by AB Bradley
“You shouldn’t have told me thank you. Dead giveaway.” His master looked around them. “It’s not smart to make camp beneath one of the trees. If the snow collapses on us while we sleep, the cold would seep through your clothes and into your bones. Not sure if I could get you to Ormhild before the ice stopped your heart.”
“I’m guessing no fire.”
“Not unless you want to kiss a snow leopard before you drift off to sleep. They’re attracted to the light, and now that we’re farther south, there’s enough large game to make them plentiful.”
Sander cleared a spot for them and placed a few hides over the hard soil. They drank from a leather flagon and filled their bellies on dried berries and greyhorn jerky. Once finished, Iron rolled on his back and stared into the sky.
The trees loomed around him save a ragged tear between them that opened to the night. Stars glittered in the gap like someone had painted a scar with diamond dust.
“Iron?”
“Yes, Sander?”
“There are some rules you should obey once we enter civilization.” He snorted and shook his head. “If you can call Ormhild civilization. I need you to think of these rules as being just as holy as the Sinner’s Ten Wisdoms. No, scratch that. These rules are even more important than them.”
Iron blinked, an incredulous smile splitting his lips. “More important than the Ten Wisdoms?” He cleared his throat and spoke in his best, worst Sander Hale impersonation. “‘A man who ignores the Ten Wisdoms today will die a fool tomorrow.’”
“Oh, you were listening to a lesson? It must’ve been the eclipse of a blue moon that day. In all seriousness, this is important. You won’t get the chance to die a fool tomorrow if you ignore what I’m about to tell you. You’ll die much sooner than sunset.”
Intrigued, Iron turned from the stars to look at his master. “I’m listening.”
“First and foremost, never, under any circumstances, use your magic.”
“What?” Iron rolled onto his wounded arm and nearly cried out. He worked through the pain and propped himself up. “Might as well ask me to cut off my arms. Why can’t I use magic? That’s the best part about what we do!”
“And the most dangerous. Iron, there are no others on Urum who can do what we do. Either they will hate you for it and try to torture it from you, or they will fear you for it and simply try to kill you. Every king and queen, every…” Sander struggled with the words. He cleared his throat and continued. “…Every tyrant will hunt you. No one you befriend will ever be safe, assuming you’d ever be able to trust anyone you met.”
The rare moment of seriousness in his master’s tone disarmed Iron’s wit. “I—I guess I could keep it a secret. I’ll tell no one what I can do.”
“Promise me in this. A Sinner’s Oath.”
Iron groaned. A Sinner’s Oath. Unbreakable. “That’s too much. You’ll just have to believe me when I say I’ll keep it a secret.”
“Hells no, it’s not too much. I’m your master and you’d better listen to me. You owe me a debt for saving your ass from those wolves, and I’m calling you on it. You say the words and seal the secret in your heart. Now.”
“Fine. I promise.” Iron took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “As the Sinner slips me from death’s grasp, so shall I swear to keep my word. I will tell no one of the magic we share.”
A cold grip clamped around his heart but quickly faded. Iron opened his eyes and looked at his palm. Without the magic flowing through his blood, the world had lost some of its color. He looked to his master who was snapping his fingers with a look of concern puckering his lips. “Well hells, mine’s gone too.”
“Oh, then you should release me so you can use your magic again. Just say the words. Hold the Sinner’s Oath fulfilled.”
“Nice try. I survived this world before my power, and I’ll survive it after.” He sighed and lowered his hand. “Second rule: Don’t make any friends. People are awful and friends will get you hurt. I regret teaching you the word friend in the first place, or at least I regret telling you its true meaning. From now one, the word friend means something unpleasant like, I don’t know, wart.”
“Maybe I’ll just close my eyes and wait for you to tell me when the world’s safe enough for me to open them? Or should I just wrap myself in swaddling furs and jump into your arms?”
“You were much cuter and far more manageable in swaddling clothes. Trust me.”
“This isn’t fair! We’re finally starting to explore and you won’t let me do anything! Are you really that poor a teacher that you’ve got no faith in your student?”
Sander’s lips pressed into a thin line. Iron met his master’s dark stare. He knew his words hit Sander where they would sting. Iron regretted the words, but his pride kept him from showing it. The throbbing in his poisoned wound intensified, and he swallowed a grimace.
“Listen, boy.” Sander pointed a finger between Iron’s eyes. “You listen to me, and we just might survive long enough for you to heal. I think you’re strong. In fact, I think you’re probably the second most capable priest of the Sinner walking on this hateful ball of rock and water. I’ve made you into the sharpest sword on Urum, but you’ve never left the sheath. Power without experience is just another way to spell disaster. If you ever want to be the most capable priest in the world and so, so much more, then you will listen and listen well. Understood?”
“Fine.” Iron twisted onto his back and glared into the starry scar. He remembered the circle of stars wheeling in his vision, and the woman’s vague words. The Serpent took many forms. Maybe that meant Sander’s advice actually contained some kernel of wisdom. Maybe someone waited out there to turn on him.
Or maybe you’re delirious from poison and all your master’s courage could fit on a snowflake.
Technically, Sander had only made him promise not to use magic. He never made him promise not to make a friend. The world beyond the lower reaches couldn’t be that bad. Sander was a good man—or so he had been to Iron—there would be other Sanders in the world to find, and they wouldn’t go around making Iron commit to Sinner’s Oaths over every little thing.
An oddly chill sweat beaded on his brow despite the furs covering his body. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. His arm throbbed like it had grown a heart of its own. Thankfully, they would reach Ormhild tomorrow, and then Sander’s friend would heal him. Iron closed his eyes, and a dreamless sleep sunk its fangs into him.
CHAPTER SIX
Thyra and the Coins
Distant voices called to Iron through an inky night. No stars appeared in the scar between the trees. Clouds must have come. Worse, had snow somehow fallen? Terror wrapped a cold and clammy hand around him. Sander had said something about the chill stopping his heart. The chill, the slow poison of winter. It was one of Sander’s earliest lessons. Iron recalled the signs.
Fingers and toes like wood, hard to move and harder to handle. He tried wriggling his hand. No luck. Terror tightened its grip. A body rocked by violent shivers, unless of course the chill had already reached his heart. Iron stared into the black and felt not a single tremble. He didn’t feel much of anything.
I’m not already dead. Oh, Sinner, I’m not dead. No! He pulled his mind through the fog. No, not fog, black oil thick as tree sap and deep as a mountain lake. Iron fought the black. Voices were bare whispers, so bare, but he heard them nonetheless. He pulled his mind toward them, willing his body through the soft pull of an endless sleep.
The black fought him, and he fought it. He wondered if he would fight for eternity. If this was death, no wonder the living clung to life.
Iron reached toward the voices. They grew louder—at least he thought so. Yes. They are louder. I’m here! I’m here!
A dull light appeared like a high sun through a thin veil of winter clouds. He stretched toward the sun. He could almost grab it now, just a little more…
Iron’s fingers pierced the diffused veil, and the world expanded in beautifully
harsh light. Water soaked him head to toe. He thought he’d fallen in a frozen lake, but no, the salt stinging his lips, the cold, clammy skin, it all pointed to his own sweat and not a pond. His wounded arm no longer burned. In fact, it no longer hurt at all.
A few blinks brought some clarity to the world. A blue salve coated his wound. A stench like sour mint rose from it as an oddly soothing chill sunk into his muscle. He looked around his room. Sunlight poured in an angled column onto a floor covered in furs. Dust swirled and danced like sprites in the light. Tables crowded the room. Dingy glass bottles, vials, jars, and other containers all in shades of blue and green littered the tabletops. Odd objects floated in a few of the bottles. They had an eerily animal look about them.
Skulls of goats, greyhorns, and elk stared at Iron from mounts on the wall. Their horns and antlers held unlit candles in varying states of use. Beneath the skulls, Sander’s familiar silhouette waved one arm over a hunched bean of a figure while the other arm formed a fist pressing against his thigh. “You’re almost done, and I’ve got the money! Give me a break here, Thyra. He’s just a kid.”
The hunched figure named Thyra spat and turned, waddling toward the shaft of light. She passed into it like a wraith might pass through stone, and it illuminated her features.
She had a face like half-cooked potato with cheeks that swelled beneath sagging lids. Her wide, flat nose drew up its short bridge into a wrinkled scowl, and when she saw Iron’s open eyes, her jowls moved with her disapproving head shake.
“You think I don’t know this runt’s poison?” She grabbed a small cup and took a swig. Iron had an inkling it wasn’t medicine. “I know this poison. We all know this poison, you fool, even as far as Skaard, we know that corruption. You bring Sol and his demons to Ormhild. He would leave our lands be and look south and east. Not now. Not now!”
Sander rounded the table until he stood behind her, his footfalls thunking on the creaky floorboards. “It was just an accident. Sol can’t possibly know we’re here.”
Thyra laughed and beat a fist against her sagging chest. “You think the world is stupid? All lands know of the obsession Eloia’s king has finding the thing that eluded him on the Godfall.” Her features hardened, her lips pressing together into a wrinkled prune. “We mourned their loss. Even in frozen Skaard, we mourned them. I mourned them, more than many. But they are gone, and now the Serpent Sun rises. You are a curse, and I should never have let you into my home. You and your tongue, Sander, they’ve always brought me ill fortune.”
Iron swallowed and sat up. He used a bandage on his bed to wipe away the salve. Where the wolf’s bite once festered, now only pink skin remained. He tested his leg. The knee strained to bend and flex and his toe ached, but the movement brought no flash of pain. “Thank you, Thyra. We didn’t mean—”
“Bah! No words from you. Why did the wolves attack you? They only hunt the king’s enemies. Who are you? Why has a man I have not seen in years come knocking at my door with a boy whose veins blacken with cursed poison?”
Iron looked beyond Thyra to his master. Sander’s eyes glittered beneath his shadowed hood like quartzes. The slightest shake of his head told Iron to be a sinner, not a saint.
Sol. She said Sol. Good King Sol? The man who rules Eloia to the south. He recalled reading about the kingdom. It was a smaller one, not anything more than a regional power and surrounded on its northern side by the Sapphire Sea and isolated on the southern side by the Simmering Sands. Sander never spoke much of it, only that their king hated the gods more than most other heretics.
“My parents worshipped the Six.” Iron swung his feet onto the floor. “The king hated them. They tried to start an uprising, but it failed. Now he hunts me because he thinks I’ll start another.”
Thyra smacked her lips like she’d eaten the lie to see if it tasted sweet or sour. “So you and your addle-brained master don’t carry any sort of weapon?”
“No. I have nothing but an old sword. I think if we’d carried anything magical, you would’ve known by now.”
Thyra laughed and refilled her cup. “Of course I would have. It would be the first magic used on Urum since the gods fell. I think that’d be a sign even a blind fool would see.”
“There’s no magic left? At all?”
Sander lifted his chin. Iron flashed him a look. Remember your promise, his eyes said.
“You can’t be this dense.” Thyra downed her drink. “Magic died years ago in the Godfall when King Sol toppled the Six. We are at his mercy now. The world is at his mercy now. One by one, little Eloia grows into a titan worth fearing. So…you have no way to stop him? No weapon he fears that can kill his demon alp?”
The alp, the demons of the Second Sun who’d returned to fight the Six. The Six destroyed them once. Iron had faith they’d do it again. “I might,” he blurted.
Both Thyra and Sander’s eyes widened; one from shock and one from anger. Thyra shuffled forward. “What have you discovered? What is the key to his undoing? Tell me, tell me please. The Council of Ice and Steel fears he’ll turn his fleets upon our shores. Now that you have come, I know they’re right. But if you have a weapon, maybe we can fight them! We are Skaard. Our ancestors stepped from the ice and made this land of winter ours. We will not give it up to some him southern heretic easily.”
“I…my weapon…it’s a, ah, secret.” He cursed himself as soon as he spoke the words. No doubt that lie tasted particularly sour.
Thyra’s nostrils swelled as her sigh poured from them. “You lie to me. You will let Skaard fall if you have a weapon. I think now you probably don’t have one anyway. My hope has blinded me. You are as much a Sinner’s man as Sander, all full of lies and half truths, leaving bodies in your wake. There is a good reason he hasn’t shown his face here in years. Ask him about that.”
Sander muscled past Thyra and grabbed Iron’s bicep, yanking him from the bed. “We need to leave.” He tossed a purse onto the table. Gold coins spilled out, glittering in the light.
Iron grimaced at his soreness, but it was that kind of soreness felt after a long day of swordplay—a satisfying ache. He glanced behind him. Thyra stared at the payment on her table, plump, wrinkled fingers lingering above the open purse. “Eloia coins from before the fall?”
“They’re still good,” Sander grumbled, reaching for the door.
“You fool! He’s had these smelted.” The purse hurtled over Iron’s shoulder and smashed in a tinkling pile by the door frame. “Your coins are from before the fall. Tell me: How long have you two been in Skaard?”
Sander remained silent. He slammed open the door. Tongues of chill, salty wind licked at Iron’s sweaty cheeks. Above, bird cries warbled in shrill notes, the soft rhythm of water lapping the shore kept a steady beat beyond the wall of mist greeting them. Iron didn’t recognize the bird, but he’d heard water make that sound when the wind was high and summer briefly melted the lakes around their home.
“How long have you been in Skaard,” Thyra demanded, her heavy footsteps thumping toward the door.
His master twisted, yanking Iron outside. The man jerked the door shut, grabbed the sleigh propped on the outside wall, and wedged it beneath the knob.
A weight smacked the door. The knob twisted. The wood muffled Thyra’s angry scream.
Sander sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “The world’s changed since we’ve been hiding from it. I’m more ignorant than I thought.”
“Are we just going to leave her locked in there?” Iron scanned their surroundings. They stood on a wide catwalk, beyond which only pale fog speckled with snowflakes swirled. His heart sunk at the sight. He’d hoped for a city, not another world of white and grey. He twisted to the door and gasped at the gargantuan wall hewn in shades of translucent blue. He stepped toward the barrier and looked up. Another catwalk a few yards above theirs blocked his view of the top, but he thought he caught another catwalk beyond that one, and then perhaps another.
Iron pressed his hand against the wal
l. “Cold as ice,” he whispered.
“Stop gawking at the glacier. She’ll get out soon enough and summon the fucking guards, and trust me when I say they’re no baby greyhorns. Thyra’s a gasbag like I said, but she’s about as slippery as we are when she needs to be. Don’t believe anything she says.”
Thyra’s slapping quieted. Iron thought that probably was not a good sign, even though her words piqued his interest in his master’s past. “Where do we go? I thought the sun was out.”
“Reflected sun from above the glacier. There’re mirrored shafts carved down the ice to light the lower apartments and keep them livable. Fog’s thick and unpredictable in Ormhild. It doesn’t make a pretty view, but it does makes an invasion difficult, especially considering how the city’s built. Follow me, we’ll go higher, and if you’re lucky, the wind will clear the fog for a few breaths.”
They struck down the catwalk. Door after door revealed the homes carved into the glacial wall. Oil lamps set in even intervals promised light once darkness fell. Every so often, they’d pass a barrel or crate, or brutish, fiery-haired merchants selling fish or clams.
Sander had to constantly grab Iron’s arm and tug him along. Iron wanted to touch that hair. It was like sunlight sprouting from their scalps or fire threaded by the Six and woven into men. The townsfolk didn’t return his looks of curious wonder. Even the merchants narrowed their eyes and quieted their calls when the two dark-haired men passed them by.
His master cocked his head and impatiently yanked Iron onward. “Ormhild’s not like it used to be. We need to find a way out of the city before Thyra’s able to raise the alarm. We’ll need to climb to the top of the crevasse then back down to the docks. They’re on the other side since bigger ships don’t fit in the crevasse’s shallow waters, and when it’s crowded and a storm comes it can cause some nasty wreckage.”