Danr nearly staggered at this unexpected hit. “Me? What?”
“Your mother had a sharp tongue, didn’t she?”
And Danr had to answer. “Because she was a truth-teller, like me. That’s a stupid observation. Sorry!” he added quickly.
“Haven’t you ever heard that boys fall in love with girls just like their mothers?”
“I have, and it’s a foolishly idiotic saying pushed around by idiotic fools—sorry!” Danr dropped the sack and clapped both fishy-smelling hands over his mouth in horror, though he knew the words would still come out if Death asked him a direct question. At least he truly was sorry—that much wasn’t a lie.
But Death seemed unbothered. “Hmm. Perhaps not as foolish as you think. At any rate, I thank you for your service, dear boy.”
It seemed a dismissal, and Danr didn’t think that quite fair. Talfi had died to get those objects, for Vik’s sake. Well, not really died, and Death of all people knew Talfi was in no danger. Rather than let him walk through her door, Death had offered to give Talfi half of Ranadar’s remaining days, and Ranadar had accepted. But Aisa had been hit during the squid attack, and—well, it wasn’t right of Death to brush him off.
“I want to ask a favor,” Danr said quickly.
“Hmm,” Death said again.
It hadn’t been an invitation to talk, but neither had it been a refusal. Danr decided to hurry on. “I want a … solution to my problem with Aisa. You know what I’m talking about.”
“And I think you need to say exactly what you want, love.”
The others remained absolutely still behind him, whether paralyzed by unease or something stronger, Danr couldn’t say. He forced himself to keep his eyes on Death. “Please don’t. Don’t ask me.”
“You brought it up. What exactly,” Death asked relentlessly, “do you think will solve your problem with Aisa?”
Shit. Danr didn’t want to say. Even though Talfi and Ranadar already knew, and Kalessa had probably worked it out, he didn’t want to say. The words seemed small in the presence of this large being. But they pushed themselves out of his mouth.
“I want to be fully human,” he said hoarsely, “so that Aisa won’t be unhappy when she marries me. It sounds small and stupid, I know that, but it’s what I want.”
Death continued to knit. “Very good, though I wish you had said it without being compelled by the truth-teller’s blessing.”
“Curse,” Danr muttered, looking away. His face burned.
“It all depends on your point of view,” Death said amiably. “But the world turns on petty desires. It always has done so.”
“What does that mean?”
“People think history is made when powerful princes and clever kings make long, careful decisions. Should I start my war this year or wait? Should I marry my daughter to my neighbor to the east or to the west? Should I try the duke for murder so justice can prevail, or let the matter drop because I need his army to defend our border? And so on. But really, it almost never works that way.” She leaned forward, though her face stayed in shadow. “Did you know there was a king named Alessander who conquered large swaths of Balsia and Xaron, but when he reached Irbsa, he turned around and went home because the chief general, who was also Alessander’s lover, died unexpectedly? One man couldn’t overcome his grief, and an entire empire faltered.”
Danr shot Talfi a glance. “No, I—”
“In another part of Balsia,” Death continued, “a little-known king and queen were seeking a wife for their son. They paraded three women in front of him and told him to choose one. One of the women wore a yellow dress, and for the simple reason that he liked the color yellow, the prince pointed to her. They later had a son of their own and named him Bal.”
“Bal,” Danr repeated. “You mean Bal, the hero who—”
“Imagine how history would have gone if that woman had worn a green dress or if the prince had preferred blue. Meanwhile, you yourself are here because of small, petty decisions.”
Danr stepped back. “Me?”
“Of course. Aisa begged you to stay out of it when they were beating her for witchcraft, but you mixed yourself up in it anyway and got yourself exiled. Later, your aunt Queen Vesha—such a lovely woman—asked you to be the Stane emissary to the humans, and you were all set to refuse. You only agreed because you felt guilty over what you’d done to that White Halli boy. Such a petty thing. And then, when you found out your friend Talfi loved men instead of women, you very nearly wrote him off. But at the last moment you decided you wanted to stay friends with him, and thank the Nine you did. Without his friendship, you would never have found the Iron Axe. Petty, petty decisions decide how the world will go. It’s always been so, dear.”
“All right,” Danr replied slowly, unable to say that he understood—it would have been a lie. “But can you make me fully human? For Aisa?”
“I can’t make you fully human for Aisa, or for you,” Death replied, and Danr’s heart sank. “Only you can do it.”
Danr’s heart jerked. “I—what?”
“In the end, only you can decide to change,” Death said. “You know, Aisa herself said that if you give her enough time, she’ll probably overcome her little problem.”
“How long do I need to wait?” Danr cried out. “It’s been more than a year. And you said probably.”
Death shrugged. “So goes the world. Let me show you what we can do. Talfi, honey, you might want to cover your eyes.”
“Really?” Talfi looked startled. “Why?”
“Because you won’t like this very much.” Death slid one of her needles free of the work in her lap and drew a perfect triangle in the air three feet across. It glowed with golden light. Ranadar gasped. Death struck the triangle with the needle, and it shattered into a thousand shards that gleamed like a shower of jewels. She jerked the needle, and the waterfall of shards froze in midair.
“You know that power runs through the Nine People of Erda,” Death said. “The Fae—elves, sprites, and fairies—have power of mind, which lets them make glamours and illusions and such. The Stane—dwarfs, giants, and trolls—have power of the hand, which lets them tunnel and build and use shadows. And the Kin—orcs, merfolk, and human—have a power of their own.”
“We do?” Talfi was ignoring Death’s admonishment to hide his eyes.
“The power of the shape,” Danr breathed. “I remember. Grandmother Bund mentioned it when I first visited her under the mountain, but I forgot all about it. So much has happened.”
“After the Sundering,” Death said, “there weren’t many humans alive to remember the power existed. Even the legends became scarce.”
“When did we have it?” Talfi demanded.
“I just said—in the days before the Sundering.” Death waved her needle, and the multicolored shards rushed about the cave in a rainbow river. “You were there, dear. You just don’t remember. Not yet.”
“I don’t know if I want to remember,” Talfi muttered, and Ranadar touched his shoulder.
“A thousand years ago, when the Stane went to war against the Fae, they created the Iron Axe, a weapon so powerful it could sunder the earth itself.” The shards formed into a great glowing axe that matched the one on the table, though this one crackled with power. “But the Fae allied with a group of Kin to steal the Axe away, and the Stane were left with one recourse—to destroy it before the Fae could use it against them.”
Death waved her needle, and the Axe shimmered into a shower of brightly colored dust that sculpted itself like sand into a small stone altar. A group of tiny people dressed in clothing so outdated Danr couldn’t even think of it as old-fashioned were gathered around it. The people were a mix of dwarfs, trolls, giants, humans, and orcs. Danr did recognize that some of the trolls were actually trollwives, the most powerful magicians among the Stane.
“The Stane had their own allies among the Kin—humans and orcs and even a few merfolk,” Death said. “The trollwives summoned magic to destroy
the Axe. But magic requires a sacrifice, and rather than ask for one among themselves, the trollwives demanded one from the Kin, who gave them one.”
Two robed men dragged a teenage boy to the altar and a blond woman in plate armor clasped a small medallion around his neck. Even though the image was small and the boy wore strange clothing, Danr recognized Talfi. Talfi, the real Talfi, went pale as milk, and Danr wanted to stop the whole thing, even though it wasn’t real. Ranadar put an arm around Talfi and tried to turn his face away from the sight, but Talfi watched with steadfast determination.
“The trollwives fashioned a dagger,” Death continued. “They used it as a conduit, you see, and they thrust it into the sacrifice’s heart.”
Her words were duplicated by the silent glowing figures of dust. Danr, who had watched Talfi die a number of times, still felt the terrible pang when the dagger went in, and he almost reached out to stop the trollwife who wielded the dagger, even though none of this was real and it had happened a thousand years ago anyway. The real Talfi made a small sound. The dagger stood upright in image Talfi’s chest, beating with his heart, while dusty, glowing blood gushed from the wound. The medallion glowed white-hot. To Danr’s surprise, battle-hardened Kalessa set her mouth and turned away for a moment.
“But the Stane back then were even more selfish than the Kin knew,” Death said. “They didn’t tell the Kin that the sacrifice’s blood was a mere catalyst, a way to start the spell running. In order to destroy the Axe, the trollwives needed to draw on some power, a great deal of power. Rather than drain their own, they took it from the Kin.”
The gathered trollwives raised their hands. From all the assembled Kin and from sources Danr couldn’t see came streams of power. The power rushed through the dagger sticking out of Talfi’s chest, focused through the medallion around Talfi’s neck, and poured into a single trollwife. The Kin dropped to their knees, squirming and convulsing as the power left them. The trollwife exulted while Talfi writhed sickeningly on the altar. Now the real Talfi buried his face in Ranadar’s shoulder. Danr’s mouth went dry. These were his people torturing a young boy and hurting the Kin. Did Talfi blame Danr for any of it?
The trollwife gathered the power—all of it—and released it in a great geyser. The dust exploded into a shower of light again that reformed into the Iron Axe.
“The power destroyed the Iron Axe,” Death said as the handle broke away from the Axe’s head. The pieces bled light. “And the blow sundered the continent. Have you ever wondered why the spell would do such a thing?”
“No,” Danr replied.
“Think on it, then. Why would the trollwives fashion a spell that would destroy the continent on which they were standing?”
“I don’t know. I can’t know, and you’re trying to hold back information so you can look powerful and mysterious—sorry,” Danr said.
“You do have a way to know,” Death countered. “And I’m giving it to you, if you pay attention.”
“It has to do with me,” Talfi put in slowly. “Doesn’t it?”
Death ignored him. “As I was saying, the Stane paid for the destruction spell in blood, and so did the Kin who colluded with them. Unfortunately, so did all other Kin everywhere. The power of the shape, the power that had destroyed the Axe, didn’t return to the Kin after the trollwives used it. There was no way for it to do so, you see. Not with the catalyst dead and gone.”
“But it—I—didn’t die,” Talfi said in a hoarse voice. “I lived.”
“You did not live, child,” Death contradicted. She tapped the dust with her knitting needle, and it all vanished. “The Axe split into three pieces—it haft, its head, and its magic. The magic entered you and kept you alive in the way a draugr is alive. A few days after the continent sundered and the sea flooded the place the Nine Races now call the Iron Sea, you washed up onshore, took a new breath, and wandered away with the trollwives’ medallion around your throat.”
Talfi’s hand automatically went to the silver medallion around his neck, the one he had worn as long as Danr had known him. The edges were worn. It had an Axe on one side and the symbol of the Nine on the other.
“That was a busy time for me.” Death went back to knitting. “The point of all this, though, is that the Kin lost the power of the shape.”
“What does the power of the shape do?” Danr asked, relieved that the scene was over.
“Many things, depending,” Death said. “The orcs once used it to change into the wyrms they can now only ride, for example.”
Kalessa gasped. “We did?”
“Indeed. And you could bond more tightly with your wyrms—read their thoughts and command them from a distance. The merfolk changed into humans and walked on land, or they changed into other sea creatures, like seals and dolphins. But humans were the most versatile. They changed shape into any number of creatures—wolves and bears and eagles. Some could do it on their own, others needed a skin of the creature first. Some Kin learned to change the shapes of other people or animals. Witches turned their enemies into toads, and wizards created chimaeras and sphinxes by smashing three or four animals together. Some learned to grow to the size of giants, and others learned to shrink smaller than fairies. It was a heady time.” Death rocked faster, caught in the memories.
“All the Kin could do this?” Danr said, amazed.
“Goodness, no.” Death checked her knitting, discovered she had dropped several stitches, and unraveled a row with a click of her tongue. Danr thought he heard faint screams. “Talent for the shape runs in families, you see, though the occasional wild gift shows up. The more talent you have, the more you can do. Some talents let you only change your own shape, and some only let you change the shape of others. The truly gifted could do both. And it all takes power. Lots of power.” She leaned forward, eyes sparkling. “That’s where the fun began, dear.”
“Fun?” Ranadar said.
“When you change your shape, it becomes easier to share your inner power with someone else. Change yourself into a cat, and another Kin can draw off your power more easily for his own magic.”
“Familiars,” Danr whispered.
“Draw too much, and the familiar dies,” Death said. “As I said, fun.”
“That doesn’t sound like—” Talfi began.
“I didn’t say it was fun for you,” Death interrupted. “And now you’re going to ask where the power of the shape can be found, yes?”
“That was the point of coming here, great lady,” Ranadar said.
“Hmm.” Death tapped the tips of her needles against her chin. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”
Danr’s heart plunged into his feet and his hands turned cold. “What? After all that I—”
“Really, dear,” Death interrupted. “You need to listen more. I said I can’t tell you.”
“Oh. Uh … someone else can tell me?”
In answer, Death raised her head, though her features remained in shadow. “I think it’s time, sisters.”
The darkness behind her stirred. Vik! Danr backed up a step with a twinge of fear, and he clutched his old bag, feeling small and defenseless. When Death called something up, you didn’t want to be close to it, no, you didn’t. The others tensed as well. Talfi touched the amulet at his throat.
From the cool shadows slipped three women. They wore cloaks in different shades. The first wore the green of pale spring leaves and carried a bag of seeds. The second wore the rich green-brown of summer grass and carried a hoe. The third wore the riotous rainbow of an autumn forest and carried a sickle. The blade had a smear of blood on it. All three women had strange faces that were neither beautiful nor ugly, old nor young, though they looked tired. The third, the one with the autumn cloak and sickle, looked particularly pinched and weary.
Danr’s legs went weak when he recognized them, though he’d only heard of them in stories. These were the Three Gardeners, the Fates Nu, Tan, and Pendra, and they planted a seed for every life in the shade of Ashkame, the Great Tr
ee. Each seed grew in rows pushed and perfected by the Gardeners. Some plants they coaxed into full bloom and let them twine around those close to them. Other plants they ripped out and threw away. Even the Nine bowed to the Gardeners. Most people lived their lives hoping never to gain their attention, and now they were looking straight at Danr. His blood stopped flowing.
“Great ones,” Danr murmured, and managed a shaky bow. The others followed suit. Ranadar put his hand over his heart.
“You brought us a present,” Nu said in a flutelike voice.
“A gift,” said Tan.
“A sacrifice,” said Pendra.
“I did?” Danr cast about, suddenly desperate. He hadn’t brought anything, and in any case, what did you give the Gardeners?
“It’s on the table, sister,” said Death.
Pendra, with slow, tired hands, picked up the squid’s beak in one hand. In her other, the sickle gleamed, and the air curled around it. For a moment Danr considered looking at it—at her—with his true eye, then recoiled at the idea. For all he knew, gazing at the Three with his one true eye might strike him blind.
“Delightful,” said Tan. Her voice was ancient as a star and just as steady.
“You’re too kind,” said Nu.
“I thank you,” said Pendra, and a droplet of scarlet blood dripped from her hand. It tapped the cave floor. Danr watched it fall, more than a little startled. Had she pricked herself on the beak? It had never occurred to him that the Gardeners could bleed.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Pendra glanced down at her hand and shook another droplet of blood away. “When I think big, I am fine. But where is Aisa? Why did she not come?”
“Aisa?” Danr repeated. “She … I didn’t ask her to come. I didn’t want her here.” His face flamed as the embarrassing answer forced itself from his chest. Why did they have to ask? Didn’t they know the answer already?
“A pity,” said Nu.
“A shame,” said Tan.
“A loss,” sighed Pendra. “A petty decision that will complicate future rows.” She crushed the squid’s beak in her hand and it crumbled to a dust that she wiped on the front of her autumn cloak. Some of her blood mingled with the dust. Danr stared, his embarrassment forgotten.
Blood Storm: The Books of Blood and Iron Page 8
