb for a moment and was forced to circle, scanning frantically. Finally he spied it again, a good distance below him and sinking quickly. He thrust his tail, pushing himself to go deeper, keeping his eyes on it. There were a thousand fissures in the ocean bed, places where the orb would vanish if he didn’t catch it now. Swimming furiously, he lunged forward, opening his jaws and closing them onto it.

  The sizzle at the touch of such a large amount of solid gold made his body shiver with pain, but it was nothing compared to the agony in his chest. Working hard against the pressure, he set his gaze on the surface and drew on his last reserves of strength to propel himself upward, heading for the fresh air above.

  His chest began to suck. His nostrils threatened to open. The heavy orb in his mouth was a foreign object that he longed to spit out. Stars sparkled in his vision. At his limit, he gave one final thrust with his tail and his head shot above the surface.

  His nostrils breathed in the open air. Relief flooded through him.

  He spent long moments gasping, struggling to breathe around the orb in his mouth. Then he began to swim toward Widow’s Peak.

  When he reached its shore, he would rest. Then, in the form of a dragon this time, he would grip the orb in his claws and fly with it all the way back to Sindara.

  41

  Kargan stood on the terrace outside his throne room, watching the sky. Still no sign of them. Even so, something told him they would come at any moment.

  ‘Er . . . Great King?’ Lord Haviar’s voice came from behind him.

  Kargan remembered that he had been in the middle of a conversation. He turned to face his companion on the terrace once more.

  A short, dark-skinned noble with a thin nose and even thinner lips, Haviar wore an orange tunic over brown trousers and had a limp he swore was a war wound. The obsequious lord and Kargan were utterly different. Kargan was bigger than Haviar in every dimension, and where Haviar’s head was bald, Kargan’s hair was thick, black, and oiled, and he had a beard to match. Haviar tended to dance around what he was saying, which irritated Kargan, who was nothing if not plainspoken.

  ‘I have many things on my mind,’ Kargan growled. He looked up meaningfully, and Haviar nodded.

  ‘I do understand, Great King. However, as I was saying, we must show our people compassion. It is only right that we share certain things. Our knowledge, for one, so that they are able to make what could be choices of life or death. Our protection, for another. Lamara’s walls are tall. We have tens of thousands of men on the walls, armed with bows and ballistae. Beyond the city, your subjects don’t stand a chance.’

  Kargan remembered now why he had started looking at the sky. He had absolutely no idea what the short man next to him was talking about.

  ‘These days are perilous, Haviar. I don’t have time to figure out what it is you’re getting at, so how about this time you just come out and say it.’

  ‘I’m talking about Koulis,’ Haviar said, his eyes narrowing. He then breathed slowly, smoothing his expression. ‘The common people should know that Koulis has fallen.’

  Kargan snorted. ‘You mean the same people living in the slums outside the city walls?’

  ‘Yes,’ Haviar said evenly. ‘And the herders, farmers, and quarrymen too. As I said, we should share our knowledge. They have a right to make decisions about their lives. If they abandon their homes, they might survive. We should also give them our protection. They are Ileans as much as you or I.’

  Kargan crossed his arms in front of his chest. ‘Listen. If we told the common people—’

  Haviar interrupted. ‘Many of them know already. The rumors . . .’ He trailed off when he saw Kargan’s black expression. His face slowly paled when he realized what he had done.

  ‘Never interrupt me again,’ Kargan said, towering over the shorter man and fixing him with a me
nacing stare. He waited for Lord Haviar to nod before he continued. ‘Now,’ Kargan said, ‘if we told the common people, by way of a public declaration, that the rumors they have heard are true, everyone would want to get inside the city walls. Already we have too many. They would interfere with our soldiers, the very men trying to protect us. And the farmers would abandon their fields, just as they are about to begin the harvest.’

  ‘But, Great King, these are people’s lives we are talking about,’ Haviar protested. ‘Outside they are defenseless. We could at least give them a chance to flee. If we can’t protect them in Lamara, they could head east, toward Haria or Abadihn. Great King, if we say nothing, and the dragons come, their deaths will be on all of our consciences. Helios would not weigh our deeds kindly at the gates of paradise.’

  ‘I have a pyramid that is supposed to solve that problem,’ Kargan said with a wry grin. He waved a hand. ‘I’m only jesting.’ He pondered for a moment. ‘You have actually given me something to think about, Lord Haviar. Will you do something for me?’

  ‘Of course, Great King.’ The shorter man waited, his expression hopeful as he wondered what his king would ask of him.

  ‘Double the guard on the city gates, and double the number of patrols stopping people from climbing the walls.’ Kargan nodded to himself. ‘That should do it.’

  ‘I . . .’ Haviar looked puzzled. His lips thinned as he realized. ‘At once, Great King.’ He bowed, departing quickly, but Kargan caught the angry expression he was trying to hide.

  Kargan was glad to see him go, and returned his attention to what was becoming a frequent habit: pacing the terrace and gazing up at the sky. He alternated his furtive inspection with glances at the soldiers on the city walls.

  Kargan had called every garrison in the Ilean Empire to Lamara. Distant divisions traveled from Abbas, Serca, and Abadihn, and now Ilea’s great army, far larger than any other, was stationed in the capital. Locals had been evicted from their homes to lodge the growing number of soldiers, swelling the population in the slums outside the walls. The city’s workshops churned out ballistae day after day. A curfew had been imposed: no one was allowed out after dark. Riots were ruthlessly quelled. Lamara was a city under siege, but had yet to face an attack.