And then she paused. What if this failed her? What if she was too weak? What if Danr was not strong enough?
The harbormaster’s golem destroyed another house. Blood had spattered it to the shins. Aisa straightened her back. That was what the harbormaster wanted her to think, what Sharlee and Hector wanted her to think, what the Fae wanted her to think. Before, she’d had the time and luxury to wallow in her weakness, but now there was no time to think about such things. There was only time to act. She would be strong because she had to be, and wasn’t that always the way of strength?
Aisa inhaled, expanding her chest. She pushed outward and upward. And she GREW.
It was easier than taking on the shape of an animal. This was her own shape, but bigger. Bones lengthened and thickened. Muscles flowed like soft clay and grew. Her head came up to the rooftops, and it seemed to her that the city was growing smaller. Aisa expanded, up and up and up. Her clothes shredded and fell away. Kalessa’s shape-shifting sword expanded with her. When Aisa’s eyes reached the rooftops, her strength faltered, and she felt dry inside, like a glass suddenly gone empty. This was different from changing into an animal or a mermaid. Those shapes required a single change, and no magic to maintain. But this shape was more impossible. Her bones were too heavy to stand upright, her muscles too thick to move. She needed to draw on magic to keep the giant shape together, but already she was running out.
Then she felt the soft touch of her connection with Danr again. She looked down at him, so lithe and slender, and he waved at her. He closed his eyes, and she felt power flow from him. It knocked on her skin, and she accepted it, drinking as greedily as a baby from a bottle. He went down on one knee as she grew a little taller, and then the new power stopped. Danr panted in the street. Talfi and Ranadar rushed over to help him, but there was nothing for them to do. The power flagged. It was not enough. Aisa felt herself begin to collapse back down toward her original size.
The golem’s head came around as it and the harbormaster caught sight of her.
“AISA,” it boomed. “YOU WILL NOT … STOP ME. HALZA … WILL GRIND YOUR BONES.”
Aisa shrank farther as the golem stomped toward them.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Danr tried to come upright, but even with Talfi’s help, he couldn’t gain his feet. He was simply too weak. Power rushed out of him and into Aisa, but he had already given her so much today already, and he was tired, so tired. The rain pushed him down, streaming over his head and down his arms. His heart slowed in his chest.
“I won’t,” he whispered to the cobblestones. “I won’t give in.”
But he had nothing more to give.
The stones shook under the golem’s heavy steps, and the dreadful voice laughed. “HALF-BLOODS. ALL THE … TRASH. HALF … THE POWER.”
“Vik!” Talfi muttered. “That thing is even bigger close up. Ran—what can you do?”
“I have no blood from its maker,” Ranadar said. “It will not notice my glamours.”
“Retreat!” Kalessa barked.
Aisa, still naked, stepped between them with slow, heavy steps of her own, but she was half the size of the golem, and she had no more chance than Danr did. Danr looked up and up and saw the harbormaster in his own shape clinging to the golem’s shoulder at its ear. The harbormaster said something, and the golem drew back its hand to swat Aisa aside. Danr’s heart twisted in his chest.
And then from nowhere, a soaked wolfhound dashed over to press its ribs against his shins. Two wet ravens flapped in a heavy circle around his head. Remembering the slave market, he closed his right eye. Instantly, his true eye saw the freed slaves in their true shapes. The wolfhound was the woman, and both ravens were men, and it was strange, indeed it was, to see the men fly in circles. The wolfhound woman looked into his eyes. He saw gratitude there while the raven men croaked around his head, and he felt all three of them, their blood, their energy, their lives, shared with his.
The wolfhound nodded once, and with a soft sound like a cloud tearing in two, their power rushed into him, filling him with sunlight and thunder. Danr came upright and raised a fist. The power of the shape, the power of the blood, cascaded into him, through him, in an invisible river that rushed straight into Aisa. Her arm snapped up, and the flat of Kalessa’s sword caught the golem’s arm. Aisa grew. She was nearly to the golem’s chest. The golem hesitated, unsure how to react. Rainwater ran through its giant runes like rivers, but somehow failed to wash away the blood that stained its forehead. Aisa, still growing, pushed hard, and the golem was forced back a step. Rubble crunched under its foot.
“Vik!” Kalessa said. “She has become Belinna herself!”
More lightning forked across the sky, followed by thunder like the shout of an angry volcano. Wind tore down the streets, lifting loose rubble and sending terrified people in several panicked directions. In the meager shelter of the low wall, the wolfhound flopped at Danr’s feet and the bedraggled ravens perched on his shoulders. Their power streamed through him into Aisa, but he felt more than that—he felt others beyond them, others they had shared blood with, and still others they had shared with. With his true eye, he could see it, see the silver threads of power that connected them all. In all, he felt more than a hundred people, two or even three steps removed. Some were easy to touch, others were stubborn and distant. What would happen if he touched that much power?
Aisa’s growth had slowed. Her dark skin glistened with rainwater, and her muscles stood out as she inexpertly wielded the enormous sword, trying to push the golem back. The harbormaster seemed to have recovered from his surprise, however, and the golem was now pressing forward again. It still had a full head on Aisa, and it was as tireless as stone, while Danr felt the tremendous amount of power it took for Aisa to hold such a great shape together.
“YOU WILL … DIE, NAKED SLUT,” proclaimed the golem, “AND HALZA WILL … DEVOUR YOUR … SOUL.”
“I am friends with Death,” Aisa said in a voice grown rich and deep. “We will open her door wide for your fat ass, Harbormaster.”
The golem drew back a great fist and struck. It caught Aisa on the chin. Her jaw slammed shut, and Danr felt the pain as his own. The wind screamed with her voice as she reeled back and fell. The earth rumbled when she went down and took several houses with her. One of her outflung hands thudded onto the cobblestones only a few yards ahead of him on the street. Rubble scattered everywhere. Talfi and Kalessa leaped back, pulling Ranadar with them.
“Aisa!” Danr felt he should hope everyone in the houses had escaped, but he could only worry about her. Anger at the harbormaster colored his vision red. The harbormaster said he wanted to help Balsia, but he was like every other ruler Danr had met, hiding a desire for power under kind words. He abandoned the shape-shifted animals and ran toward Aisa’s giant hand.
Aisa needed more power. Already, she was shrinking again, and Danr could feel the trio of shape-shifted animals growing tired as well. The power he had felt just beyond them beckoned with a silver song. The storm swirled and howled and pelted him with rain. Recklessly, Danr reached out as he ran. He reached through the trio whose blood he shared and toward the other shape-shifters he had felt. He reached into the web of blood and the power it contained, and just as he reached Aisa’s outstretched hand, he touched it at once.
Magic thundered into him, and he cried out in pain. Every nerve raked raw. His skin split open. Lava poured over the open places. He screamed and screamed. Raindrops sizzled when they touched him. He was dimly aware of Talfi and Ranadar and Kalessa all at his side, but they could do nothing. The ravens and the wolfhound slumped to the sodden stones, unable to move, and still the pain tore through him. The power was more than his body could hold. He was clutching the sun, and it roasted him alive because he wasn’t strong enough.
Aisa’s head turned. He could have stepped straight into her kind, pain-filled eyes. They filled his universe, and some of his agony lessened. “My Hamzu,” she whispered. “What are you doing?”
You’re not strong enough now, he told himself through the pain. But you could be.
He knew. Even filled with the terrible pain, he knew. A half troll was much stronger than this small human form. All he had to do was take back the shape.
But no—he was trapped forever in human form. Grandfather Wyrm had said he could only change shape … change shape …
White-hot pain ripped every nerve, dripped poison and acid into each individual muscle fiber. It wasn’t true. Grandfather Wyrm had said he would only have one other shape, and Danr had assumed he would be able to change shape only once. He could go back to being a half troll.
Danr became aware that he was screaming. After everything he had gone through, everything he had worked for, he should give up this new shape? It wasn’t right. He had fought for this shape, fought to become human at last, for them. For Aisa. How could he give it up?
I love you, not your shape.
The memory of those words drilled through him now. Who had he really taken a human shape for? What was the real reason he didn’t want to give it up? Tears that mixed many kinds of pain ran down his newly human face.
But of course there was no choice. Aisa needed him in his birth shape, and he would do it for her.
The burning pain devoured him from the inside. Somehow he pulled a tiny bit of the power and called to his birth shape. His body answered to it easily. His muscles thickened, his head expanded, his chest barreled, dark hair sprouted. The splint and his clothes tore off him in rags, and in less than a second, he took his original half-troll shape. Even his broken arm was healed.
Aisa was struggling to her feet amid the rubble of the houses. The golem drew back a foot and kicked her in the side. The crunch sounded like a river of breaking bones. Part of her rib cage stove in. Another kick broke Aisa’s arm and sent Kalessa’s sword spinning away down the street, tearing apart more buildings until it shrank and vanished. Aisa’s scream of pain raked up a howling rage in Danr. He threw back his head and roared a troll’s roar to the skies. Blood power thundered through him, but his body was strong again. He roared a second time and sprinted across Aisa’s hand, up her arm, and onto her shoulder. Golden energy flowed out of his hands and feet and into Aisa’s skin.
The golem leaned over, its crushing fist ready to fall. But Aisa grew again. Danr felt her expand beneath his feet. Broken bones reformed and muscles knit together. She caught the golem’s fist and sat up, forcing the golem back. Danr barely grabbed hold of her ear in time to keep his place on Aisa’s shoulder. Sheets of rain crashed over all of them. The ground swooped into the dizzying distance. From this vantage point, Danr could see that big chunks of the city had been razed. Ships huddled like frightened dolphins in the harbor, and people surged through the crowded streets in a desperate attempt to flee the fighting giants. Even the army was fleeing, leaving toy-sized catapults behind. Was this how the Nine saw the world?
Danr sent an endless stream of power into Aisa, and she surged to her feet, now as tall as the golem itself. Danr stared across the distance between them at the harbormaster, the power continuing to flow through him. They were mirror images—the small man on the shoulder of a great golem, the half troll on the shoulder of the huge human.
“YOU … CAN HELP ME … DESTROY THE CITY,” said the harbormaster through the golem. “YOU … CAN HELP ME REBUILD IT. YOU … CAN BE MY QUEEN.”
“Men always say that when they are losing,” Aisa boomed in her new voice. And she stiff-armed the golem. The golem staggered backward, and the earth shuddered. Danr surged with pride. All around the city, he felt the other people, the slaves who had shared his blood. Some of them had managed to change their shapes, and it was easy to take their power. Most had not been able to change their shapes, and taking their power was harder, but he did it anyway. Many of them were growing tired.
The harbormaster and golem rallied and came at Aisa. The two titans slugged at each other like thunderheads in battle while over them crashed near-continuous lightning and thunder and Danr desperately clung to her, feeding her power. Aisa tried to knock the harbormaster off the golem’s shoulder. Each time the golem parried her fists with its forearms and dealt Aisa a harsh blow in return. The golem shattered her nose and broke ribs, and each time Danr cried out while the harbormaster cheered. But after each punch, Aisa changed her shape just a little and healed the damage. Aisa struck back, smashing at the golem with fists and feet. Once she sent the golem to its knees, but it scrambled upright. Bruises darkened her knuckles, and blood ran from her fingers, but she kept fighting.
“YOU … WILL LOSE,” the golem said. “IT IS IN … YOUR BLOOD.”
It—he—was right. Danr was panting now. The people he was drawing power from were drained nearly dry now, and the golem showed no signs of slowing. Aisa hadn’t even cracked it. The moment Danr stopped feeding her power, she wouldn’t be able to hold the giant shape together any longer and the golem would crush her to pulp.
As if in answer to this thought, the power stuttered and dimmed. Aisa staggered. The golem took advantage of weakness to deliver a gut punch that drove the air from Aisa’s lungs. The world tilted and Danr nearly lost his grip on her ear. He was so close to the harbormaster that he could see the ice in the other man’s eyes. Danr closed his right eye.
“You’re losing, half-bloods,” the elven harbormaster shouted. “Your race is weak, your kind is weak, your blood is weak. You don’t deserve to walk the earth!”
Lightning flashed so close that Danr smelled ozone. It illuminated the fresh, glistening blood on the golem’s head just as the thunder smashed the sky. In Danr’s true eye, the blood glowed with the same power as the blood that flowed through the harbormaster’s delicate veins, connecting them. And Danr knew what he had to do.
• • •
Aisa recovered from the stagger and came upright. Pain and release washed through her enormous body in waves. One moment, she felt the pain from a ham-fisted blow. In the next, the wound was healed. She was sweating, for all that she was naked in a rainstorm, and fatigue was beginning to pull at her. This stupid man, the harbormaster, and his indefatigable golem, kept coming. She ducked under a punch and rammed into the golem with her shoulder, still trying to dislodge the harbormaster. The harbormaster clung to his perch even as the golem fell back a step, crushing more of the very city she was trying to save. She couldn’t even think about the people. It made her sick. But she had to fight him, bring him down, or he would crush all of Balsia into dust and turn himself into the world’s worst despot.
The power coursed through her, and she reveled in her strength. Unlike the Battle of the Twist, where she had been forced to watch, Aisa herself was fighting. Hamzu poured power into her, and she sizzled with it, felt the lightning in her fists and feet. All the anger and fear she had felt, all the rage and terror, came out of her now, and she directed it at the golem. She kicked its thigh with her hard heel, and this time the clay actually cracked with a satisfying crunch.
And then, a few paces away, she saw Kalessa’s sword, lying in the abandoned street as small as a pin. Where Kalessa, Talfi, and Ranadar had gone, she didn’t know, and she prayed they were all right. While the golem was off balance, she leaned down to scoop the sword up, and felt Danr cling harder to her ear.
“Are you all right, my Hamzu?” she asked, her voice as quiet as an avalanche.
“I’m … fine,” he said in her ear. “But we can’t kill it, Aisa.”
She plucked the sword from the ground with her thumb and forefinger. It exploded to giant size in her grip. She swung it once, twice. Oh, this was delightful.
“We can, my Hamzu.” Aisa aimed a blow at the harbormaster, but she missed and struck the golem on its upper arm instead. It chipped, and she felt the impact shock in her arm and shoulder. Rain lashed at her, but she ignored it.
“I’m running out of magic, Aisa,” Danr said. “We won’t last long.”
And with his words, the magic fell away, just as it had done a
moment ago. She staggered again, and the sword grew heavy in her hands. As if in answer to her need, the blade changed into a small knife. Her strength began to fade. She cast about for a way to bring the golem down quickly, but nothing came to her.
“Aisa,” Danr panted, “it’s the blood. You can stop the golem with blood. My blood.”
Blood?
Aisa’s eye went irresistibly to the bloody runes atop the golem’s head. What could he possibly mean? How could his blood—
A chill slid over Aisa’s skin. She glanced sideways at Danr, clinging to her naked shoulder, so small but at the same time so strong. When had he taken his original shape? She hadn’t noticed. His trollish form was a comfortable shape, one she liked more and more as time went on, and she was glad to see him in it, half-blood or not.
Half-blood.
Aisa snapped her head around to look at the golem again. It was four or five paces away and advancing. Hokk said when a golem was completed, the owner smeared Stane blood into the head runes. Did that mean anyone who smeared more Stane blood into the runes would gain control of a golem?
The moment the thought entered her head, she knew it was true.
Can you wield the sickle without flinching?
The voice in her head was soft, insistent. The golem stomped across wet, slippery rubble toward her, and the magic that kept her shape together was fading again. She could feel her big, powerful shape shrinking, her new strength draining out of her. Danr, her quiet Hamzu, tugged her ear insistently.
“He’ll destroy the city and kill thousands more,” he said softly. “It’s the only way. A small sacrifice.”
Can you wield—
No! Anger thundered over her. “Leave me alone! Why must we always make the sacrifice? Why must we be the ones that bear the pain?”
The golem advanced another step. The harbormaster laughed his chalkboard laugh. “YOU ARE … SMALLER, HALF-BLOOD. HALF THE SIZE … ALL THE FILTH.”
“Aisa, we don’t have time to talk about it,” Danr said. “We have to do it now.”
Blood Storm: The Books of Blood and Iron Page 31
