“Karan?” he demanded in a low hiss through the quiet. “Karan? Is that you?”
“Abir.” Karan’s voice sounded relieved. “Yes, it is. Everybody stay quiet.”
“And shut your eyes,” the strange male grunted. “Syrah, a little light, if you please.”
And then, before anyone could get over their surprise or voice their confusion, the room was suddenly illuminated, the entire chamber revealed in a warm, ethereal glow.
CHAPTER 48
“There are those, later in our lives, who would find reason to criticize our actions of those few days. They would call us brash, irresponsible, even arrogant. They would demand to know why we did not take pause, why we did not seek out another solution.
I tell all of such a mind to come back with me, into my memories, and tell me if their logic still holds true once they understand with their own eyes the horrors we witnessed that night…”
—Syrah Brahnt, Executor of Laor
Had she not already been crouched low to the floor, the scene before her would have brought Syrah to her knees.
Revealed by the pale glow of the three faint orbs of light she’d summoned over their heads, somewhere around half-a-hundred huddled forms were blinking in her, Karan, and Raz’s direction from their places laid out or sitting up one against the other, packed like rats into a space that might have fit a quarter that many comfortably. The sight dropped a stone from her throat to her stomach, and her breath caught as she cast about the room, looking into every face. There was no consistency in age or gender or race. Slaves who looked to be no more than ten or eleven years old lay beside those who had clearly seen too many summers already. Girls and boys mixed with men and women, each having carved out their little spot on the floor. Humans and atherian alike were gaping at them with pained confusion, the former with hollow, lifeless eyes, the latter’s sadness hidden behind the reflective gleam that shone back at them in dozens of twin points in the light of the magic. Together they formed a blanket of living beings, huddled together partially for warmth, partially because there was no space to spare. Along the opposite wall, a single bucket took up a valuable corner of the room, and the smell wafting from it spelled out its purpose all-too-well.
Discretion and privacy were strange concepts in this place, luxuries best never pined for.
“It’s all right,” Karan was saying, holding up her hands as several expressions shifted into terrified panic, no one understanding who they were, or what they were doing there. “They’re friends. We just needed a place to lie low.”
“‘We’?” a throaty voice repeated from the back of the room. “What do you mean ‘we’, Brightneck?”
Along the rear wall, near a single small window that would ordinarily have been the only source of the space’s light and fresh air, a figure shoved himself up from where he’d been huddled among several other forms. Syrah blinked as he stood, having to shake the striking impression that, for a moment, a reflection of Raz himself was getting to his feet across from them. The longer she looked, though, the more distinct the differences became.
Aside from the obvious lack of wings, the male was a little broader than Raz, his shoulders looking like they might have been three full feet across, but he was several inches shorter. In addition, his eyes were a harder shade of gold than either Raz or Karan's, like roughly-cut gems gleaming in his serpentine face. The scales of his clawed hands and thick forearms were white-washed, like he was wearing skintight gloves the color of bone, and the membranes of his ears and the crest that flickered over his head were burgundy, giving Syrah the impression that he was older, perhaps five or six years Raz’s senior.
Aside from that, there was a distinct, harsh aura about the atherian that set Syrah immediately on edge.
“I-I’m not a slave anymore, Brahen,” Karan was responding, though her voice faltered with doubt. “My chains… My chains are gone.”
As one, all eyes in the room dropped to Karan’s feet, and there was a rumbling moan of disbelief from the huddled bodies as the empty manacles were noticed for the first time.
At the back of the room, the face of the broad atherian—Brahen—twisted in rage.
“What have you done?” he demanded wrathfully, starting toward them, shoving and kicking a path through the cowering forms that didn’t get out of his way in time. “What is this? If the masters find out you’ve slipped your irons—!”
“They’re not my irons anymore!” Karan squealed, but she apparently couldn’t help but take a step back, almost bumping into the wall behind her as the lumbering male approached. “They’re not my masters anymore!”
“Fool!” Brahen snarled, the white claws of his hands flexing with every step he took closer. “First Abir keeps us from what little sleep we get, now you risk all our hides with your selfishness. I’ve had enough. I’ll kill you both myself and be done with all of—!”
“Try it, friend,” a deadly growl interrupted him, “and there might be just enough of you left to toss in the shit-bucket.”
A massive form slipped between Brahen and Karan, then, blocking the older atherian’s way when he was ten feet from the female. The collective inhalation from the slaves that followed, each of them taking in the terror that was Raz i’Syul Arro, cast a thrilling chill up Syrah’s back.
She had always known Raz was big. At over seven feet tall, the man towered above most anyone he faced off against, the only notable exception she had ever known being Gûlraht Baoill, who’d been a giant in his own right. In her mind’s eye, though, Syrah had never considered how Raz might measure up compared to others of his kind. If she contemplated it, she thought she might have always just assumed that the atherian were a generally large species regardless, having never come across another before their arrival within sight of Karesh Syl. Karan had reinforced this presumption, standing several inches higher than Syrah, who was already considered a tall woman among her kind.
Looking around now, though, Syrah saw that she’d only been half-right.
The atherian, apparently, were indeed a larger breed than their human counterparts. Karan, it turned out, looked to be of about average height, maybe even a little shorter given her age, and Syrah thought the other males—judging by those who’d sat up to follow what was going on—might have stood around six and a half feet tall had they been on their feet. Brahen, it seemed, was already a specimen of notable size, and the way the others scrambled out of the way or watched him apprehensively as he’d crossed the room said that he was all-too aware of this.
Which partially explained, Syrah thought, the look of utter shock printed across his serpentine features now.
Raz, indeed, was not as broad as Brahen, but he stood at least three or four inches taller. In addition, the Dragon cut a much more impressive figure than the other male, his armor shining in the glow of Syrah’s magic, Ahna’s blades gleaming wickedly from where he had her slung in her typical resting spot over his shoulder. He appeared utterly relaxed, but Syrah made out the cold warning in his eye, the subtle stillness of his amber gaze that spoke of a man who didn’t make threats lightly.
Brahen, though, along with every other slave in the room, wasn’t looking at Raz’s face.
Instead, to a one, they were staring at his wings, extended loosely six feet on either side of him, casting the walls and ceiling about them in wavering shadows in the light of the orbs.
“Dragon.”
The word started as a whisper, slipping across the room as it was passed from person to person. Even Brahen mouthed it, Syrah saw, taking a step back from Raz and nearly tripping over a human boy who couldn’t have been older than twelve. A few of the older atherian, in addition, were murmuring another word, one she couldn’t quite make out. Several of these figures started getting to their feet, reaching out toward Raz hesitantly with confused expressions on their faces.
And then, in a slow, uncertain wave, every head turned away from them, looking to the back of the room.
At first, Syrah
couldn’t figure out what had drawn their attention away, or what they were all waiting for. Then, just as she thought to ask Karan what was going on, a second figure pulled himself shakily to his feet, rising out of the same corner Brahen had stood from. An old man, his dark, wrinkled skin marking him as one of the many Percian crowding the room. A broken ring of greying hair crowned his mottled head, and his eyes, as dark and deep as any of his kind, were staring at Raz like they’d never seen anything so amazing in the world.
“Abir,” Karan said as loudly as she dared from beside Syrah. “Abir… I think I found the meaning in the words.”
Syrah blinked, looking between the young female and the old Percian. The man—Abir—took a stumbling step forward, still fixated on Raz, mouth hanging open.
“I… I don’t believe it,” he muttered to himself. “He’s come… You’ve come…”
“Karan,” Syrah said sharply, grabbing the female’s attention. “What is this? What words?”
Before the atherian could answer, though, Abir began to speak:
“Sand and snow, they come as one,
fire and ice made whole.
The Dragon’s blade, the Witch’s might,
each will play its role.
On wings of war, freedom soars,
though death will claim its fill.
Stand and fight, all you chained,
as iron falls to will.”
Once more, silence held sway over the room. Everyone, even Brahen, turned to face the old man, who’d continued his approach, humans and atherian scooting sideways to give him a free path.
Amazingly, it was Raz who broke the stillness.
“A seer,” he hissed, almost reverently. “You’re a seer.”
In response, Abir’s brown eyes filled with tears, and he smiled as he took his last few steps forward, reaching out. Syrah thought for sure Raz would pull away from the man, or swat his hand aside, but to her disbelief he did no such thing. Instead, he allowed the old slave to approach and reach up, touching the scales of his face gently.
“From sand then snow then sea, the dragon comes…” Abir said with a choking laugh, like he was quoting some old poem. Then his face stilled, and he looked suddenly stricken, as if abruptly remembering something harrowing. “The eldest of your family is gone, boy. I have seen it in my dreams. She wishes you to know you were the very last of her thoughts.”
Raz stiffened at the words, exhaling in a sharp, broken sound of grief.
“Raz?” Syrah demanded anxiously. “Raz, what’s wrong?”
It took a moment for the atherian to answer her, and even then he seemed unable to look away from the old man.
“My… My Grandmother,” he said quietly, his voice shaking. “My Grandmother has joined the Arros among Her Stars.”
Sadness welled up inside Syrah. There was a moment in which she processed the news, recalling all he’d ever told her of the old woman he’d left to the care of his cousin in Miropa, one of the few links remaining to his old life. Before she could stop herself, she took two steps forward, wrapping the arm not holding her staff around his waist.
“Raz… I’m so sorry,” she said into the silk cloth of his white mantle, pressing her face against him. “I’m so sorry.”
The atherian gave another rasping gasp, but didn’t shake her off. His body shook, and then his legs gave out, dragging him and Syrah both to the ground as Ahna rested limply against him. Abir came with them, too, his face stricken, his hand withdrawn to clutch at himself like he was suddenly overcome by some terrible cold.
“Arro?” Karan’s small voice rose uneasily from behind them. “What do you mean? What do you mean, Abir is a… a ‘seer’?”
It took a long time for Raz to answer her, and Syrah could feel him trying to control the sorrowful quivering. After nearly a minute, he started to stand again, and she let him go, remaining on the ground with Abir as she fought to master her own heartbreak.
“Abir has been gifted with sight,” Raz said, his voice flat as he half-turned to meet Karan’s eyes. “He’s been touched by the Twins. The Grandmother of my clan was the same. She read her signs in the old way, in the scattering of bones and stones, but she was the same.” His attention fell slowly back on Abir, and his next words seemed almost meant for no one but himself. “I sometimes wonder, in fact, how she didn’t see the end coming…?”
Syrah watched the old Percian across from her on the floor, now pulling at the worn rags that hung from his narrow shoulders, shaking like a man who’d come to understand his purpose for the first time in his life.
“But what does it mean?” Karan insisted, and others around her murmured the same demand, wanting to know more. “The words, what do they mean?”
“It means he can’t win this fight by himself.”
Syrah couldn’t fathom why she said it, what possessed her to answer for him. All she knew was that—looking up to take in Raz’s winged outline standing above her—the truth of the weight he carried had settled upon her all at once. At least fifty slaves lay in this room, chained and bound and forced to sleep one pressed against the other. There were like to be another fifty in the chamber below, she knew, which meant over a thousand in the compound they now stood in. If some four score such places existed around the city…
“Your Moon isn’t prophesizing some grand victory,” Syrah told the room coldly. “It’s not telling you to be patient and wait for freedom to fall into your lap. The telling isn’t even meant for Raz.” She looked around at the startled faces of the slaves around her. “It’s meant for you. It’s meant as a warning, and as a call.”
Blinking, she looked back up at Raz, who was watching her with sad fondness as she spoke.
“‘Stand and fight, all you chained, as iron falls to will,’” she finished quietly. “The words mean that some wars cannot be fought alone.”
There was a heavy pause as the men and women and children looked on with wide eyes. A few appeared more terrified than ever, hands twitching and some even clutching at their chains as though they were the only solid thing left to hold on to. More, though, seemed to be gazing at her differently, a change coming over them as her message struck true.
Then there was a derisive snort.
The spell broke, and Syrah turned to glare at Brahen, who was still standing no more than a few feet away, thick arms crossed over his broad chest and looking disgusted.
“A ‘seer’,” he quoted distastefully, eyeing Abir, who was still on his knees on the floor. “What a load of shit. ‘Stand and fight,’ ha! You would have us all die at the Tash’s hand, on nothing more than the word of an old man I should have killed a long time ago.” He turned to glare at Syrah, uncrossing his arms to point a pale finger at her. “And you. I don’t know what you are, but it’s clear you pray to different gods than ours. Magic.” His lip curled at the floating balls of orbs. “There is a reason such a thing doesn’t exist in the lands of the Sun. It’s blasphemy. It’s witchcr—!”
WHAM!
In all the battles they had fought, in all the times she had seen Raz in his violent element, Syrah didn’t think she had ever seen him move so fast. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, or maybe just the small confines of the room around them that gave the illusion of speed, but whereas in one instant Brahen was standing, glowering around at them as he spewed his poison, in the next he hit the ground with a massive crunch that shook the floor, Raz half-kneeling beside him, his free hand around the male’s throat. The older atherian, to his credit, roared in anger and defiance, slashing at Raz’s restraining arm with his white claws but gaining no traction on the steel plating of Allihmad Jerr’s masterfully crafted armor. Before anyone could stop him, Raz spun Ahna in his other hand and raised her above his head, twin points down.
Syrah’s voice was only one of many to yell as the dviassegai plunged earthward.
CRACK!
Ahna slammed into the wood of the floor, splitting the planks on either side of Brahen’s thick neck with a marksman
’s precision. Her scarred blades shoved through until the male was pinned to the ground, still howling and cursing, his hands scrabbling at the weapon’s haft as he tried to pull her free. In the room below, Syrah heard muffled shouts of fear and alarm as the slaves beneath them likely saw the dviassegai’s steel tips punch through the roof of their quarters.
Keeping one hand tight about the lowest of Ahna’s leather grips to keep Brahen from tearing her free, Raz reached up and slowly drew his gladius from over his shoulder. The momentary relief Syrah had felt upon realizing the male hadn't been impaled or decapitated began to fade, then vanished altogether when Raz shoved the edge of the sword blade under the struggling atherian’s chin.
Only then, at last, did Brahen stop fighting, his breath coming in a hiss as the razored steel pressed against the scales of the highest part of his throat.
As Iron Falls (The Wings of War Book 4) Page 51