As Iron Falls

by Bryce O'Connor

  As he’d guessed, the news wasn’t good.

  The messenger had just finished stammering a hurried “Thank you, sir” and started to turn toward the door of the hall again, when Lazura spoke.

  “No. Stay.”

  The words hissed from her lips like ice made ethereal. Though she had no true power over the society as far as anyone outside of Adrion and her pet shadows were aware, the utter fury in the command grabbed the messenger firm, and he froze where he stood.

  “Lazura… Adrion said warningly, but she took as much notice of him as she did the chair she had just vacated. She was breathing hard, the parchment crinkling in her fingers as she gripped it furiously. Before his eyes he saw the letter start to smoke, and his apprehension solidified into something very much like true fear.

  “Na’zeem has failed.”

  She said it quietly, but the words were sharp as daggers against Adrion’s skin. Had he not been worried about the more imminent dangers, he might have taken some small amount of satisfaction in this news. He’d suspected it might come, after all, though the delivery was much earlier than he’d expected.

  As it was, all he could do was stare at her, silent and unmoving, hands gripping the arms of his chair so hard it hurt.

  “He was ‘forced to retreat’,” Lazura quoted in a deadly tone that made the candles jump and flicker around them. “He and three others are all that remain. Another five were arrested by the local guard, though he assures me he will have found a way to retrieve them before this letter reached us.”

  Adrion’s brows furrowed in confusion. “‘The guard’ arrested his men? I didn’t imagine these Laorin would have such men under their employment…”

  “They don’t,” Lazura answered, not looking up as she read the letter for what had to be the fourth time. “The Monster came to them. They seem to have crossed paths in Ystréd, one of the Northern cities.”

  That explains it. Adrion almost felt sorry for Na’zeem and his subordinates if they had approached the fight under the impression that Raz i’Syul Arro had been delivered to them by the Twins on a silver platter. More than half the assassin’s men had been wiped out in their initial assault. They were whispers in the night, fabrications of darkness that weren’t supposed to exist. As far as Adrion knew, neither Na’zeem nor any of his men had ever been caught in the act of carrying out Lazura’s orders, much less been killed in the attempt.

  Adrion wondered, with no small amount of satisfaction, if this disastrous failure would do something to wipe away the smug, cruel confidence Na’zeem’s eyes had always boasted on the few occasions they’d met.

  “Is something amusing?” Lazura asked him, the question like broken nails scraping across the back of his neck. With a jolt of fear, Adrion realized he had been smiling ever so slightly.

  “Not at all,” he answered at once, sitting up straighter in his chair and thinking fast. “I was just considering that the Monster is still within our grasp. Na’zeem has options yet. If he’s managed to free those captured by the guard, he’ll still have a force of almost ten men. Now that he’s faced Raz once, perhaps he will know how best to approach his next attempt.”

  A chill swept through the room, like the fire in the back wall had suddenly stopped exuding warmth, exposing them to the cruelty of the desert night. Again the candles danced, and in that half-moment of dimmed light the outlines of Lazura on the floor and walls around her seemed to combine into some twisted, terrible form.

  “The beast,” Lazura said, her words almost echoing over the deathly silence that followed Adrion’s suggestion, “has fled. The Monster is in the wind once again.”

  For several seconds, nothing happened. Lazura stood, so still she might have been made of ice and stone. The quiet of the chamber took hold once more, not even the wind outside seeming brave enough to disturb her. Adrion began to relax ever so slightly, thinking perhaps she’d managed to keep control of herself this time.

  And then the air about the woman began to shimmer, like a mirage across the hot sands of the Cienbal, and Adrion’s blood ran cold.

  “Run,” he managed to get out, struggling to stand.

  The messenger, who still hadn't moved from his place by the door, looked around at him. “M-My lord?” he asked foolishly.

  “RUN!” Adrion bellowed, making a desperate swipe for the crutch leaning on the table beside him.

  Too late.

  Lazura let loose a scream of such wrathful fury, Adrion felt it vibrate in his teeth. In the same instant, the parchment the woman had been holding in both hands blew apart as though by a terrifying blast of wind, and a wave of incomprehensible energy rippled out from her form. Adrion had a moment in which he saw the magic coming at him, saw it shatter glassware and send books and wine-filled goblets and lit candles hurtling, before it caught him. When it did, he was thrown backward with such force he might as well have been kicked in the chest by a horse, and he missed tumbling into the fire by mere feet. Instead, Adrion was slammed into the granite wall, breaking an old oil portrait of a caravan trundling across a dune-laden horizon, and fell heavily to the floor.

  Flames erupted around him even as he heaved and gasped for the breath that had been pummeled out of him. The hearth roared, the candles now scattered across the floor blooming into ravenous life as they answered the call of the magic. Lazura was still screaming, howling in rage as the fires rippled higher. Consumed by desperation, Adrion forced himself to roll onto his stomach, still heaving for air as he began to scramble for the next room.

  It didn’t take him more than ten seconds to make the arched way, but in that short time the inferno was raging in truth, a torrent of ravenous brilliance churning out of control. Adrion could smell his own hair burning, and when he reached the sudden coolness of the fire-free space he immediately rolled himself about, putting out the small flames that had caught on the edges of his pants and shirt sleeves.

  Behind him, within the cacophony of the white fire which now devoured what had been their dining hall, he could still hear Lazura’s bitter screams. She howled, shrieking in hateful denial, untouched within the cage of colorless flames which licked at the ceiling. Beyond her, though, was another sound. Within the depth of the beast’s gullet, another voice rose.

  The wailing, pitiful cries of unfathomable agony as a man suffered the horrid fate he had delivered with his own two hands.

  CHAPTER 16

  “It is not always in prayer that one may bear witness to the greatness of one’s gods. Rather, where better to bask in the glory of one’s creator than in the infinite wonder of creation itself?”

  —Studying the Lifegiver, by Carro al’Dor

  There’d been a period of several days, as Raz had set course with Talo and Carro the previous year for the Citadel, in which the winter storms had buffeted them about and ripped their words away. It had been hard, then. The cold had dug into them as they rode, kept at bay only barely by the Priest’s spells of warmth and protection. The wind bit like a blade through their cloaks and furs, cutting through the magics all too frequently. They’d moved at a crawling pace, unwilling to risk their horses by pushing them into anything faster than a plodding walk through the snow. Patience wore thin quickly, and it wasn’t until the blizzard cleared that Raz had been able to take in the wonder of the lands about him in winter.

  Now, as they traveled further east with every passing day, he was reminded of that time, and suspected that he should have been miserable.

  The rains had started not a few hours after their sixth morning on the road broke an early dawn. Raz had sensed a heaviness to the air when Syrah woke him, a denseness that must have had something to do with the grey and black clouds broiling overhead, blotting out the Sun. Soon after, he’d felt the first ping of a drop against the steel of his pauldron, and he had wiped up the trail of water running down the steel, staring at it in stunned amazement.

  Before midday came and went, the six of them were guiding their horses through puddles and coursing
streams that cut furrows across the mud of the road, the downpour blinding even Raz to anything beyond some fifteen feet ahead.

  In the day since, he hadn't been able to stop smiling.

  “Raz!” Syrah shouted with a laugh. “Stop that! You’re going to catch cold!”

  Raz grinned, tilting his head down from where it had been upturned toward the clouds. Water streaked his face, slipping in narrow lines down the sleek skin of his snout and between his ears. His hood was pulled back so that he could feel the rain, marveling at the sensation of it against his scales.

  “This is incredible,” he said for what must have been the hundredth time. He pulled his hood up again and shifted Gale closer to Nymara, slipping into the ward of warmth Syrah was casting about herself. “Incredible. It’s endless!”

  “You mean relentless,” Eva grumbled from the Priestess’ other side, pulling her thin leathers tighter around her shoulders. While the magic kept them all from catching a chill, it couldn't defend them from the storm completely. Everyone was soaked, and Eva and her entourage were huddled miserably over their saddles, the hoods of their traveling capes pulled high atop their heads.

  Despite the strain of a week’s ride, the wonder of this amazing event had yet to wear away for Raz. Even within the ward he looked up, appreciating the infinite thrum of the storm overhead with nothing short of reverence. When he’d experienced snow for the first time, it had been an incredible moment. Something so delicate, so magical. It had enthralled him, that wonder, but at the same time it had been strange to him, a concept he’d only been able to imagine until it finally fell, dulling the world like a spell of white and cold.

  But rain… Rain was an altogether different matter.

  Water was life in the South, a substance treated with such reverence that Miropa, the greatest of the fringe cities, had been built up around an oasis like a crown. In the depth of the Cienbal itself, the Garin had been a place of peace and plenty in a world of heat and strife and hardship. Water was that which gave all, that which granted life.

  And so, on the three occasions in his life Raz had witnessed rain fall upon the sands, it had been cause for nothing short of worship and ceaseless praise to the Twins.

  He was remembering those times now, looking up into the storm suspended above them like the head of a great hammer hovering above the world. He couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop himself from feeling the water in a way none of the others seemed able to. It would have saddened him, were he not so engrossed in the memories of another life, in a place where such bounty would have led to dancing and festivals and rejoicing that transcended pettier things like class and wealth and vocation.

  Raz heard a familiar laugh, and he looked around again. Syrah was watching him, eyebrow raised, clearly amused by his continued fascination with the sky.

  Raz sighed. “You don’t understand,” he told her. “And I clearly can’t explain it well enough.”

  “Because you’re bloody mental,” one of Eva’s men—Jeck—grumbled from where he and his mount towed the cart behind them. “It’s rain, Arro. Nothing more.”

  There was a mumbling of assent from the other two—Fara and Samet—and Raz shook his head in disagreement. “Just imagine if you could have the Southern Sun in the middle of the freeze,” he said. “Even if it was just a day or two.”

  “I’d still rather take the damn cold,” he heard Eva sniff from across Syrah. Jeck, though, made a face that said he might have gotten Raz’s point.

  “The world is fascinating in that way,” Syrah said, still studying the storm. “We live in lands that border each other, and yet the rains we consider only a necessary nuisance are something else entirely to you.”

  Raz nodded, holding out a hand so that it passed beyond the boundary of the ward to his right, watching the downpour course across the worn leather of his gauntlet. “That’s the least of it. You should have seen me when I stumbled into your woodlands for the first time. I used to call deer ‘ponies,’ before Arrun Koyt taught me otherwise.”

  Syrah’s gaze dropped back to him, eye so wide you’d have thought he’d just told her he secretly knew how to fly. Several of the others snorted in amusement as well.

  “You did not!” she hissed in delighted disbelief.

  Raz nodded, pulling his hand back and shaking it dry. “I did. I also thought I could find myself a cave or something and weather out your winter until the snows passed—not that I even knew what snow was. I’ve since learned that would not have been my best option…”

  The others all got a good laugh out of that, even Eva, though Syrah looked suddenly pensive. She was quiet for so long that Raz eventually had to nudge her with an elbow and give her a “spit it out” look.

  “I was just thinking,” she said so that only he could hear her as the others started their own discussion about who would tow the cart on their way back to Ystréd. “Talking about new lands… I don’t know much of Perce, other than what I’ve read in books.”

  Raz scowled slightly, though he looked away so the Priestess wouldn’t notice. The further east they traveled, the land around them shifting from plains and woodlands to grass-strewn rock and slate as they approached the coastline, the more he wished he had never committed to this foolhardy plan. It was an act of desperation, a trade of dangers he wasn’t convinced was balanced in their favor.

  Still, Syrah was right: they couldn’t stay in the North, and Raz supposed that a wild shot at freedom was better than an eternity fleeing bounty hunters and assassins.

  “It’s supposed to be a beautiful country,” he admitted reluctantly. “Not in the same fashion as all of this—” he waved a hand out to the lushness of the grass and brush that waved in the wind over the rain-darkened stone “—but in its own way. My father and uncle used to tell my cousins and I stories of the world, when I was younger. Perce was actually the realm I wanted to see most, until I learned more about its practices…”

  “Really?” Syrah asked, sounding surprised. “What made you wish that?”

  Raz reached up and wiped rain off his snout. “The Percian might be cruel and ignorant, but the lands beyond the lowest border of the Cienbal’s sands are rich and abundant. My father used to tell me that Perce and the Seven Cities share the plains and savannahs, and that the world there was brimming with life. He said the Sun was kinder, too, and that the days weren’t as unbearable in their heat and the nights weren’t as cruel in their cold. He said that animals unlike anything I could ever imagine roamed the land.” He smiled slightly as he remembered the delight he’d taken in the stories, looking forward at the road again. “Striped horses. Birds as tall as a man that couldn’t fly, but could outrun all but the best riders. Beasts with necks as long as my body.” His thoughts were far away now, giving in to the memories. “I remember begging my father to take us.”

  “But he couldn’t,” Syrah said, almost sadly.

  Raz shook his head, the recollections fading away into the rain. “In another life, maybe. His father had taken the caravan south a few times, when he was younger, but when the Arros took me in…”

  “It wouldn’t have been safe for you.” Syrah looked dejected. “How sad that a place as wonderful as that would be so closed off from the world.”

  “Not the world,” Raz said firmly, feeling his apprehension returning. “They’re happy enough to do business with the likes of the Mahsadën. We won’t have any friends in that place, Syrah. We will be on our own.”

  Syrah nodded, but reached out and squeezed his arm comfortingly.

  “Then we’ll just have to make some,” she said with a half-hearted grin. “And—” she looked suddenly mischievous as she pulled away again “—we’ll have to find me a striped horse.”

  At that moment, Nymara chose to make a disgruntled huff, as though annoyed, and both Raz and Syrah choked on their laughter, earning themselves not a few odd glances from the others.

  Despite the storm, they made good time. The rains subsided after a day or so, and—a
ll of them already too soaked to care about getting a little dirty—they started up a good pace at once, ignoring the mud that splashed up around them to coat their pants and boots. After a few more nights spent camped out along the main road, Eva finally led them off the beaten path, along a narrow trail barely wide enough to allow for the cart as it wound between the stony outcroppings. The next day, after they broke their fast, Eva informed them they’d be arriving within a matter of hours.

  Neither Raz nor Syrah had bothered asking “arriving where?”

  All around them, the stone and rock jutted up and over the path, massive edges of slate and shale layered with waving tufts of blueish grass and green-and-black moss. Above them, the sky was clear once more, the lingering trail of the storm having long-since faded to the west, revealing the welcome warmth of the Sun. Raz had been able to smell the ocean since the evening before, but now, as they started off again—single-file with Jeck and the cart bringing up the rear—he thought he could make out the cry of distant gulls on the air. He told Syrah as much, and they’d spent an amusing several minutes as she cupped a hand over her good ear and strained to hear before giving up. Not long after, though, the shrill call of the birds was distinct, and even as the Priestess looked around at him in excitement Raz made out another, softer sound.