Blood Storm: The Books of Blood and Iron

by Steven Harper

  Aisa polished her nails on her blouse. “You were saying, O wise one?”

  Danr, who had grown up much farther north, far from the volatile weather tossed in by the sea, checked the window in amazement. “Will it start up again?”

  “Not until the next one, whenever that is.” Ranadar held out his hand to Kalessa. “Your knife. Make it bronze, if you please.”

  “Are you asking to play with my blade, elf?” Kalessa asked archly.

  “Only with your permission, my lady.” Ranadar kissed the back of her hand.

  “You are an orc woman flirting with a regi elf,” Aisa observed.

  “One who’s attached,” Talfi added.

  “How far the mighty have fallen,” Aisa finished.

  “I do need to get out more.” Kalessa sighed and handed Ranadar her knife, the one that had stabbed the dwarf. The blade, now bronze, still bore streaks of blood. Ranadar turned to Talfi.

  “This will not hurt.” He touched the flat of the blade to Talfi’s forehead, leaving a bloody smear, and spoke some words. A blink of light, and Talfi was no longer there. Instead a dwarf stood in his place, and in Talfi’s clothes. Now that his features were uncovered, Danr could see the dwarf had slightly bulging eyes and a long, thin nose matched by a long chin. A black beard spilled down his—Talfi’s—tunic, and unkempt hair made a bushy mess on his head. His hands reminded Danr of trowels with fingers, and his back had a slight hunch. Danr whistled under his breath. The others moved closer to admire. The dwarf looked up at them. His face was the dwarf’s, but his expression was definitely Talfi’s. It was eerie.

  “Very nice,” Aisa said. “How did you make the clothing fit? I was half expecting him to be naked.”

  “That would be awkward,” the dwarf said in Talfi’s voice, and that made Danr’s skin crawl.

  “It’s a glamour, not a change of shape,” Ranadar replied. “I know what Talfi’s clothing looks like, but I didn’t understand the dwarf’s appearance until I had the blood.”

  “Will this glamour fool a golem?” Kalessa asked.

  Ranadar nodded. “That was the whole point. It was cast with blood, so it will.”

  On impulse, Danr closed his right eye and looked at Talfi with his true eye. The dwarf vanished, leaving Talfi in his place. When Danr opened his eye, the dwarf reappeared.

  “My true eye sees right through it,” Danr reported.

  “Then it is fortunate the golems do not have true eyes,” Ranadar observed. “Your turn, my orcish princess.”

  He smeared Kalessa’s forehead with the blood, and in an instant, an exact copy of the dwarf took her place, except this one wore woven leather armor.

  “How do I look?” the dwarf said in Kalessa’s voice.

  Aisa burst out laughing. “Oh my! Hearing a woman’s voice come out of that body … Kalessa, you and I had better say as little as possible.”

  “Is that how you keep an orc quiet?” Talfi observed.

  “It is a fine thing for you that your lover has my knife,” Kalessa said, but it was hard for her to keep a straight face—she was arguing with her dwarfish twin.

  Ranadar smudged Aisa’s forehead next, creating a dwarf in the loose skirt and blouse Aisa preferred. Here, Danr laughed. “Er … maybe you should wear something else?”

  Aisa the dwarf twirled, and her beard stood out. “Is this not what dwarfish women are wearing this season?”

  “Just put on a cloak for the trip to the house,” Ranadar said tightly. He was sweating a little now. “We only have to fool the golems, and they will not care what we are wearing.”

  He reached up to swipe Danr’s forehead with the blade. Danr felt a slight tingle. All the other dwarfs in the room clapped their hands over their mouths in startlement or silent laughter.

  “That was so strange!” Aisa said. “You are short now!” She reached out to touch the air above where the dwarf’s head would be and touched Danr’s chest. He automatically took her hand and pressed it to his heart. Even though it looked like a stumpy dwarf’s hand, it felt like hers.

  “I’m here,” he said simply.

  “Oh, that hurts.” The Talfi dwarf rubbed his eyes. “Your hands are in the wrong place, but also in the right place. I can’t make it work.”

  Ranadar smeared the last of the blood on his own forehead and became a dwarf in brown and green silk. He handed the knife back to the Kalessa dwarf, who sheathed it. “We need to move quickly,” he said gruffly. “I can only hold this for a short time.”

  They hurried down the back stairs so the other inhabitants of the house wouldn’t notice them. Outside, the sky had cleared, leaving crisp, bright stars. Danr, who could see perfectly well in the dark streets, took the lead. Fortunately, the house where the mermaid was being held wasn’t that far away, and the streets were all but deserted at this time of night, allowing them to move with speed, though once they heard tromping feet. The entire group of them pressed against a house and stared wide-eyed at half a dozen trolls trudging down the street. Each troll topped Danr by a good three feet, and their arms were heavy as glacier ice. They were pulling great wagons loaded with what smelled like clay. The one in front, clearly the leader, caught sight of the group, and Danr’s heart stopped.

  “Heading for the Bosha Temple?” the lead troll called out without stopping.

  “No,” Danr replied truthfully.

  “We’ll be there later,” Talfi jumped in, making his voice gruff. “Lots of clay, huh?”

  “You would know,” the lead troll said, continuing on his way with the others.

  “What was that about?” Kalessa asked when they were out of earshot. “Why are they bringing clay to the temple of Bosha, and why would we know anything about it?”

  “They think we’re dwarfs,” Danr reminded her.

  “I still do not see any significance. Did you not tell us Prince Karsten allowed the trolls into Balsia to dig sewers? What do sewers have to do with cartloads of clay?”

  “We must move along,” Ranadar interrupted.

  The elf was all but panting when they arrived at the high wall that surrounded the stone house.

  “Will you be all right?” Talfi asked in a worried voice.

  “Just keep moving,” Ranadar replied tightly.

  Inside the iron gate, a golem stood guard. Aisa walked straight up to it and waved her hands. The golem didn’t respond. Kalessa drew her knife and it flicked into a full-length sword. She feinted at the golem through the bars. It still didn’t react.

  “A fine job with the glamour,” Kalessa said with satisfaction. “But how will we get inside?”

  Danr strode up to the small iron gate beside the large one, grasped the bars, and heaved. The muscles on his arms bulged and the bars dug into his fingers. The iron gave, then bent open with a quiet screech.

  “All in,” he said.

  “I forget just how strong you are,” Kalessa said, and slipped through the opening. Aisa followed with a smile of approval that made Danr’s heart swell with pride, even if the smile came from a dwarf in a dress. Then Talfi went.

  “I cannot go through.” The Ranadar dwarf was still standing some distance from the gate. “If I touch the iron, it will disrupt my spell.”

  “They touched iron,” Danr said.

  “They are not holding the spell together.”

  “Right.” Danr strode back to him. “Brace yourself.”

  Without further warning, he picked Ranadar up. The glamour flummoxed Danr a little until he hit on shutting his right eye so he could see the elf’s true form. Then he tossed Ranadar lightly over the wall. There was a soft yelp and a thump.

  “Are you all right?” Danr whispered.

  A number of curse words followed. Danr assumed they meant yes, and he ducked through the gate himself. The golem standing guard, meanwhile, didn’t seem to notice. It didn’t even move.

  On the other side, Talfi was helping Ranadar to his feet. Aisa and Kalessa had spread out to scout. All of them were still in their dwarfish g
lamours.

  Danr felt large and conspicuous, even in the darkness. His troll’s eyes could see quite well in the starlight, and it was nice not to be speared with pain every time he glanced at the sky, but it was nervous work being here. The great house loomed like a stone dragon over a treasure of carefully sculpted bushes and well-laid flower beds. Crickets, emboldened now that the rain had ended, chirped softly all about. Danr heard faint splashing.

  “This way,” he whispered, and led the others around the side of the big house. The windows were dark, thank Rolk, and they came across only a single golem, which ignored them completely.

  “We have to hurry,” the Ranadar dwarf said through clenched teeth. “The glamour will fail soon.”

  “Hold on.” The Talfi dwarf took his hand. “You can do it, Ran.”

  Aisa and Kalessa moved ahead without comment. Kalessa had her blade out. It was in the form of a curved sword—bronze so it wouldn’t bother Ranadar.

  In the rear garden, they found a large open space. A pavilion with a canvas roof had been erected there, and just past it lay both the mermaid’s tank, now empty, and a pool filled with water that reflected the stars. Danr’s heart gave a little jump. This had to be it, and no one seemed to be around. They could get out quickly, without trouble. Aisa would be happy, and then they could go off to find Grandfather Wyrm to regain the Kin’s power of the shape. For the first time in his life, Danr would be fully human, fully accepted, and able to live a normal life.

  Aisa hurried over to the stone-lined pool. Kalessa, however, caught up with her and yanked her back. “You do not know, sister, how the mermaid will react.”

  As if in response, a great splash erupted near Aisa’s feet. Aisa gasped. A moment later, the mermaid’s head and shoulders appeared amid a ring of ripples. The tattoos masking her face gave her an angry, savage look.

  “Who are you, dwarf?” she hissed.

  Aisa, still in her dwarfish disguise, knelt at the edge of the pool. “I am a human, not a dwarf. This is a spell that allows me and my friends to slip past the golem guards. My friends and I have come to bring you out of this place.”

  The mermaid considered this. “Any place is better than there. I will go with you.”

  Danr exhaled, and Aisa relaxed, too. He hadn’t thought the mermaid might refuse.

  “What is your name, not-dwarf?” The mermaid glided closer across the smooth water of the pool.

  “I am Aisa,” she said. “This is Ham—his name is Danr.” Aisa pointed at the others and made quick introductions. “I have long wished to actually touch a mermaid.”

  “My name is Ynara.” The mermaid put out a dripping hand. “Take my hand, cousin.”

  Aisa reached out. Danr discovered his heart was pounding. He understood how deeply important this was to her, and he felt proud and thrilled to stand next to her while she fulfilled one of her dreams. Her fingers stretched toward the mermaid’s.

  Ranadar screamed in pain. The dwarfish disguises vanished with a pop. Aisa, now human, snatched her hand back. Danr whipped around. Ranadar had gone down to the ground with the shaft of an arrow sticking out of his shoulder. Talfi shouted his name and knelt beside him.

  “An iron arrowhead,” Talfi cried. “They know we’re here!”

  “Intruders! Intruders!” A dozen rune-covered golems poured into the garden. Their molded faces and empty azure eyes were blank as stone, but they moved quickly, and they were stronger than even Danr. Kalessa managed three or four swings that carved pieces out of one golem before two others got her by the shoulders and disarmed her. Her blade thumped to the grass and changed back into a small knife. One golem grabbed Aisa, which sent Danr into a rage. He managed to pull the head off one golem, but four swarmed over him and forced him to his knees. Talfi hesitated, not sure if he should run or stay, and the moment cost him. A golem caught him in its stony grip. Ranadar proved no resistance whatsoever. The mermaid vanished to the bottom of the pool.

  Hector and Sharlee Obsidia strolled into the garden. Sharlee was holding a bow. Behind them came the dwarf, still dressed in red.

  “My golem!” the dwarf cried, and rushed over to the one Danr had pulled apart.

  “So glad you made it!” Hector boomed.

  “Darling! I wanted to say that,” admonished Sharlee.

  “You got to shoot the elf,” the man reminded her, “so I get to make the entrance. Next time we’ll do it the other way.”

  “Sharlee!” Aisa struggled in her golem’s implacable grip. “Why are you doing these things? I thought we were friends.”

  “Never, honey,” Sharlee purred. “I’m a little surprised you didn’t notice. Now you’re going to do as you’re told. Right down to the ship you take on your journey.”

  “What journey?” Danr demanded. The four golems held him with eight hands, all of them as hard and heavy as iron chains. Danr strained against them—he couldn’t help himself—but they wouldn’t move. “What do you want? Let Aisa go, and I’ll give it to you.”

  “I know you will,” said Hector. “And I’ll be quick, because I know you appreciate that.” He paused, giving lie to what he had just said. “We want you to bring us the power of the shape.”

  The words hung like poisoned water droplets in the air. No one spoke for a long moment. The friends traded confused looks.

  “So I think you need to explain a little more,” Talfi said from his own golem. “But let me get that arrow out of Ranadar first.”

  “And give him his glamour back? Hardly,” Sharlee said.

  Danr clenched his teeth. “Explain fast. You may think these golems are strong, but they’re only clay, and clay breaks.”

  “No … ,” moaned the dwarf. He was cradling the golem’s head in his lap.

  “This is the half-blood who looked at me with a true eye and told me how to behave.” Hector strolled over to Danr and looked up at him. “You may have beheaded a city of elves, boy, but it’s not a half-blood’s place to give me advice.”

  Calmly, as if he were picking a flower, he sank a fist into Danr’s groin. Pain burst through Danr and coiled in his lower abdomen like a cold snake. He tried to double over, but the golems held him upright.

  “Shit,” Talfi muttered.

  “I’ll give you some advice, troll boy,” Hector said in the same soft, amiable voice. “For months, I’ve had you watched, and I know you’ve spoken with Death since the Battle of the Twist. My wife told me that once I planted thoughts about the power of the shape in your head, you would go crying to Death about it. She has a soft spot for you, so she must have told you where to find it. You and your slattern will fetch the secret of the shape magic and you will bring it here to us, and only us.”

  “That is quite a chain of logic,” Aisa said. “You take a lot for granted.”

  “No,” Sharlee said. “You common people are terribly transparent to anyone who bothers to look.”

  “If we are so transparent,” Kalessa said in a too-even voice, “how did you miss the fact that we would never go on such a journey for a pile of wyrm shit like you?”

  Hector said, “Hokk, if you please.”

  Grumbling, the Hokk the dwarf produced a set of iron wrist shackles. With surprising deftness, he clapped them on Ranadar’s wrists and drew the arrow out of Ranadar’s shoulder. Ranadar cried out again, and once again, Talfi tried to escape his golem, to no avail.

  “Let me go to him!” Aisa demanded as blood ran down Ranadar’s shoulder.

  “Of course. We aren’t barbarians here,” Sharlee said. “You’ll find what you need in that pavilion over there.”

  To Danr’s surprise, the golem released Aisa, who shot Danr a look before she hurried into the pavilion and came out with bandages, dressings, and other supplies. Her golem followed, remaining a pace behind.

  “Here’s what’ll happen,” Hector said. “We’re giving you the mermaid. With our blessing.”

  “Because … ?” Danr asked suspiciously.

  “Because she will guide you to t
he shape magic,” Sharlee said. “That’s why we had her captured in the first place. We’ve already sent a number of slaves and servants and hirelings to find the secret, and none of them ever came back. But you, Danr—you and Aisa are heroes of the Twist. It’ll be a small thing to fetch us the power of the shape.”

  Danr worked his jaw. “There’s going to be a threat here somewhere, I know it.”

  Sharlee gestured to the golem holding Ranadar. It hoisted the elf over its shoulder and without ceremony, tossed Ranadar into the empty mermaid tank. Ranadar, bound by the iron shackles, was barely able to land without injuring himself. Talfi shouted Ranadar’s name.

  “Water,” said Sharlee to the golem. It trudged over to a well and windlass several paces away.

  “What are you doing?” Aisa demanded.

  The golem cranked the windless, hauled up a dripping bucket from the depths, extracted a cup from the bucket, and trudged over to the tank. It climbed the ladder, emptied the cup into the tank, and headed back to the well for more. Ranadar watched, but was too weak from the iron to do anything about it. A quiet horror stole over Danr.

  “At the rate the golem is working,” Hector said, “it will take four days and nine hours, give or take an hour, to fill the tank to the point where your friend won’t be able to breathe, though that will depend on how well he can swim with those shackles on.”

  “You’re the boy who lives forever,” Sharlee said to Talfi. “If he dies, you’re going to live a long, long time without your true love.”

  Hector asked Danr, “Will you let your best friend mourn a loss that will pain him even after your bones are dust?”

  It was a direct question. “No,” Danr said. “We’ll get you the power of the shape. If you promise to let Ranadar go when we bring it.”

  “Danr!” Aisa said. “We can’t trust them!”

  “We’ll find the power of the shape and bring it here,” Danr repeated dully. “You have my word. And you know I can’t lie.”

  “Indeed!” Hector clapped his hands. “I knew I could count on you! Didn’t I say they would do it, Sharlee?”

  “You did, darling. I’ve never met a more intelligent man.”