The Bloodheart

by Steve Rzasa

  The golem is not a dumb brute, it seems. It knows enough to know Smoke plus Flame equals Bad. It staggers away.

  The bomb explodes in midair, chest high to the golem. The concussion bowls Gridley and me over, sending waves scalloping across the pond.

  It leaves a gaping wound on the golem’s chest, deep enough I can see the sun glint of the obsidian core. The same obsidian on which the Bloodheart rested until Luc plucked it from its nest.

  The golem screams. And I do mean a scream. It is a high-pitched, feral, enraged noise that makes Gridley howl and the rest of us shudder.

  “Captain! Beware!” Ariya’s words are muffled but her concern is not.

  The golem slogs deeper into the water, toward the shore to which Gridley pulled me. It seems the creature has ascertained my leadership role in this band of adventurers. How fortunate for me.

  My ears ring and I am sopping wet. I try to get to my feet but the pain in my side strikes me down. I collapse into the water.

  Suddenly my hands are unbearably cold.

  A laugh burbles up into my chest, and even that hurts. Of all the times for the magic to want to break loose of my grasp! I cannot wrestle it now!

  The next thought is as clear as the sky above and below: I don’t have to wrestle it. Not here. Yet I hate the thought of using it. I don’t want this force again. I cannot trust it to fulfill what I desire.

  It did my beloved Cassia no good.

  The golem is near. I hear its joints of rock grinding against each other, and its legs sloshing through the water.

  Water. All around us, and all over the beast.

  Niall sprints the pond’s edge, snarling challenges for battle at the golem.

  The golem will have none of it.

  Ariya swoops down and looses an arrow from her crossbow. It clatters off the golem and it pays her harassment no mind. After all, she doesn’t have another bomb.

  The creature comes for me.

  I stand up, my side aching, my chest heaving. My throat is raw and my voice a rasp. “You won’t have me, beast. You hear me?”

  It smiles, a hideous twist of stone into gaping maw.

  There is no room to equivocate. Despising my inability to suppress the ice, I raise my hands. They are so frigid now they are covered with a sheen of frost. It creeps down my arms to the elbows. There’s nary any feeling remaining in the fingers or the palms of my hands.

  So cold.

  Niall skids to a halt. His mouth hangs wide open, revealing white fangs and a lolling tongue.

  He sees the glow, he blue light that starts at the center of my chest and suffuses my body, growing outward in waves, just like the ripples from the bomb’s explosion.

  I can feel the magic pulsing. It builds within me, a throbbing in every nerve and muscle. My mind is all that keeps it leashed.

  So cold. Unbearable. But I must.

  The golem stops six feet from me. It glowers and roars in my face.

  I yell back, my lungs on fire, my entire body glowing like the sun but blue as the sky. No thoughts, no last words, except for one, whispered after my war cry dies out…

  Glacii.

  It has not passed my lips for many years. The effect is immediate. Ice crackles from my hands and fingers. It whips out in jagged streams, just as lightning leaps between the clouds. They strike and play over the golem’s body. It shrieks.

  I ignore it, concentrating my mark: the water dripping down its muscles, soaking between the cracks.

  For as every child knows, when water is cold enough, it becomes ice. When it becomes ice, it increases its size.

  That is what the water in the golem’s body does. It crackles and expands, forcing its way out of every crevasse, building pressure.

  Push. More!

  The golem roars but I shut out the sound. A last surge of ice ripples from my hands. It envelopes the beast, then dies as the light fades from my body.

  It’s enough.

  The golem shatters into thousands of shards of ice and stone, blasting out of the water. The wave cuts into me, shredding my shirt and my skin with tiny blades.

  I fall. But Ariya catches me.

  Silence. We did it. We won. My eyes close.

  Ariya gasps. When I open my eyes, there are tears brimming in hers. “Captain! You’re… you’re so cold.”

  What a silly thing to say. I drift off to sleep.

  I care not if I ever awake.

  THE SEVENTH CHAPTER

  ~

  “Bowen? Bowen?”

  The voice is soft, insistent. It speaks to me with care. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, the image of my beloved appears. Her hand caresses my cheek, and it is warm against the biting cold. Cassia?

  “Bowen! Wake your arse.” The voice is rough, demanding. The hand slaps me.

  No, not Cassia.

  My eyes require such effort to open I might as well have shoved aside an oak barricade half a foot thick. The face before me is blurred. Blurred, and crowned with red.

  Of course. Niall.

  I blink, bleary-eyed, until the image clears. It splits into two of him, side by side, and, makes my head spin. Finally, Niall coalesces into himself.

  He grins. “It’s about bloody time. You had us worried for naught, it seems.”

  “It…seems.” My throat is scratched raw. One would think I hadn’t used it in months. Yet I’ve been lying here for…well, that is a good question. It’s only then I realize Niall’s face glows not with delight but with the yellow-orange of a candle’s halo. Everything else is the deep blue-black of night. “What day is this?”

  “The same. It’s night. You’ve been down for hours now. But it wasn’t until after sunset that your temperature finally rose. You’ve been a bloody icicle.”

  I press a hand to my forehead. It’s still cold enough to set my teeth chattering. One would think with the three quilts layered upon me that I’d be sweltering. “Have you been my nursemaid, then?”

  Niall chuckles. “Hardly. That pup Luc wouldn’t leave your side for the longest time. Nothing I said could persuade him.”

  “Not even… your polite manners?” I cough. Ack. There’s a flagon off to the side of the bunk.

  “Steady here.” Niall gets me the flagon and helps me take a drink. The water is manna for my parched throat. “No, Gridley finally nudged him topside. Your hound, though, wouldn’t leave your side.”

  There’s no porthole down here belowdecks. We’re in my cabin, as my still fuzzy brain reckons. Too dark to make out anything but the stack of books in the shelf carved into the bulkhead beside the bunk. I throw aside the quilts. Shivers overtake me. A furred head pushes under my hand, and a wet tongue licks the wrist. Gridley is here, good lad.

  “Hold, now, where do you think we’re going?” Niall stands back.

  “Up to my post. This is my ship, still, is it not?”

  “Yes, but… you need your rest.”

  “Says you, I suppose?”

  Niall snarls. “Shark’s breath, Bowen. You swore to me you would not dabble in those arts again. Three years to the month since I signed on to this fool’s venture, flitting between clouds, only on the oath you wouldn’t.”

  “I did so swear. I also did not anticipate the need to rescue my comrades from a golem’s rage.”

  “Don’t argue! The ice nearly killed you last time. And now this…” He shook his head. “You’ve not been trained.”

  “I’m well aware of that. Now if you don’t mind, I’m off to the wheels.”

  I promptly stumble and collapse to my knees.

  Niall sighs. He loops an arm under my shoulders and helps me to my feet. “Stubborn as an orc,” he mutters. “Come on, then. Ariya will stop pestering me with questions, at the very least.”

  ~

  If Niall expressed the frustration of a mother hen doting on her chick, Ariya was a loud, irritated rooster.

  “Captain! It is about time you have rejoined us.” She steadies the ships wheels. “You owe me an explanation.�
��

  I close my eyes and breathe in the night air. Clean, and cool. Look about—the stars are everywhere. No moon out, and few clouds slide by us as Sleet rides the winds. Their lights speckle the sky, diamond scattered on black velvet. “What manner of explanation might that be?”

  “The one in which you explain why you did not inform us you were an ice-summoner.” She stares hard at me, but she never lets go her hands upon the wheels.

  “It was no secret from me,” Niall grumbles.

  “How lovely. He knew, but this daughter of the Aevorn did not. Niall cannot even keep himself sane around a shank of lamb.”

  “Jealous, my dear?” Niall winks.

  “Enough.” I rub at the bridge of my nose. The headache now pressing between my eyes is unbearable. “Ariya, he has known me since we were lads. There was no grand conspiracy to hide my … ability from you.”

  “Your decision to exclude me put the ship and crew at risk.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, he broke an oath to me that he wouldn’t summon,” Niall says.

  “It does not.” Her tone is frosty and brooks no disagreement. “I cannot forgive it.”

  “Very well. But can you tell me whence we’re bound while you’re busy holding this new vendetta against me?”

  “We are returning to Bristol-on-Sky. I thought it best and Niall agreed.”

  I give him an accusing look. He shrugs and pays closer attention his sword scabbard. “You two agreed? Without violence by either party?”

  “The captain was incapacitated and I, as first mate, bowed to the wisdom of our lovely sailmistress and rigger.” Niall flaps his arms at his sides. “What else would you have us do? Stay docked at Applemont and see if the good golem was blessed with even larger siblings?”

  “No, of course not.” The mention of the golem bombards me with memories of the confrontation. Ice runs in my veins yet again. But the frost does not return to my hands. Progress, I suppose. “What of Luc and the Bloodheart?”

  Niall points to the bow. Luc is curled up by the gunwales. As I approach Gridley lets out a joyful bark. He licks Luc’s face and in return Luc kneads his fur.

  “Good to see you well, Luc.”

  He stands up. A weather beaten bag of brown leather hangs from his left side, the strap lashed across his chest. “You’re not hurt.”

  “Only tired.” And dizzy, famished and ill.

  “The magic you turned on the golem was powerful.”

  I glance back at Niall and Ariya. He watches me closely, while Ariya pretends I do not exist. Her cold shoulder will warm. It’s not the first time I’ve been on her wrong side. “It was. It’s not something I let myself do very often, something I no longer thought myself capable of summoning.”

  “Why? Are you afraid of it?”

  “I…no. One is supposed to be trained in summoning. I never was. So my control is somewhat less than perfected.”A partial truth. I can rein in the ice, most times, but I despise it. I would cut it from my flesh if I could.

  “You were so cold after the golem was destroyed.” Luc touches my skin. “Like you were dead.”

  I withdraw from his touch. Thoughts of home, which I’d long buried, were exhumed and I did not care to examine the remains. “The Bloodheart. Why did you not tell us of the golem?”

  “Father told me the relic was safe, but I thought he meant there was a trap.” Luc looks pensive, his brow furrowed. “I never knew we had a golem under the town square. He was very big.”

  “That he was. May I see the relic?”

  Luc reaches into the bag. He holds up the Bloodheart, but does not let go. Instead he whispers, “Be very, very careful.”

  Indeed.

  It is warm to the touch, much warmer than my skin at the present. The warmth intensifies, blooms under my fingertips as I turn the object over in my hands. I’ve never had the chance to touch platinum, to see it up close. It is a fine, lustrous metal that catches the starlight and turns the whole object a silvery blue.

  A sudden blaze of heat courses through my hands, up my arms, into the very core of my being. All the lingering ice is swept from me. I gasp.

  Words fill my mind. Words and pictures. Love and sorrow and peace and pain. Feelings so intense I know not whence they come. The words alongside them, under them, they carry the weight of such authority they can only be from a powerful king or an emperor of the Far East.

  I feel trapped, and inexplicably damned. Locked in a dungeon—a sensation with which I am unfortunately familiar.

  One word pounds against my mind. Seek.

  It all melts away. I stand there, trembling. Luc has taken the Bloodheart from my grasp. He stares at me, that sorrowful expression on his face. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you hold it. It’s heavy.”

  All I can do is nod, and wipe subtly at the tears in my eyes lest Niall sees. “Yes. Yes, it is. Why don’t you keep it secure, for now?”

  “I will.” He tucks it into the bag. “Captain?”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t want to go back to Bristol-on-Sky. It’s dangerous.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose we shall have to worry about those men we faced before. I doubt they will trouble us. The ones who are still among the living, that is.”

  “No. That’s not it. Darkness presses in. The Bloodheart won’t be safe there.”

  I consider this, ready to balk at his suggestion we not return. That gaze of his is so confounded earnest. Gridley rubs up against my leg, and gives me a look of complete confidence. The lad is on to something. I would follow him were I you.

  I look to the northern horizon. There are clouds there. Thick ones. This does not faze me, not as a rule, but in light of Luc’s words I cannot help but see the malevolence behind them. Something is not right. It is the same sensation the cavern beneath Applemont’s square impressed upon me.

  “Please, Captain. Can you take us somewhere else? Somewhere safe?” Luc asks.

  I sigh. “Lad, there’s precious few places in this sky or on this sea one could call safe. And I need to know more about…”

  My words trail off into the breeze. Safe. Know. More.

  Of course.

  “Ariya!” I stride swiftly to the ship’s wheels. “Bring us about to an easterly heading. Take us down to the Orient Stream.”

  To her everlasting credit, she spins the ahead-wheel to turn us away from our northward course and uses the rise wheel to begin our descent from 9,000 to 6,000 feet before a single question leaves her mouth. “Captain?”

  “Have you dropped your ballast, Bowen? If we’re to sell the bauble we’ve got to return to Bristol-on-Sky and make the appropriate contacts,” Niall says. “The ones with big bags of gold, preferably.”

  “I don’t think it will be safe for us there.” No need to mention Luc’s premonition, for the moment. “Besides, we need to know more about this Bloodheart before we complete our transaction.”

  “What’s east then?” Niall seems befuddled. True, most of our journeys take us north and south these days.

  “We’re off to Jasna Góra. The answers I hunt will be there.” I fervently hope so.

  “Jasna Góra?” Niall scowls. “Is that among the Silesian Rocks? Some kind of trading post?”

  “You fool.” Ariya’s voice strikes us like a whip, but there is something strangely reverent even with the chastisement. Even though she speaks next to Niall, her stare is fixed on me. “Jasna Góra. The great library.”

  THE EIGHT CHAPTER

  ~

  Strathern

  I DON’T LIKE TO FLY. Not as a passenger. I used to, eons ago, when I was but a lad. No longer.

  Let me state it plainly. It’s a nuisance, and makes me dizzy if I’m not the one at the wheels. Give me a ship on the seas, leaping the crests and diving the troughs, and I’m a happy man. Even if others are too busy vomiting off the gunwales to notice. Flying, well … I have less control.

  I must have control.

  Our pilot is expert. He docks us
at Bristol-on-Sky with the barest of bumps. The thick clouds don’t hamper him. Good thing, too. Our warship is the HMS Inexorable, thrice the size of the largest ship moored here. I take time to admire her form as my company of fusiliers disembarks. The hull is dark oak edged in crimson and black. The red and black checked pennants of Northamber snap in the breeze. The royal crest—an obsidian crown atop crossed silver swords on a crimson shield—is emblazoned on sails of gray fabric that churn in the wind like storm clouds. She is pierced for sixteen cannon and carries the full load, though I put little faith in the hellish contraptions. Nearly got myself blown up by one years back. Hence the lost right arm.

  Well, not entirely lost. I rap my knuckles on the replacement. It rings hollow and metallic, like a church bell.

  I am a great fan of irony.

  “Sir.” My lieutenant is a humorless man, with as much personality as a slab of shale. He never smiles. Lines on his face are longer than the rigging of Inexorable. “The men are ready.”

  “Good.” As if I couldn’t tell that. Twit. “Form up. Two lines. Secure the street when we reach our destination.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  We march into town. There’s no chance of stealth here. These boys each wear a steel cuirass that rattles and clanks with each step. Their boots stamp against the dirt. The lieutenant’s scabbard and pistol jangle against his armor.

  My raiment is far simpler—a white tunic and black trousers, black boots, brown leather bracers on my wrists and a vest of the same material, all shrouded in a cloak red as the dawn and edged in black.

  I don’t need any directions from the old wretch watching the docks, nor do I need a map. There’s a dark corner by a tavern that’s familiar.

  The soldiers herd any passers-by—and by that I mean drunken louts, lazy layabouts all of them—out of the main street. More like main rutted dirt path. Nothing as grand as the paving stones of the Majesty’s Avenue in Pons Aelius. I’d much rather be wandering among the gray stone and white turrets than here in this filthy burg.

  Into the tavern I go.

  There’s hardly a warm welcome for a man dressed in wealthy garb such as mine. Ah well. I smile broadly for the dozens of pairs of bleary eyes that turn my way. “Greetings, servants of the king. I seek the brothers Lundstrom. My information suggests they frequent this fine establishment. Will anyone help me find them so I may bid them hello?”