by Rob J. Hayes
"Do you know how much a life is worth?" Loran said. Josef hates the sound of the man's voice almost as much as he loves it.
Josef shrugs. He's already tried to find a way out. Tried and failed. He's stuck there. Trapped. Alone save for prisoners and the mad man who keeps them. The walls bow first outward and then in again, just like they had in the ruined city next to the Pit. He's travelled down every hallway and investigated every room, but there's no way out. The Iron Legion has used Geomancy to seal them in.
"I asked you a question, Yenhelm," Loran snaps. Josef shoots him a hateful glance. Loran is busy at his desk, grinding something in a small clay mortar. There's a sharp, tangy smell on the air, like vinegar left out for too long.
Josef looks away before Loran can see the hate in his eyes. Best not to anger him. Just like back in the Pit, it's best to keep his head down, try not to be noticed. "I didn't realise you expected an answer. You already know I don't have one."
"It is rude to ignore a person. Especially when they are trying to educate you." Josef didn't ask to be educated. He doesn't want to be educated. Loran doesn't care.
"A life is priceless," Josef says. How could anyone put a price, a value on life? He paces back and forth, stealing glances at the desk over Loran's shoulder. There's little else in the dark room except for a few sputtering torches and endless bookcases. "It is impossible to judge its worth, because it is subjective. Your life means nothing to most of the people of Ovaeris, yet you place a price beyond all others upon it. The life of an abban is worth a fortune to a farmer, even more to a starving man, but nothing to a king."
"I didn't ask you for philosophy, Yenhelm. I asked you for mathematics. I followed your progress at the academy, and I know you excelled with both letters and numbers. And your Biomantic knowledge outstrips almost any but my own. So, I ask you again. Do you know how much a life is worth?" Loran glances over his shoulder and there's a hard light to his eyes. An implied threat told with only a brief glance. Josef shivers and looks away.
He draws in a deep breath and lets it out as a sigh. "Thirteen." A flippant answer. That will just make Loran angry. He shouldn't have said it.
"The correct answer, Yenhelm, is no. You cannot possibly know the worth of a life as you have not done the calculations." Loran grinds the pestle angrily into the mortar.
Josef looks inside himself for the hundredth time since being taken from Do'shan. He can feel the Biomancy inside, something powerful and innate. It is a school of magic that is most often used to heal, repair the body and grant new energy to the patient. But there is a darker side to Biomancy. Just as it can be used to heal, it can also be used to harm. Flesh can be convinced to become wounded. Seeds of decay and rot can be planted. Disease can be nurtured into bloom. Loran's back is turned. Josef reaches out, his fingers just a whisper away. He tries to bring his innate Biomancy to bear, to force its power to harm, to unmake. But it slips away from him, resisting his commands. He can't control it, not like when he has a Source inside.
"As a Biomancer, committed to the science of healing, it surprises me you are not more interested in the mathematics, Yenhelm." The Iron Legion continues, heedless of Josef's attempt to end him. He hates this man. For everything he has done, and everything he is trying to do, Josef hates Loran.
A glass bottle lies nearby. And empty wine bottle long since drained. Loran drinks heavily some days, though never shares why. Josef wraps his fingers around the neck of the bottle, tests its weight. Is it heavy enough to kill? He doesn't know. He's never hit anyone before. He creeps forward, arm raised, hands trembling.
"For instance, how much is a life worth in terms of raw materials? How much is a life worth in terms of vigour or spirit? What about potential? All of these are pertinent questions that need answering for the advancement of the science. Until now, no one had the necessary combination of skill and will."
Josef hesitates. Can he really do it? Can he really kill a man like this? In brute force and blood. To save his life. To save all the lives of those trapped in cages. One strike might not be enough. What if the bottle breaks? Then he could stab Loran with it.
"But then of course there is more to it," Loran continues, still working away at his desk, standing with his back to Josef. "For instance, have you considered that the life of a terran may not be equal to the life of…"
Josef strikes.
The bottle shatters in Josef's hand as it connects against an invisible kinetic shield that Josef didn't even know was possible. He sags back, shards of glass falling to the floor and others left jutting from his hand. He stares at the glass in his hand. There's no pain. Then there is! Josef grits his teeth and clutches at his wrist, hissing at the molten agony piercing his hand.
"I'm disappointed, Yenhelm," Loran says without turning around. "But not surprised. I had hoped you would see the importance of what I am trying to do and help me willingly." The Iron Legion turns and there are hard, unyielding lines to his ancient face. "But then willing cooperation can be coerced."
With a snap of his fingers, the Iron Legion opens a portal. He thrusts a hand into the portal and pulls a man through. The portal snaps shut behind him. The man is dirty and thin as a pole, too old to work and too weak to defend himself. He snivelled in the Iron Legion's gnarled grip, shaking with fear. The Iron Legion gripped the trembling man by the shoulder, holding him before Josef.
"What are you doing?" Josef asks. His hand was agony, but he could already see some of the lacerations healing as his innate Biomancy repaired the damage. He'd never seen such powerful healing.
The Iron Legion squeezes the man's shoulder and he sags against the pain. There is an indomitable strength to Loran Orran. Josef trembles; how could he have hope to hurt this titan? "What is your name?" The Iron Legion asks.
"Shen Omeron." The withered man's voice trembles as much as his body.
Loran squeezes a little tighter and the man whimpers at the pain in his shoulder. "Tell us about yourself, Shen."
"I have a family!" Shen blurts the words as though they might form some sort of shield around him. Nobody wants to kill a family man. Nobody wants to orphan children or widow a wife. Josef wills the Iron Legion to let the man go. To set him free to return to his family.
"What is this?" Josef asks. He can hear the panic bleeding into his own voice.
The Iron Legion holds Josef's gaze with his own bright stare. And then his hand begins to glow, a soft white light at first, turning to a blinding brilliance. Shen sags, his legs go limp and his trembling ceases. Only the iron grip of Loran Orran keeps the man upright as the last vestiges of colour drain from his dirt-stained face. When the glow subsides, the Iron Legion releases his grip. Shen's withered corpse falls to the floor. There's no life left in that body, not even flicker. Not even a ghost.
Loran Orran wipes his hand on his robe, staining the grey a little darker, then turns back to his desk and continues grinding ingredients in the mortar. "Do you know what I did there, Yenhelm?"
"That was Biomancy," Josef says. He knows it's true. Somehow he knows it. But it's like nothing he's ever seen before. It's a perversion, a horrific twisting of a power that is meant to heal, not harm. "You used it to take instead of give. How?"
The Iron Legion nods, a smile stretches his wrinkled jowls. "I have hundreds of prisoners just like Shen. You have seen only the smallest fraction of my laboratory. Below, I have dungeons that are full. They are not guilty. Not criminals. None of them deserve to die. But they will. Every time you disobey me, I will kill one of them. If you attempt to harm me again, I will kill ten. Their lives mean nothing in the grander scheme of things. The world is broken, Yenhelm, and if I must murder half of the people in it to fix it, so be it."
"You're a fucking monster!" Josef whispers. He can't say it any louder, the words barely forced past his terror. He can't take his eyes from the crumpled form of Shen. His family will never see him again, they won't even know if he's alive or dead.
"A worthless moniker. I am what th
e world needs." He holds the mortar out. "Drink this."
"What is it?" Josef asks, his voice small. A thick grey paste sits in the depression of the bowl and it smells like swamp water.
"Does it matter? You will drink it whether you want to or not."
Josef snatches the mortar away and raised it to his lips. He doesn't want to drink it. He's certain nothing good can come of it, but he can't be responsible for another innocent death. He won't allow the Iron Legion to murder anyone else to coerce him. The smell makes him gag and the taste is beyond vile, but he forces it down. The discomfort is worth the life he would save by obeying. When he's done, a wave of dizziness washes over him and takes something away. He's not quite sure what it is that is taken from him, but the body at his feet no longer seems to matter. He can't even recall why he ever cared.
"There." The Iron Legion smiles that grandfatherly smile of his. "That will make you more pliable. Sweet Silence is a chore to make and expensive too, but it will be worth it. My threat of violence to others might keep you from attempting to escape or do me more harm, but I feel you would resist what I need to teach you."
Josef can feel himself swaying, the world moving gently. "W-h-h-a-t?" The words come out slow, heavy. He struggles to form them, trying to remember how to speak. It doesn't matter. Why did it ever matter? So much easier to just relax into the fog.
The Iron Legion smiles again. "I need you to learn to do this." He gestures at the body. The corpse had a name once. What was it? It doesn't matter. It never mattered. "I need you to learn exactly what a life is worth."
Josef's ordeal was far from over. For even as I sought to turn myself into a monster, he was made one against his will.
Chapter 11
Weeks after the freeing of Do'shan, the city was barely recognisable from the ruined fortress we had first encountered. Aerolis had raw material to spare and a vision to see his city magnificent once more. Freedom, at least a pretence of it, did wonders to improve his attitude. Dilapidated homes rose up, correcting themselves. Those buildings too far gone to save were torn down, the stone being used to erect new structures. Great walls rose up at the edges of the city, just a short walk from the edge of the mountain, and the surviving weapons of war were relocated to those walls.
I woke one day to a great rumbling, as though the mountain were shaking once again, and for a moment I thought Iron had survived. I thought the Aspect was angry enough to shake the mountain apart. But it was Aerolis. The great amphitheatre collapsed in on itself, rock and mortar and sand ripped apart. From the wreckage grew a tower. I say it grew, because I have no other way to describe it. To those of us who stopped to watch, the tower seemed to build itself, brick by brick, level by level. Nearby buildings were cannibalised as well, regardless of whether they had occupants. It grew so tall, I had to tilt my head back to watch its rise continue. It was a grand thing, there was no mistaking that. With walls as thick as Hardt is wide, and a circumference that took a full hour to walk around, it is a sturdy structure. The very pinnacle of Do'shan. Once the ground stopped shaking, we knew it was finally built. We stood silent, in a sort of reverence, I suppose. It is hard not to feel wonder at a structure so monolithic, built in only a morning.
We thought Aerolis was done then. A magnificent tower, no doubt, but just a tower all the same. A spire jutting up in the middle of the city, a palace for a creature that thought itself a god. The Rand and Djinn are not altogether dissimilar. But atop the very pinnacle of that tower, four horns grew from the rock, curving inward from the edges of the tower and meeting at a single point. Light blossomed at that point, brighter and brighter still. Ssserakis cowered inside of me. The horror had become used to the daylight of our world and found more than enough dark places within me to hide. But the light that shone forth from the tip of the spire was something else. So bright it hurt to look at. I had to shield my eyes from its glare, and even then, I felt as though that light was shining down on me and me alone, scorching the darkness from me. And then it was gone. The light moved. More accurately, I suppose, it turned. Like a lighthouse, shining its brilliance around a full circular circuit, so does the light atop Do'shan turn. Of course, that's not all it does. Aerolis built a weapon unlike anything the world had ever seen atop that tower.
The ferals swarmed. You would think that such radical restructuring of their home would cause fear, but that was not the case. They worshipped Aerolis as a god and placed in him all the faith and belief that such a position demands. They did not fear what their god did to their city, because they trusted him. I would like to say that it was their simple minds that allowed them to believe, but even the most intelligent of us is subject to belief. I believe. Not in the Rand or Djinn, and not even in that thing that watches us all through the torn sky out in the Polasian desert. I believe in myself. Perhaps that makes me conceited. So be it. Even if the whole world arrayed itself against me, I would believe in myself and struggle on. That is not to say my mind and opinion cannot be changed, but that I will not blindly line up behind the masses. People can be wrong. The beliefs of an entire world can be wrong. Widely accepted facts can be wrong. Vainfold taught me that. The Djinn proved it, too. Or maybe I did. It was a widely accepted fact that the Djinn were dead. At least until I freed Do'shan. It was also a widely accepted fact that the Rand and Djinn were gods. They are bloody well not. I know what the Rand and Djinn are, what they really are. I know where they come from and why.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
For a full week, day and night, Aerolis reshaped his city. The tower and its shining beacon were the last of it. When the Djinn was done, we stood in a city as grand as any I had ever seen. Though it did not have a grand population to go along with the aesthetics. Other than myself and my little band of friends, the only inhabitants were the ferals. There were many of them, but they still crowded in the caverns underneath the city. For the most part, the buildings went unoccupied, the warehouses unstocked. As attractive as the Djinn had made its city, there was simply no one to live in it. It was still dead. And with no chain to climb, and no flyers to visit the land, we were unlikely to pick up any more passengers. More than that, Ro'shan was a vibrant paradise of a city with a lake and a forest. Do'shan was a cold, barren place. And we would all die up there soon if we could not secure new supplies. Food was running short. Before me, the ferals had run the chains, making frequent foraging trips to the land below. That was no longer possible. Aerolis' people were starving right along with us. Yet I had more important things on mind. Importance is a relative concept.
"Aerolis!" I was standing at the foot of the tower he had built. For all its grandeur, the tower had one glaring oversight. The Djinn had not given it a door. There seemed to be no way into the structure at all.
Ssserakis laughed, a harsh sound like glass shattering. But the horror was not mocking me. There was respect underneath its chuckle. You never learn, Eskara. Creatures like the Djinn need impudent fools like you.
"I can't tell if that was an insult or a compliment."
If you can't see a compliment, then it likely never existed. I grinned at that.
"You owe me, Aerolis. Show yourself." So many people counselled caution to me. Hardt, Tamura, even Ishtar said I should step carefully where the Djinn was concerned. Fuck that! Caution has its place, right at the back of the line waiting for whatever handouts it can get. The Rand and the Djinn were used to caution from us. But Ssserakis was right; what they really needed was a bold kick in their bloody arses.
A fire burst to life nearby, small flames but growing greater and hotter by the moment. They started to twirl, forming into a spinning vortex. For a moment, more than one, actually, I thought Vainfold was free. I thought the Djinn had somehow escaped its prison inside the crown and had come for me. Its threat to remember me weighed heavily when I thought about it. My shadow rippled beneath me as Ssserakis made ready to defend us both. The horror was growing stronger by the day. More than that, since I had accepted it as a part of my
shadow, it found the manipulation easier. We practised, when alone, and it no longer drained the horror of energy quite so swiftly.
"I have told you about…"
"You owe me!" I cut the Djinn off mid-tirade. I knew what it would say, admonish me for daring to summon it. Impotent threats were all Aerolis could throw at me and we both knew it. The Djinn would suffer my impudence as long as I remained useful to it, and I had already proved my use more than once. Besides, I wasn't lying. The Djinn owed me, and I wasn't about to let that debt go unpaid considering the price.
"I decide when to pay my debts, terran. Not you." The fire was hot, but I carried a Pyromancy Source in my stomach and the heat didn't reach my skin.
"No!" I hissed the word and took a step closer to the flames. It was uncomfortable, but then comfort has always been an alien concept to me. I wasn't sure where to focus my gaze, the Djinn had no face, so I just stared into the fire with my flashing icy blues. Not many people can weather the intensity of my stare, but then Aerolis is not many people. "I will not sit by and wait. You are immortal, Aerolis. My life will pass in a blink to you."
The flames swirled in front of me for a while and the Djinn said nothing. I didn't back down. I don't back down. The art of bluffing comes down to playing your hand and throwing yourself into it. You must make your opponent believe the lie you're telling, and the best way to do that is to believe it yourself. I told myself Aerolis wouldn't hurt me, that the Djinn would honour his deal. I almost believed it too. I think I would have, if not for the wordless fear Ssserakis spread in the back of my mind.
"I promised you Sources," Aerolis said eventually. "Take as many as you wish. A fortune paid in the corpses of my siblings."
"I only need two. Necromancy and Impomancy. Any more than that would be useless to me." I did not care for any monetary value of the Sources. I cared for the power they contained. A Sourcerer cannot wield two of the same type of Source. Well, that's not entirely accurate. They can, but they shouldn't. They really fucking shouldn't. Rejection speeds up, minutes instead of hours or even days, and the breakdown can be catastrophic. There is a raging inferno on the southern tip of Isha that refuses to burn out due to a Sourcerer with two Pyromancy Sources inside, and the result has been burning for over two hundred years.
