Silver Road (The Shifting Tides Book 2)

by James Maxwell

  Then Cob came through for him.

  The old man weaved his way through the crowd until he came to someone he knew, a dark-skinned pirate with a strip of cloth tied around his forehead and an axe held high above his head. The pirate readily gave Cob his weapon and the old man called out.

  ‘Dion!’

  Cob tossed the weapon and it fell down in the sand at Dion’s feet. He saw that it was an obsidian axe, with a wooden haft as long as his arm and as thick as his wrist. The head was as glossy as the ocean at night, a heavy quarter-circle slotted tightly into a carved depression, bound solidly to the wood with gut. The volcanic stone it was made from was rare and could cut more sharply than steel. There was no metal in the weapon at all.

  As soon as Dion lifted it, Reece attacked.

  The stocky man came in, weaving and dodging, presenting a difficult target to follow. He held the long dagger out at the level of his waist as he thrust toward Dion’s chest.

  Dion lunged to the side and Reece’s blow met empty air. The crowd roared. Dion then hefted the axe and turned to face the bigger man, who snarled at him as his feet shifted on the sand.

  The next time Reece attacked, he slashed at Dion’s face. Dion leaned back as the sharp steel whistled in front of his nose. Holding the axe with both hands, he then lifted the haft to smash into his opponent’s arm from below. Reece winced but managed to keep hold of his weapon. Dion then swung at Reece’s head, but the experienced fighter easily evaded the blow.

  Panting, the two men circled each other as the onlookers bayed for blood. Reece’s eyes glared murderously. He cut the air with his dagger and smiled.

  Reece’s next lunge barely missed as Dion dodged to the side, the dagger skewering the air where he’d been only a moment before. As he moved Dion brought his axe to bear, swinging it down, but his position was awkward and he only pushed the dagger away with the obsidian head’s blunt edge. With watching men all around, Dion and Reece again faced off. The stocky man shuffled his feet from side to side, looking for an opportunity. Dion held his axe with two hands, one high and one low.

  Around them the onlookers howled, but Dion forced himself to ignore them and instead concentrated on the fight for his life. The words of his older brother long ago told him that combat was about keeping pressure on an opponent. Dion was the slighter man, but his weapon had longer reach.

  As he wondered what move he should attempt, it was Reece who attacked first.

  Reece brought his weapon down from overhead as he came forward, slashing in a sweeping diagonal motion. Dion jumped back, nearly tripping over a depression in the sand. Reece grew confident, but when he came in again, this time Dion stepped forward.

  He removed his right hand from the top of the axe and held it by the base alone. He then used the axe to block the dagger and had an advantage, for the haft of the axe was thick while the dagger was light and he barely registered the connection. As Dion punched with his right fist at full extension, his shoulders twisted as he put force into the blow.

  He struck Reece squarely in the jaw, but the stocky man was tough. He grunted and shook his head from side to side. Dion was overextended, with his weapon in the air and his right arm outstretched. Reece pushed forward, using his superior mass to put Dion onto his back foot. The dagger inched forward as he shoved, despite Dion’s attempts to hold him back. Dion felt a sharp pain in his side as the dagger made contact. He gasped with pain and the onlookers cried out at the first sight of blood. But then Dion punched Reece in the face again, feeling his fist crunch against his opponent’s nose. Reece howled and pulled away.

  Finally the two men ended up facing each other once again, both breathing heavily. The onlookers were screaming and roaring.

  Reece spat a tooth on the ground, spattering blood just near Dion’s feet. ‘You’re weak. They’ll never follow a man who can’t fight.’

  Dion now held his axe in his right hand, halfway up, where he could grab the bottom of the haft with his left if he needed to. He realized that the watching men had gone silent, waiting to hear what he had to say. Dion pointed with his weapon.

  ‘I can fight,’ he said. He smiled. ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

  As Dion said the last words he shot forward. Reece’s dagger came at him but Dion spun around the thrust and somehow he knew exactly where to be. He took the axe in both hands and struck hard, in a savage but swift blow.

  Dion felt contact as the blade of the axe hit his opponent’s lower abdomen. Reece screamed in pain as he struck. Blood shot out in a spray.

  Dion completed his turn and saw Reece crumple to the ground. Gathering himself, Dion gasped and realized how much energy the fight was taking out of him.

  ‘Are we finished?’ Dion said.

  Reece was on one knee, but when he looked up, all Dion could see was hate and rage. Reece would rather die than lose in front of the men.

  The onlookers bayed like wolves howling for blood as Reece slowly rose to his feet, standing shirtless, with the blood on his body dripping down, tainting his trousers.

  Then Dion looked down at himself.

  In the heat of battle he’d forgotten the wound in his side, but now saw a growing stream of bright blood. He put his hand to the wound, relieved to find that it was shallow, but the pain was steadily growing.

  Reece came in with a roar, dagger raised above his head. Dion prepared to lift his weapon but his opponent changed his attack at the last moment, cutting low. With Dion’s stomach sucked in, the blow missed narrowly, but he suddenly felt Reece’s free hand grip hold of the axe handle and the stocky man grunted as he yanked hard.

  Dion tried to keep hold of his weapon but the axe fell out of his hands and he tripped backward onto the sand. The ground came up to meet him as he struck hard. Now unarmed, Dion was suddenly helpless and on his back.

  Reece loomed over him, axe held in one hand and dagger in the other.

  Dion’s heart pounded in his chest as he saw the axe raised above his enemy’s head in the blow that would end his life. Sweat trickled down Reece’s brow, coating his face, which was curled into a snarl. Blood reddened his lips.

  Unarmed and on his back, Dion’s chest heaved, his eyes wild and staring as his breath ran ragged. The onlookers roared at him. He heard voices cry out for him to do something.

  Then something inside him snapped.

  Dion roared like he’d never roared before as he climbed to his feet, and suddenly Reece’s head was far below him, staring up at him with an expression of utter horror. Straightening, Dion glared down at the man whose weapons now appeared puny, incapable of harming him no matter what he did.

  Filled with sudden strength, he formed his right hand into a fist, feeling the might in his arms, matching the wild sensation of primal rage that banished all other thoughts from his mind. Reece lifted his weapons but Dion swatted them aside, brushing them away like irritating thorns. His fist struck his enemy squarely in the head, and then a second blow crushed his face into pulp. Dion’s mouth opened and he roared in triumph as Reece crumpled, dead before he hit the ground.

  What is happening to me?

  Dion shook his head from side to side. He whirled to face the crowd of onlookers, stunned into silence. A short old man was calling out a name. It was his name.

  Forcibly taking hold of himself, looking at the tiny pummeled corpse on the ground far below, he felt an odd sense of falling, accompanied by a strange . . . changing.

  Suddenly Dion was lying on the sand. He realized that he had his eyes closed and opened them, slowly sitting up. He looked at his hands, seeing fingers, normal, human fingers.

  He climbed unsteadily to his feet and looked around him.

  He was standing in a circle of people. Every gaze was on him, every face looking at him in awe. Reece’s broken body was nearby, crushed by the giant with the force of mountains in his arms.

  Moving into a stumbling run, Dion pushed his way free of the circle as the crowd made way for him. He didn’t look back.


  ‘Dion.’

  He heard a gravelly voice and turned to see both Cob and Finn approaching.

  ‘What is it?’ Dion said, standing at the end of the beach and staring at the curling waves. Nearby was the crippled bireme, far enough from the settlement to escape the burning. Dion sighed and didn’t look up to meet the old man’s eyes.

  ‘The vote is in. You’re the new king of the Free Men.’

  Dion glanced up. ‘What did you just say?’

  ‘It’s you. You’re our new leader.’

  ‘But they saw . . .’

  ‘Yes, they did.’ Cob grinned. ‘And now they’ll follow you farther than the edge of the world. By Silex, you were terrifying.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you have silver hair?’ Finn asked, his face curious more than anything else. He turned to Cob. ‘That’s right, isn’t it? Eldren have silver hair?’

  ‘He’s only half eldran,’ Cob said.

  ‘The half-eldran king of the Free Men,’ Finn said, his eyes lighting up with inner fire. ‘What a tale! We’ll be famous throughout the Maltherean and beyond!’

  ‘You speak the truth?’ Dion asked Cob.

  ‘Aye, lad. They’re afraid, all of them,’ he clapped Dion on the shoulder, ‘but with you to lead them . . . They don’t have to be.’

  ‘You’ll do it?’ Finn asked.

  Dion was pensive for a time. He needed to prove both to himself and to Nikolas that people would accept him for who he was. As the leader of the Free Men, he would have his chance.

  He lifted his chin. ‘I will.’

  Finn whooped. ‘We have a new king!’ he cried.

  Leaving Dion and Cob behind, he shouted as he ran back toward the crowd on the beach.

  ‘We have a new king! Andion, the king of the Silver Road!’

  46

  Chloe concentrated. No fear. She focused on the single thought. No fear.

  ‘Chloe!’ Liana’s voice called from inside the villa. ‘I have the fire going. You’re not still there, are you?’

  Chloe sat on a stone bench that framed the gardens, near the wide basin filled with water. It was close to dark and she’d been sitting in the same position all afternoon, staring at the heavy iron pot in her hands, half filled with water. Her brow was furrowed.

  She had needed to have a break from practicing with copper after the buzzing in her ears became too loud to bear. She’d also had no luck with the golden bracelet; try as she might she couldn’t get it to glow a second time. The old magus had said that different sorcerers had affinities with different materia but she hadn’t been able to find any silver. Nonetheless, the power still raged inside her, pushing at her will like a dam threatening to burst. She summoned her courage and decided to try iron.

  There was a codex in the villa’s small library devoted entirely to the mastery of iron. Most of the text was incomprehensible, but there were a few exercises she could try and this was one of them. Control of iron was completely unlike copper. Rather than thoughts of beauty and harmony, and concentration on a sweet, pure note, Chloe instead tried to put herself into the mindset of a warrior.

  She thought of enemies she’d faced in the past: Solon, who had tortured and impaled her loyal bodyguard Tomarys, and the tattooed tribesmen who had hunted her and Liana in the plains. She remembered Triton’s sneering look as he’d prepared to kill her at the Temple of Aldus, and the savage wildren she’d encountered at Cinder Fen. She knew she was scowling down at the iron pot as she summoned hatred beyond what she normally allowed herself to bear. But it wasn’t the desire for violence that would make the iron respond; she also needed feelings of strength and courage. She needed to think of warlike images: swords and spears, and helmeted soldiers like the men of Nikolas’s king’s guard who had murdered her father’s allies among the consuls. Above all else, she couldn’t feel any fear.

  The iron pot began to grow warm.

  No fear, she told herself. Be brave. Be strong.

  The heat increased, but it was projected out of her hands, and provided she controlled her power she would be unharmed. Steam began to rise from the water as she concentrated still harder.

  As she maintained contact between her skin and the iron, the warmth in her hands grew and the first bubble appeared in the water. Her apprehension rose with the knowledge that with nothing more than her hands she was causing the water to grow hot enough to boil. Her hands suddenly felt burning hot until she stamped down on the fear.

  No fear. She repeated the mantra. No fear.

  Chloe felt sudden weariness descend on her, threatening to break her concentration. The crushing fatigue seemed to grow no matter which metal she was working with. She now had to combat both her own trepidation and the fatigue that dragged at her eyelids and made her shoulders slump.

  But at the same time she felt intense relief as the power within her was released through the palms of her hands.

  The water began to hiss and then bubble.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Liana gasped. ‘That looks dangerous.’

  Distracted by the eldran, Chloe saw Liana keeping her distance, wide eyes on the iron pot. Liana put her hand to her chest and grimaced as if in pain. She took three steps back.

  Chloe forced herself to concentrate again on the iron pot, even as she felt her own fear rise, mirroring her friend’s. The heat in her hands grew rapidly, increasing her fear still further. The pain fueled the panic, and as her courage failed her the fire in her palms became agonizing.

  The iron suddenly grew blisteringly hot.

  Chloe’s palms sizzled against the pot’s surface and she cried out in pain. She recoiled and threw the vessel forward, splashing hot water everywhere as the heavy metal clattered to the ground.

  Her eyes closed and she crumpled.

  What you are doing is more dangerous than you realize.

  The voice was soft and sibilant, undoubtedly female.

  Stop before you kill yourself. For now you must live with the fire inside you.

  Have patience.

  The woman’s hiss was vaguely familiar.

  I will send for you.

  Chloe opened her eyes. The voice was still in her ears; her dreams had been strange. She was lying on her bed and staring at the ceiling. She felt pain in her palms and lifted her hands to examine them, seeing that the skin was bright red but fortunately wouldn’t blister.

  Leaving the bedchamber, she found Liana sitting on one of the high-backed chairs close to the hearth. The eldran had her satchel on her lap and was looking at something inside. As soon as she saw Chloe, Liana swiftly closed the satchel and bundled it in her lap.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Liana’s face was worried.

  ‘I’m fine.’ Chloe hesitated, and then put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I know you said the power causes you pain, but surely there is another way.’

  ‘I’m trying to learn.’

  ‘If you don’t control it, you say you could die. But from what I can see, even using it can still kill you.’

  Chloe wished she didn’t agree with her. ‘The iron pot. Where is it?’

  ‘Where you left it.’

  Leaving Liana behind, Chloe exited the villa. She found the iron pot lying upended near a damp patch in the stone. Crouching and picking it up, she turned it over in her hands. Her eyes widened.

  The bottom was rusted through, even to the point of flaking away under her touch. A chunk broke off when she pulled at it.

  She shook her head. Vikram was dead. There was no one else who could teach her.

  She went back inside to study further.

  47

  High on a hill overlooking the wide harbor of Koulis, a manse of three levels stood proud and lofty. Gardens of thorny plants and palm trees surrounded it on all sides, giving it a wide buffer of privacy from any of the smaller villas nearby. A tall stone wall surrounded the grounds, crowned at regular intervals with sharpened wooden spikes. It was the dead of night and the manse was
dark, still, and silent.

  Only a keen eye would have seen the men in black clothing creeping up to the exterior of the wall and tossing a looped rope over a handful of the spikes. After fastening the other end around the broad trunk of a tree, the most slender of them, his face darkened with soot, now climbed up the tightened rope, moving like a trained acrobat. He carried a thick carpet with him.

  Reaching the wall’s summit, he struggled with the heavy material as he draped the carpet over a section of the spikes. Watched by his companions at the wall’s base, he finally finished his covering and nodded to the men below. He then climbed over, falling gracefully to the ground on the wall’s other side.

  One after another, the men in black climbed up the rope and over the wall, with those already over bracing the falls of the next to come.

  Everything was done in silence.

  Soon over thirty pirates had made it across, and they now looked to a man in the center for orders. His face was blackened and his flaxen hair was dyed with soot. He wore a loose black tunic and like all of them his feet were bare. He was the only man among them carrying a bow.

  ‘Wait here,’ the leader said.

  He took an arrow from the quiver on his shoulder and fitted it to the string. He left on his own while the rest of the group stood tense, waiting for a cry to split the night. Time passed, the tension growing before the bowman returned, and then he nodded to his men.

  ‘That’s all of them. I’ve cleared the grounds but there will be more guards inside. Ready your weapons.’

  As soon as Dion finished speaking, sliding steel and jangling metal filled the air until every man in the group soon stood with eyes gleaming, brandishing axes and swords, clubs and daggers. There was no way to quiet the noise. A dog started barking somewhere and as he glanced at the manse’s second level, Dion saw movement at a window.