“You know it’s true. Hamzu,” Sharlee said.
The hurt on Danr’s face grew, and the awful black guilt pulled Aisa into the ground. He hated her, and he should. A person as weak as she was deserved no love. The blood from the wound on his arm and chest trickled down and spread across the grass in a scarlet sheet. He was hurt. Fires crackled in the trees and Fae screamed in her head. Behind it all stood Pendra with her sickle, ready to hand it to Aisa.
“You don’t deserve this power, Aisa. You’re afraid of it,” Sharlee said, echoing Aisa’s thoughts. “Tell us how to take it from you, and you won’t have to worry about it ever again.”
“I … ,” Aisa said. He didn’t love her anymore. It was all a great lie, had been from the beginning. She should have known from the beginning. How would she go on now?
“If you don’t tell us, dear, we’ll tear his arm off,” Hector said pleasantly.
A lie. They said her love was a lie. But Danr was a truth-teller. She could ask—but if she did, he would answer. He would give tell the absolute truth. Did she want to know if Sharlee’s words had stopped his love?
“Besides,” Sharlee added, “what do you care if we have it? What has the world done for you but give you pain?”
“Why are you listening to them, sister?” Kalessa wrenched uselessly at her fetters.
“Leave her alone.” Talfi got to his feet behind her, leaving the semiconscious Ranadar for the moment. “I’ll—”
“Do nothing, Talfi,” Sharlee said in a voice smooth as melted sugar. “If you move, our golems will rend your Fae lover to pieces while you watch.” And Talfi froze.
“Give us the secret, Aisa,” Hector said, “and we’ll reward you. How does ten thousand gold hands sound? You’ll be a wealthy woman, beyond the petty worries of a world that’s kicked you in the face. What do you owe the world?”
They were right. What did she owe the world? She had been kidnapped and enslaved and raped and be-glamoured. The Obsidia were offering a real reward in cold, hard coins. Death herself sent Aisa on pointless quests with no real reward except the loss of her Hamzu. The Nine could take the world and—
Then she knew. Hamzu. Danr. He would tell the truth. Sharlee and Hector were aware that Danr was a truth-teller. Why did they not ask him for the secret? Sharlee and Hector were manipulating her. Why?
Because they needed to neutralize her, get her on their side.
Aisa drew herself up. “You fear me,” she said. “You have always feared me. You know how strong I have become, and you need me on your side.”
“We’d be fools not to want you on our side, honey,” Sharlee said with a nod. “We’ll give you whatever you want—money, mansions, slaves—”
Aisa’s spine stiffened. Sharlee cut herself off, but too late. The reminder of the source of Sharlee’s wealth hung there, tainting the very air with poison. Aisa would never accept a reward from a slaver.
“Thank you, Sharlee,” she said.
This caught Sharlee off guard. “Thank you?” she repeated.
“For bringing out the truth. You tried to destroy my love for Danr and his love for me with a truth that became a lie because I hid it. You brought my truth into the open when I could not, and now I need no longer lie. For that I thank you.” Aisa took a deep breath and forced herself to face the truth. “Danr, do you still love me, despite what you have learned?”
There came only a tiny pause. “Of course I do,” Danr said from the golem’s arms. “Every day and always.”
Her heart swelled and she felt it join with his, swirl through the stars and stream together like paired comets. “And I love you. I will never join with the Obsidia.”
“Ah well,” Sharlee said. “It was worth a try. Danr, honey, how do we get the power of the shape?”
“You need to sip a bit of blood from someone else who has it,” he said promptly, “but it’ll only work if you have the talent.”
“Aw, no,” Talfi muttered.
“Is that all?” Hector rubbed his hands together. “That makes it easy enough.” He snapped his fingers at a golem. “Slice his throat and drain the blood into a barrel.”
“You do not need all of it!” Aisa protested. “A drop is enough, and he is already bleeding!”
“You got a lot of power from a bit of blood, honey,” Sharlee said. “I want to see what happens when I bathe in it.”
The golem strode toward Danr with a knife. Aisa recognized it as Kalessa’s. Another golem rolled an empty barrel toward him. Danr tried to fight again, but his arm was still broken and a patina of sweat coated his skin. He looked desperately at Aisa, and mouthed a single word:
Ynara.
And then he closed his left eye.
For a horrible moment, Aisa thought he was looking at her through his true eye. But that was his left eye, the closed one. He was giving her a message. Ynara. Aisa swallowed grief yet again. Ynara had died under the power of the shape, and now—
She had died. And Danr was calling attention to his true eye, the one that had only just now seen the Obsidia.
“Wait!” Aisa took a step forward. “I have changed my mind. I will join you.”
Hector held up a hand, and the golem with Kalessa’s knife halted. “Why would we care? We know the secret now.”
“But you do not know how to use it,” Aisa countered. “I do. I can teach you. I can show you how to use it properly.”
“Aisa, no,” Danr moaned. And she noticed it was a statement that could be taken any number of ways. It was not a lie.
“Why should we believe you?” Sharlee said.
“I have stood before Death and Grandfather Wyrm and lived to tell about both,” Aisa said. “You can trust me when I swear. If you take only a drop of Danr’s blood and then let him go, I will teach you how to use the power. I swear by Rolk and Kalina, the sun and the moon.”
Sharlee and Hector exchanged glances. “Wonderful!” Hector said.
He gave instructions to a golem, who plodded over, swiped its hand over Danr’s wound—his face went paler than Aisa thought possible—and plodded back to the Obsidia.
“What are you doing?” Talfi hissed.
“Saving us all, I think,” she hissed back.
Hector stared at the blood on the golem’s hand with ravenous greed. “We’ve been waiting so long for this,” he said in a voice that raised the hairs on Aisa’s arms. “You first, my love.”
“No, you, my darling,” Sharlee replied.
“Together, then,” Hector said. Together they lifted the golem’s hand to their lips and licked.
“Damn you!” Kalessa continued to tug at her fetters. “Vik and Halza devour your souls!”
“We’ll kill the orcish pig first,” Hector said. “Her safety wasn’t part of the bargain. Then the elf, and then Talfi.”
“Do you feel anything?” Sharlee said. “I don’t.”
Aisa held her breath and shot Danr a look. His pinched face gave her nothing.
“No change,” Hector said. “In every sense of the word.”
“I told you that very few have the talent,” Aisa said. “You may not.”
Hector’s face grew red. “Grick’s tits, do you take us for idiots? The talent ran strong in both our families before the Sundering! I have the talent! I can feel it in … in …”
He dropped to the ground. A dreadful yellow glow started in his midsection and spread to all his limbs. Hector squirmed in obvious and horrid pain on the grass.
“Darling!” Sharlee dropped beside him, her face a mask of terror. “What’s wrong?”
Hector made only a choked gargling sound. His right arm changed into a wing and then a chicken leg. His eyes bulged out of their sockets and turned into butterfly eye stalks, then sucked themselves back into his skull and migrated to the sides of his head. They widened and darkened, like those of a horse. His skin sprouted fur, then pulled it back and changed into leather scales. His legs went boneless, then turned into a glistening mass of jellyfish protoplasm that ex
ploded, covering Sharlee with steaming ooze and leaving Hector without lower limbs. Hector shuddered hard and went still.
“No,” Sharlee whispered. “Hector? Darling, speak to me!”
“Ynara,” Danr said. “She died the same way.”
“You saw it!” Sharlee rounded on him. Tears streaked her face. “You knew the power would kill him and you said nothing!”
“You didn’t ask,” Danr said.
“I’ll kill you!” Sharlee screamed. “The golems will—”
A set of wrist shackles shot across the courtyard and caught her full in the forehead. Sharlee dropped soundlessly to the grass with a splat into her husband’s protoplasm. Talfi stepped carefully around Aisa with a pale Ranadar beside him.
“That shut her up,” he said. “Sorry it took so long, but I had to get Ranadar out of those shackles.”
“He has a fine arm on him,” Ranadar observed.
“And we are grateful,” Aisa said.
The golems, bereft of orders, went motionless except for the one still trudging back and forth between the well and the broken tank. Aisa ran to Danr, who remained in the grip of the golem that had broken his arm. Pain twisted his face.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“No,” he said truthfully. “It’s like someone dipped my arm in lava and I think I’m going to faint. Thank you for making me say that.”
“I am so sorry,” she said, working at the golem’s impassive hands. “I should have told you the truth before.”
“Do you really see blood from the Battle of the Twist?”
The golem’s fingers were stubborn, and it was difficult to force them open without hurting Danr further. Aisa finally picked up Ranadar’s wrist shackles and smashed at the golem’s forearm. Talfi and Ranadar, who was recovering steadily, were gingerly searching Sharlee’s clothes and Hector’s body for the key to Kalessa’s chain while she fumed under the tree.
“You killed all those people. No—” She put a finger on his lips to hush him. “I know it had to be done, and if we could go back in time, I would have you do it over again. Know that I still love you, my Hamzu.”
Smash, smash, smash. The clay cracked. Danr grunted but didn’t speak. The silence stretched between them, pulling unexpected tears from Aisa.
“I am not strong enough to do what needs doing,” she said. “This is why the visions come to me. I had no strength when you were swinging the Iron Axe, and I had no strength when the world converged on you afterward. I had no strength to sacrifice Ynara so the merfolk could have the power of the shape.”
“You’re plenty strong,” Danr gasped. “I lean on you. And now you have the power of the shape.”
“A power I can barely use without exhausting myself,” she said. “I have no real strength.”
The arm finally broke off. When it did, the golem’s fingers released Danr’s arm. With that accomplished, he was able to wriggle painfully out of the golem’s other hand and sit panting on the ground. When Aisa came over to examine him, he took her hand.
“Tell me now what you meant by a sacrifice,” he said.
She looked into his eyes, the deep brown ones that had taken her through more than a world, and at last she told him the rest. She told him of Pendra, and the garden, and the sickle, and Ashkame. And when she was done, she realized Talfi and Kalessa and Ranadar were there as well.
“And you say you have no strength,” Kalessa said in awe. “The Gardeners themselves want you to—”
“I do not want that,” Aisa retorted. Lightning forked in the distance and dark, wet clouds piled high. “I have watched Ynara die because of me. I will not watch others die.”
“I love you no matter what you decide,” Danr said stoutly. “We love you.”
Aisa’s eyes filled like the rain clouds. She dashed at them. “A fine thing to be surrounded by so much love after so much hate. But now I need to check your arm, Danr, and—”
Danr kissed her as thunder crackled through the sky.
• • •
Sweat streamed down Willem’s skin, and he ached from the iron in the manufactory, but he forced himself to stand upright, the high priest and harbormaster of Balsia. Everyone would know someone was in charge, everyone would know the world was properly ordered.
He stood on the steps before the crowd of Whitecaps, exactly ninety-nine men carefully chosen for their fighting prowess and command presence, all wearing the resplendent blue-and-white lacquer Willem had chosen exactly for this moment. No iron. Willem himself wore his increasingly tattered, short robes and cloak as if they were a suit of bloodied armor and kept the hood drawn like a helmet. More than half the battle was acting as if you’d already won. The other half was simple planning, and Willem had been planning for a long, long time.
From inside the manufactory came heavy clunks and thuds. The Whitecaps, encased in their lacquered armor, were too disciplined to react, and Willem swelled with a pride that momentarily overtook his aches and pains. These were his men, and in a few moments, this would be his city, and then his world. Under his hand, the world would become as regular and even as the tide through the simple expedient of destroying anyone or anything that wasn’t.
“I’m not here to give a pretty speech,” Willem said. “I’m here to tell you the prince is coming. He intends to dismantle this temple stone by stone, bring it down around our ears. He wants to throw us into prison while our Lady of the Oceans weeps salt tears and the twin war gods exult in our loss. He wants to put my head on a pike at the city gates.”
Outrage rippled through the men, and several put their hands on their new bronze swords.
Willem said, “But I’m also here to tell you that we won’t let that happen. I won’t let it happen.”
“Father Nikol!” barked Punsle at the first man in line. “Prepare your own hand to receive the blessing! The rest form a line behind.”
Father Nikol stepped smartly forward, unable to keep a shadow of pride off his face at being called first. With his bare hand, Willem made the sign of the Sea Goddess over Nikol’s head, then laid his palm on the man’s cheek. Nikol stiffened in surprise at the unexpected gesture, then relaxed and stepped backward with a look of wonder and adoration on his face. The elven glamour had him full in its grip.
“Excellency?” Nikol whispered.
“Will you obey me and only me, now and forever?” Willem intoned.
“I will die to defend you.” Nikol clasped Willem’s hand in both of his own, weeping tears of joy. “If only you will let me.”
“The Sea Goddess is pleased, my son,” said Willem. Nikol staggered away, overjoyed and not knowing how to express himself.
“Father Fenrid!” Punsle called, and Father Fenrid came forward to receive the same blessing.
When it was all done, all ninety-nine men gazed up the stairs at Willem in adulation. He faced them, took a deep breath, and cast back his hood, revealing himself as a full-blooded elf.
There was a moment of motionless silence. Willem’s heartbeat pounded in his ears. For a moment, he was sure the glamour had failed. Then, to a man, the throng knelt, and every man put his hand on his heart. Exulting in this new power, Willem spread his arms over them in benediction.
By now, word had gotten out about Willem’s location, and messenger acolytes were piling up at the bottom of the stairs, all of them from Principals who commanded the walls and were sending updates or asking for orders.
From the front gates of the temple came a thunderous boom. One of the messenger acolytes, bolder than the others, dashed up the stairs. She hesitated when she saw Willem’s new shape until Willem touched her face and her expression cleared.
“Excellency,” she said, “I must report. The prince’s army has surrounded the temple. They have armored battering rams at the gates and they are bringing siege engines. We are pouring pitch and loosing arrows. What are your orders?”
Another boom.
“Excellency,” said another acolyte, and Willem touched
him as well. “We have word that the prince is in negotiation with the trolls. In exchange for weapons and armor, they will fight on his side against us. When the sun comes down, they join his army. What are your orders?”
“Excellency,” Punsle said, “it would seem the odds are very much against us. Should I prepare the emergency exit plan?”
In answer, Willem raised a fist. Behind him, the roof of the manufactory crashed upward. People fled in terror, and Willem pursed his lips at the chaos, temporary though it was. Wood and slate cracked and splintered, and a great form more than five stories tall heaved itself upright from its kneeling position, shedding bits of scaffolding as it went. The great golem rose high over the city, its three-foot azure eyes glowing ocean blue. Scarlet streams dripped down its head in a bloody baptism. The golem cracked its knuckles with the sound of snapping oak branches. Punsle and the few remaining onlookers gaped in a mixture of awe and terror. Willem couldn’t help the thrill that went through him at the sight.
“The half-blood was half right,” he said to Punsle. “I wasn’t building an army of golems. I was building an army of golem.”
“Yes, Excellency,” Punsle whispered, still staring up and up. And up. “What do you intend?”
“First we—I—destroy the prince’s army,” Willem said. “Then the entire city of Balsia.”
Now Punsle did jump. “The city, Excellency?”
“So it can be rebuilt, Punsle, in a fine and orderly fashion. Always think bigger, Punsle. Always.”
“YOUR … ORDERS … EXCELLENCY?” asked the golem in a voice like an avalanche.
Thunder boomed. With a laugh, Willem twisted himself up to the golem’s shoulder.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
We must kill her,” Kalessa said.
Sharlee lay unconscious beneath the tree. Hector’s grotesque corpse bubbled next to her. With no one to command them, the golems stood scattered about the grassy courtyard, motionless as the clay statues they were.
Danr closed his eyes—both of them—for a tired moment. His arm had been dipped in melted iron and it was starting to swell. “Must we?” he said. “I’ve had enough of death, and I have a bad kind of feeling we’re in for more without adding to it here.”
Blood Storm: The Books of Blood and Iron Page 29
