The Iron Ring

by Auston Habershaw

  Tyvian parried a tenth attack; he had been pushed back almost to the end of the car. “You know,” he called over the wind, “you really ought to watch yourself up here—­it’s very slippery!”

  Frustrated and enraged, the Defender performed a flèche. This was an aggressive, lunging attack, but launched from the back foot rather than the forward, with a result halfway between leap and charge. It was a bold and risky maneuver, but if used in the proper circumstance, could be deadly.

  This was not the proper circumstance.

  During the duel, Tyvian had been cataloguing the Defender’s attacks and concluded that his defenses had exhausted the man’s repertoire of offensive maneuvers—­all except the flèche, which every competent fencer knew. So Tyvian’s opponent had allowed himself to be pushed back into a place where a flèche would appear wise; namely, backed up against the edge of the car. But the common retreat and parry defense for a flèche was not an option here. Tyvian knew this; the Defender knew this; any competent fencer would have known this. Tyvian, however, was more than merely competent—­he fought dirty. When the Defender’s rear foot left the ground to launch the flèche, Tyvian dove at the man’s knees. As the sword pierced the empty space where Tyvian’s torso had been, Tyvian’s body knocked the man’s legs out from under him. The Defender landed with a thunk on his sword arm and slid off the side of the car.

  Tyvian rose, walked to the edge and peered over. The Defender was clinging to a window frame on the side of the car by one, white-­knuckled hand. His feet dangled over the speeding tracks, his face set in panic. “Help . . .” he managed.

  Tyvian chuckled and shook his head. “My dear fellow, just who do you think you’re dealing with anyway?” He cut the man’s fingers at the knuckles with one quick slash of his rapier and watched him tumble beneath the heavy wheels.

  Tyvian swung himself inside the cargo car a minute later, whistling as he went. It was still dark, but the lone feylamp was still there, and it gave enough light for him to see his deathcaster lying on the floor next to the case full of brymm and the unconscious body of the boy, Artus.

  He scooped up the priceless weapon-­artifact and, casting a cursory glance over the other objects—­a case of volatile alchemical ingredients and a worthless street urchin—­turned to cut the remainder of the spirit engine loose.

  “That’s far enough, Reldamar!” Myreon Alafarr stood in the door, her staff glowing softly in the dark. Tyvian couldn’t help but notice the lighting was rather flattering to her statuesque profile.

  He grimaced. “Ah, Alafarr, I was just thinking about you. How exactly do you plan to explain your failure to your superiors this time?”

  She snorted. “Still glib, I see. I’ve noticed, though, that you seem a bit more disheveled than usual. I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “Oh, but I’ve noticed that you seem to have run out of henchmen. You should take that as an insult.”

  Alafarr leveled her staff at Tyvian. “Give it up. You’re no match for me, and you know it.”

  “You magi and your famous arrogance. If your so-­called ‘High Arts’ counted for much, you would have caught me long ago.” Tyvian took a step back toward the case full of brymm.

  “You’ve got a plan, then.”

  Tyvian smiled. “One twitch from you and I’ll blow the brymm.”

  “They’re in mageglass containers—­a deathcaster won’t do anything to them.” Alafarr snorted, but didn’t move.

  “Who said anything about using a deathcaster?” Tyvian said, and produced the last sphere of antispell in the palm of his hand. He held it over the case.

  Alafarr frowned. “You haven’t enough antispell in that little sphere to nullify the whole case. It would be only three or four vials, at most.”

  “Yes, but once freed, the combined brymm from those four vials will alter the magical ley of the case to a sufficient degree that the surrounding mageglass vials will destabilize, creating a chain reaction, and—­”

  “Yes, yes—­I keep forgetting you’ve studied.” Alafarr made a sour expression. “Such a waste.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  She sighed. “You could have been a great mage, Reldamar. With your intelligence and your connections, you could have earned your staff in Saldor and done a great deal of good.”

  “And been a civil servant to the sweaty, unwashed masses, you mean? You sound like my mother, Alafarr.” Tyvian scowled.

  “Your mother is a great woman.”

  “You would say that—­she’s not your mother.”

  Alafarr, oddly, looked offended. “I grow tired of this. You’re a blight upon your family name and a scourge upon the earth, and I’m taking you with me this time. Put the antispell away—­if you drop it, you’ll kill us both, and you love yourself too much for suicide.”

  Tyvian grinned. “You don’t know that. The nature of the Fey is chaotic, and brymm is just concentrated Fey energy. We don’t know what it will do, precisely. It will destroy us both, yes, but maybe not immediately. Who knows—­I might have time to escape while you, of course, would have to stay. You couldn’t allow a whole spirit engine full of innocent ­people be blown to smithereens over little old me, now could you?”

  “You’re a monster, Reldamar.” Alafarr stated coolly, hands tightening on her staff.

  “No, Alafarr, I’m a gambler.” Tyvian dropped the antispell and leapt clear.

  The crystal broke on the lid of the case, and, for a split second, nothing happened. Then the whole case ceased to exist all at once and there was a rush of searing hot air as though belched from the open door of a furnace. Tyvian was thrown across the car and slammed, upside down, into the wall. While his head was still spinning, he observed that where the case had been was now the center of a fiendish display of fiery destruction. Tiny sprites of flame—­complete with little legs and arms of pure fire—­danced and twirled throughout the car, setting everything they touched instantly and completely alight. There were hundreds of these sprites and they moved with a gleeful and malicious intelligence. Tyvian knew he had only seconds to escape before he, too, would be little more than fuel for their consumption.

  Black smoke stinging his eyes, he felt around for his deathcaster, but found instead a human hand. It was attached, he quickly realized, to the boy, Artus. Awakened by the explosion, the boy clung to Tyvian’s arm and pulled himself closer, screaming, “Help! Help! What’s happened! Oh gods!”

  The boy was a panicky wreck, and Tyvian should have shaken him off, but he was unsteady on his feet from the explosion and the world was still spinning. “Help me up!” he screamed in Artus’s ear, “Get to the door!”

  Their one chance for escape—­their one chance—­was the open cargo door through which the gnoll had been propelled earlier. Holding on to Artus’s shoulders, Tyvian pushed the two of them through the maelstrom of ever-­growing fire. Somewhere in the chaos he heard Alafarr chanting incantations over the roar of the flames. Laughing despite himself, Tyvian wondered if the mage would be successful or not.

  Then the door was before them. Tyvian pushed Artus as hard as he could, but the boy had, in a fit of panic, dug in his heels. He should have left him again, but Tyvian found himself screaming in his ear, “Jump!”

  “But, no, it’s—­” Artus began.

  Tyvian, his pants and shirt set alight already by twirling, dancing fiends, kicked Artus in the back of the knee and, as the boy buckled, heaved both Artus and himself through the open door.

  He expected snow, he expected ground, he expected to hit something hard and roll; none of that happened. They fell through open air, and he abruptly realized what Artus had been trying to say. They had jumped off a bridge.

  A brick wall of icy water hit Tyvian in the face.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE IRON RING

  The smell of dead fish and the hiss of a woodstove woke T
yvian from his coma. He was looking up at the dusty rafters of a thatch-­roof cottage, and his head was pounding. Sitting up gingerly, he saw that he had been laid on a straw pallet on a floor carpeted with beaver pelts, and covered by a thick blanket of itchy wool. He was wearing his underbreeches and nothing else. He spoke his first thought aloud. “If this is the afterlife, then I am sorely disappointed.”

  “I am impressed.” A deep, weather-­worn voice rumbled from behind him.

  Tyvian craned his neck—­a punishingly painful maneuver—­to see a burly man with wild, graying black hair and a thick matted beard sitting on a stool that didn’t seem quite capable of accommodating his weight. He was clad in heavy furs and had the hands of a laborer—­thick, callused, and large. Tyvian sniffed the air tentatively—­the man smelled faintly of mud and sweat. “You will forgive me if I do not return the sentiment. Where am I?”

  The man chuckled. “Out of ten thousand men, only perhaps a score might have escaped the Defenders aboard that spirit engine. Of that score, I doubt that even one of them would have the presence of mind to be flippant after two days of unconsciousness. You are an incredible person, Tyvian Reldamar, despite yourself.”

  Tyvian’s stomach tightened. He quickly scanned the room for a weapon, and spotted a long knife in a scabbard hanging by the rough wood door. When he looked back at the hairy man, he noted that the stranger’s dark keen eyes had followed his every glance. He might be smelly, but the man sitting across from him was not a fool. “You know my name, but I don’t believe I know yours.”

  “Eddereon.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “You are a very good liar.”

  Tyvian scowled. “Thank you.”

  A teapot whistled, and Eddereon clapped his hands together and rose. “Ah! You must be thirsty, hungry. You haven’t eaten for some time.”

  Tyvian watched him go to the stove and pour out two cups of tea, keeping his bulk interposed between Tyvian and the knife. Searching his memory, Tyvian tried to recall whether he’d heard the name Eddereon before. It was Northron, the lack of surname and his faint accent making that fact even more obvious. Tyvian had never crossed the Dragonspine into those cold, open lands; he never saw any reason why a person would feel the need. He couldn’t have met this Eddereon there, then. The man had to be an expatriate, but Tyvian couldn’t place him, precisely. His face looked vaguely familiar—­those eyes especially. It was the face of someone he might have passed in a crowd or spied across a smoky tavern. That was all he had, though, and he didn’t like it.

  Eddereon held out a teacup. “It isn’t poisoned, I promise.”

  “No thank you—­I ate well on the engine.”

  Eddereon smiled, revealing an imperfect set of teeth. “No, you didn’t.” Tyvian’s indignant expression prompted the big man to continue. “I spoke with the boy, Artus. He doesn’t like you very much, you know.”

  The boy! Suddenly Tyvian’s escape from the burning spirit engine came charging into harsh focus—­the fire licking at his back, his pushing Artus from the train, the fall from the bridge. He glared at Eddereon. “I should have drowned.”

  “I saved you. You and the boy.”

  “From a freezing river at night? Why?” Tyvian spat.

  Eddereon left the tea on the floor next to Tyvian and sat back down, chuckling. “Interesting that you don’t ask ‘how.’ ”

  “Answer the question, Eddereon.”

  Eddereon’s face grew suddenly solemn, and strangely calm. “I saved the boy because he was an innocent, and undeserving of the fate you put upon him. I saved you, Tyvian Reldamar of Saldor—­known smuggler, thief, and blackhearted killer—­because I have seen in you the potential to be much, much more.”

  Tyvian rolled his eyes and lay back on the pallet. “I seem to be lectured as often as I am captured. I take it you work for the Defenders, or perhaps my mother? Is that how you know who I am?”

  “No.”

  “You lie.”

  “I do not.”

  “Clever retort, but I am strangely unconvinced.”

  Eddereon sighed. “Have you asked yourself how it was that the Defenders got wind of your operation to defraud Marquis du Rameaux?”

  Tyvian sat up again, eyes flashing. “You tipped Alafarr off?”

  Eddereon nodded. “Not Alafarr, but her superior, Tarlyth, with whom I have dealt with in the past. I have been watching you for almost two years, ever since I heard of your exploits at the Blue Party in Eretheria. It took me that long to obtain enough information to set you up.”

  “I suppose you told Zazlar Hendrieux, too? Is he getting a cut of the reward money, then?”

  “How Hendrieux received word, I do not know. He might have warned you, I suppose, but chose to betray you of his own accord.”

  Tyvian sprung from the floor and lunged at the knife. He drew it, but his legs, weak from inaction, caused him to stumble back to the ground. Still, he cocked his arm back, aiming to throw the knife through Eddereon’s eye. Tyvian had the big man dead to rights, and Eddereon knew it, but he did not stir from his stool.

  “Before I kill you,” Tyvian sneered, “I want to thank you for saving my life. You seem a decent sort for a backstabbing, stinking vagabond.”

  Tyvian tried to throw, but a sudden, searing agony shot through his right hand like liquid fire running through his veins. His arm didn’t—­couldn’t—­move. He dropped the knife to cradle his pain-­wracked hand to his chest. It was then that he saw the plain, dark iron band he wore on his ring finger. It was from there that the terrible pain erupted. Roaring, Tyvian attempted to pull it off, but he could not. The pain the ring was causing faded quickly, but no matter how he twisted, yanked, or scraped, the innocuous iron ring did not budge in the slightest—­it was as though it was fused to the bone. “What the—­” Tyvian gasped.

  Eddereon stood up, his face again as solemn as a priest’s. “It is the instrument of your salvation, Tyvian.”

  Tyvian picked up the knife in his left hand and dragged himself to his feet. “Get it off me.”

  Eddereon raised his hands. “It is beyond my power to do so. Once put on, only the bearer may remove the Iron Ring.”

  Tyvian staggered at Eddereon, knife pointed at the man’s throat. “Get it off, or I will kill you where you stand!”

  “You have no call to kill me, Tyvian.” Eddereon said calmly, hands at his sides. “I am unarmed. I have done you no harm. I am not your enemy.”

  Tyvian lunged at him, but fiery lances of pain from his right hand shot through his arm and across his shoulders, causing him to stumble, yelping in agony.

  Eddereon stood over him. “You cannot kill me.”

  Tyvian dropped the knife as the burning pain continued. As soon as it left his hand, the pain quickly faded. “What . . . what enchantment have you put on me?”

  “I am not the maker of the ring. I am only its bearer, and its keeper.” Eddereon held up his right hand, and Tyvian immediately spotted a plain iron band identical to his own nestled there between wide pink bands of scarred flesh.

  “Kroth, what madness do you peddle, man?”

  The door swung open and Artus, clad in furs, came in with an armload of firewood. He saw the half-­naked, panting Tyvian on the ground and looked at Eddereon. “Is everything all right?”

  Eddereon smiled. “Yes, I am fine. Master Reldamar and I were having a chat.”

  Artus snorted. “So, what—­he was insulting you and you gave him a smack?”

  Tyvian scowled at him. “I should have left you to burn, brat.”

  “Hey,” Artus snapped. “Next time you throw somebody out a spirit engine, maybe pick somewhere with ground, huh?”

  “Artus, leave us.” Eddereon said.

  Artus’s mouth popped open. “It’s damned cold out, though! I’ll freeze!”

  Edder
eon pointed at the door. “Out. It will not be long.”

  Grumbling, Artus left, shooting Tyvian one more rude look before going. When the door was closed, Eddereon held up his ringed hand again. “I, once, was very much like you, believe it or not. I was a brigand, a bandit. I and my men raided the caravans along the King’s Highway that runs from Freegate to Benethor. I was elusive as the wind, mighty as the lion, and brutal as winter. All men knew my name and feared me.”

  “Let me guess,” Tyvian snorted. “Then some cheeky, moralistic git stuffed a magic ring on your finger and it trained you to jump through ethical hoops, too?”

  Eddereon nodded. “My reaction was much the same to my Initiator. I tried to kill him several times; I sought to cut the ring from my hand, with little success. I cursed it and cursed all who saw it put there. The ring is not as restrictive as I thought, however. It does not tell you what to think. It does not seek to make you a sheep. You will find it can be resisted sometimes, and there are those who endure its effects for decades, continuing in their old lives, if with markedly less pleasure.”

  “If it isn’t meant to control me, then what, pray tell, is its purpose?”

  “You are no sheep, Tyvian Reldamar. You are a wolf, just as I am. It is not our destiny to settle down on a farm or weave baskets in a humble shop. We are too volatile and too restless for that. We need adventure, challenges that tax the body, mind, and soul. Before the ring, we found that life as villains. The ring will guide you to that same life,” Eddereon smiled broadly, “but this time as something far more noble.”

  Tyvian glared at Eddereon for several moments, working up the proper reaction. Were his mouth not so dry, he might have spit in the burly stranger’s face. He took a sip of tea, but it was bitter and too hot to help in that regard. Besides, he thought perhaps that spitting on Eddereon might be misinterpreted; Tyvian was willing to bet Eddereon washed his face with his tongue.

  Instead, he rose. “Where are my clothes?”