Across the small cellar, Beashi’s glare arrowed into Azar. Fury blazed in her eyes. The woman thought my compulsion was the mage’s doing.
With a grunt, the men tugged us forward. Avill stumbled and nearly fell, squeaking and breathing hard through her nose.
They dragged us up the stairs and into the moonlit square. Before leaving the shadow of the building, Beashi stopped and raised a finger to her lips. To enforce her command, one of the men pressed a dagger into my ribs while the other moved to threaten Azar. At least they’d left my sister alone. Once Beashi was sure we hadn’t been noticed, she set off in the lead.
They marched us through the town, beneath the reeking corpses of the Atal, and into the moonlit grasslands. A narrow road cut through the waving grasses, bending north toward the shining crest of the Icethorns. The evening was warm for Chilltide, with breezes smelling of hay. My thoughts raced as I reached for the knot binding my wrist to Azar’s. If I could just break contact with her, I could fix this.
But the rope felt like steel under my fingers. I couldn’t budge the knot. Once we’d passed beyond the boundaries of the town, the dagger had left my ribs. I examined the henchmen, wondering if I could somehow grab a blade from one of them and manage to slice through the rope. I’d never been very quick, and with Avill tied to my other hand, more likely I’d pull us into a heap on the ground. Gritting my teeth, I marched on. There had to be something we could do.
We walked for maybe a quarter of an hour before Beashi called a halt.
“You can remove their gags. Begging won’t help them, and no one can hear them scream from here.”
Azar and I spat but said nothing as the rags left our mouths.
“Savra, help us,” Avill squeaked as soon as she could speak.
“I can’t,” I said, glancing at her pendant. “What about you?”
She shook her head. The fish must have negated the power of the Wind’s Gift as well.
Awkwardly, I turned and laid my cheek on top of her head. “Be brave, sweet one.”
I expected Beashi to sneer at the tender moment, but a flicker of something else crossed her face. Remorse? Grief?
“So, you’ve decided to kill us before the others overrule you,” I said. Now that we’d stopped moving, the night air sank through my clothing. Avill shivered and pressed close.
“I must protect my people,” Beashi said.
“From what?” my little sister spat. “From me?”
Again, that flash of emotion tightened Beashi’s features. Something had hurt her. Deeply. She swallowed and glanced at her henchmen as if to gather strength. “From anyone who sides with the Atal. I gave you and your sister every opportunity to reject the mage’s control. But since you are determined to stand with her, you’ll share her punishment.”
The woman nodded at a henchman who stepped forward and laid his blade against Azar’s throat. The ferro remained silent, eyes fixed on a distant point.
“No last words?” Beashi sneered. “If you begged, you might even spare the lives of the innocents you’ve enslaved.”
“I am no threat to you,” Azar said quietly. “I wish no harm upon any citizen of the Empire. Atal or Prov.”
Beashi snarled, shaking her head. “Lies.” She glanced at her thugs. “The sooner this is done, the sooner we can return to our beds.”
The dagger-wielding henchman swallowed and rotated his grip. I gritted my teeth and twisted hard against the rope binding me to Azar. She winced but said nothing.
A drop of blood beaded on her throat.
“Get on with it, Reld,” Beashi growled. I noticed she wasn’t looking at Azar directly. Despite the tough act, she was a coward inside.
“You lost a child, didn’t you?” I asked. “Maybe she was around my sister’s age. Maybe you blamed the Atal lord and his sons.”
Rage twisted the woman’s face. “You shut your mouth. Say anything more and your death won’t be quick.”
The blade at Azar’s windpipe wavered. Still, the mage stood rigid, gaze unfocused. I finally recognized the pose. Azar was trying to use her powers.
“What about your friends here?” I asked. “How did you convince them to turn from simple shepherds to murders. They didn’t—”
I broke off when Azar’s eyes snapped open. She stepped back, leaving the blade hanging in the air. The henchman licked his lips and advanced to rest it against her flesh again, but not without clear reluctance. Azar ignored him, her attention fixed on Beashi.
“Teval wants you to know this won’t bring him or your daughter back,” Azar said in a calm voice.
At the name, the thug inhaled sharply. He lowered his blade and backed away, eyes wide. I glanced at the dagger, once again judging whether I could get hold of it and slice the bonds.
Beashi’s throat worked, producing words that didn’t escape her lips. Her fingers curled and straightened. Finally, she blinked and narrowed her eyes. “Someone told you the names of my family.”
Azar shook her head as a purple glow rose from the pocket where our captors had shoved the black-iron fish. Staring, the henchmen backed away farther.
The trinket rose from the folds of fabric, spinning in the air. It whirled faster and faster, throwing out light that began to take the form of a human figure. Azar bent her head in concentration as the image of a young girl materialized over the road. With yells of fear, the henchmen took off running for the town.
“Stop!” Azar yelled. “I mean you no harm.” When their steps slowed at around a hundred paces distance, she turned back to Beashi. “I am sorry beyond words for your losses. Your family misses you. They want you to know that.”
In front of the mage, the child’s figure nodded.
“How?” Beashi managed, her voice scarcely audible.
“The throne has always been secretive about the powers of the metalogists. And my order is among the least known. Suffice to say, black iron is the source of my abilities. It’s my conduit to the spirits. The trinket didn’t cut off my magic. It made it stronger. Strong enough to do much more than creating an image of your daughter.” For the barest instant, the image shifted into a glowing dagger before returning to the shape of Beashi’s child.
The woman stepped back, eyes flitting. “But in the cellar, you… You took control of me. Forced me to speak. Your grasp vanished when they bound you with the iron.”
I sucked in a breath to admit my ability, but Azar interrupted. “Was it the iron that stilled my ability?” she asked. “Or did I wish to give you a chance to repent of your own free will?”
Beashi’s face hardened. “You wished to humiliate me in front of my dead family. And then?”
“I had no such desire.”
“Let us go,” Avill said. “We never wanted to hurt you, can’t you see? Atal and Prov need to stand together now. The flood is here, and we are your only chance to seal the breach.”
“Flood?” Beashi asked, pointedly glancing around.
“The monsters that attacked you,” I said.
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “The Atal are the Empire’s true monsters.” Her eyes darted nervously to Azar’s conjuring. The glowing figure had faded to a faint shimmer as the black iron sank toward the road.
Azar cast her eyes down, shaking her head. “Please free us. We have work to do.”
As Beashi’s lip curled, it dawned on me that Azar had removed the black iron from her body. It no longer negated my magic. I plunged into my aura-sight. Colors leaped to life before me, Beashi’s spirit a complicated whorl of grief and anger and shame.
I considered taking control again but didn’t see the need. I doubted Beashi retained enough sway with the henchmen to command our deaths. Instead, I hoped to convince her to change her view.
“I am going to show you something,” I said. Before she could respond, I shoved an aura-lance through her. But rather than explode my power inside her spirit, I extended just enough barbs to hold her in place. I starte
d shoving memories across the link. Forcing her to see.
Kostan sat across from me at a table in the Graybranch Inn. It was the evening I’d returned from seeing the Prov boy beheaded in the Jaliss lockup. I sent Beashi my pain and my horror. I forced her to see the reaction on his face, the words he’d spoken to comfort me.
I sent her images of him standing together with Stormshard, defending the city.
I made her feel the explosion of warmth in my heart when he’d told me his hopes for the Empire. She witnessed his worry over the refugees. The sweat slicking his back and shoulders as he swung the pickaxe at the boulder blocking the road.
I showed her my desperate longing to be by his side. Forced her to watch with me as he picked a crying Prov boy from the road and carried him for hours.
As I shoved more and more recollections across the link, I released the barbs that held her rigid. Beashi fell to her knees. Finally, when I could no longer stand to remember because deep in my heart I feared I’d never see him again, I withdrew my aura.
“That’s your Emperor,” I said softly. “That’s what it looks like when we forget our old hatreds and work together.”
Beashi said nothing, her jaw slack.
“Your daughter wants you to know she forgives you for being mad,” Azar said quietly. “But revenge won’t bring her back.”
Head bowed, Beashi put her face into her hands. After a moment, she stood and stepped forward to work on the knots binding us. “Explain to me why you came and what you need.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Kostan
An underground city
OVER THE NEXT days, I learned to adjust my sense of scale. We knew the final seal component, the last Heartstone, must be somewhere in the vast system of chambers and corridors, but the search would clearly take time. The deeper we delved into the city beneath the mountains, the more wondrous the chambers and hallways and buildings became. Structures lined avenues, just like they would in an above-ground city. In one district, shops had been cut from the stone. The lower stories held shelves and stone benches while the upper rooms seemed to have been intended for living space. In a few of these buildings, we found our first real traces of the Lethin.
A glassblower’s shop held vases and faceted crystal bowls. A pot of sand still stood beside the crucible. In a potter’s studio, there was a stone wheel which rotated like an axle in a cart, and somehow after all these thousand years, it needed no grease. The deeper we went, the more preserved the chambers. At first, we found wooden chairs that crumbled when moved, tapestries too fragile to touch. Farther down, a wooden table bore the weight of a scout’s rucksack without splintering. Deeper still, a whisk broom had escaped the ravages of time, its straw wrapped by a wire and fastened to a handle of polished wood.
Then we found the forge, and I began to imagine we could win this. Our blacksmiths, one from the garrison and one from amongst Stormshard’s ranks, started work immediately. Chunks of strange black stone had waited in a metal bucket beside the furnace. After carting down load after load of wood, one of the curious smiths tossed a bit of the stone into the forge’s iron belly. When I stopped by a few hours later, they were still shaking their heads over the rock that burned. Meanwhile, a trio of high-ranking ferro mages set up in a room across the corridor from the forge. They guarded their work with a concealing curtain and a handful of bored mages of low rank. Through some means I didn’t understand, they removed the previous enchantments from the iron they’d brought into the mountains, delivering objects one at a time to the forge.
The stack of black-iron blades grew, and weaponsmiths added guards and leather-wrapped hilts before sending loads to the soldiers waiting above. After two days, most of the black iron had been repurposed into blades and arrow tips. When the mages summoned me to their chamber, I was confused to see that they’d disenchanted everything except the candleholders and lanterns.
“Your eminence,” Hoareld began, “we thought these might be of use—”
“Of course!” I said, understanding. “They will be a tremendous help.”
Though I’d spent my youth in halls illuminated by ever-burning candles, I’d taken the constant light for granted. I’d never really grasped how much quiet work the ferro mages had done to improve life in Steelhold. After I’d Ascended the throne, I’d learned of their power first-hand when an assassin had leaped at me, prompting black-iron defenses to send lightning arcing through the man’s body. But until now, I hadn’t appreciated the lanterns glowing in the hallways, the goblets that kept Highsummer wines chilled, and even the black-iron fountain with its constant hiss of sand in the courtyard. Those things had made a hard existence more comfortable, yet the ferros had worked their magic with little interest in seeking admiration or even gratitude.
“I’ll send Vaness right away. She has a head for logistics and planning and can find the best spots for permanent illumination. Make sure she reserves a few lights for the scouts exploring the lower city. We have reason to believe there may be another Heartstone far below ground.”
“As you say, your eminence,” Hoareld said. “If you don’t mind, we’ll retire for some much-needed rest after we speak with her.”
I blinked, only now taking in the drawn expressions on their faces and the puffy areas beneath their eyes. “Have you not slept since we…”
“Not since the scouts discovered the forge, your eminence,” the man said with a slight bow.
“Go, please. Vaness can wait.”
As they shuffled to the door, I moved to the stone counter where they had arrayed the enchanted light sources. Touching one was like returning to my childhood. It had been a cruel and cold life, but it was the only beginning I had. No matter what happened to me after this, at least I could be grateful that Savra and Fishel and all the friends I’d made had taught me the true value of companionship.
I stopped by the forge to check with the blacksmiths. They reassured me that, unlike the mages, they’d set up a rotation. Molten metal and lack of sleep simply didn’t mix. My concerns eased, I left them to their work.
At a crossroads in the area that I’d come to think of as the merchant’s district, a fountain spouted from the wall and into a basin which drained through a stone grate. I splashed water on my face before heading back toward the surface. In the upper chambers, Provs had begun to settle into niches and alcoves, claiming territory with bedrolls and the few keepsakes they’d carried into the mountains. Around half still preferred to remain above ground despite the cold. I felt sure they feared a collapse, and I didn’t blame them. I wouldn’t force them to enter the city, though the warmer temperatures might help with their rattly coughs and shivering flesh. I did insist on a plan for getting everyone underground when the Spawn came, though.
I slept aboveground for a different reason. When the enemy came, I would be ready.
I emerged from the stairway in the feeble warmth of late afternoon. Following my habit of the last few days, I turned for the foot of the valley and our first line of defenses. The first wall was simple, an earthen mound set with sharpened stakes. The second was a dry-stacked stone barricade the height of two men. After enough timber had been cut from the forest below, chained to mules and dragged uphill for firewood and fortifications, we’d closed both walls over the roadway, sealing the valley. Lone travelers and scattered refugees coming from distant settlements could still approach, but they needed to skirt the defenses, a time-consuming process that left them exposed.
Without mortar to bind the stones, the Prime feared the inner wall wasn’t stable enough to risk placing soldiers atop. Instead, a string of wooden towers behind the wall provided vantage for our archers. Each expert marksman would have two dozen arrows tipped with black iron. Compared to the size of the horde we expected, they would do little more than give the advancing army pause when the creatures—or more likely, Parveld—noticed the lethal nature of our weapons.
With good fortune, a pause would be a
ll we’d need to get me to the Heartstone.
“It’s almost done,” the Prime said when she spotted me climbing one of the towers to inspect the work.
“We’re more fortunate than I expected,” I said. After the attack at the garrison, I’d dreaded each day, certain that the next assault would come. But not only had we reached the valley without even a glimpse of the Riftspawn, we’d had enough time to get defenses in place.
“No doubt if we’d convinced the astrologers to flee the city, they’d now claim the stars had granted us a boon,” she said with a wry smirk. I got the feeling the Prime put little faith in astrology.
“The final black-iron work is almost finished. The smiths will move on to any repairs to our ordinary steel next.”
“I’ve assigned ferro weaponry to the front lines. The soldiers are sleeping in shifts and each knows who to deliver their blade to before resting.”
“Any news from the lookouts?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. Until sundown, we’ll still have the advantage of communicating with mirrors. If they come in the night, we’ll have less warning.”
“We’ll hope they come by day, then.”
Something over my shoulder caught the Prime’s attention. “Hey, protector,” she called. “Make sure you divide the arrows equally.” She cast me a questioning look. “If there’s nothing else…
“By all means, see to the preparations.”
As she trotted off, I climbed down from the archer’s tower and followed one of the newly trampled paths uphill. Around a hundred paces behind the towers, the trail reached the first of a set of fallback positions. The soldiers had dug a semicircular trench, and a waist-high wall guarded the uphill edge of the ditch. Around a dozen of these small fortifications stood between the outer wall and the Heartstone. Once the archers’ arrows were exhausted, if I hadn’t yet taken control of the battle via the Heartstone, the soldiers would retreat through the locations, holding each as long as possible without taking heavy casualties. With the black-iron blades and the advantage of high ground, we’d hold back the Spawn far better than we had in other clashes.
Fate of the Drowned (The Broken Lands Book 3) Page 24