Age of Swords

by Michael J. Sullivan

  Outside, the lightning cracks and hammering hail continued, but from a safe, muffled distance. Panting from the run and realizing they’d escaped without significant injury, the three exchanged the stunned looks of survivors. Relief washed over Persephone…until she noticed they weren’t alone.

  —

  Gifford would never win a footrace. Although he came to this realization late in life, everyone else knew it the day he was born. His left leg lacked feeling, couldn’t support his weight, and dragged. His back wasn’t much better. Severely twisted, it forced his hips in one direction and his shoulders in another. Most people pitied Gifford and a few even despised him. He never understood either.

  Roan was the exception. What everyone else saw as hopeless, she took as a challenge.

  The two were out in front of Gifford’s roundhouse, and Roan was lashing the wood-and-tin contraption to his left leg, tightening its leather straps. She knelt in the grass before him, wearing her work apron, a smudge of charcoal on the side of her nose. Her dark-brown hair was pulled back in a short ponytail so high on her head that it looked like a rooster’s crest.

  Dozens of cuts from working with sharp metal marred her clever little hands. Gifford wanted to hold them, kiss the wounds, and take the pain away. He’d tried taking her hand once, and it hadn’t gone well. She’d pulled away, her eyes widened with fear, and a look of horror crossed her face. Roan had an aversion to being touched—Gifford had known that—he’d simply forgotten himself. Her reaction wasn’t limited to him. She couldn’t suffer anyone’s touch.

  Yanking hard on the ankle strap, Roan nodded with a firm, determined expression. “That should do it.” She rose and dusted her clean hands symbolically. Her voice was eager but serious. “Ready?”

  Gifford answered by pulling himself up with the aid of his crafting table. The device on his leg, constructed from wooden sticks and metal hinges, squeaked as he rose, a sound like the opening of a tiny door.

  “Do you have your weight on it? Try. See if it holds.”

  For Gifford, any attempt to support himself with his left leg was akin to leaning on water. But he’d gladly fall on his face for her. Perhaps he could manage a roll and make her grin. If he’d been born with two stout legs, strong and agile, he’d dance and twirl like a fool to amuse her. He might even make her laugh, something she rarely did. In her mind, she was still a slave, something less than nothing. Gifford longed for Roan to see herself the way he did, but damaged as he was, he made a poor mirror casting back a broken image.

  Gifford tilted his hips, shifting some weight to his lame leg. He didn’t fall. A strain tugged on the straps wrapped around his thigh and calf, but his leg held. His mouth dropped open, his eyes widened, and Roan actually did smile.

  By Mari, what an amazing sight.

  He couldn’t help grinning back. He was standing straight—or as straight as his gnarled back allowed. Using magic armor fashioned by Roan, Gifford was winning an impossible battle.

  “Take a step,” she coaxed, hands clenched in fists of excitement.

  Gifford shifted weight back to his right side and lifted his left leg, swinging it forward. The hinges squeaked once more. He took a step the way normal people did a million times, and that’s when the brace collapsed.

  “Oh, no!” Roan gasped as Gifford fell, barely missing the newly glazed cups drying in the morning sun.

  His cheek and ear slammed into the hardened dirt, jarring his head. But his elbow, hand, and hip took the bulk of the punishment. To Roan, it must have looked painful, but Gifford knew how to fall. He’d been doing it his entire life.

  “I’m so, so, so sorry.” Roan was back on her knees, bent over him as he rolled to his side. Her grin was gone, the world less bright.

  “I’m okay, no pwoblem. I missed the cups.”

  “The metal failed.” She struggled to hold back tears as her injured hands ran over the brace.

  “The tin just isn’t strong enough. I’m so sorry.”

  “It held fo’ a while,” he said to cheer her up. “Keep at it. You’ll make it wuk. I know you will.”

  “There’s an added force when walking. I should have accounted for the additional weight when your other leg is raised.” She slapped the side of her head several times, flinching with each strike. “I should have realized that. I should have. How could I not—”

  He instinctively grabbed her wrist to prevent additional blows. “Don’t do—”

  Roan screamed and jerked away, drawing back in terror. When she recovered, they exchanged embarrassed looks, mirroring each other. The moment dragged unpleasantly until Gifford forced a smile. Not one of his best, but it was all he could manage.

  To ease past the uncomfortable pause, he picked up the conversation where they’d left off, pretending nothing had happened. “Woan, you can’t know ev-we-thing when doing something new. It’ll be betta next time.”

  She blinked at him twice, then shifted her focus. She wasn’t looking at anything in particular; she was thinking. Sometimes Roan thought so intently that he could almost hear it. She blinked again and emerged from the stupor. Walking over to Gifford’s crafting table, she picked up one of his cups. The awkward moment vanished as if it had never happened.

  “This design is new, isn’t it?” she asked. “Do you think it could hold its shape at a much larger size? If we could find a way to—”

  Gifford’s smile turned genuine. “Yew a genius, Woan. Has anyone told you that?”

  She nodded, her little rooster crest whipping. “You have.”

  “Because it’s twue,” he said.

  She looked embarrassed again, the way she always did when he complimented her, the way she looked when anyone said something nice, a familiar unease. Her eyes shifted back to the brace, and she sighed. “I need something stronger. Can’t make it out of stone; can’t make it out of wood.”

  “I wouldn’t suggest clay,” he said, pushing his luck at trying to be funny. “Though I would have made you a beautiful hinge.”

  “I know you would,” she said in complete seriousness.

  Roan wasn’t one for jokes. Much of humor arose from the unexpected or preposterous—like making a hinge out of clay. But her mind didn’t work that way. To Roan, nothing was too absurd and no idea too crazy.

  “I’ll just have to think of something,” she said while unbuckling the brace. “Some way to strengthen the metal. There’s always a better way. That’s what Padera says, and she’s always right.”

  Roan had good cause to think so highly of Padera’s opinion. The oldest resident of Dahl Rhen, she’d seen it all. She also had no trouble expressing her thoughts, regardless of whether people wanted to hear her opinion or not. For reasons beyond understanding, Padera had always been particularly harsh with Gifford.

  As Roan struggled with the buckle, the wind gusted and blew his cloths from the crafting table. Two cups fell over, making a delicate clink. Thick, voluminous clouds rolled in, blotting out the blue and blanketing the sun. Around the dahl, people urgently trotted toward their homes.

  “Get the wash in! Get the wash in!” Viv Baker yelled to her daughter.

  The Killian boys raced after chickens, and Bergin rushed to shut down his new batch of beer. “A perfectly blessed day just a minute ago,” he grumbled, peering up at the sky as if it could hear him.

  Another gust made Gifford’s entire set of cups collide and ring. Two more toppled, rolling on their sides and making half circles on the tabletop. He had been having a productive day before Roan had stopped by, but she was always a welcome distraction.

  “We need to get your pottery inside.” Roan redoubled her effort to remove the brace but was having trouble with one of the buckles. “Made it too tight.”

  The wind grew stronger. The banners on the lodge cracked with a sharp report. The fire braziers near the well struggled to stay lit but lost their battle, both snuffed out.

  “That’s not good,” Gifford said. “Only time they’ve blown out was when the l
odge’s woof came off.”

  The thatch of his little house rustled, and dirt and grass pelted his face and arms.

  Frustrated with the buckle, Roan reached into one of her pockets and pulled out another of her inventions: two knives bound in leather so they could both cut at once. She used them to release the brace’s straps, freeing him. “There, now we can—”

  Lightning struck the lodge. Splinters, sparks, and a plume of white smoke preceded a clap so loud that Gifford felt it pass through him. Giant logs exploded and thatch ignited.

  “Did you see—” Gifford started to say when another bolt of lightning struck on the other side of the lodge. “Whoa!”

  He and Roan stared in shock as a third and then a fourth bolt hit the log building. Cobb, the pig wrangler and part-time gate guard, was the first to react. He and Bergin ran toward the well, picking up water gourds on their way. Then another bolt of lightning exploded the well’s windlass into a cloud of splinters, and both of them dived for the ground.

  More lightning bolts rained, both inside and outside the dahl. With each shaft came screams, fire, and smoke. All around Roan and Gifford, people ran to their homes. The Galantians, Fhrey warriors who had been welcomed to the dahl when exiled, rushed out of their tents and stared up at the sky. They looked just as frightened as everyone else, which was as disturbing as the cataclysmic storm. Until recently, the Fhrey had been thought to be gods.

  Gelston the shepherd ran past. Lightning hit while he made his way between the woodpile and a patch of near-ripe beans in the Killians’ garden. Gifford didn’t see much, just a snaking, blinding brilliance. When his sight returned, Gelston was on the ground, his hair on fire. Bergin rushed to the man’s side and doused his head.

  Gifford shouted to Roan, “We need to get to the sto’age pit. Wight now!”

  He grabbed his crutch and pushed himself up.

  “Roan! Gifford!” Raithe yelled as he and Malcolm hurried toward them. Raithe still carried two swords: the broken copper one slung on his back and the intricately decorated Fhrey blade hanging naked from his belt. Malcolm held a spear with both hands. “Do you know where Persephone is?”

  Gifford shook his head. “No, but we need to get to the pit!”

  Raithe nodded. “I’ll spread the word. Malcolm, help them.”

  The ex-slave moved to Gifford’s side, put his shoulder under the potter’s arm, and practically carried him to the big storage pit while Roan followed close behind. With the first harvest still more than a month away, the pit was nearly empty. Lined with mud bricks, the hole retained the smell of musty vegetables, grain, and straw. Other members of the dahl were already there. The Bakers huddled with their daughter and two boys against the back wall, their eyes wide. Engleton and Farmer Wedon peered out the open door at the violence of the storm.

  Brin, the dahl’s newly appointed Keeper of Ways, was there as well. “Have you seen my parents? They’re not here,” she said in an unsteady voice.

  “No,” Roan replied.

  Outside, thunder cracked and rolled continuously. Gifford could only imagine the lightning strikes that accompanied them. Being down in the pit, he couldn’t see the yard, just a small square of sky.

  “I need to find them.” Brin bolted toward the exit, springing like a fawn. Unlike the crippled potter, Brin could win a footrace, and she was easily the fastest person in the dahl. The fifteen-year-old regularly won every sprint during the Summerule festivals, but Gifford had anticipated her dash and caught her wrist.

  “Let me go!” She pulled and jerked.

  “It’s too dangewous.”

  “I don’t care!” Brin yanked hard, so hard she fell, but Gifford still hung on. “Let me go!”

  Gifford’s legs, even his good one, were mostly useless, and his lips slid down the side of his face because he didn’t have the muscles to support them. But reliance on his arms and hands turned them into vises. Gavin and Krier, who always picked on him, had once made the mistake of challenging Gifford to a hand-squeezing contest. He humiliated Krier, making him weep—his name magnifying the boy’s embarrassment. Gavin was determined not to suffer a similar fate and cheated by using both hands. Gifford had held back with the first boy but didn’t see the need to do likewise with a cheater. He broke Gavin’s little finger and the tiny bone that ran from the second knuckle to his wrist.

  Brin had no possibility of breaking free.

  Autumn, Fig, the Killians, and Tressa stumbled through the door, all of them exhausted and out of breath. Heath Coswall and Bergin came along just after. They dragged Gelston, who remained unconscious. His hair was mostly gone, the scalp red and black. Bergin was covered in dirt and grass and reported that the lodge was burning like a harvest-moon bonfire.

  “Has anyone seen my parents?” Brin asked the newcomers.

  No one had.

  As if the wind and lightning weren’t enough, hail began to fall. Apple-sized chunks of ice clattered, leaving craters in the turf on impact.

  More people raced into the shelter of the pit, running with arms and baskets over their heads. They filed to the back, crying and hugging one another. Brin watched each come in, always looking for but not finding the faces she sought. Finally, Nyphron and his Galantians charged in with shields protecting their heads. Moya, Cobb, and Habet were with them.

  “Let me go!” Brin pleaded, struggling against Gifford’s unrelenting grip.

  “You can’t leave,” Moya said, her hair a wild mess. “Your house is burning. There’s nothing—”

  Outside, a roar grew like the angry growl of a colossal beast. Everyone stared out the doorway as the sky turned darker still, and the wind blew with even more force. Without warning, the Bakers’ roundhouse ripped apart. First the thatch blew away; then the wood beams tore free; finally, the log walls succumbed and disappeared, sucked into the air. Even the foundation of mud bricks was sheared and scattered. After that, a whirlwind cloud of dirt and debris consumed everything outside the storage pit.

  “Close the door,” Nyphron ordered. Grygor, the giant, started to haul it shut just as Raithe arrived.

  “Has anyone seen Persephone?” Raithe asked while scanning the crowd.

  “She’s not here. Went to the forest,” Moya replied.

  Raithe drew close to her. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “Suri, Arion, and Seph went to talk to Magda.”

  “That old oak is on top of a hill in an open glade,” he said to no one in particular. Raithe looked like he might throw up. There had been rumors that the Dureyan was in love with Dahl Rhen’s chieftain, but a lot of recent gossip had turned out to be untrue. Seeing Raithe’s face removed any uncertainty. If Roan were still outside, Gifford would have looked the same way.

  Everyone sat or knelt in tearful silence as the roaring grew louder. With the door closed and guarded by the giant, Gifford let go of Brin, who collapsed and sobbed. All around, people quivered, whimpered, and stared at the ceiling, no doubt wondering if it, too, would be ripped away or cave in.

  Gifford stood beside Roan, the crowd pressing them together. He’d never been this close to her for so long. He felt her warmth and smelled charcoal, oil, and smoke—the scents he’d come to associate with Roan and all things good. If the roof collapsed and killed him, Gifford would have thanked Mari for her final kindness.

  The shelter was little more than a hole in the ground, but because it protected the dahl’s food supply, the pit was solidly built. The best materials went into its construction. The walls were dirt and stone, the ceiling braced by logs driven into the ground. Most of Gifford’s work ended up in that pit. Huge clay urns held harvests of barley, wheat, and rye. Their tops were sealed with wax to keep out the mice and moisture. The enclosure also safeguarded wine, honey, oil, vegetables, and a cache of smoked meats. At this time of year, most of the urns were empty, and the pit was little more than a hole, albeit a sturdy one. Still, the ceiling shook, and the door rattled.

  The only bit of light entered through the nar
row cracks where the door didn’t precisely meet its frame. This sliver of white flickered violently.

  “It’ll be okay,” Gifford told Roan. He said it in a whisper, as if a secret chosen to share with her alone.

  Around them, people wailed, and not just women and children. Gifford heard Cobb, Heath Coswall, Habet, and Filson the lamp maker weeping openly as well. But Roan didn’t make a sound. She wasn’t like them; she wasn’t like anyone. The light from the door highlighted the contour of her face, and she didn’t look scared. Instead, intensity shone in her eyes. If not for the dozens of people between Roan and the exit, he had no doubt she would have opened the door. She wanted to see. Roan wanted to see everything.

  After what felt like hours, the clatter of hail stopped, but the rain continued to fall, hard at times then lighter, only to pound once more. The howl of the wind faded. Even the cracks of lightning fell silent. Finally, the light from around the door became bright and unwavering.

  Nyphron shoved the door open and crept out. A moment later he waved for the others to follow.

  Everyone squinted against the brightness of the sun, struggling to see. One of the lodge’s banners lay on the ground, its ends frayed. Thatch and logs were scattered everywhere. Not a single roundhouse had survived. Branches, leaves, and broken bodies littered the yard, none of them moving. Overhead, clouds were breaking up, and patches of blue emerged.

  “Is it over?” Heath Coswall asked from the back of the crowd.

  As if in answer, a loud boom sounded, and the dahl’s front gate trembled.

  “What is that?” Moya asked, speaking for everyone.

  Another bang hit, and the gate began to buckle.

  —

  The rol where they sheltered was like the one under the waterfall that Suri had shown Persephone months ago, which had provided refuge from a pack of wolves and a deadly bear named Grin. Carved from natural stone, the room was about the size of a roundhouse and had strange markings near the ceiling. While the waterfall rol was slightly larger and square, this one was perfectly round and contained six stout pillars surrounding a gemstone the size of a storage urn. Embedded in the floor, the standing crystal gave off a green, unnatural light. Six heavy benches encircled the stone, as if it were a campfire and the room used for telling ghost stories. In front of the bench farthest from the door stood what Persephone first thought were three small men. Each was less than four feet in height, their faces illuminated by the eerie emerald light. She might have screamed, and certainly would have recoiled, if their expressions hadn’t been so clearly marked by shock and fear.