Age of Swords

by Michael J. Sullivan

  Flanking the fireplace were shelves upon shelves and more shelves of little drawers with small, white, polished-marble handles. Tacked up on the wall to their left was a large sheet of tanned animal skin—very thin—on which was painted a strange image. Not pretty like those Brin had decorated her home with. This was very detailed and showed hundreds of lines all interconnected in rings like the pattern found in the slice of a very large tree. A window of nine square glass panes made up the wall to their right. Glass. Persephone had only seen it at Alon Rhist, and she knew none of the others, except Arion, had ever seen anything like it. With the darkness outside, the material magically reflected their own images.

  “Please, do sit down.” The red-bearded Dherg gestured at the chairs, as the door to the room closed from the outside. Their escorts crossed the room and waited for them to comply before the one who spoke sat on a wobbly stool behind the desk.

  “I am Gronbach Eyck Prigmoore, Master Crafter and mayor of Caric,” he said with a strong Dherg accent that formed most of the sounds in the back of his throat before rolling them out, giving the words a sharp, hard sound. “I understand that you were invited here by these three? Is that correct?”

  They all looked to Persephone, even Arion. “Yes,” she replied. “We heard you were having a problem with a giant, and we’ve come to rid you of that menace in exchange for weapons.”

  “What sort of weapons?”

  Persephone realized she hadn’t considered what would be best. Her people had always used spears and axes, but perhaps swords and shields would be better. She looked at Frost, who sat across from them in front of the rows of little drawers looking just as nervous as she felt. “Swords.” She decided. “Ones that can stand up against the Fhrey’s.”

  Gronbach noted the exchange of glances and frowned at Frost and Flood. “Why?”

  “We are going to war against them.”

  Gronbach’s eyes widened, and immediately he looked at Arion. “This is very strange…very, very strange.” He fumbled with a piece of shiny gray metal bent in an L-shape, flipping it over and back between his fingers. “We have treaties with the Fhrey. You must know this, severe, harshly limiting treaties.”

  “Do they prevent you from trading weapons?” Persephone asked.

  He looked up. “Well, no, not exactly, but I’m quite certain that’s because no one ever imagined…I simply can’t see that they would…this is very strange.” He looked at Arion again, suspiciously this time. “I think it would be best if we just sent you back home and pretended none of this ever happened.”

  “You can’t do that,” Flood burst out, giving Persephone the impression that a great deal had been discussed while she was held in the other room.

  “They are our only hope,” Frost told him, his tone quieter but no less dire.

  “There’s no reason to believe they can do anything,” Gronbach responded.

  “Do you think we would have risked execution if we didn’t know? If we weren’t sure?” Flood said. He pointed at Arion. “She is Miralyith, just like Fenelyus. We saw her open the ground, which swallowed a giant.” Then he pointed at Suri. “She is her apprentice, and killed that same giant. If anyone can do something, it’s them.”

  “You have to let them try,” Frost said. He glanced awkwardly at all of them and added, “None of us have a choice anymore.”

  “Because of you!” Gronbach shouted. “You couldn’t leave well enough alone. More than six thousand years it was contained. Three hundred of our bravest warriors gave their lives to trap it, and you…” He began to say more, but then stopped himself, taking a moment to breathe deeply several times.

  He looked back at Arion. “We don’t like each other, your kind and mine. An ocean of blood divides us. The law is clear. If I let you loose in the depths of our holy city of Neith, I will be thrown into the fires of Drumindor just as surely as these three.”

  “But aren’t you the ruler of your kind?” Persephone asked.

  Gronbach’s brows rose. “Of course not. I told you, I’m only the mayor of Caric.”

  “Then shouldn’t we be speaking to the leader of your people?” She directed her question to Frost, who made a quick shake of his head.

  “We no longer have a king,” Rain explained in the silence that followed. “Mideon was the last of the Belgriclungreian monarchs. When his daughter, Beatrice, died, so did the bloodline and the monarchy.”

  “So who is in charge?” Persephone asked.

  Gronbach appeared puzzled for a moment. “Well…no one.”

  “Each city or village has a mayor or council,” Rain clarified.

  “It’s one of the things we were hoping to fix,” Frost said, while stepping forward. “We need to reclaim the Stone Throne, crown a new king, and restore the monarchy and our people to greatness. The lack of a single ruler has doomed our people to divided bickering, too many petty disputes. Every village has its own way of doing things. We can’t even haul a cart from Linden Lott to Drumindor because the track of the road changes width. How can we possibly accomplish anything that way? We’re no different than Rhunes now; it’s impacting our crafts. We’re forgetting the old ways because the tools and recipes are buried under that mountain.”

  Persephone addressed Gronbach, “So, if you are in charge…at least here…you can negotiate a trade, yes? If there is no one who’ll stop you, then—”

  “Didn’t you listen?” Gronbach exclaimed. “Everyone would stop me. A mob would form and carry me to the fires of Drumindor, and they would have no trouble navigating the irregular road!”

  Gronbach glared at Frost and then began stroking the length of his beard, his eyes shifting from side to side. He huffed, groaned, and finally sighed. “And yet…” he began. The dwarf had his jaw clenched, his mouth frowning deeply. “If we do nothing…”

  Gronbach stood up and walked to the drawing on the wall. “Balgargarath reached the Great Anvil two days ago.” He tapped on the drawing. “Echo and Khem led teams down to seal the Great Gate at Rol Berg.” He tapped the drawing again, this time at a different spot. “Their efforts won’t hold. We don’t have long now. Khem estimates three weeks.”

  “Two,” Rain said with conviction.

  “Two?” Gronbach looked at him skeptically.

  Frost and Flood both nodded.

  “If Rain says two weeks,” Frost explained, “it’ll be two weeks.”

  Gronbach’s shoulders slumped, his arms dangled limp at his sides, and his head hung. “We’re doomed.”

  “Gronbach,” Frost said, “if this works, all of Neith will be open again. We can finally go home.”

  “And if it doesn’t…”

  “Then you’ll be dead even if you’re not dragged off to Drumindor. They”—Frost pointed to Persephone’s group—“are our best hope. Maybe our only hope. They have a Miralyith. Fenelyus created Mount Mador on the crushed bodies of the Tenth and Twelfth legions! Balgargarath will be vanquished.”

  Gronbach seemed to soften.

  “But we’ll do nothing without payment. Without weapons,” Persephone said.

  The mayor of Caric looked over and expelled an unhappy laugh. “If you can do this thing for us, the Belgriclungreian Nation will…we’ll give you ten bronze swords.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Moya burst out. “Ten! This giant sounds like a threat to your very way of life, and you offer just ten weapons? Forget it. Send us home like you wanted to in the first place. You can take care of this Balgargarath yourselves.”

  “Moya, please.” Persephone shot her a let-me-take-care-of-this look, which Moya replied to with a roll of her eyes. Turning her attention back to Gronbach, Persephone said, “I want ten thousand bronze blades.”

  “Ten thousand?” Gronbach’s eyes widened. “Never going to happen.”

  Persephone firmed her jaw and stared.

  “I will offer you one hundred blades,” the dwarf said.

  “A thousand,” Persephone demanded. “That’s nine thousand less than I c
ame for.”

  “Perhaps, but no less ridiculous a number. I can’t produce a thousand bronze blades. We don’t even have the resources. We couldn’t make that many if we wanted them ourselves.”

  “What about that?” Arion asked, pointing to the gray metal he’d been playing with.

  Gronbach looked down. “This? This is…” He hesitated, and then hid the piece in one of the drawers. “Nothing.”

  “It’s the same metal your weapons are made of, yes?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  Persephone got the point. “Of course, it’s the gray metal you use, so you must have stores of it. We want one thousand of those weapons.”

  “One hundred bronze swords is my offer,” Gronbach said.

  “Then you can take care of this giant yourselves. I can’t fight a war with a hundred weapons no matter what they are made from. Give me one thousand of the weapons like your people use, or give us leave to go,” Persephone said.

  Gronbach tugged on his beard and looked to Frost, Flood, and Rain, who nodded encouragingly. “All right, fine. One thousand weapons, but you can’t tell the Fhrey where you got them. They’ll know they’re Belgriclungreian blades, but they don’t need to know I was the one to provide them. Is it a deal?”

  “Agreed,” she said, standing up. “We will rid you of this giant, and you’ll give us one thousand gray-metal swords.”

  “Giant?” Gronbach hesitated and stared at her. “You realize Balgargarath isn’t a giant.”

  “They said…” She looked at Flood.

  “Oh, he’s plenty big—so technically that’s true—but he’s not a Grenmorian.”

  “What is he?” Arion asked.

  “Balgargarath is a demon.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Choosing Swords and Shield

  I have always worshipped heroes in stories. I had no idea I was surrounded by them.

  —THE BOOK OF BRIN

  Dawn approached, slipping in all but ignored, and Persephone found herself huddled on the bed in a small room across from another one of those amazing nine-pane windows, thinking about demons.

  Now that they had hammered out an agreement, Gronbach had quietly arranged for them to stay in more appealing rooms than the cell. Hers wasn’t far from the one with the huge fireplace, and she felt that was part of its appeal to Gronbach. He seemed nervous about the possibility of them wandering the corridors and offered to have whatever they needed brought to their rooms. She hadn’t asked for anything—none of them had. Something warm to eat would have been nice, barley soup maybe, but that night she was just happy to have things settled. She hadn’t thought to ask about food until it was too late.

  The window indicated that the room bordered the outer wall, and from the emptiness of the corridors and the quiet of the place, Persephone had the impression this portion of Caric had been emptied of its usual inhabitants. Perhaps it was because of them, because Gronbach didn’t want anyone to see the forbidden Rhunes and the hated Fhrey staying down the hall. Persephone preferred to believe Gronbach was hiding his criminal act as best he could and that there wasn’t some other reason that this area of the Dherg city had been evacuated.

  Then you’ll be dead even if you’re not dragged off to Drumindor.

  She wondered if Frost was merely being dramatic.

  Three hundred of our bravest warriors gave their lives to trap it.

  Learning that Balgargarath was a demon rather than a giant certainly gave her pause. Can Suri and Arion dispatch something that has taken so many lives? Having seen Arion and Gryndal face off, Persephone would bet on the Miralyith in a battle against twice as many Dherg. And of course, if Arion had doubts, surely she would have said something as they were being led out.

  Persephone hadn’t slept. She had a room to herself, and while the bed was a little short, it was comfortable. Still, she had lain on top of the covers in the dark for hours, unwilling to disturb even the blankets. She didn’t feel welcomed, or wanted, and feared the worst. At any moment, the door could burst open, and she might be dragged away and thrown into the fires of Drumindor—whatever that was.

  The land of the Dherg wasn’t at all what she’d expected. Because of their bright clothes and small stature, she’d anticipated a pleasant little world of pretty homes along a sleepy beach. This gray world of stone was neither charming nor bright.

  She may have drifted off at one point or another. If so, the sleep was light, her consciousness skipping across slumber like a flat stone. Eventually, she sat up, pulled the top blanket off the bed, and wrapped it around herself to stave off the chill. She tugged the blanket to her neck and stared at the slowly brightening face of the window. Once more, her thoughts turned to demons.

  Persephone didn’t know what a demon was, not really. She’d heard stories, but the tales were always vague on details. Evil and powerful were the two traits they seemed to have in common. Persephone imagined demons as lesser, malevolent gods, minor deities. They were the storms that destroyed the harvest, the cold that killed, and the sickness that brought fever to the dahl. There was a time when she’d believed that the brown bear known as Grin was a demon, but the beast turned out to be just a bear. Gronbach had called his demon Balgargarath, not a pleasant-sounding name.

  The light from the window remained weak, just enough to cancel her reflection, but also enough to begin revealing the interior of her quarters. A small stool, the perfect size for a little man or woman, stood beside a desk similar to the one Gronbach used. The surface of this desk was clear of clutter but just as battered as the other. A device was mounted on one side. Made of metal, it had a pair of gaping jaws and a twisted piece that seemed designed to close the two halves together, squeezing anything placed between its teeth. A wide assortment of hammers was mounted on the wall behind the desk, dangling from pairs of wooden pegs.

  Roan would love a place like this, Persephone thought, although she wouldn’t keep it as neat.

  A tentative knock sounded at the door.

  “Come in,” she said apprehensively, not at all certain what she might be inviting.

  To her relief, Brin crept inside. She was also bundled in a blanket, the end of which dragged behind. “Did I wake you?”

  Persephone shook her head. “Hard to sleep.”

  “I know.” The girl stood just inside the door, shifting her weight from bare foot to bare foot.

  “C’mon.” Persephone scooted over and patted the mattress. “Up on the bed. That floor is freezing.”

  Brin trotted over and jumped up, sitting on her legs. She threw the blanket open, and then closed again, wrapping it tightly about her as she settled in like a bird on a nest. “It’s still summer, isn’t it?”

  “Stone steals the heat, and the windows are drafty.”

  “Hey! You have a glass window.” Brin looked across the room at the nine brightening squares with a little smile of wonder.

  “You don’t?”

  Persephone drew a loose hair away from Brin’s eyes. How many times have I watched Sarah do the same thing and think about the futility of the effort?

  Brin shook her head, undoing Persephone’s work. The chieftain reached out and pushed the hair away again.

  “They put me with Moya and Roan,” Brin said. “Moya snores. Did you know that?”

  “Unfortunately, I do.”

  They sat for a time, quietly watching the early light begin to expose vague shapes beyond the panes. Ghostly forms only partially revealed themselves, shrouded behind a dim haze that Persephone finally realized was fog. She was anxious to see what this new world was like, but the temperature wasn’t warm enough to burn that fog away, a disappointment. As far as she knew, they were the first Rhunes to cross the Blue Sea. Belgreig was something of a mythical place—the land of the Dherg—the once great empire brought low by the Fhrey after an epic war. It couldn’t all be as dreary as what they’d seen so far.

  “What do you remember Maeve telling you about demons?” Perseph
one asked.

  Brin glanced up at her with childlike eyes, wide and innocent. Then they changed. Persephone saw the shift, the fade of the girl and the rise of wisdom. There was a legend that Keepers didn’t simply memorize stories, but inherited the spirits of the Keepers who’d come before. Persephone had asked Maeve if this was true or not, but the former Keeper of Ways never answered. Looking into Brin’s eyes, she wondered anew. Maybe they were all in there, a score of ancestors going back to the first days, a council of spirits who pushed forward when a chieftain posed a question. Brin looked as if she were listening to voices that only she could hear.

  “Unlike spirits of nature, demons come from the same place as gods,” Brin said, staring at the desk while speaking as if she were seeing some other place beyond the room. “They are eternal beings of great power that seduced women who then gave birth to the giants. Envious of the gods, they sought the destruction of all their works. They are fire and ice, darkness and despair, pain and torment. Intelligent, crafty, and wicked, they are known to change shape. They can appear as animals, fire, whirlwinds, and people. While in their true form, they are hideous creatures that can appear beautiful and thereby tempt people to act against their better natures. Their purpose is always to betray, destroy, and bring havoc upon the children of the gods, their unworthy rivals.”

  Brin stopped. She blinked and looked up. The girlish face surfaced once again. “You’re afraid, aren’t you?”

  “If I wasn’t before, I am now.” She brushed Brin’s hair away again.

  Brin nodded. She swallowed hard and stared down at the bed looking as if she might be sick.