Age of Swords

by Michael J. Sullivan

  Suri stood up, closed her eyes, and furrowed her brow. She tilted her head from side to side. “I’m not sure what to do. There are so many choices, and so few sources to draw from!”

  “It needs a drag on the back,” Roan was saying, holding the next stick up in front of her. “Something to catch the air and keep the stone tip pointed forward.”

  “Like what, Roan? Like what?” Moya was flashing her hands open and closed, begging for an answer. “Think, damn you. Think!”

  Persephone couldn’t do anything but watch. Suri remained standing, frustrated and confused. Roan dug through her bag in a panic, spurred on by Moya, who was still holding on to the bow. Arion stood next to Suri, whispering encouragement. The dwarfs were inching backward toward the stairs.

  Persephone shouted down to Brin again, and there still wasn’t any reply. How could she have survived that fall?

  Persephone had thought that coming to Belgreig would be a simple thing, just a boat trip and an afternoon walk to a room where a giant was trapped. Suri or Arion would do something miraculous, and then they would be heading back with swords and maybe some shields. She’d even entertained the idea of convincing the Dherg to join them in the war. If that had happened, she would have contributed to the cause, made a difference.

  On the far side, the raow finally managed to rock the pillar to its tipping point. The creature dropped deftly to the ground as the mammoth column breached the edge of its base and, just like a cut tree, began its inevitable fall. The angle was off. The tower of stone wouldn’t hit them. The column would land to the left, closer to the stair, just missing the dwarfs.

  Persephone realized in that late instant as the pillar fell that she never should have allowed the others to come. She should have been the chieftain and ordered Moya, Roan, and Brin to stay behind. This was all her fault, her mistake, but the gods wouldn’t limit their punishment to only the one responsible. At least they were just an insignificant band of misfits: an inexperienced chieftain, a teenage Keeper, an insecure ex-slave, a troublesome beauty, a crazy mystic, and an outcast Fhrey. She wondered if anyone would even notice they were gone. Thank Mari, I didn’t bring Raithe.

  The column crashed, severing the floor just in front of the stairs. Persephone felt the ground give way beneath her, and she was falling along with everyone else, tumbling into darkness.

  —

  I’m still alive. This was the first thought that flashed through Persephone’s head.

  The second was that she was drowning.

  She still held Rain’s stone shard, and while it gave her something to focus on, it provided no answers. Its glow revealed nothing, just a light in a void of blackness. She was underwater, that much was obvious. She felt her body rise, helped by kicks and strokes until her head broke the surface. The moment she did, she felt pain as her forehead struck stone. The glowing gem revealed she was trapped under a low ceiling. The distance between the surface of the water and the overhead stone was little more than an inch, just enough to push her lips and nose up to breathe.

  I just fell. How can I be trapped under a ceiling?

  The answer soon became obvious. Gasping for air, she felt the surface of the stone scraping past her fingertips. She was in the grip of a strong current, moving fast, swept along a low ceiling of solid rock.

  Morton Whipple!

  Persephone hadn’t thought of him in decades, but now she couldn’t think of anything else. In the cold dark, she saw Morton’s face again—just as clearly as she had at the lake.

  The Whipples had farmed two fields near the forest, down in the valley by a stand of birch trees. They had six children, none of whom survived to adulthood. But back then, two of the Whipple children still lived, Morton and Allison.

  Aria, Sarah, and the Whipples had joined Persephone on a trip to Dreary Lake on a warm winter’s day. The snow had stopped, and the ice fishermen reported there were patches where the winds had swept the surface of the lake clear. The group had it in their heads to go sliding. When they arrived, they found the rumors were indeed true. The icy surface of the frozen lake was mostly clear and buttercream smooth. They ran and slid, dived and shoved, plowing one another into the banks of wet snow.

  Before long, they were soaked from sweat and ice melt. Morton made a boastful roar, beat his chest, and ran off in an attempt to best Aria’s longest slide. Unfortunately, he made the mistake of going the wrong way. He probably didn’t think he’d go so far—none of them did—and they watched in horror as Morton Whipple slipped right into the hole cut by the ice fishermen. He disappeared with a barely noticeable plunk.

  The surface of the ice was glassy, warmed by the day’s sun. Persephone could see Morton’s face looking up, his fingers and palms pressed white against the underside of the ice. Allison Whipple, who herself was only two years away from drowning in the White Oak River, pounded the surface, trying to break it. Four inches thick, the frozen lake didn’t notice her tiny fists. Morton’s mouth was open. Persephone remembered that. She couldn’t understand why at the time. Later she realized that between the water and the ice there was a thin layer of air he was breathing. He was also moving. The lake was fed by streams that flowed down from the hills, and the water spilled out again at the southern end into the White Oak River. In the summer, you could feel the current; in the spring, it was dangerous; in the winter, deadly. Of course, no one ever went swimming in the winter, not until Morton Whipple fell through the ice.

  Persephone had seen Morton’s face looking up at her through that glassy veil for months afterward, and the nightmares returned that spring when hunters found most of his body down in the gorge. In Persephone’s dreams, their roles were switched. She’d press her cheek against the cold surface, sucking air with fish lips while being dragged along. Aria and Sarah would run ahead, scrape a window in the snow so they could watch her float by, and then they’d dash off again to repeat the process. All the while Persephone could hear the dull thumps of Allison’s little fists hitting the ice, turning them bloody.

  The nightmare had finally come true, but instead of being trapped by ice, Persephone was under solid stone. Allison wasn’t there; neither was Aria or Sarah. They were all dead. Maybe everyone else was, too. As far as Persephone could tell, she was alone.

  Her fingers desperately searched for cracks or nibs to stop her drift, but the surface had been worn smooth by the water and there was nothing to grab. Even if she could have halted her passage, she had no idea what good that would do. Her only hope was that the current might take her someplace better than where she was, someplace she could crawl out.

  As with all nightmares, things got worse rather than better.

  The little gap between her and the rock disappeared. Terrified, Persephone was forced underwater. With the current still pulling her along, she prayed that the gap would return. It didn’t. Instead, she was sucked down. Deeper and deeper she was pulled, jerked, tugged, and throttled. Just when she thought she would certainly drown, she popped up again. The ceiling was still there, but she found a greater gap, a full head’s worth.

  Thank you, Mari! Thank you, Mari! Thank you, Mari!

  Persephone bobbed along the water’s surface, one hand still holding the glowstone, the other sliding fingertips along the slick ceiling. She was moving faster, speeding up. The stone overhead flew by until her fingertips numbed to the sensation. She held the stone out before her, hoping to spot any hanging rocks so she could duck or dodge them.

  She felt herself falling again, this time through the air. For several seconds she plummeted. She almost screamed, but managed to hold it back, knowing she was likely to hit water again.

  Her anticipation was realized as she plunged into another pool. Persephone swam several frantic strokes in a random direction perpendicular to the current. Her only hope was to find dry land where she could get out of the water. She was in a cavern and could hear the roar of falling water gushing and echoing. Just as she was growing tired, just as she felt hopelessness cree
ping in, something grabbed hold of her wrist.

  Persephone jerked back, but couldn’t break free. She did scream then.

  “It’s okay! It’s me.”

  Persephone brought up the light and saw Brin’s face.

  “Brin!”

  The girl pulled Persephone to a rock ledge where the two scrambled out of the water. The moment they were clear, Persephone wrapped both arms around the girl and squeezed tight. “Oh, Brin! You’re all right.”

  Brin shivered. The air was colder where they were now, and both of them were soaked. Persephone inspected the girl with the glowstone, and found a cut near the top of her head that bled. “You’re hurt!”

  “So are you,” Brin said. Reaching out she touched Persephone’s forehead and drew back bloody fingers.

  A cry cut through the water’s rush. Persephone cupped the gem and searched around. They were in a small, narrow chamber that had been carved out by the underground river. Black, water-polished stone had been smoothed into wavy patterns and eddy holes. At one end was the waterfall that spilled into the chamber through a hole in the ceiling. The other end of the chamber narrowed into a drain. Searching the surface of the pool, Persephone spotted two bobbing heads.

  “Hold this.” Persephone gave Brin the glowing stone as she waded back into the pool to help Moya and Roan find the shore.

  As she did, Arion, Suri, and Minna splashed down, and not long after came the three dwarfs, one after the other. They made a chain of hands and safely fished everyone out of the pool and up on the rock.

  For several minutes, no one said a word. Few could as they coughed, spat, and labored to breathe. Whether from fear or the cold, everyone was shaking.

  “I can’t believe we survived that,” Moya said. She was still breathing hard, her head hanging, hair dripping.

  Brin nodded. “I thought I had died five different times, starting when that thing woke me. That was the raow, wasn’t it?”

  The others waited for Suri to answer, but she didn’t. The mystic stood away from the rest, facing the waterfall.

  “Yes,” Persephone said. “We think so.”

  Brin shivered.

  “Anyone else bang their head on the rock?” Moya asked, and was answered with a round of moans.

  “Why didn’t you do anything?” Flood asked the Fhrey, and Frost who sat beside his brother nodded. “You could have stopped that thing. Killed it in an instant. We could have died back there. Why didn’t you stop it?”

  “That raow, or whatever it was, is nothing compared to Balgargarath. The demon is…I can’t even explain it, except to say the raow is a bug in comparison. We nearly died and you just stood there!” Frost shouted, his beard bristling.

  Arion looked at him but said nothing.

  “You’re Miralyith,” the dwarf said incredulously. “We saw what you can do. What happened? Why didn’t you use your power, your so-called Art?”

  Arion looked away as the spill of water roared off the rocks.

  “Answer me!” Frost shouted.

  “She wanted me to do it,” Suri said.

  Heads turned.

  The dwarfs thought about this a moment; then Flood turned to Suri. “Then why didn’t you do anything?”

  Arion said angrily in Fhrey, “She’s learning, and that wasn’t exactly a classroom setting. You don’t just wake up one day able to move mountains.”

  “When a creature is attempting to kill us, do you really think that’s time for training?” Frost bellowed. “You want to teach the girl, fine. But when our lives are on the line, you need to step in.”

  “She needs to practice. The Art is rarely required when everything is calm and serene. Times of danger, when you must think and act fast, are the best environment for training. It builds emotion and adds power. Stress aids the process. We’re talking about the Art here; it’s not like making a sword or a pair of boots.”

  “It takes years of practice to make a decent sword,” Frost argued.

  “Of course. So how long do you think it takes to understand the rhythms and patterns of creation? Much of it is intuitive, but much more is not. And there isn’t a formula to follow, no step-by-step process that produces the same result. It’s an art, a process of intuition, trial and error. It’s mastered by learning through practice, finding out what each individual can do and how they can do it. What is safe and what is dangerous. What can be altered and what kills.

  “You think Suri is less capable than I, but you don’t know the Art, nor can you see her potential. Trust me when I tell you that if this Balgargarath is as sinister as you keep saying it is, it’s Suri and not me that you want to face it.”

  Arion shivered then and turned to Suri. Returning to Rhunic she said, “I am cold, and I am wet, and I am tired of explaining methods. Suri, can you please do something about that. The cold and wet part, I mean.”

  “There’s nothing to burn,” Roan said. “And even if we had anything, it’d be soaked.”

  “So?” Arion said, and turned to Suri.

  The mystic nodded.

  She raised her hands as if playing her string game without the string. She began to mumble and then hummed. Her fingers played and danced in the air for a moment. Then she paused and stopped humming. Just when Persephone was certain something had gone wrong, Suri clapped her hands, and a flame appeared. Not a campfire, just a single tongue of flame like a little person dancing on the stone.

  “Over here.” Arion pointed toward the center of the stone ledge. “Make it come over here.”

  The little spitting tongue of orange and yellow hopped and whirled to the center of the ledge. Everyone nearby drew back. Moya stumbled and nearly fell in the pool in her rush to get away. Even Minna began to growl at the dancing flame.

  “Now,” Arion said, “make it grow.”

  Suri’s gaze focused on the fire, and she whispered something while squeezing her hands into fists. Slowly the flame became two and then three. They spit and sparked and fanned out. Soon it was like any other campfire, except this one didn’t seem to burn anything. Still, it gave off heat, and everyone lost their fear as they gathered around it, joyous at the warmth and familiar light it offered.

  The fire continued to burn, and Suri’s hum changed tone as she threw out her hands first one way and then the other. When she was done, Persephone was amazed to find she was no longer drenched. Everything from the top of her head to her shoes was as dry as when she had set out. By the looks of astonishment, not to mention the dried hair, fur, and beards of the others, she wasn’t the only one.

  Arion nodded in approval and gave Suri a little smile. “Good. Very good.”

  —

  Persephone sat beside the pool on the flat rock with her back resting against the wall. It made a fine seat, and with Suri’s fire, she was warm enough to be comfortable. The light of the flames revealed the chamber to be smaller than she’d first thought. They were in little more than a pocket of hollowed-out stone, somewhere and yet nowhere, lost deep underground, disconnected from the world of light. The thought that she and the others were dead crossed her mind. This was certainly how she pictured death—dark, hard, and cold.

  The spirits of warriors who fought bravely went to a place called Alysin, a green field of warmth and beauty. For the rest, there was Rel, if they were virtuous, and Nifrel—below Rel—if they weren’t. All three realms of Phyre were underground, deep, deep inside Elan. Whether dead or not, Persephone couldn’t imagine they were anywhere else. Either they had walked in through the front door by invitation or they’d accidentally slipped through an unattended crack. The result, she reasoned, would be the same. They were there to stay, but what did a person do after she was dead? The question might seem strange to the living, but was incredibly relevant to the recently deceased. She wished she had asked more questions when she was alive. She hadn’t expected death to be so complicated.

  After a few hours—though it was hard to tell time, if time even existed for them anymore—some sought refuge thr
ough sleep. Brin didn’t try, even with Persephone’s assurances that she would personally keep a vigil. Persephone could still see the image of little Brin being dragged off, that pale white hand clamped over her mouth. She wondered if either of them would ever manage to sleep well again.

  Suri sat off to one side, speaking softly to Arion. Moya, Rain, and Flood had climbed up the rock toward a higher ledge to see if there was a dry path they could take. Persephone could hear them causing little landslides of dirt followed by the occasional grunt from Flood or curse from Moya. As far as she could tell, Rain never made a sound.

  “Are we dead, do you think?” Persephone asked Frost.

  The white-bearded dwarf sat close to the fire, his feet out toward it and his back against the cliff. He raised a bemused eyebrow and chuckled.

  “Are you laughing because we are or because we aren’t?”

  “We are still very much alive.”

  Persephone wasn’t sure she was willing to accept his judgment as fact, but he did sound most certain. Still, she had to admit she didn’t feel dead, even though she wasn’t sure what death would feel like.

  “Where are we then?” Persephone asked Frost.

  “I have no idea. We obviously didn’t come this way before. We’re down deep, though. Fell a very long way.”

  “It didn’t seem like such a long fall.”

  “It wasn’t just the first drop or the last. The whole trip along that sluice was most decidedly downward. Half a mile maybe, three-quarters even. Rain would know better. He’s the digger. You want to know how to build a house or fortress, I’m your Belgriclungreian. You want to know about constructing a canal or a well, that’s Flood. You want to know about stone, about the dark, about the passages of Neith, Rain is who you want to talk to. He’ll be able to tell you exactly where we are. Honestly, I’m a fair builder, Flood is actually better…and don’t you dare tell him I said so. But Rain…Rain is something special. Even among our most respected diggers, he’s a legend.”