The Bloodheart

by Steve Rzasa

  Niall tenses.

  “A lot more—how so?” I kneel beside Luc.

  “Where’s Gridley? And Ariya.” He looks downstream.

  “Ariya is on patrol. Gridley’s run off to the water.” I point, which seems to satisfy Luc.

  He waves at Gridley, who favors him with an energetic bark before splashing through the water. “Oh, good. We can leave when Ariya returns.”

  “Leave?” Niall throws up his hands. “We just got here! Haven’t had but an hour to cool our heels!”

  “Luc. Show me the Bloodheart,” I say.

  He pulls it from the bag, and I suck breath through my teeth. It’s flashing rapidly, as fast as a man’s heart as he runs. The pulses are bright, insistent.

  “We must be near,” Niall whispers.

  The sound like canvas unfolding and flapping in the wind draws our gaze across the stream. Tereth pulls himself up on his haunches, his flanks sleek with sunlight. He looks well rested. “It must be close.”

  “I think I just said that.”

  “Silence, man-worm.” Tereth steps across the stream, his claws digging furrows in the dirt and churning up the mud underwater. The stream turns brown. “Keeper Luc. Lead us to the Everflame.”

  “I will try.” Luc smiles at me. “We should fly again, Captain.”

  My body is so weary. But the pull of the Bloodheart is irresistible. “Niall. Call Ariya. We’ll prepare the ship.”

  “But we’ve only just arrived—”

  I glare at him.

  He grinds his teeth, and stomps off into the woods.

  I turn to Tereth. “What is this Everflame?”

  “The final element of the Bloodheart. None have seen it before and lived.”

  “Not even dragons?”

  Tereth shakes his head.

  “So I repeat myself—what is the Everflame?”

  “I have no idea, man-worm.”

  I sigh. All of this, and still no silver. Evan would tell me it is for a higher purpose. That is what I keep whispering to myself.

  Still, I can’t help but wish I’d taken Niall’s advice.

  THE TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTER

  ~

  The farther we follow the Bloodheart, the more agitated Gridley becomes.

  He’s unwilling to be petted even by me or Luc. From bow to stern he paces, sniffing the deck and the rails and the masts. What he pursues I know not. It’s been a long time since we’ve had rats aboard for him to hunt. He made short work of their incursion.

  I chalk it up to the Bloodheart’s presence. It pulses so rapidly as to seem atremble. The light is brighter than the North Star, a brilliant, pure white. Luc keeps it confined to his bag, save to take glimpses as we correct our bearings.

  Gridley stays far from the Bloodheart.

  We’re out in the center of the Riven Plains of Rus. Four thousand feet below us are great ravines, long furrows cut in the ground. Benath could curl up easily in their depths and be lost forever. Hovering over these slashes are hundreds of islets and a handful of larger islands. My chart tells me seven hundred seventeen have been mapped. They hang as low to the ground as a few hundred feet, and soar as high as ten, twelve, even twenty thousand feet above us in a great cloud of rock. The sky glitters green with their aethershards.

  The sun dips below the horizon. White wisps of cloud turn a startling pink, glowing like embers in the hearth. The sky is a sharp blue that makes the eyes stare in wonder. It will be dark soon.

  The Bloodheart guides us, by our trial and error following its cues, to a long, wide island flat as a pan. It is thick with grass, but bears no trees. Three arches of crumbling stone sag over a stream.

  A stream?

  “How is that possible?” Niall glares over the rail as we circle round the island. There’s no dock, no sign of any manmade structure save for the arches.

  “It could be an aquastone.” Ariya flits between the masts, checking the rigging.

  “Those are mythical.”

  “Hardly. The Aevorn have a prized few.”

  “Is that so?” Niall sneers. “Why have you never mentioned them before?”

  Ariya scowls at him. “To keep them safe from slavering dogs such as you.”

  “Such sharp words from a pretty mouth.”

  “Not so sharp as my arrows.”

  “Stow it, you lot. Ariya, explain, please.”

  She points at the stream. “The aquastones summon water from air, though none say how they achieve this magic. Legend has it they were entrusted to the Aevorn and their ancestors, the Saryava. Some tell of a huge stone given as a gift from ancient dragons, one the size of Sleet that was shattered and shared. Others speak of small crystals formed on frozen isles high above the clouds, near the very edge of the sky. No one knows but one thing: they work.”

  There is ample evidence of this, as I watch the water cascade across the isle below. I cup my hands to my mouth. “Tereth! Is there any cause for alarm you can sense?”

  He is flying fifty feet off, and my shout echoes across the wind to him. He snorts smoke. “None that I smell. But the magic here clouds my senses.”

  I nod. The ice tingles up and down my arms, pinching at my skin. The air breathes magic. It is as palpable as a coming rain.

  There’s ruins scattered among the grass, great lumps of granite and shale. Here I make out the sunken outline of a barn’s foundation; there, the overgrown grid of a barracks. The stone is weather-beaten, stained with moss, broken and collapsed everywhere I look. My chart has no name for the place, nor a hint of how ancient a settlement this was.

  At the north end of the island is a towering stack of white granite, glinting like a dragon’s fang, shaded pink and orange with the sunset. This is the origin of the bubbling stream that carves the island in two, twisting its way through the grass, before the water plunges into a misty haze over the edge. “Ariya! Tie us there!”

  “Aye, Captain.” She’s gone in a flash of feathers, with Tereth swooping in behind her. He takes up a watch to the east as Sleet soars in by the rocks. Niall tosses Ariya the lines, and she tethers us to sturdy outcroppings of granite.

  Vesna emerges from my cabin. She hasn’t said a word to me since we left the clearing. We share a look. I can see her pain plainly. Does she see the frustration and anger burning in me?

  Trust is broken.

  We disembark, our little band—myself at the lead, sword and gun holstered; Niall flanking me, musket bared; Ariya flying overhead, crossbow ready to strike; Vesna a half step behind me and to the left, no weapon on hand but her dagger secreted away in the folds of her skirt; Luc by my left hand, carrying the Bloodheart in his bag; and Gridley trotting ahead, whining and sniffing, alert as ever yet still bothered by something.

  “Steady, Gridley.” I snap my fingers at him. He knows this sign. He’s to heed to my beckon.

  Instead he barks, and bolts to the ship.

  “Gridley! Here, boy!”

  Niall puts his musket over his shoulder. “What’s got into him?”

  “I don’t know.” Gridley bounds up the gangplank onto the deck. “But he’ll be fine aboard. Come on. I’m in no mood for distractions.”

  Luc watches the Bloodheart. Its flickering light makes his face pale, as the night sky encroaches around us and blues fade to violet. He stumbles over rocks every few feet, so intent is he on its signals.

  He pauses by the stream. It is wide, and deep, large enough to conceal Tereth if he were to sleep in its depths. I can make glimpses of large, smooth stones at the bottom and gaping black spaces. Caverns? Or illusions the shadows under the surface play in the darkness?

  I shake my head. All this water, summoned by the aquastone concealed in the stack of granite. A dull purple light suffuses that end of the stream, marking the stone’s resting place.

  “It’s here.” Luc points at the water.

  “Here? Where?”

  “Here.” He raises an eyebrow. “Can’t you tell?”

  Luc opens the bag. The Bloodh
eart shines like one of the stars glittering overhead in the velvet black sky. “Right in the stream.”

  Niall snorts. “That doesn’t make a lick of sense.”

  “Be quiet.” I kneel by the water. It’s cold to the touch, numbing the sensation of ice prickles in my fingers. I can’t see beneath its surface anymore. Darkness has fallen. Even the pale glow of the Bloodheart is not enough to reveal its secrets.

  “There is something down there.” Tereth sniffs. “I sense it. Powerful. The Bloodheart is the key to finding it. This is what Benath said.”

  “Thank you, very helpful.” But his words give a fresh breath of air to my sails. “Luc, stretch out your arms and hold the Bloodheart over the stream.”

  He does so, without question. The Bloodheart’s reflection shimmers on the water, writhing with the current.

  Another glow from the streambed appears.

  Ariya murmurs a soft prayer. Niall, of course, readies his musket.

  I put my nose close to the water. It’s a ring of sigils, their number and meaning distorted by the stream. They form a small circle, and illuminate a concavity at the center. The sigils pulse with a brilliant gold glow.

  Luc gasps. The Bloodheart’s colors shift from blazing white to the same brilliant gold as the sigils in the river.

  “A key, indeed.” I smile and clasp Luc on the shoulder. “Now we must get it to the lock.”

  “Are you planning on taking a swim?” Niall asks.

  I’ve already pulled off my cloak and tug at the hem of my tunic. “I don’t see another way.”

  “You have no idea what’s down there.” Vesna’s voice catches me by surprise. “Whether it’s safe or not.”

  “Your concern is touching.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that, Bowen.” She puts her hands on her hips. “You’ll endanger us all if you risk opening that lock or whatever it is. You’re the most skilled at the helm.”

  A valid point. But Ariya cannot swim. And Niall is not very good. Tereth is too big, too ungainly…

  “I can swim down there.” Luc smiles.

  “No, lad, we must keep you safe too. Vesna is right—we don’t know what’s in the depths.”

  “Considering the last time we descended to find a relic we unleashed a golem, I’m not getting my fur wet for this thing,” Niall says.

  “Bowen.” Vesna points to the stack of rocks. “The aquastone produces the stream.”

  “Yes. So?”

  “Can we not make it stop somehow?” She directs this question to Ariya. “Surely you know of a way.”

  Ariya frowns. “I do not know of a way, I am sorry. Only the mages of our flocks know the secrets, and there are too few of them spread too far.”

  “Forget it. I will go.” I unbuckle my belt, and set wheellock pistol, sword and dagger in the grass. I yank off my tunic. The cold air bites at me.

  Cold.

  I shake my head. “What a dunce I am.”

  “No arguments, Captain.”

  “How kind. Spread out and give me room. Luc…” I look him in the eyes. “You must get down there and put the Bloodheart in the lock. You’ll know when.”

  He nods, stolid as an armored soldier.

  I stretch out my hands toward the water, and close my eyes. Picture the stream flowing. Now picture what I want to change, and will it to happen.

  I have never used the ice as anything other than a weapon, or as a tool against an enemy, not since Cassia died. Would she have me carry on as such, wielding this power as a blight? What I need now is to summon without malice, without fear, with only the pure intents of keeping Luc safe and reuniting the pieces of the Bloodheart.

  If Evan is right, if magic serves both for good and ill, I pray it is the former in this moment.

  “Glacii,” I whisper.

  The blue glow returns to my fingers. It caresses the water, threading amongst liquid, changing the temperature, making it frigid, expanding it in its banks—

  Freezing it.

  Tereth’s growl rumbles the dirt. The burble of the stream subsides to a trickle between stones. I open my eyes. Where my hands are aimed the water has frozen into a ragged wall of ice, fifteen feet tall and twenty feet across. Behind that, extending toward the aquastone, ice crackles as the water continues to freeze up. In front of the wall, the water has receded.

  Run off the edge of the island into thin air.

  Luc’s boots scrape on rock and slip on mud. He’s down in the bottom of the stream, his face taut in the golden glow. The ring of sigils pulses ever brighter as he approaches. He stops at the edge, puzzles over the sight of it. The glow bathes him.

  “Luc!” My arms tremble. The muscles shake. Blue creeps its way up to the elbows. Frost sheathes them, and I lose all sensation in my hands. The magic courses through me, up in to me, out of me. My mind is abuzz. “Do it quickly!”

  He kneels and places the Bloodheart firmly in the center of the sigils. It makes a solid clink on rock.

  Fire bursts into the night sky.

  I catch a shout of surprise from Luc that is lost immediately in the roar of flames. Red and gold, orange and yellow, they shoot up hundreds of feet, towering over us, illuminating the plain of the island around us as clear as daybreak. Niall yells something but I cannot hear him. Beneath the roar of the flames comes a terrible shaking, that vibrates rock and soil and sets my bones trembling.

  My legs weaken. Cold crystalizes my body, piercing flesh, stabbing bone.

  A pair of hot hands catch me about the middle, blistering against my skin. They help me stand. I can hold the ice no longer. I yield with a gasp.

  The blue glow shuts down. Ice buckles and strains against the pressure of water around it, until the dam I’ve erected shatters in a thousand pieces. The stream shoves its way through, barreling toward the tower of flame.

  The torrent splits in half and curves around either side.

  I blink, eyes bleary. No. The entire tower is not aflame, not any longer. I’m staring at fifty feet of white rock, the same as the stack, with fire shooting off the top. The water courses around the stone, churning and frothing, towards its inevitable plunge.

  Where is Luc?

  The hands that held my sides move to my shoulders. A kiss as searing as a branding iron touches my skin.

  “Bowen. You cried out for help.” Vesna. She has tears in her eyes. They gleam blue in the light of the fire tower. “Are you hurt?”

  “No. Spent.” Those two words cost a great deal of strength. My hands are still a pale blue, brighter at the palms, the color slowly returning at the finger tips. “Leave me be.”

  “You need tending to. I have to make sure you’re not in danger.”

  “Don’t touch me. Not…not when I’m like this.”

  “Bowen.” She whispers my name. “It matters not whether you are all flesh or a block of ice. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  Yet she has that dagger from Strathern. I want to believe her, more than anything. Still, I release myself from her ministrations.

  She crosses her arms, and says not another word.

  I am sorry, Vesna.

  Ariya circles the tower at a safe distance, her wings transformed golden in the firelight. She points. “I see him! I see Luc!”

  Alive or dead, I have no time to ask her the question. A silhouette of a young boy’s shape appears in the flame. Luc steps out of the fire with that smile present.

  He’s not even singed.

  THE TWENTY-FOURTH CHAPTER

  ~

  ARIYA LIFTS HIM FREE OF the rock spire and brings him to a gentle landing before our group. Thank heavens the boy is uninjured. I slip on my tunic and cloak, don my belt of weaponry. Even Niall gives him a curt nod and a pat on the shoulders.

  Tereth stays back from the pillar. Far back. He shields his body with his wings, and sits low in crouch with his head arched. Those huge eyes watch our group, wary.

  “Luc.” I give the boy a hug. Surprising. He returns it gently. “You had me f
rightened, lad.”

  He shakes his head. “Stop fearing. That’s what Father told me.”

  “How did you escape unscathed?”

  “I don’t know. I held the Bloodheart close, and it felt cool. Like a breeze through the apple trees at home. I could smell them, and see the blossoms. It was easy to walk through the flames. They were—not real.”

  “They appear plenty real to me,” Niall says. “So what of the third part of the relic?”

  “That is it.” Luc faces the pillar. “That is the Everflame.”

  He holds the Bloodheart over his head. The flames atop the pillar hiss and snap. They swirl faster, blurring together into a whirlwind, the heat of which soaks us with sweat. With a great thunderclap the flames leap outward in four blazing arms and strike at the Bloodheart.

  Luc staggers under the impact, his eyes wide and mouth open. Heat bowls over us. Grass underfoot withers. Still the flames pour into the Bloodheart, until the last tendril of fire strips itself from the rocky pillar.

  The deluge disappears. The pillar is bare, pale blue in the night. The air is still, but remains hot as on a late summer’s evening.

  The Bloodheart glows crimson.Luc is transfixed by it.

  “Lad.” I give him a shake. “Are you well?”

  He nods, but doesn’t speak.

  “This is powerful magic that you worms should not have touched,” Tereth says. “We must proceed cautiously.”

  Niall pats his musket. “That was the intent.”

  “Don’t mock me, were-fox.” Tereth moves in closer to us, watching the Bloodheart and Luc as if he’s stalking supper. “We must not tarry here.”

  “Calm yourself, dragon.” I shake Luc again. “What’s wrong?”

  He gazes at me. His eyes have lost their focus, and his expression is blank. “We’re in danger. It’s hiding. Waiting for us.”

  “Waiting?” My heart freezes up. “Waiting where?”

  Gridley howls. The sound echoes across the plain, from the ship.

  And answering him comes a horrific shriek.

  Niall aims his musket. “What was that?”

  “Come on!” I sprint toward Sleet, wheellock pistol at the ready. “Ariya!”