Blood and Iron: The Book of the Black Earth (Part One)

by Jon Sprunk

  Horace was about to shout for everyone to stand clear when the two younger priests by the altar stepped forward. Horace only had an instant to process the itching down his spine before twin attacks of jagged stones and freezing cold rushed at him. He braced himself for pain. Yet the sorcerer on the left threw back his head to reveal a thin shard of metal protruding from his neck, and his partner on the right jerked away with a similar dart through the meat of his hand. Both their magics dissipated into the air. Before either man could recover, Horace harnessed his zoana, and a mighty gust of wind poured out of him, hurtling both sorcerers over the side of the terrace.

  The two older priests had already retreated behind the altar. As the pall lifted, soldiers with white figurines perched on their silver helmets pushed through the throng, and Horace got a glimpse of how many people were in attendance. More than a hundred, to be sure. Then he looked below and saw an ocean of faces filling the temple courtyard. Taking a deep breath, he raised his right hand, open palm held out.

  The soldiers stopped at the front of the crowd, fingering their weapons as they watched him, but none advanced any closer. The zoanii watched him as well with various expressions. Most appeared shocked, but some whispered to each other, their eyes never leaving him. Horace started to beckon to the queen, his plan no more complicated than escorting her out of the temple. He cursed as a sheet of brilliant white spray cascaded from the south end of the terrace where another Red Robe pushed through the crowd. The nobles and soldiers in the path of the sparkling cone fell to the floor covered in hoarfrost.

  Horace grabbed Alyra and conjured a barrier just as the whiteness crashed over them. Spiderwebs of rime formed across the surface of the bulwark. Horace visualized a ray of fire shooting from his palm. Instead, three blazing spheres the size of apples zipped across the space. Two impacted on a frosty buckler shield conjured by the Red Robe with dull thumps, but the third sphere curved around the shield to strike the sorcerer in the forehead, dropping him to the floor. Horace prepared to fashion some kind of magical cage to hold the man down, but before he could act, a massive stone spike erupted from the terrace floor, impaling the fallen sorcerer through the back as it lifted him off the ground.

  Horace looked for the person responsible for the killing. At the altar, the venerable priest slumped on the floor with his eyes closed. There was no sign of Rimesh. The queen and her betrothed glared at each other but otherwise hadn't moved. Standing beside Byleth, Xantu glared at the bridegroom like he wanted to roast the prince over a slow fire. Then the bodyguard winked at Horace out of the corner of his eye, and Horace swallowed his annoyance.

  It was over. The rest of the attendees and their soldiers didn't seem inclined to get involved. The queen was safe, and now they could get out of here.

  He was about to release the protective shield when Alyra pointed upward, and Horace noticed for the first time the balcony above the terrace. Men stared down from the gallery; at least twenty of them, their crimson robes glowing darkly in the sun's dying light.

  Horace dragged Alyra down to the floor and poured all his strength into the barrier. His knees had barely touched the floor stones when a powerful force smashed against the shield. A sharp pain ripped down the center of his head as screams reverberated through the terrace. Horace didn't want to look, but he forced himself to as Alyra stiffened against him. Wedding guests lay all about him, their limbs and torsos contorted in sickening positions. With an ache in his stomach, he realized they had been crushed. He held Alyra close as his barrier was pummeled as if by a thousand invisible sledgehammers. The din of the pounding blocked out any other sounds. They were trapped. Eventually his mystic barrier would fail, and then they would both die.

  A stream of blood ran from under the pile of crushed bodies. Horace squeezed his eyes shut, but the darkness brought no reprieve from the images cascading through his mind. He stood once again on the deck of the Sea Spray. His family was safe from the plague consuming Tines. As Sari chased Josef through the crowd of sailors, Horace shaded his eyes and viewed his dying town.

  The crackle of splitting wood made him whirl around. The burning schooner in the next berth lurched as its foremast broke loose from its moorings. The tall pole fell like an axed tree. Sari screamed, Josef still squirming in her arms.

  An anguished yell erupted from Horace as his family disappeared under a mountain of flaming wood and rigging. He leapt toward the inferno, digging at the fiery debris with his bare hands until strong grips dragged him away. He struggled against the sailors holding him back, his gaze on the spot where Sari and Josef had been standing only moments before. A trickle of blood ran along the deck.

  “Sari,” Horace croaked, hunched on the terrace floor. A bitter taste flooded his mouth. “Josef!”

  “Horace!” Alyra gasped.

  He shuddered against the painful memories. If he hadn't taken his family aboard that ship, they might still be alive today. It was his fault they had died. If he was any kind of man, he would have thrown himself into the flames after them. Better to die that day that live with this shame.

  Warm wetness touched his fingers. He looked down to see the rivulet of blood had touched his hand. He watched it pool around his fingers, running against his old burn scars. He could still remember being on his hands and knees on the deck of the Sea Spray, digging through the burning sailcloth and rigging while his wife and son screamed. Those wails echoed inside his head now just like they had on that cursed day. If he closed his eyes again, he would see their faces, melting before his eyes, calling out for him…

  A ragged scream erupted from his mouth as he hauled himself to his knees, the agonies of his past and the icy fire of the zoana fusing together in the blazing furnace behind his breastbone. A tracery of tiny cracks ran through the barrier as he delved into the gray space inside him, gathering up every bit of magic he could summon. Tears ran down his face like beads of molten lead. His bones ached with the intensity of the power running through him. With a deep gasp, he lashed out.

  Crackling forks of green lightning flashed from his hands. The Shinar dominion pulsed within him while the energy poured out, seemingly without end.

  Skin blistered and blackened as the emerald bolts raked across the gallery. Crimson robes burst into flames. The enemy sorcerers fell in droves, their shrieks echoing off the temple's inner walls.

  Horace kept a tight rein on his thoughts, knowing that if he dwelt for even a moment on the fact that he was killing people—human beings with families and dreams of the future—his control over the zoana would evaporate. He focused on the task at hand. Ignore the cries of agony. Incinerate each enemy in turn and move on.

  The soldiers on the terrace rushed toward him, but a gust of frosty wind sent them tumbling back in a clatter of metal. The queen and Xantu pushed them back with alternating blasts of wind and multicolored flames.

  As the last sorcerer fell from the balcony, Horace released the power and gasped as a stinging jolt, like ripping off a fresh scab, passed through him. His insides trembled and he felt like he might be sick, but the feeling passed after a couple deep breaths. In the hazy smoke rolling across the terrace he saw the faces of his wife and son, and the pain of losing them ran through him like a spear. He held onto that agony, cherished it, knowing it was the only thing keeping him together. Without it, he would shatter into a thousand pieces. And yet, holding onto the memories was killing him. Slowly, day by day, eating him from the inside, denying him the chance to truly live again.

  Sari, Josef, forgive me. I can't do it anymore.

  Then Alyra stood beside him. Spots of soot smudged her face, but she had never looked more beautiful. In that moment, he realized he could let go of his past. The pain remained, but it was now a dull ache that was fading with each breath he took. He was free, though an empty hole remained inside him. He was about to reach out to Alyra when a cool voice spoke behind him.

  “You astound me yet again, Lord Horace.”

  Byleth strode toward th
em. She sounded pleased for the most part, but there was something else in her tone. Wariness, perhaps. Despite some smeared makeup and a little perspiration beading on her forehead, the queen's magnificence shone like a bonfire.

  Yet Horace wasn't as swayed by her looks as he had been before, and he found his gaze wandering back to Alyra. “I was merely repaying a debt owed, Your Excellence.”

  “Just remember.” Byleth stepped closer to him and placed a hand over his heart. “You are my champion.”

  Horace started to stammer a reply when he caught a glimpse of movement from over his shoulder. He turned in time to see a man in a yellow robe dart out the ruined doorway.

  Rimesh.

  Horace reached out with his power, intending to seize the priest in a grasp of solid air, but the power slid off without slowing him.

  Horace grasped Alyra's hand. “Accompany the queen back to the palace.”

  He couldn't tell which of the two women was more taken aback by his command, Alyra or Byleth. Both stared at him with odd expressions. “Please,” he added. Then he took off after the menarch.

  The women called after him in a bizarre chorus, “Where are you going?”

  Horace kept running.

  This is a mistake.

  Horace squinted as he ducked through the ruined doorway after Menarch Rimesh. Getting the queen to safety should have been his primary concern, but the sight of the priest escaping this death-trap of his own making had infuriated Horace. He had to be brought to justice. However, a little voice nagged in the back of Horace's head that he was only doing this because he wanted revenge for being locked down in that pit. He ignored it.

  Several doors opened along the corridor. Horace started trying them all, but as he moved down the passageway, an impulse tugged at him. It drew him toward a small door farther down. Horace pushed it open. Inside, glowing orbs on the walls illuminated a narrow corridor of dressed stone. Hearing footfalls ahead, he sprinted down the hallway. He passed several doors but didn't check them. The footsteps came from ahead, or so he thought. The close walls played tricks on his hearing.

  As he followed the corridor around a corner, Horace tried to ignore his shaking hands. The zoana lent him strength and clarity, but it also put his nerves on edge. He kept expecting the menarch or another Red Robe to leap at him from every shadow. Yet it was more than that. Over the past weeks all of his old assumptions had been challenged in ways he could have never anticipated. It was apparent that the Akeshians believed in their heathen gods every bit as fervently as the men and women who packed the churches of Arnos every Godsday. They were different, but they weren't evil. At least, not all of them.

  Horace stopped in his tracks as he entered a large chamber with a very high ceiling. A massive golden effigy, twenty feet tall, dominated the room. The statue was of a muscular man on a throne holding a spear in one hand and a fiery ball in the other. Golden flames radiated from his high crown. This could be none other than the Sun God of the Akeshians. The thing looked like it was made of solid gold, but he couldn't believe that. The cost would have been beyond imagining.

  On the other side of the chamber he found a stout wooden door, but it was locked. There was no keyhole, and he didn't have a key anyway so it didn't matter. The door felt solid enough to withstand anything less than a battle-axe. He didn't have one of those either.

  Reaching out with his power to the door's stone frame, Horace winced as the effort became slightly painful. Not a sharp pain like he had injured himself, but the dull ache of an overused muscle. Gritting his teeth, he tried harder until he was rewarded with the familiar rush of energy. Cracks appeared as the stone frame flexed. A hard kick swung the door open with pieces of the lock mechanism flying off.

  The chamber beyond was smallish, about ten feet on each side, with tall cabinets against the far wall. Horace took a step inside and felt a slight tickle down the back of his neck. He halted in mid-step and then stumbled back when something slammed into the other side of the door. He caught his balance against a wall and stared through the gloom, looking for the threat. A hole the size of a dinner platter had been ripped through the center of the door. Horace looked himself over but didn't find any new injuries. With a grunt, he summoned the Imuvar dominion and projected a gust of wind ahead of him. It ripped the door off its hinges and tossed it across the room. He heard footsteps rising above him to the left. A quick look revealed a case of ascending stone steps. Horace charged up them two at a time. Just as he reached the first landing, the familiar tickle itched down his spine. He jumped back just before the wall in front of him exploded in a rain of shrapnel. Horace looked up in time to see a heavyset man in red robes escaping around the next turn of the stairs. Fists clenched, Horace ran after him.

  He rounded the next turn a little more cautiously and wasn't surprised when a rock the size of his head flew just inches in front of his face. It hit the wall beside him and caromed down the stairs. Horace erected a barrier of solid air in front of him as he edged around the corner. Isiratu stood on the landing above, breathing heavily. Blood dripped from a deep gash down the side of his neck, but the former nobleman didn't seem to mind it as he raised his hands. Horace glimpsed something falling from the ceiling a heartbeat before a huge piece of stone crashed down on him. His shield collapsed, holding just long enough to deflect the stone so that it missed his head by a few inches. Startled, Horace opened himself to the Mordab dominion and tried to fashion a ball of ice, hoping to distract or at least slow down the former zoanii, but instead a cold mist filled the stairway. He threw himself against the wall as Isiratu made another gesture. Another large stone dropped from the ceiling to shatter on the steps between them.

  Time to fight fire with fire.

  Lord Mulcibar had said that a master of the Shinar dominion was a master of all the dominions. It was time to test that theory. Horace opened his qa to the Kishargal dominion. His earlier exhaustion faded as a new strength seeped into his veins. He was suddenly aware of the stone around him—the walls, floor, and ceiling, as well as the many chips of stone scattered on the stairs. With a thought he lifted the small pieces of rock and sent them flying up at his foe. Isiratu raised his arms to protect his face, the sleeves and front of his robe shredding from the onslaught, and Horace pressed his attack. Isiratu motioned with one hand, and chunks of stone tore loose from the stairway walls, but Horace shattered them with his thoughts, one by one, as he climbed the steps.

  Isiratu's face had turned purple. Blood streamed down the front of his robe from the immaculata on his neck, but he continued to fight. More rocks flew at Horace from every direction as he kept climbing toward his foe, but not a one touched him as he discovered he didn't have to shatter them all. Just by altering their paths by a couple inches, he could force them to swerve around him. Isiratu gasped as he lifted both arms to the ceiling. Larger blocks of stone rained down, but they curved away from Horace to strike the steps behind him.

  “Why did you have to stay in Erugash?” Horace asked, mostly to himself. “Why couldn't you leave me alone?”

  He reached out with his zoana and exploded a slab of stone as it fell. Bits of shattered rock showered over Isiratu. Horace launched a blast of air and shoved the former lord back across the landing. Isiratu struck the far wall, pressed there by the powerful wind, but still sustained his attacks, even as new immaculata spread across his face.

  “I would have let you go!” Horace shouted at him. The zoana coursed through him like a mighty river. Its taste was intoxicating. “Even after the pit, I would have let you live. But you won't stop until one of us is dead!”

  Isiratu made a growling sound in the back of his throat. He reached for the ceiling, and a tremor raced through the steps under Horace's feet. Cracks sprouted in the walls, spewing dust into the air. Horace braced himself for a knockout punch. Then the rain of stones ceased. Isiratu stood rigid, his eyes wide and bloodshot. Blood from his immaculata gushed from his neck and poured down the front of his robe. Then he slumped
against the bands of air holding him upright, his life extinguished. Horace looked upon the man who had delivered him over to the temple, now dead by his hand, and wondered if this ending had been destined to happen from the first moment they met. He severed his connection to the magic and stepped over Isiratu's body. He wasn't finished yet.

  The stairs took him up several more stories. His knees ached by the time he arrived in a large, open-sided chamber at the apex of the temple. Cyclopean stone pillars at each corner held up the domed roof, the interior of which was painted in a breathtaking mural of the Akeshian pantheon amid a starry sky. Horace peered around for the menarch. There was nowhere else he could have gone. Then he heard the soft whisper of leather scuffing across stone.

  Rimesh stepped out from behind the southeastern pillar holding a long dagger. Its bare blade shone in the starlight. “I thought my mission was to purge this city of its sins and bring it under the protective aegis of Amur. But then I learned of you and I realized the corruption went deeper. You are no mere savage. You are a cancer lodged in the city's breast, spreading your destructive influence to everyone and everything you touch.” He pointed the dagger at Horace. “And the only way to stop your menace is to cut you out.”

  Horace wanted to strike the priest down where he stood but suppressed the temptation. He had spilled enough blood this night. “It's over. The queen is returning to the palace, unwed and still in power.”

  “For today.” Rimesh advanced, moving with the measured tread of an experienced warrior. His face betrayed no fear or apprehension. “But tomorrow or the day after, or next week, my Order will have its way. The gods have spoken.”

  “The gods? You mean a sect of old men who want to rule the empire.”

  “And you? You are an abomination conceived in chaos. It would have been better for the world if your mother had strangled you the day you were born.”