by Steve Rzasa
Vesna shuffles beside me. She smiles my way, but it is a sad expression devoid of hope. I give my most confident gaze in return. How easy it is to mask one’s true feelings when the need arises.
Even Gridley is bound, dragged along by two guards with ropes to his collar and a muzzle secured by leather straps to his mouth. His limp is barely noticeable; Vesna’s herbs have healed him well.
No one speaks. I know their hidden questions. Where is Luc? Where is the Bloodheart?
The ramp proceeds up at a shallow angle. It is dark inside, lit only at intervals with torches that snap flame and give off a foul stench. Above us daylight beckons through a small rectangle in the ceiling.
The ramp opens into a broad, circular room built entirely of stone. Twelve huge windows affixed with thick iron grates offer breathtaking views of the skies for miles around, views marred by the Northamber war fleet. Wooden shutters are flung open. There are raised stone benches chiseled into all the walls. Four bloody Northamber banners as big as sails hang on the wall, black crowns and silver swords emblazoned everywhere. Under those banners, arranged at the cardinal points of the compass, are cages of metal and wood fastened to stone blocks. There are three in each cluster.
Into one set of these we’re herded unceremoniously as pigs. Guards push Ariya and Vesna into the left one. Four men shove Niall, while others cast me and Gridley into the rightmost. Those same guards take up places around us, fusils held ready.
Vesna gasps. In the middle of the room stands Luc.
He’s on the low step of a circular dais with seven steps that is hewn of the whitest marble. It has a column of blackest obsidian that shines with reflections of the room, and reaches like a gnarled tree to the ceiling a hundred feet up. Cut through the column at the height of a man’s chest is a hole.
Luc cradles the Bloodheart to his chest. It’s pulsing a steady red, the throbbing of a human’s heart. His eyes are dragged down by dark circles, and his face wet with tears. There’s no sound save the faint shouts from the ships’ crews outside, and the howl of the winds swirling around the tower.
Cloaked figures approach from either side of the dais. They are black wraiths edged in crimson. Five of them. Strathern leads them, and when they gather between our cages and the dais, he throws back his hood. Those pale brown eyes lock their gaze with mine. The red-haired beauty stands to his right, her smile bold, and the young blond man with the cruel sneer at his left. Two more: a burly, massive, silent fellow who seems descended from a bear, and a thin, rangy fellow who edges closer to the blond man.
“You’ve been admirable opponents,” Strathern says. “Models of valor. Make no mistake: few have faced summoners of Northamber and survived.”
“Excuse us if we take little solace from your praise,” I say.
Niall slams his body against his cages, the chains banging a terrible racket. “Butchers!” he snarls. “You killed priests and their young! I’ll feast on your guts!’”
Strathern wags a finger. Lightning jumps in a ragged bolt to Niall’s cages. He yelps and releases the bars, shaking his fingers. There’s a wisp of smoke in the air. “Careful. Should you shift your form I daresay you’ll find your bindings far too strong to burst.”
“Murderers!”
“You filth killed two of our forces!” the blond man snaps. “You’d be dead in your own pool of blood if I had my way!”
“Silence, Calder.” Strathern gives him a withering glare. “Yes, we lost Etheria and Fantine. They knew the peril involved. Soulmages—and apparently the crew of Bowen Cord’s Sleet – are none to be trifled with.”
Strathern places a hand on Luc’s shoulder. My teeth grind. Cold tingles my fingers. I do not know how much ability I have. The ice fled me during my time asleep and during our voyage here. Somehow Strathern’s spell that knocked us insensate damaged my skill. I hold fast to the cage bars. Yet the ice is still there, prickling beneath my skin. Murmuring the summoning, I ease cold into the bars. In my mind’s eye I see the ice creeping through the metal, into the other cages, across the stone and up into not only my chains but the chains of my companions.
Is it imaginary? My fetters seem colder. But senses can lie.
Gridley whimpers and paces the cell. He lifts his feet high with his steps.
“I wanted you to see this, Cord. To see what the Bloodheart is truly meant to do. Young Luc is our kind volunteer to our cause. He alone can wield the Bloodheart…for now.” Strathern smiles, and musses Luc’s hair. “Indeed, none of us could touch it, as you can see by the damage done to my metal hand. He also told us none of you could hold it, Captain. Do you know why?”
I frown. Niall was injured when he tried to take it from the altar at Applemont. I, however, did touch the Bloodheart. As did Vesna.
Yet, with different results.
“Tell them what you told me, Luc,” Strathern says.
“I’m sorry.” Luc is weeping now. “Father told me never to tell anyone. He said he didn’t want anyone to know that only children of the Most High can hold it.”
Only those children? Or did he mean something more than a young lad or lass? What does it portend for Vesna and I?
“Surprisingly simple. All this time, all this searching for a relic of power that would bring one kingdom to rule the skies and the seas and we, fools that we were, nearly destroyed the person that would let us bring that search to its conclusion. All this time, I saw the Most High as a myth of deluded, banished summoners which they used to explain powers none could fathom.” Strathern shakes his head. “If we’d killed this boy at Applemont we’d have lost our prize.”
Luc’s expression hardens. “The Bloodheart won’t serve you. You’ll never be stronger.”
Strathern sighs. “Yes, you are as foolish as those soulmage dolts in this regard. Our relic is a tool, Luc, to be directed like any other form of magic wielded by any other summoner. Place the Bloodheart in the column.”
“No!” The ice surges from me, and it takes all my concentration to make certain it’s still creeping into the bars and not blasting forth. “Luc, don’t!”
Strathern snarls and sends a bolt of lightning my way.
The pain is unbearable. Thunder booms in my ears. The stench of my clothing and skin burning is foul. When the crackle of the bolt fades, I hear shouts from my companions and threats rejoined from the soldiers and summoners.
“Enough!” Strathern’s voice is as loud as the lightning strike. Bolts writhe up and down his metal arm. “Enough of these foul delays, and your insistent interference! Boy, you put that thing into the column or your friends will be roasted faster than a boar on a spit!”
Luc steps up to the column, trudging his feet. The summoners watch in rapt attention.
Niall kneels on his side of the bars, near enough to me to whisper, “Are you well?”
I cough. The burns are not as bad as I thought—reddening of the skin in places, though patches of my tunic are charred. “Cooked, mildly.”
Niall grins, and holds up manacled hands. “These fetters are all that keep me from tearing those fiends apart.”
I stagger upright, and place my hands on the bars between us. Frost slithers across them. “You know, I’ve been working on that.”
“Such was my wonder. The iron is getting colder. So’s the floor.”
“When we’re ready, watch for a signal from me,” I murmur. “Pass word to Ariya.”
“Already done. I knew you’d be up to something, Bowen.”
Luc is at the top of the steps. He hesitates, looks at us, and mouths the words: “Forgive me.”
He places the Bloodheart in the gap.
It stops pulsing. My breath stops along with it.
With a sharp crack, the Bloodheart ignites a brilliant white, blinding as the sun, shooting dazzling rays tinged with rainbow colors from its entire surface. The rays trace paths over the floor, the walls and the ceiling. None strike humans.
The light creeps up and down the obsidian column, making it as t
ransparent as glass. It writhes and twists, like a tree caught in a windstorm, a thing very much alive.
Stone vibrates under my feet, and chains rattle on my legs. Soon the entire chamber quakes, bringing us to our knees. Even the summoners flail about for a handhold. After an intolerable stretch the tremors subside into a low rumble. Something—else is different. Something I cannot place.
A breeze from the windows ruffles my hair, and I cannot believe my senses.
Strathern’s laughter is deep, rumbling from the gut.
“Are you mad?” Calder shouts. “Your pet relic is going to destroy us, and you’ll revel in our deaths?”
Strathern shakes his head. The chuckles subside. “Ah, Calder, as blind and deaf as usual. The world would be a far more unpredictable place without the constant of your idiocy.” He gestures to the windows.
The clouds move. Much faster than the drifting I saw when we arrived at Navio Mons, and when I spied them as we were brought into this chamber. The astonishment hits me with a physical blow.
The clouds move because we move.
I can feel it under my feet, and in the depths of my gut. I know it as sure I were behind the wheels of Sleet again. Slowly, ponderously, Navio Mons sails the skies.
“It cannot be.” The red-headed woman has discerned this, too, because she stares at the window a spell before grasping onto Strathern’s metal arm. “An isle cannot move.”
“Yet, it does. All things are possible now, Satara.” He puts hands on her shoulders and smiles broadly. “This is His Majesty’s vision come true. Navio Mons is no longer a fortress anchored to the sky. She is a warship, the mightiest ever known.”
There is more silence. The awe is plainly visible on all faces. Except the youth Calder. He scowls. “Where is the tiller? The rise wheel and the sails? Will you push us where we need to travel, sire?” He spits the title out as if it were a vulgarity.
Strathern considers him with an expression that chills my bones even more than the ice summoned. It’s the look of a man weighing his options for disposing of a pest. But rather than taking any rash action, Strathern steps up the dais to Luc. “This is our helmsman, Calder. We need only direct him.”
Luc’s eyes are blazing white, the same color as they were when he summoned magic, and the same color as the Bloodheart now. He nods, his face blank of emotion. “I see – the whole world. All the places. A big map, and I can touch it. The Bloodheart shows me.”
“Good. Very good. Take us to Zadar.” Strathern smiles our direction. “The king’s order stands: we begin our conquest of the world with the place where all nations meet, where defiance is most easily and publicly stomped upon. We will bring our boot heel down and put the fire out.”
“You cannot! The merchants will never stand for it!” Vesna reaches through the bars. I know she longs for her dagger. Her lips curl in an angry sneer. “You can’t rule a place that will hate you so!”
“Rule it? My dear, I don’t intend to rule,” Strathern says. “I plan to kill every living soul on those isles.”
THE THIRTIETH CHAPTER
~
Strathern
I LET THAT SINK IN. They’re all stunned to silence. Even the obstinate were-fox ceases growling. Good. I have their attention.
“Don’t think I’m without mercy, Cord. I can be persuaded to alter my plans. You need only swear your allegiance to the Crown of Northamber.”
Cord scowls. He’s hanging onto those bars for dear life, as if they’ll save him. “Join a butcher like you, with a madman for a king? You’d have me join your armies of fell beasts and enslaved summoners? Never.”
“Never. How many times have I been told such?” I gesture at my summoners. “You see their power, Cord. I have seen your latent ability. You can be harnessed as a fine weapon in the service of His Majesty. Given command of your own warship—Sky’s fire, an entire squadron if you like. You’ve been without proper training and mastery for too long. Let me show you just how a summoner should wield his gifts.”
“You try hard to sell me on your cause. What of my people?”
You see? This is what I knew of Bowen Cord when he first jumped off the safety of his ship to rescue the woman for whom his heart longs. He’s a man of principle. A man who doesn’t desert his companions. Loyalty is his key virtue.
What a weakling.
“They can serve, as well. Fine mercenary and spy potential. Their prowess in a fight is indisputable.”
“In return you’ll spare Zadar.”
“Yes.”
Cord’s mouth twists into a smirk. “I don’t believe a word of it.”
Calder snickers. If that boy weren’t such a source of raw fury in battle I would take great pleasure in searing him inside out with lightning
“Is that what you think?”
“I know it. You’ve manipulated and killed your way across the skies to get to us,” Cord says. “You slaughtered the soulmages at Jasna Góra. One of them was a friend—a brother to me. I would never trust your word when his blood is fresh on your fingers.”
“Fine, then.” Leverage is needed. I beckon Calder forward. He’s the perfect one for this. “Kill the women. Start with the Aevorn. Take your time with Juric.”
Cord shouts his protest at me but it’s lost in the howl of the were-fox. He lunges at the bars. Two guards thrust the muzzles of their fusils forward.
Calder storms toward the women’s cage, his cloak billowing like an angry cloud. Lightning crackles around both his fists. He’ll make a mess of the women, I’m sure, but Cord is being uncooperative. I need to ensure his compliance. Force—or rather, the threat of it—is an acceptable way to secure such.
He unleashes twin strikes at the Aevorn woman. They wrap around her, stabbing into her skin, enveloping her wings in a firestorm of light. Her back arches, and she grits her teeth. There are no tears I can see, nor does she cry out.
Juric shies away, screaming at Calder to stop but not daring to intervene lest she’s struck too. The were-fox reaches for Aevorn through the bars—the fool—and is thrown against the opposite side of the cage.
Calder grins, ramps up the lightning strikes. I glance at Cord. He’s in agony over her pain, I can see it. The way his fingers grip the bars of his cage. The way the knuckles are white with—
No. They’re not white. They have a bluish tinge to them, a luminescence. I hear a whispered word…Glacii.
“Niall!” Cord shouts.
The were-fox transforms. His shirt tears under the force of his expanding flesh and muscle. He’s fully formed into a red and white beast with slavering fangs. He howls, an ungodly cry that reverberates off the roof and sends the guards backing away from the cage. The iron collar resists, bulges—and shatters like glass. Every bit of metal that’s broken is shiny with frost.
He smashes through the bars as if they were icicles. Within a space of heartbeats he’s torn open the two men nearest him. He breaks the cages to either side of him.
Damn that Bowen Cord!
“Calder, stop him!” Satara and I move to protect Luc, as one, without consulting each other.
Calder turns his lightning aside and it singes Niall’s fur. But doesn’t stop him. Doesn’t even stall him. The beast plows into him and seizes his cloak. He flings Calder to the nearest wall, twenty feet away. Calder slams into it with a sickening crunch and slumps to the floor.
There’s gunfire, and clouds of smoke from the infernal weapons obscure my view worse than any storm I’ve encountered on sea or sky. The sounds of metal clanking against stone ring out, above the echoes of the gunshots. It’s not until then I realize how cold the room is, how much of a chill there is in the air. Cord’s crafty, I’ll grant.
I lash out with lightning but there’s no mark to hit, no target to burn. Rostov lumbers into the fight, flinging fireballs. They miss Niall, who has a screaming soldier’s arm gripped between his fangs. A shot slices through Rostov’s arm, sending him staggering.
Bowen Cord sprints out of the s
moke. He and the cursed mongrel of his. He’s liberated a wheellock pistol from one of the guards, and casts it aside, the wisp of white smoke from its muzzle curling a corkscrew. He shoulders into a nearby guard who is fumbling with the mechanism on his fusil. Cord strikes him in the stomach, deep below the ribs. He wrenches the fusil out of the man’s hand and uses it as a club across the fore of his helmet, crumpling the metal.
Cord’s chains are gone, too; only the bindings remain about his wrists and ankles. The muzzle keeping his hound’s mouth safely shut must have been broken off, because the mutt latches on to the ankle of another soldier and tears him off his footing. The soldier slams down onto the concrete.
Vesna Juric grapples with Taran, holding fast to his wrists as he blazes a stream of fire clear up to the ceiling on snaking tendrils. He kicks her away, and brings the fire down at her. It sears her clothing, making her screams pierce my ears. But the Aevorn woman hammers into Taran with her chains, still attached to her arm, yet wielded like a steel whip that sprays fragments of ice.
There is smoke and fire everywhere. Yet I will not try the stun again. If I subdue Cord again, he will be twice as dangerous as before. This has to end.
Pity. I had great hopes for him.
The dog lunges up the dais, racing for Satara just as it did at Jasna Góra. She uses her summoning to yank stones from the dais steps, chunks of marble that she pelts at him. But he’s far too fast, and evades them as if they were no more inconvenient than puddles in a muddy street. With a pair of leaps he’s slammed onto her chest, biting and snarling, she using her arms to defend from his fangs.
A white hot arrow of lightning arcs across the room, striking the beast.
It howls piteously, sparks showering the dais and Satara both. The dog is flung from her and down to the base of the steps. No movement. White fur charred black. Steam rising from the body.