The Bloodheart

by Steve Rzasa

  It’s Calder’s doing. Face twisted in fury, he’s pulled himself off the floor where Niall mashed him and vented his rage on Cord’s hound.

  “Gridley!” Cord has a blade now; from which soldier he’s swiped it I know not. He buries it in his opponent’s gut up to the hilt, shoves him off with a kick of his boot. Blood drips from the blade. His countenance is one I would find fearsome, if such a man could scare me.

  He mounts a savage attack, pelting me with an ice storm of razor sharp shards. I use my cloak to deflect a fair few; the rest a web of lightning melts into a harmless shower. One strong bolt I send coursing down the tip of his sword, but he’s fast, faster than I expect. Ice shoots forth, coursing up his hand across the hilt and blasting out from the blade.

  I press home my attack, pounding at Cord with bursts of lightning even as he fends them off with blue-white spheres of ice that fly forth from his fingertips. We close the distance between us.

  He slashes suddenly with sword. I block the blow with my arm, and draw my own blade. His onslaught is nothing I can’t handle, but I give him points for ferocity. With each savage thrust he makes I parry neatly and counterattack. Cord is nimbler than I credited him; he slips out of reach of my own blows and return fast enough for his own swipes.

  Calder should not have killed the dog. It’s made Cord sloppy, yes, but it’s also added fuel to his fire. I could have kept it from Satara without its death. Now Cord is useless to me, for he’s consumed with vengeance. Calder’s ineptitude has fouled my plans.

  Calder uses both hands to hammer Niall with a double burst of lightning just as the were-fox leaps upon him. He’s sent tumbling end over end.

  The Aevorn woman soars out of the sights of a soldier, his fusil exploding in smoke and fire. She loops behind him and stabs him between his shoulder blades with the very dagger lodged in his belt. Rostov goes full bore for her with fire but she is quick as a lightning bolt, that harpy. She evades the blaze, which instead immolates the soldier she’s just impaled. Taran is bloodied on the floor, senseless I suspect, and Juric has launched herself at another soldier, having added a saber to her arsenal of chains.

  By the skies. Where would we be had Cord a dozen men in his crew instead of these three hellions? At least the boy Luc is still welded to the Bloodheart, his eyes blazing white as stars. Navio Mons still moves. I can feel her shifting underfoot.

  Cord says nothing as we duel. His only sounds are grunts of exertion and the clang of his steel. Out of the corner of my eye I spy Satara rising to her feet. She nods and raises three chunks of marble into the air, each the size of my arm.

  I strike at Cord, who dodges the blow but only just. My blade rends his cloak. He lashes wildly, but instead of blocking I duck under his sword, skidding on the floor.

  Satara’s missiles streak overhead. The first two slam into Cord’s left arm, the third catches him across the chest. It’s enough to knock the man over. But he lets fly a spasm of blue light that slams Satara, encasing her legs in ice.

  I bring my blade to his throat. He’s shivering, panting. His fingers are coated with frost.

  “Surrender now and I give the order no harm will come to your people.”

  “Gridley is dead,” he says through gritted teeth. I see his anguish. Calder is a fool. “Your promises mean nothing.”

  Before my blade can so much as twitch cannon fire booms outside the walls. Cannon fire—from my ships? Those guarding Navio Mons?

  My lieutenant bursts into the room, flanked by more soldiers. His hair is unkempt, his cloak missing, and his uniform sullied. His mouth flaps wide open as the depths of a cave. “Sire! Sire! We’re under attack!”

  Of all the stupid incompetent …

  A roar shakes the room.

  It is deafening, even though I can plainly tell it is beyond the walls. All combat around me ceases. Even Cord looks up, eyes wide, ignoring his imminent peril.

  “Strathern.” Satara’s teeth chatter. “What is it?”

  The roar is repeated, closer, louder, and accompanied by dozens more that sound far softer. More cannon fire. Shouts of alarm from the ships outside the windows. Through the openings facing south, I can plainly see our foremost warships sailing to meet a dark cloud that resolves itself into the silhouettes of flapping wings and the glow of distant flames.

  Dragons. Again.

  “You can’t win.”

  The boy speaks? His eyes still glow bright, and his hands grip the Bloodheart, but he is facing me. Looking right through me with his gaze. It’s as if my soul has been uncovered for all the isles of the sky to see. As if I’m pushed off the rim and falling to the ocean.

  For once, and only once, I’m terrified.

  Luc raises his right hand to the ceiling. Blinding lightning, coruscating with green, shoots forth in a swath. An earsplitting thunder rattles my teeth. The lightning splashes across the roof and the upper wall, shaking it, loosening stones, until a section wide enough to berth a man-of-war and its sails explodes outward.

  Dragons and warships collide in midair.

  THE THIRTY-FIRST CHAPTER

  ~

  Bowen

  BENATH IS HERE. HE DID not come alone. There have to be twenty large dragons attacking along with him. One, I see, is Tereth. His wound hampers his flying, but he’s no less vicious for it, unleashing gouts of flame at the nearest frigate. Its return cannon fire goes far too wide. Tereth’s flame ignites half the sails on the forward mast.

  The dragons are all adults, all male, their crowns resplendent, roaring and flashing fangs. Their wings pound the air in overlapping rhythm, and I swear I can feel the gusts from where I lay prone on the floor.

  Benath barrels into the middle of the Northamber fleet, veering suddenly for the nearest massive warship. Its hull is black wood and banded together with iron armor. One of the harpoons affixed to bow shoots out with a whistle, but Benath arcs over the top of the sails, letting the harpoon fly harmlessly below his tail. He slams his entire girth down through the sails, ripping cloth and splintering masts. Gunfire ripples across the deck from dozens of muskets, shrouding Benath’s claws in smoke. He bellows a stomach-churning roar and slams both legs deep into the hull. Wood cracks with the sound of thunder, snapping and splintering, until he’s torn the ship clean in half.

  A glittering green object floats serenely up out of the wreckage, dragging along bits of metal and wood. Benath blasts both halves of the ship with fire and lets go. They plummet like comets, men’s screams trailing them far out of sight.

  With that devastating attack, the frozen tableau around me in the tower’s uppermost chamber snaps into motion. I release the ice stabbing through my hands. A blue glow smacks Strathern dead center to his chest, tossing him across the dais with a chunk of ice rapidly spreading across his tunic.

  Gridley. The fiend Calder killed Gridley. I scramble across the floor, staying low to the stone as a musket ball whines overhead. Smoke still rises in tendrils from his fur.

  “Gridley? Gridley!”

  He doesn’t stir. I rub his back, and curse. His body is hot. Far warmer than what it should be. Is there a heartbeat?

  Ice cracks nearby. The red-haired woman, Satara, chips away at the ice binding her legs with a piece of marble. It won’t hold her long. But she’s preoccupied by the gunfire and swords clanging and, with smoke drifting in clouds across the room, doesn’t seem to see me.

  A whine. Gridley’s head moves, ever so slowly. He blinks.

  “Gridley. Good lad.” I rub under his chin.

  His head goes limp. There’s no breath, no pulse, no life.

  Instead of rage, instead of sadness, everything in me goes cold. My heart has iced over. It may well not be beating. I cannot feel it. I cannot feel anything, except for the icy pain throbbing in my fingers, my hands, my wrists, my arms.

  Every though of treating the summoning as a gift instead of a curse flees me. I care not for whether it is a warped reflection of true magic.

  Twice. That’s twice
Strathern and his vile minions have taken from me. No more.

  No. More.

  I whirl and face Satara. She sees me, and her eyes go wide. Good. I will not face anyone in a fight without their face to mine.

  There’s a whoosh, and something sears my side. I cry out in pain. Smoke. Fire. I cough, choking. Tear my cloak from my shoulders. It’s engulfed in flame.

  The big bear of a bearded man. He thunders at me, releasing twin fireballs each the size of my head.

  No thinking. No planning. I step toward him, fling out one, two streaks of ice that flash freeze and extinguish the fireballs. He’s on me a moment later, swinging a punch with a meaty fist that trails a long jagged blade of fire.

  I block it with my right arm, glowing blue and encased in a heavy shield of ice. With my left I jab out and upward with a long frozen blade that extrudes from my palm through my fingers. It stabs deep into his chest.

  My shout surprises even me.

  He gasps, and sags forward. I shove the ponderous weight off, snapping the ice blade in half.

  “Rostov!” Satara ceases her assault on my frozen prison about her legs. She’s hammering me with rubble from the collapsed ceiling.

  Somehow I form a shield, not a mere encasement for my arm but a long and rectangular slab, glowing blue and forged of ice thick as the breadth of my hand. The rocks bounce off, gouging craters and sending sprays of shards. They pummel me with such force that I’m on my knees again. Eyes pinched shut, I mutter my incantation and will what I wish.

  I hear her scream until the sound is muffled and choked off. It fades out completely. Ice snaps and piles up. I exhale, my efforts spent.

  Satara is sealed inside a mound of ice. Her beauty is even more awe-inspiring encased under blue-white. Arms are outstretched, fingers curled. The green glow fades out of her eyes. So does the color in her cheeks. She suffocates inside the ice.

  My insides recoil at what I’ve done. This is the danger of which Evan warned—succumbing to the dark clutches that would have me use ice-summoning to kill, to destroy, to impose my will on others. This is not wielding magic with a clean heart. This is abomination.

  An agonizing jolt twists my body. The pain builds inside me until I scream, dropping my ice defenses. The damaged shield smashes to bits.

  Calder. He’s walking toward me, pumping a snaking bolt of lightning into me even as he holds Niall in midair in his own prison of crackling heat and light. “Don’t rush yourself, Cord! You’ll join your simpering mutt soon enough!”

  He says more but the words are lost amidst my own cries, the crack and thunder of the lightning bolts, and the continued gunfire from the few soldiers using the downed sections of wall as barricades. I twist around, each muscle blazing with pain, willing myself to face my attacker. He has a look of supreme confidence on his face, arrogance of youth not yet tempered by time and loss.

  Someone slips in behind Calder. His expression freezes, eyes widen, and his mouth goes slack from its sneer. Blood trickles from the left corner, dribbling down his chin. He pitches directly forward like a tree with an ax laid at the roots.

  A dagger is pinned precisely to the base of his skull, the same ornate dagger Strathern gifted to Vesna.

  The lightning cuts out, releasing me from pain and dropping me back into comfort. Muscles twitch and bones ache.

  Vesna wrenches the dagger free from Calder and crouches beside me. She’s pale, bloodied and stained with dust. She gasps, her arms shaking. “Bowen! You’re hurt.”

  “Such is my lot this voyage.” I wince. “We have to get to Luc. Get him away from that thing.”

  “Hold tight.” She smiles and winks. “Try not to catch any musket fire or any more lightning bolts.”

  I glance beyond the still body of Calder. The cold in me is melting. My hands shake. Ice drops in chunks. Where are my crew?

  I find them amidst the debris from the collapsed wall, dueling with the remnants of the Northamber guards. The last of the summoners, the thin man, grasps at his leg with bloody fingers whilst flinging the occasional fireball at a mound of blocks halfway across the room. Five guards and a sixth man, the one who shadowed Strathern everywhere, shoot the same direction.

  Niall is slumped on the floor, shifted to his human form, behind those stones. Nasty bruises discolor his skin. Musket balls ping off the lumps of wall around him. He nods at me, and takes a break from panting to grin.

  Ariya alights next to him. She’s bleeding heavily, and pale skin is as white as the marble around us. But the silver in her eyes is none duller. She wields a musket and fires it with stunning accuracy. The ball catches a soldier in his helmet. She ducks beside Niall to reload as he aims a pistol over the barricade.

  Strathern lies insensate beneath a mound of ice.

  Outside the walls, dragons wheel close by, setting fires to anything they can find. Terrible, high-pitched shrieks join the cacophony of thunderous roars and rolling cannon fire—the shrieks of the valkiros. The vile creatures, with desiccated bodies and ragged leather wings, are black insects against the dragons’ grand blue and white hides. They cling to Benath as mosquitoes, slashing at him, most drawing no blood I can see. A pair of dragons fall, dragging a swarm with them, trailing green blood and black smoke. How many more have fallen? I cannot tell, but their ranks appear thinned. Crews from a man-of-war wreathed in fire cheer in exultation. A tremendous explosion rattles the walls; two ships have collided, and their powder magazines must have caught, because there’s nothing left but a mash of wood ignited into black clouds of smoke and bright orange flames.

  I half-walk, half let Vesna drag me up the dais to Luc. My throat is burned, my voice raspy and strange to my ears. “Release it, lad! Let’s leave here!”

  “I can’t. The black thing won’t let me take it.” He sounds strained, the calm gone.

  “Then leave it. You’re the one we need to save! Without you they can’t use it!”

  “It can’t stay with them! I won’t let it. Father wouldn’t want it.” He looks at me, eyes aglow with that unnerving white. But it’s still his face, kind as ever.

  “Please, Luc! Come with us.” I stretch out my hand for him.

  Luc removes his right hand from the Bloodheart. Tiny fingers brush mine, startlingly warm. “Make it stop, Bowen.”

  A gunshot explodes.

  I never hear the footsteps, nor the click of the wheellock being primed. Smoke bursts around us. The ball hits Luc square in the heart. Blood blossoms like a flower in the field. Light winks out from his eyes, and for a moment, there is the familiar brown. His gaze goes vacant and he slumps onto the Bloodheart. The white lights flicker out, and the column fades to its original obsidian sheen.

  I whirl, facing our attacker. All I get is a glimpse of Strathern bringing the stock of his wheellock pistol down on me before my vision shatters in pain and light.

  Vesna screams at him, slashing with her dagger. Strathern catches her wrist and twists hard enough it snaps as loud as the gunshots still echoing around the room. Her screams rise an octave and she falls to her knees.

  Strathern holds her wrist in a grip so firm his knuckles are as white as the ivory dais. He drops the pistol and places his metal hand over my head. Heat from the lightning jumping between outstretched fingers bakes my hair. The fingers are ruined, half-melted.

  “Interference. Constant, unrelenting, interference.” There’s ice still stuck to his chest, and a coldness in his glare that chills me worse than any magic. “I’m through with it.”

  The fury and grief mingle in my heart. “Why did you kill him? Luc was innocent! He did no wrong.”

  Strathern nods. “That is why I killed him.”

  He discards Vesna, and shoves Luc’s body aside. Free of obstacles, he touches the Bloodheart with his true hand.

  White light flares to life again—this time tinged with crackling bolts of red lightning. The column glows, and a sudden lurch beneath my feet sends me staggering. If the fortress isle of Navio Mons was sailing under Luc
’s guidance, it is soaring twice as fast now.

  Strathern doesn’t cry out in pain. He holds fast to the Bloodheart. When he looks at me, his eyes are brilliant with a hideous red, glowing as coals in the dark depths of a dying fire.

  “For a brave fighter, Cord, you lack foresight.” His voice is a hideous choir of altos and tenors, sounding as metal dragged across stone. “The legends tell that only the blood of the innocent, the truly innocent follower and faithful of the Most High, can power the Bloodheart and work its submission.”

  Vesna is in a heap on the floor, sobbing. I enfold her in my arms. Strathern traces a lazy path across the relic. When he holds up his hand, it is smeared with the deep crimson of spilled blood.

  Luc’s blood.

  Strathern chuckles. “Oh, yes. You see it now? The Bloodheart is mine to control. Mine to command. When I take this beautiful vessel to Zadar, I will personally incinerate every soul standing there, and burn down every building. My lightning’s reach is unstoppable.”

  There’s a sword nearby. Resting on the dais steps. Can I reach it and stop him?

  “You would not believe what I can see. How far I can see.” He gazes out above our heads, through the yawning gap Luc blasted in the wall. “You cannot believe the power I wield.”

  He flings a lightning bolt out from his metal hand. It’s ten times larger than anything I’ve seen him send, a churning, coruscating flare of heat and sound that tears through the air. It bangs out into the sky with the crack of a hundred cannons and hits a large, scarred dragon. The creature dies with a hideous, gurgling scream that cuts off into blessed silence. A cloud of ash smears the sky in his place.

  Strathern’s laughter rises.

  I lunge for the sword, but I’m far too slow. Strathern’s red bolts pin me down, searing at every hair and muscle in my body. My yells are more deafening than that thunder burst that accompanies his strike.

  In the midst of pain, I hear a shouted warning, feel a rush of wind, and see a flash of white. Ariya. She grapples with Strathern, a blade in her hand, and is able to plunge it into his side.