by AB Bradley
Her lips departed, and she leaned away. “No. Forgive me, but no.”
“I love you, Ayska. I know I do. Even from the first moment I saw you, I loved you.”
“You just said you hated me!” She laughed and turned to the side as the world reappeared from the retreating mists.
“Only because I couldn’t accept it. I do love you. It’s true.”
“And what do you know about love, little bay gull?” Ayska took a step back, sucking in a breath of air as she turned to the pond. “Was it a lesson your master taught you? Was it defined for you in a book?”
“Of course not.” He took a step closer to her. “I don’t need to learn the definition. It’s something your heart teaches.”
“Spoken like a poet who never knew the feeling. Love is not what you think it is. Love is an obsession. It’s a painful ache. It’s a worry. It’s a risk. When you lose it, if only for a moment, your world breaks like a wine glass smashed against the wall. Love is not a pleasant thing, not the true kind of love that’s more than lust or passion.”
“Do you love me?” he asked.
Ayska turned her back as she crossed her arms. The pool lapped at her feet. She stared at its cool waters while Iron stared at her through the torture of his twisting heart.
She lifted her gaze toward the sky. “I do love you, Iron.”
“Good!” His smile pressed his cheeks toward his eyes as he marched over to her. “I knew you did. I knew you felt something!”
She whipped around, the look in her eyes freezing him like an old glacier. Ayska backed toward the reeds leading to their camp. “No, it’s not good. You don’t understand, not at all. We can’t love each other. I won’t let us.”
“What? Why are you torturing yourself?”
“We both torture ourselves, you idiot! I see the struggle, the pain when I look at you. It’s my curse. It’s my fault. I can’t love you because me loving you would destroy you, just like it almost destroyed you in Athe. What happened back there taught me one thing more than anything else. This—you and I—we can never be. I’m sorry, Iron.”
“Oh, so now you’re pressing the blade to your own throat.”
“That’s not the same thing and you know it. You barely know me. You have no idea where I’m from and what kind of burden I bear. There’s a curse on me, and if I let myself love you back, you’ll fall to it too.”
“Being enslaved must have been a horror I can’t imagine.” He walked toward her, trying to calm his thrashing nerves. “But you can’t let that part of your life poison you forever.”
“Being a slave?” Ayska laughed and trotted to the hilltop. She stopped, whipping around. “Being a slave was a horror you’ll never imagine. But being a slave isn’t what I speak of. My curse, my pain, my burden, they all come from the days before I wore chains. We will never be together Iron, because if we were, I’d destroy you, or worse, make you into a monster like me.”
“Ayska…”
“No.” She sighed and turned away. “My life belongs to Kalila. I am loyal to no one else. I’m sorry. I do love you, and I will follow you to the ends of Urum to destroy Sol. But we can never be together. Never.”
“Ayska…” Iron’s voice tumbled into soft whisper.
She shook her head and darted to the camp. The tall reeds closed behind her, a wall of grass that might as well have been made of steel and taller than a titan. Iron turned, walking to the tree. He slid to a seat before falling to his side. He closed his eyes, listening to his breath.
In his mind, he was back in the Everfrosts, riding a thundersnow. In that moment, he was the High King of his own kingdom, the Lord of Ice and Snow. Fate stole that throne from him and crowned him this cursed Fireborn. He didn’t like the fire. He didn’t want the fire. Let him have ice. Let him ride snow.
Iron didn’t move from his spot in the shadows. Late in the night, sleep eventually claimed him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Shining Step
The reed’s lash left a pulsing sting against Iron’s back. He winced at the pain as a grain of sand lodged itself in his eye and gave him two sources of irritation in as many seconds. He ignored the blur of his vision and slid awkwardly on the dune, his ankle rolling in the sand. Ahead, the rest of his companions reclined on their greyhorns while the beasts trudged over the endless desert. At the back of the line, Iron walked without the aid of his mount, practicing the ridiculously complex moves of the Shining Step.
Batbayar grunted and scowled at Iron from his lumbering ride. “I thought you might learn faster, elchgharat. You are clumsy. Shining Step is different than other styles. You must move without thinking, always walk in motion. Shade Stride is to kill unseen like a shadow with knives. Loyal Stance is to defend when hope is lost. Gentle Dance is to bend and twist like lovers in bed. Shining Step is different than these. Shining Step is the Child’s walk, and children do not think. They do. You are young enough. Be a child.”
Moving without thinking, especially when the wind constantly toyed with the loose sands beneath him, was much more a challenge than tying his body into a knot while sailing over the Sapphire Sea. Clearing his mind of the constant mash of anger, disappointment, fear, and exhaustion clogging every thought also proved harder than a few stern words or lash from Batbayar.
“It’s hard,” Iron said.
“Hah! Now you sound more like child.”
Iron sighed and blinked the sand from his watery eye. He continued performing the steps Batbayar drilled into his head each night they made camp until the man finally decided to let Iron have his meal. He’d ate like a ravenous snow leopard after the deepest of winter passed, then slept like a bear on winter’s onset—at least until Batbayar ended his rest with a boot to the belly.
In a way, Iron enjoyed the near torture. It kept him from speaking with Sander or Ayska. Those two weighed on him more than the Six or the war or the High King stoking it. He cursed himself for telling Ayska he’d actually loved her. He spoke true, but still it hurt to think of the fool she’d made him for it. Worst yet, she loved him back and still refused him.
He planted a foot on loose sand. Pain lashed his ankle as his foot twisted and he tumbled over, rolling down the steep dune. The desert coated his skin, blinded him, blanketed his lips and tongue with hot grains. He hit the base of the dune and coughed, coming to his knees. “How am I supposed to stand on this damn sand?”
“The sand is no problem. It is you. I tell you not to think, and all you do is swell your head with silly things. Sand is much like the Child. It moves, it flows, it does not think but goes.”
“Great. He rhymes,” Iron muttered, tromping up the dune. Batbayar was a mounted silhouette beneath the blazing sun that shone so bright it forced Iron’s eyes to the ground.
He reached the top just in time to take a lash to the cheek. He swallowed the words he had for the man and instead restarted the routine. From the corner of his eye, he spied Batbayar watching intently, sweat rolling in warped trails down his tattooed face. He puckered his lips and looked south. “Tell me what you know of my home.”
“Ker?” Iron stumbled. Batbayar sighed. Iron regained his balance and thought to Sander’s lessons on the isolated country. “It’s the southernmost kingdom known to us, the only one that far south. The desert keeps it safe from Sol to the north, and the Churning Ocean keeps it safe from whatever lands lie beyond the waves to the south.”
“I know where my home is. Tell me of it.”
Iron rolled his eyes and thought back to those days studying history by the sooty hearth of his ramshackle cabin. Sander hadn’t told him much of Ker. Truth was, nobody really bothered learning much about the country. Its lands weren’t particularly fertile and held no real wealth in its enormous rolling plains—a fact Iron thought best to keep from the proud priest.
“Well…” Iron tripped and buried a knee in the sand. He cursed and leapt up just in time for another lash to sting his neck. “You’re a horse people. A Chanathan horse is you
r greatest treasure and worth its weight in gold if anyone but a Kerran could ride one. No one has—or maybe if they have, your people made sure they never left Ker to tell the secret.”
That tickled the priest. The man laughed and stroked his reed. “They are our brothers and sisters. To northern men, a horse is not much more than a fancy boot to ride until the leather wears. We do not ride horses in Ker. We ride the gods of the pale plains. Chanathans have secrets for those who listen. So far, only Kerrans listen. You could learn much from a Chanathan.”
“Why did you leave home? I’ve read that Ker is the land without war. It seems like a nice play to live.”
Batbayar fidgeted, his eyes locked forward. “Ker is old. There were secrets buried there better left forgotten.” He twisted in the saddle until their eyes met. “This Serpent Sun did not slither from the sky. It came from a forgotten place in Ker. This High King Sol came to us a boy looking for adventure, and a Chanathan to ride into his palace. He left…” Batbayar shook his head. “…He left someone different.”
So the king learned the truth in Ker. Something in that land held answers. Something begged for discovery. He’d found the echo of the old gods on Rosvoi, revealed to him by the serpent charm he kept hidden. Maybe he would find the Serpent’s echo in Ker.
Knowing him better could teach me about myself. I might even learn about my parents.
“My mother worshipped the Serpent before many others,” Batbayar continued. “When Sol told us of this new god, he promised wealth and power if we would embrace him. My mother, she always lusted for Eloia. She dreamt of being a city noble and not a chieftain’s bride. The Chanathan would not speak to her, so the Serpent’s promises did. But, my father would not move us across the desert. It poisoned my mother’s heart, and she became bitter, angry, thololchkik.”
Iron grimaced as his toe twisted on the dune. He nearly lost his balance, catching himself just before he slipped once again. While he moved in the loopy, seemingly random Shining Step, he thought about Sol before the man became evil. Oddly enough, he might have been more like Iron than Iron himself suspected. Being royalty, the boy probably spent most of his life cloistered in Thean—Sollan as it was now called—learning from tutors and duelists and tacticians. Then, when he reached manhood, the world called and he answered with all the ignorant excitement of a fish flying onto land.
Batbayar’s shadow melted over Iron. “I still remember the day I left. My mother, she lost her favorite necklace. Gold is rare on the pale plains and treasured more than most things. When she could not find this necklace, she brought the servants out and beat them until their backs bled red and swelled purple. I watched. She told me I must watch to make me strong like this Serpent. I knew none of those women stole her necklace. I knew in my heart of hearts they were true and loyal to my family.”
In his mind, Iron saw the servants lined before a hide tent, backs bent and bruised and bloodied from a whip meant for horses. They screamed and cried, but Batbayar’s mother was deaf to their desperate pleas, all while a young Batbayar watched, too frightened of the violence, too confused by his mother’s brutality to protest.
“She had them all killed,” he said flatly. “Dragged behind horse until grasses painted red. I watched. I watched all of it.”
While Iron swayed and shifted, he caught the priest’s knuckles whiten. Batbayar closed his eyes, chin resting on his sweaty chest. “That night, I go to bed. I lay on something odd. In my furs, I found this necklace. But I had not taken it! So scared I was when I took it to my mother that I almost threw it to the grass. Almost did. But in the end, I was honest.”
Iron saw the boy slink through a fur flap into his mother’s room. She reclined on a bed of rich pelts, sipping something with a strong smell of fruits from a silver chalice. Young Batbayar opened his palm to her, revealing the necklace in the flickering firelight.
“She did not punish me,” he said. “She did not harm me. She told me she had done it! That all was a test to see if her son was loyal to her mother and would bring her this necklace when he found it, for the Serpent prizes loyalty to him more than any other. All those innocent women. My mother killed them to test a little boy. She did not care. ‘There are always more servants, but only one Batbayar,’ she said. I knew then, like Sol, my mother was gone from this world. What she became wears a snake’s skin now.
“I swore my oath then to the Shining Child, Standard-Bearer of Innocence, Warden of the Forgotten that I would never be the cause of another’s death. I knew no priest and learned no priestly lessons, but my life that night was no longer mine. I would be a voice for the voiceless and a shield for the weak.”
Iron didn’t know if the man’s experience had made him officially a priest, but he’d seen his share of slaughter in the short time he’d been in the world and knew what kind of effect it had on a soul. “You accepted the Six even after they did nothing to help letting innocents suffer?”
“And you reject them for the same,” Batbayar responded.
Well, look what acceptance got you, Iron thought. A lifetime watching the Serpent Sun takeover the land. The alps returning. The war spreading. Men, women, and children murdered. And then, the gods you loved falling.
“We can’t depend on the gods. We’ve got to solve this ourselves. They won’t—can’t—help, Batbayar.”
Iron would not stand idly by while the world bled for gods who couldn’t care enough to stick around for its wounds. Even if he was one half of this Serpent god, he would not let the world suffer for him or any other.
Sweat rolled down Iron’s back, but it only cooled him. Wind hurled sand in his eyes, but it only made the world less distracting. He moved with no thought save the vision of Batbayar’s servants bent and broken, of grass stained with blood, of skies echoing their cries. How stupid of him, to try and take his own life. People like those servants were the ones who truly suffered under the gods. They were the ones forgotten. While Iron pitied himself, they died, and no one would remember them.
This was the gods’ war, but in a way, it was also his. He never chose to fight it; he didn’t even want it. But maybe, just maybe, he could be the one to end it. Not by taking his own life or pitying himself, but by standing against divine tyranny and breaking a wheel that had been turning since creation’s first dawn.
His breath came in heavy rolls as he inhaled the hot air. He stilled for the first time in a long while, hands clenched tight at his sides, back straight. Iron stared at the chestnut waves stretching to meet a flat horizon capped by solid blue. “I will end it.”
Batbayar’s slow, deep chuckle interrupted his thoughts. Iron realized the man hadn’t whipped him with the reed or tossed a casual insult his way in awhile. He spun to the priest, who sat on his greyhorn watching with a bemused twinkle in his dark eyes.
“You stopped whipping me,” Iron said.
Batbayar’s lips formed a pleased crescent. His eyebrows pushed the mural of tattoos up his forehead. “Ah, yes, I threw this reed away long ago. When we began this day, you were elchgharat. Now I think you arphanarat.”
“I don’t even know what that means, like most of your Kerran words.”
“It means…” The man patted his steed, and the animal lumbered past Iron. Batbayar turned and winked. “…It means I have no steps left to teach you. Shining Step is not complex dances and fancy twirls, it is clearing a crowded mind and just being. You know how to do this now. You are a master of the stance. Remember this in battle and you will survive. The broken circle is almost mended, eh?”
The priest turned, his greyhorn tottering toward the front of the line. Iron jogged to his mount and jumped onto its back, taking a place in the shadow of the others.
It was almost mended. Once he succeeded, that was when the real battle started. No doubt Caspran would come calling then, and when he did, his games would end.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Sigrid Ostergaard
Batbayar spotted the tempest first. He crested a high dun
e and whooped, his greyhorn rearing. The others urged their mounts up the steep incline, forming a line of braying beasts and curious humans. Iron tried keeping calm, but after what must have been weeks trolling over a formless expanse and spending long nights huddled in one oasis that looked exactly like the last, the prospect of something new roiled the calm sea within him.
Iron’s greyhorn struggled up the dune. He managed to pick the slowest, oldest beast of their hairy little herd for his mount. The animal grunted as it rumbled onto the crest. Sunlight blasted Iron like a titan’s roar. He squinted, shielding his face. A horizon once deprived of detail appeared as his eyes adjusted to the light. A massive mountain—or at least once it had been called such—disrupted the flat line. Now it looked like little more than the sad corpse of a summit beaten down by the Simmering Sands’ endless, hot breath.
“What is that?” he asked as wind gusted through his hair, spitting sand against his cheeks.
Batbayar smacked his lips. “This place, I do not remember it. But night comes soon, eh? Maybe we sleep there this evening and see if this old rock has any secrets, arphanarat.”
Nephele kicked her greyhorn, and the beast loped down the dune. “While I’d simply love some place different to rest my head in this forsaken desert, it brings me no comfort to know that a guide who supposedly knows his way across the sands has never heard of the enormous mountain in it.”
“Quiet, hellcat,” the man snapped. “I know the way. This was not here when I passed last. The sands rise and fall with the winds. Maybe they buried this mountain once.”
She glanced behind her, casting Iron a worried look while the others followed them down the dune. Iron shrugged, and Nephele returned her gaze to Batbayar. “I blame you if you get us all killed.”
“Hah!” The priest urged his ride on, and it pounded down the hillside in a flurry of sand.
