by Steve Rzasa
No response. Well, perhaps I exaggerate. Several men chuckle outright and a handful more make rude gestures.
One nearest me, frightfully obese and smelling about as pleasant as mule’s stall, spits on my shoes. It dribbles down the black leather. “Pox on you and your king.”
This earns him a chorus of hearty cheers. I sigh. Such is the rabble out on the frontier isles. It’s terribly difficult to keep discipline.
But I shall try.
I raise my right arm from beneath the cloak. All laughter ceases. My new arm does have that effect on people, presumably because it is made of a silvery metal. The small orb at the shoulder glows a soft yellow.
“Fulmine icta,” I mutter.
Lightning bolts crackle out from the orb, which now glows a brilliant white. They scamper down my arm and leap eagerly from my fingers. Bolts dance across the man’s body, and he screams.
Mercifully he doesn’t prattle on forever. The screams end in a guttural choke. He slumps to the floor, smoke rising from his flesh. The stench is sickly sweet, and overpowers even the boldest men in the tavern who’d mocked me. Someone retches behind me. Ah, these new recruits can be delicate.
“Let me ask again.” My voice booms around the tavern. “The brothers Lundstrom. Where are they?”
The bartender is a reptiloid. Disgusting creature. It hisses something unintelligible and points up a dark staircase at the back corner.
I bow before him and toss a pouch of coins his way. They land with a heavy thud on the bar. “Your lord and king Octavian III thanks you, kind servant.”
The lieutenant follows me upstairs. The rest of our men take up stations outside and inside the tavern. None shall happen to slip out while I’m occupied.
Only one of the brothers Lundstrom is upstairs. Haller. Not the most cunning of the bunch, but since he is the largest that makes him the leader by default. He’s fast asleep, sprawled across a bed, arms akimbo and half covered by a rough woolen blanket. Drool stains the lumpen pillow under his equally lumpen head. The girl with him doesn’t care a whit, I’d imagine.
They didn’t even lock the door. Typical frontier scum.
“Haller!” I shout. “Where is the boy?”
I catch a glimpse of his face, expression startled and skin pink, before I upend the entire bed with my metal arm. The wood frame cracks and splinters, dumping Haller onto the floor. “Is your hearing gone? Where is the boy? For I do not see him in this room, so unless you have him packaged for me somewhere…”
The girl screams. She pulls the bedsheet close to her chest and scurries back into a corner. I point my finger at her. Sparks skittered around my hand. “Out, now.”
She moves faster than the jackrabbits my father and I used to hunt.
“Strathern!” Haller’s out of breath, scrambling upright. He wears leather breeches and grabs a blood-stained gray tunic from under the wreckage. “They… we had him. By Thor, he was right there in front of us! And then this ship captain comes along… They had a vulpex! I tried to fight off the beast but it was too strong. Lars is dead!”
His brother is dead, and he’s sharing a bed with some tavern fairy. Why does that not surprise me? I grasp him about the neck with my metal hand and hoist him up. Together we rise. Despite being a head taller than me he dangles there, choking. “This doesn’t sound like the answer I want. Who took him?”
“Bowen… Cord. Ship is … the Sleet.”
“Where is the magi’s boy?”
“Gone … back … to … Applemont.”
By sky’s fire.
With a growl of fury, I throw him through the wall. Plaster and wood shatter. His yelp is short lived. He crashes into the wall of the building across the street. There’s enough blood I know he’s dead. Well, that and the fact that his head is caved in to half its normal size is more than an adequate hint.
I whirl on my lieutenant. “Make ready for sail. Take whatever provisions you need.”
“Yes, sire.”
He leaves immediately. I stand in the opening I’ve made in the wall. Wind blows across my face. It is times like this I wish I were back home, checking the seams of cloudship sails with my brothers and sisters. The laughter and joy. We were a happy clan.
I leap down through the opening. My arrival jostles the soldiers. Mud sprays all about. When I rise, my glare rakes them.
I’m not looking forward to a long voyage in the air, and they’d best be on their toes lest they want to incur my wrath.
My name is Strathern. I am the Doorward for His Majesty Octavian III, king of all Northamber, seated in the royal palace at Pons Aelius these nine years. My job is to protect the king’s property, and by his magnanimous interpretation of the law of the land, this means relics of rare power that he does not yet possess.
The accursed boy Luc may know where to find the most powerful one of all.
THE NINTH CHAPTER
~
Bowen
IT’S MORE THAN A WEEK to reach the broad plains that are home to Jasna Góra. It’s a startling thing, so sail for days over nothing but deep blue water and scattered islands that dot the waves, both far below and high above, then cross a long, sinuous string of gray sand. Seeing our shadow ripple across endless rolling hills and green fields takes adjusting.
Changes in scenery aside, the voyage passes without incident. When deep in my slumber, though, I hear the roar of the golem mingled with the howls of wind through Sleet’s rigging.
Luc keeps to himself. Not even Gridley can lift him from his doldrums, try as he may. I call him to work about the deck as needed, and he complains not. Niall, thankfully, does not berate the lad. This perhaps has less to do with his volition than Ariya’s periodic glowering in his direction.
We emerge from the clouds twenty miles from the great library. Here the sky is so clear I can see Jasna Góra sitting on a vast field of green, a white jewel floating on an emerald sea of farms. Its bell tower, dark and forbidding, reaches to the sky without care for the white and gray domes and slanted orange roofs huddled at its base. It is all encircled by a steep, thick wall of masonry with four sharp points, one at each corner. They look steep enough to deter raiders from scaling their heights and slanted enough to deflect the most vigorous cannonades.
“The way is clear, Captain.” Ariya soars alongside, showing no concern that the ground is still a thousand feet below us. “There are a few other ships ahead. None whose sails I recognize yet.”
“Keep your eyes on them. I’d like to know if we have friend or foe among them.” I bear to port on the alter-wheel. Catch a strong gust coming from the north-northwest. Sleet’s sails go taut as they fill and she lunges ahead. The surge beneath my feet tells me she’s riding well today, content with her rigging.
“Straight on, then.” Niall reloads his musket. “The pork’s been far too salty this time ‘round. That’s what we get for buying Bristol-on-Sky.”
“Whatever is your point?”
“My point is the sooner we land, the sooner I eat of good food.”
“Patience, old friend. You’d best stow your musket. The brethren do not allow weapons on their soil. You’ll have to be patient, both with them and me.” I grin. “We’re taking the Pauper’s Canyon.”
Niall frowns. He crosses to the rail. I know what he sees. The canyon twists below like a snake, winding among the hills until it cuts down through rock as deep as five hundred feet. I know every depth, every turn, and every pine needle on every branch.
I give the rise wheel a steady turn. Sleet dives toward the canyon. My gut lurches, and I couldn’t be happier.
Niall yelps and braces himself on a rope. Ariya laughs. She turns twice, still far above the sails, and folds her wings. She plunges like a dagger, white feathers flashing in the sun. I always worry for a spell when she does it, that she won’t pull up in time, but she recovers. Her body gracefully spins into a leisurely glide.
I let Sleet settle into her run down the canyon with considerably more room to spare.<
br />
Down here in the canyon the wind funnels between steep walls of pale tan stone. Striations of black cover stretch after stretch, cutting up splotches of red, as if a giant artist wanted to show off his grand work in this hidden place. Pines cling to the ledges, crowding each for the sun and water. The river Marose is a thick ribbon of blue so dark it’s black except for where the whitewater churning around jagged boulders break the surface.
Niall grouses about my piloting but I pay him no mind. I could navigate this gorge blind if I had to. Sleet soars down the canyon as if invited, riding along the winds with grace. I catch a glimpse of the broad green plain ahead through the mouth.
We burst out of the canyon walls into the rolling hills. Villages dot the landscape, a few homes clustered hither and yon at the bends of the river, plus more hunkered down among the lingering edges of the forest.
Ariya swoops near. “I don’t recognize the flags on those ships, other than they mark the owners as being Arabs. Appears they are a convoy.”
She’s right. There are five ships, all xebecs of the same slender hulls and crescent moon sails. Flowing script that I cannot translate, even with the aid of my spyglass, makes for a lovely decoration in violet on tan sails. All five are moored to docking platforms that stretch out from the top of Jasna Góra’s walls.
“Arab traders at a library?” Niall says. “Have they nothing left to barter or sell in their own lands?”
“They likely bring their own knowledge for trade,” I say. “The priests are as fervent for knowledge as they are for worship.”
“You’ve brought us to a library run by priests?” Niall groans. “So the likelihood of them having a decent tavern is next to nil.”
I laugh. “Be of good cheer, Niall. No taverns, but they enjoy a glass of wine as much as the next man or vulpex.”
I find us an empty slip near the docked convoy and bring Sleet in to hover alongside them. Soon a long gangway extends out from the walls, pushed on rollers by burly young acolytes in brown robes. Several cast mooring lines across to us. Niall and Ariya tie us off as I hold Sleet steady.
Luc meets me at the gangway. He seems of better cheer. At least he smiles again. “Are you ready to find some answers, lad?” I ask.
He furrows his brow, though his smile remains. “The answers you want are not ones I can give you.” With that he bounds down the gangplank, once more a youth with exuberant energy and not the mysterious boy whose statements perplex me.
Gridley rubs up against my leg. I bend to the knee and give him a good scratch. “Is he all well, boy? You’ve kept close watch on him.”
His tongue wags, and he cocks his head aside as if to say, “I don’t rightly know.”
I sigh. “Well. Best we keep an eye on him, eh?”
Gridley barks. I thump him heartily on the back and he races down the gangplank in pursuit of Luc. Laughter drifts back to me as Gridley licks at his fingers.
The winds blowing up the sanctuary walls are pleasantly warm. I follow them down, the slap of my saber in its scabbard reassuring against my leg beneath the cloak. Niall trots up to me. “What pray tell did the pup mean by that? About answers, I should say. I heard every word.”
“Nary an idea.”
“Glad to see you’ve thought this all through.”
“Calm yourself. We’re among friends here.” My heart warms at the remembrance.
“I’ve not a single solitary good memory of my encounters with the priests of the Most High. So excuse my surliness.”
“Surliness? I assumed that was your normal jovial manner.”
Niall guffaws.
A bellow of greetings reaches my ears. A priest holds up a hand in greeting. His robe is white and vestments crimson. Were he not thus clad I’d still recognize him, for he’s as thin and tall as a pike. The wind blows a mop of brown hair out of place. His grin is a beacon amidst the dark forest of his beard. At the center of his chest is the emblem of Jasna Góra—an ornate gold cross, shaped as an X, set on three interlocking circles.
“Bowen Cord!” His voice is deep and cheery, with a musical lilt. He could be singing a hymn at the top of his lungs and he’d sound just as exuberant. “By heaven! Have you really come to haunt us with that dour countenance?”
“Only because I know it pains you thus to see me again.”
We both dissolve into chuckles by the time we reach the end of the gangplank and enfold each other in a backslapping hug. Niall lingers to the side, hand on the hilt of his katana. I know he’s swept the area with an intense gaze I’ve seen him level a thousand times before. Ariya alights with a whisper of wings behind him, Gridley and Luc.
“My word, it is good to see you.” The priest beams over my shoulder. “Gridley! Come hither.”
He barks and lunges for the priest. Gridley knows well from whom he can get the best ever scratch.
“Father, let me introduce my crew. My first mate Niall Phelan, and my sailmistress Ariya Stormquill.” Even Niall gives a pleasant nod his way. “This is Father Evan Tyrz, whom Gridley knows well enough because here is where I found him as a pup.”
“And the young man who gives me such a curious look?” Evan cocks his head to one side.
“Yes. This is Luc. Our passenger.” I noticed Luc has the bag containing the Bloodheart. Good that he’s remembered my admonition to keep it with him at all times. After what happened at Applemont, I’m hesitant to let anyone else touch it.
Evan kneels and smiles. “Hello son. Welcome to Jasna Góra, a city of knowledge and refuge for all.”
Luc shakes his hand. “Are you really a father?”
Evan laughs. “Of mine own brood of four, with a fifth on the horizon, in addition to my children in the Spirit.”
“My father is gone,” Luc whispers. “But he gave me this.”
He opens the bag and shows Evan the Bloodheart. It gleams in the sunlight, dazzling silver-white.
“This…” Evan whispers. “Son. Luc. Where did you get this?”
He touches it.
I cringe, awaiting the same shuddering, gasping reaction I had to the flood of sounds and images. To my everlasting surprise, tears glisten in Evan’s eyes. When he lets go, he embraces Luc as if the boy has saved him from drowning. “Such joy. Thank you, Luc, for sharing this. It is a precious gift.”
Luc smiles. “Father said so.”
I move closer, and let my cloak shroud the Bloodheart. No need for prying eyes to see it any more than it has been seen. “This is what we came to inquire of, Father. If anyone could tell us its origin and its worth, I have faith you are that man.”
Evan gives a soft grunt, I assume, at my use of the word “faith,” or perhaps he reacts to “worth” instead. “Is that still the rub, Bowen? Faith or gold. It’s been nigh on three years since you left our sanctuary, brother. You rejected the former for the latter.”
“We’ll talk of those things some other time.” My teeth grind. Evan can make me laugh the hardest but can also, unfortunately, call up my hottest anger.
“Preferably indoors.” Niall growls low at the back of his throat. He’s glaring at the acolytes who mill about tending to the mooring lines.
“Of course. Of course. Come.” Evan smiles and beckons with both hands. “Let us adjourn to the sanctum.”
“Or better still, the kitchen.” Niall’s stomach grumbles.
“Yes, a fine idea.” Evan gestures to a pair of tall, slim acolytes with blond and black hair. “Brethren, please guide our guests to the kitchen and see they are well fed.”
He glances back at me. “Whilst you and I discuss matters of a more urgent sort.”
THE TENTH CHAPTER
~
“Bloodheart. Bloodheart.” Evan taps his left forefinger against his lips. “Hmm…”
His words echo in the vast chamber around us, bouncing off a vaulted ceiling high above and seeming to issue from the murals of angelic beings of divine light. They writhe about the clouds and sky, faded after the long centuries and shrouded in
dust, but no less intense creations. At their center is a man—a lone man, wearing a crown. Rays of light issue forth from his body, rending asunder the shadows at the edges of the painting.
His eyes are as hot coals, piercing and bright. I cannot meet them. I was never able to.
Instead I look down at the surface of the broad wooden table. Just myself staring back from its polished surface. I reach for the goblet of wine and sample its contents. As sweet as I remember.
Evan stands on a step ladder six feet up. There are books everywhere. Shelves stretch for hundreds of feet along either wall of the sanctum. At the tops of the shelves windows of elaborate stained glass let in the fading light of day in soft reds, blues, greens, and yellows. The hall far to the end is dark save for a few flickering candles.
The bookshelves are twelve feet tall. I do not recognize most of the titles nearest me, in good part because they are written in tongues I never took the time to learn. Those are the ones written in Latin, and Greek and Arabic. I spot a few in English, and even fewer Germanic, Slav and Gaelic. Those titles I can render. But there are countless others, the words on their spines faded and sheathed in dust.
“You’re certain they were soulmages?” Evan’s voice breaks through my reverie. He stares down at me, brown eyes probing my defenses. “The boy’s people. Soulmages?”
“Ah, yes. As certain as I can be. That was the information provided.” At considerable cost of coin. “Luc said so and I take him at my word. That and there was … evidence we uncovered.”
“Of what sort?”
“The altar upon which the Bloodheart rested became a golem when we took it.”
Evan whistles. He rubs at his beard. “Yes. Well. That is definitely beyond the ken of mere element summoning.”
My hand prickles. I rub it on the underside of the table, out of Evan’s view. “I’d not call it mere. Ice was the only way we—I stopped it.”
