Iron Axe

by Steven Harper

  “Such a nice boy,” Bund murmured.

  Danr looked at her a little more closely. There were heavy lines on her face and he could see an overwhelming tiredness dragging at her, as if the earth itself were pulling on her body. Bund noticed his gaze.

  “What is it?” she asked sharply. “What do you see?”

  Danr hesitated. The awful truth pricked his eyes. He didn’t want to say it. He bit his lip until the blood ran, but he felt his jaw move on its own. Aisa put a hand on his arm.

  “Go on,” Bund said. “I want to know.”

  “You’re dying,” Danr answered softly. “I can see it. You won’t last longer than the new moon.”

  “Ridiculous,” Kech snapped. “You’re not going to die, Mother. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

  The old trollwife looked at Kech with fond sadness in her eyes. “Yes, he does. I’ve known myself for a long time. My draugr will haunt these walls until the coming war ends and Death is set free. My penance, I suppose.”

  Kech swallowed once, then abruptly whirled on Danr. With a start, Danr recognized the look on his face as one people often gave his mother after she read a fortune.

  “Why did you have to come back here?” Kech shouted. “Leave us alone! Get out of my house!”

  Without a word, Danr grabbed Aisa’s hand and fled.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Danr and Aisa sat in the mouth of the tunnel that led back to the surface. The soft mushroom glow crawled over the walls and stones. A pair of bats circled him for a moment, then fled squeaking into the dark. The drums faded in the distance, a faint memory. Aisa hugged her knees to her chest, understanding that this wasn’t a time for words. The entire world pressed down above him like a giant’s hand.

  His hand stole up to the pouch and its newly expanded collection of splinters. His mother could see the truth. That was what had allowed her to read fortunes—and why people had disliked her so much. No one liked the truth. Now he had become like her. A cold feeling crept through his bowels. Was he doomed to the same sort of life, with people fearing and fleeing him? Then he suppressed a snort. Honestly it wouldn’t be much of a change.

  And he had spoken to Death herself. Vik, what in nine types of hell was that? She had all but commanded him to find the Iron Axe and cut the chain that bound her, which felt foolish on the face of it—what sane person would hare off to find a destroyed weapon in order to free Death, and in just twenty-seven days? Just the memory turned his hands cold. He glanced sideways at Aisa. At least he didn’t have to do it on his own.

  “What are you thinking about?” Aisa said at last.

  “Right now?” Danr shifted on the cave floor. “Right now I’m thinking how glad I am not to be alone. It’s too much.”

  She nodded. “I am glad I can be here. I am glad you saved my life so you can continue to be in mine.”

  He looked at her half-hidden face in the mushroom glow, and a wave of affection made his throat thick as winter syrup. Danr couldn’t imagine life without her, and when had he ever told her that? “Aisa, I—”

  “I wish you hadn’t run.” Vesha strode out of the darkness toward them. Startled, both Danr and Aisa bolted to their feet, the moment gone. “I have more to say to you.”

  Danr thought about the dark power she drew like ink from a well. It made worms crawl over his skin. But she was a queen, one who towered over him, and he bowed low to her.

  “Highness,” he said. “If I may ask, I thought a queen traveled with attendants. I haven’t seen you with any.”

  She looked down at him without answering. Danr closed his right eye and saw the empty space around her, a space he now knew was usually filled with other trolls. Other trollwives. Powerful trollwives. A faint tremor shivered the cave floor under his bare feet.

  “Oh, damn,” he said.

  “What?” Aisa asked. “What do you see?”

  “Her attendants are other trollwives. They aren’t with her because they’re all busy. They’re opening the doors.”

  “We need all the doors, including the larger ones for the giants,” Vesha said. “The single door we managed to pry open is too small by itself to release an entire army, and you saw how difficult it is to use. That is thanks to Fae magic. But in a few weeks, we Stane will be free of our prison. The doors will open easily for everyone, and our people will stream down the mountains.” She paused. “It is more than food, you know. I have lived all my life under these mountains. Never once have I set foot above. I want to do that. I want to have the choice to walk among the trees above all night, if I choose. So should my people. We are held prisoners down here, and this is wrong. I—we—must walk free above. I dream of it for my people and myself.”

  “And once the doors are open and you can walk around, you can let Death go,” Danr breathed. “All this will end.”

  Vesha shook her head. “The moment the Fae learn of this, they’ll declare war on us. In our state of weakness, they’ll crush us. We’ll need power from the draugr to fight back.”

  “Then what do you want me for?” Danr demanded.

  “The Fae may have locked up the Stane,” Vesha said, “but they prey upon the Kin. They take humans as slaves. They war with the orcs. They exact tribute from the merfolk. All so that the Kin remain soft and weak.”

  “If this is how trolls use flattery,” Aisa said, “our people are less alike than we knew.”

  “You can help end it faster,” Vesha continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Be the emissary between our peoples. Build an alliance between Stane and Kin, help us release the harsh grip of the Fae on both our people, and Death’s release will come even faster.”

  “It will at that,” Danr said sadly.

  “The Tree tips,” Vesha said. “The question is whether you let it smash you down, or make it lift you up.”

  “Why me?” Danr said. “I’m nobody. The humans don’t even like me. Neither do the Stane.”

  “The Three like you,” Vesha countered. “Only they can make a truth-teller, and if they do it more than once in a generation, I have yet to hear of it.”

  “Why didn’t they do it for me?” Aisa asked. “I stole their eye in the first place.”

  Vesha grinned, and her lower fangs gleamed. “Would you want them to make you a truth-teller?”

  Aisa remained silent.

  Something occurred to Danr. “How did my mother become a truth-teller?”

  Here Vesha looked uncomfortable. “Kech took her to see the Three, obviously. They couldn’t Twist, so they must have gone the long way.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “You’ll have to ask your father,” Vesha said.

  He smells familiar. Danr remembered how the Three had laughed at his questions, and now he understood why. His parents had stood before them just as he had. Something else came to him then. Whenever he had asked who his father was, Mother always said, “He was a troll who betrayed me.” Those words, the only ones he’d known, were branded on his brain. The one time he had pushed for more, she had slapped him and run away with her hands over her mouth. He knew it now—she had fled before her truth-teller’s compulsion had forced the words out of her. She hadn’t wanted him to know his father was Kech or that she had loved him. Why? And what had she meant when she had said Kech had betrayed her? The questions swirled around his head like a flock of bats, making him dizzy and uncertain. He wanted to run back to the house, ask Kech, demand more answers, but his father’s angry face loomed in his memory. The thought of facing that made Danr cringe, and he set the idea aside. For now.

  “You still haven’t explained why you want my friend to be your emissary,” Aisa said, “and not your nephew Kech, who seems to enjoy visiting the upper world.”

  “Your ‘friend’ is still a prince,” Vesha said. “And he doesn’t have the Stane’s … problem.”

  “Sunlight,” Danr breathed. “It causes you even more pain than it does me.”

  “Indeed.” Vesha sat on a boulder with sur
prising grace for a woman of her great height and bulk. “The Stane can’t go about in the day. At one time the trollwives could cast spells that blunted the sun’s power, but those are beyond us now. We need someone who can move freely in both daylight and darkness. Someone of royal blood. Someone trustworthy, who won’t lie to us or for us. You.”

  Danr thought a long moment. He knew Vesha was telling the truth, and again he saw the heavy load she carried. She knew that Death wouldn’t look too kindly on the queen if—when—the chain was broken, and she was willing to accept the dreadful consequences if it meant freeing her people. To her, this appalling choice gave her people their only chance to survive. The question was whether or not Danr wanted to be a part of it.

  I am a part of it, he thought. Whether I want to be or not. The Tree tips.

  “I’ll do it,” he said aloud.

  “Hmm,” Aisa said behind her scarf.

  Vesha let out a long, heavy sigh on her boulder. “You have no idea how much that relieves me, truth-teller. Take these.” From her upper arm, she took a heavy band of woven gold. The metal was so pure and soft the band didn’t need a clasp, but was instead bent open and shut. The intricate weave looped hypnotically around itself in a fascinating, unending pattern. “This armband will prove you are my nephew and that you speak for the Stane. Does Skyford still exist?”

  “It does,” Danr said slowly.

  “You’ll have to talk to the earl there, then,” Vesha said. “Many of our doors open near Skyford, and we’ll need his goodwill to use it as a staging area to launch an attack at Alfhame.”

  “Uh … I’m not on the best of terms with Earl Hunin,” Danr told her. “He’s the one who exiled me.”

  Vesha brushed this aside with a wave of her huge hand. “You still know him. No one down here does. Besides, you are no longer an exile with no people. You’re a prince of the Stane, and you speak with my authority. Act like it, and people will treat you accordingly. Take this.”

  From her pocket, she took a small stone chest inlaid with more eye-twisting designs of purest gold. It didn’t even cover the palm of her hand, though it took Danr two hands to hold it. He was expecting a weight, but it rested lightly in his hands. “It contains gifts of friendship for the earl or anyone else who wants to ally with us. You may decide how to distribute them, as befits a prince who speaks for the queen.”

  “It doesn’t seem much,” Aisa said.

  “It will suffice,” Vesha replied tightly. “I know it won’t be easy, but you will have to convince him that you have the authority and that allying with us is in his best interest. If the humans don’t become allies, we’ll be forced to treat them as enemies, and thousands and thousands of them will die before we attack Alfhame.”

  “Why would he care if other Kin live or die?” Aisa asked sharply. “They have been nothing but cruel to him. To us.”

  Vesha nodded. “An excellent question. Do you care, truth-teller?”

  Danr thought, and only for a split second. He remembered how cruel Alfgeir and his family had been, how they had caused his mother’s death and virtually enslaved him. He remembered the terrible things Farek and White Halli had done to Aisa. But he also remembered the little boy dragged away by the slavers and the grief of White Halli’s son, Rudin, and the kindness of Orvandel and the friendship of Talfi. The actions of one person, or even a group of people, did not mean everyone deserved punishment. He thought of White Halli’s eyes, the eyes that Danr himself had drained of thought, and a lump of guilt rose in his throat. Maybe he could do something to balance that now.

  “I do care,” he said. “I’ll do my best to represent the Stane, Lady Aunt.”

  “And what is your name?” Vesha asked. “Bund never said.”

  Danr could feel Aisa’s eyes on him in the near darkness. Vesha’s direct question brought the prick of words back, but this time it felt different. It took him a moment to understand that there was more than one answer, and this time he could chose between them. “It seems that down here I’m known as truth-teller, so it’ll have to do.”

  She gave him a look. “Very well, Truth-Teller. Go now, and serve us all.”

  *

  “Is it Kael?”

  “No.”

  “Is it Luewe?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Is it Barhof von Schickelmeister?”

  “Oh, I hope not.”

  It was late afternoon, and they were just now emerging, grubby and hungry, from the woods at the edge of Alfgeir’s farm. Danr had discovered the Great Door opened easily from the inside. He had let it boom shut behind Aisa, and the two of them had slept most of the day away, Aisa curled up in a patch of warm sunlight, Danr in dappled shade with his hat over his face. Now smoke drifted from the thatching of Alfgeir’s house in the distance, and a herd of Alfgeir’s cows bumbled slowly down to the bottom of the pasture, ready to be brought in for the night. The cows’ familiar lowing and the smell of manure on the cooling spring air pulled Danr forward, and for a confused moment, he was ready to bring the herd in.

  “That’s not your duty,” said Aisa, reading his expression. “You’re an emissary, not a cowherd.”

  Danr shifted his bag and touched the heavy twist of gold at his throat. What had been an armband for Vesha was a neck torc for Danr. “It feels like I’ve been gone for both a day and a decade.”

  They trotted down the hill, past the lowing cows, and into the farmyard proper. Because of the two weeks they had lost to Death and the Three, it was now close to summer, and the air had become warm. Puffs of cloud obscured the late sun and blunted its golden blade, though Danr clapped his hat firmly on his head anyway. It felt strange to feel soft breezes move against his face after being in the still underground for so long. Danr closed his right eye and saw Alfgeir’s farm was different. Danr shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. The fences weren’t as heavy and well built as he remembered, the cows not as sleek and plump. Some of the latter had been carefully daubed with red dye. Danr chewed the inside of his cheek. People had been buying sacrificial cattle for the Nine from Alfgeir for years just because of their reddish color. Why hadn’t they noticed the fakery? Why hadn’t he?

  “I have a question for the truth-teller,” Aisa said as they reached the bottom of the hill. “Why were you able to avoid answering what your name is just now?”

  Danr blinked. “I … don’t know. I didn’t have to tell Aunt Vesha, either. Maybe it’s the way you gave the question. You asked if my name was Luewe, and I said it wasn’t. That’s the truth.”

  “So I could simply ask you directly what your true name is, couldn’t I?”

  The thought horrified him. She—or anyone else—could drag his true name, the one thing that belonged to him and only to him, out into the open and expose it for anyone to see. Only his mother knew that name, and it was his greatest treasure. Sharing it was more frightening than stripping naked in the village square. “Don’t!” he begged. “You can’t!”

  Aisa read his distress. “It bothers you that much, does it?”

  “Yes.” He was almost panting now.

  “Hmm. Then our game continues.”

  Danr’s knees were still weak with relief when they approached the farm proper. Like the rest of the property, Alfgeir’s house was in poorer condition than Danr remembered. Even from a distance, Danr saw thin spots in the thatching. Just as Danr and Aisa reached the half-finished well, Alfgeir and Norbert emerged from the stable a few paces away. Alfgeir was carrying a pitchfork.

  Alfgeir gasped and dropped the pitchfork. “What—” he squeaked, then cleared his throat and tried again. “What are you doing here? It’s been weeks.”

  “We bring glad tidings,” Aisa said, “of joy and comfort.”

  “You’re an exile,” Norbert said. “Nobody. We can kill you where you stand, bastard, filthy troll.”

  His words were hammers, and Danr felt them slam into him with an old, accustomed weight. The old accustomed anger came with it, along with his mother
’s voice: Don’t show the monster. Automatically, he hunched in, pulled himself down under the weight of all these words. He was indeed nobody. A bastard son of—

  No. No! He had opened the Great Door by himself. He had talked to a trollwife and faced the Three. He was a prince, an emissary of the Stane, a truth-teller. And he knew. His. Father.

  Danr drew himself upright and saw, really saw, how tall he was. And then he noticed something. Alfgeir and Norbert were different somehow, even though they hadn’t really changed. Not like the trolls. Danr gave them a long look through his left eye. Norbert stepped back and rubbed his arm where Danr had broken it as he always did, but there was no stiffness there, nothing to cause him pain. Truth dawned. All these years, Norbert had been exaggerating. Faking. How long had Danr felt bad about Norbert’s arm, and how many times had Norbert used false phantom pain to guilt Danr into extra work? A weight lifted from Danr’s back. He stood straighter and met Norbert’s eyes, letting him know the truth.

  “Don’t call me filth,” Danr said. “Or a bastard. You have no right to those words.”

  Norbert’s mouth fell open and he looked away, face flushed.

  Alfgeir, meanwhile, pulled into himself, not letting any part of himself get too far away from his body. He kept his fine clothes close about him, and his fingers never strayed far from the money pouch at his waist. A stingy man.

  And something occurred to Danr.

  “You, Oxbreeder,” he growled, “you owe me money.”

  Alfgeir clutched at his belt pouch and fell back a step. “I owe you nothing, exile. As they say—”

  “‘Poverty does not force a man to steal,’” Danr interrupted, “‘and wealth does not keep him from it.’ You stole from me, Carl Oxbreeder. In your own words, I did the work of three men, sometimes ten, but got less than the pay of one boy.” He stepped toward Alfgeir, who retreated. “You stole money from me, Oxbreeder, and I will have it.”

  “Oh my.” Aisa leaned against the wall of the house. “If only I had a snack.”

  “I needn’t pay an outcast anything,” Alfgeir said, but he was plainly nervous.