The mountain dwarfed everything Andover had ever seen before. He’d known that for a while now, certainly over the last two days the vast slopes of the black shape had grown to hide the grit and storms of the Blasted Lands and replace them with its brooding presence. He could no longer guess how high the mountain rose, because the top of it was lost in the clouds.
All his life the largest thing he had ever seen was the city of Tyrne, where he’d been born and raised. The city was immense to be sure, but it was a structure built by man, and for the first time in his life he understood that nature could build on a much grander scale.
The cave before them was another example of that scale. The gates of Tyrne were possibly higher at the main entrances to the city, but the Durhallem Pass was a fiery tunnel cut through the entire mountain and looking into it was unsettling. Dark stone lit by streaks of red light that seemed almost to pulse as he looked at it.
Andover’s voice sounded small even to his own ears. “Are you sure it’s safe?”
Drask stood next to him, his face lit by the reddish hues, his eyes ablaze with that same light. “If you mean, ‘will the mountain fall down?’ it is safe. If you mean ‘will you survive entering the pass?’ that is up to the followers of Durhallem and the King Tuskandru.”
The answer was not at all comforting.
“So, what now?”
“We walk.” Drask started forward and the other members of their troupe did the same. With no other choice, Andover followed. His hand slid along his side until he felt the haft of his weapon and took comfort from the grip. The Sa’ba Taalor walked with no real change in their demeanor, meaning they remained alert and their bodies moved with the same predatory grace as always. He gave no thought to the way he walked, but might have been surprised to know how much of that same relaxed gait he’d adopted over the last few weeks.
Delil walked next to him and Bromt stepped to the side, his eyes narrowed into slits. He could never tell if the man was angry or merely trying to see something far away when he looked that way, but the appearance was one of great rage, barely suppressed, so he kept his distance just to be safe. As he had been struck no less than a thousand times by the man in the last few weeks of travel it seemed the safest course of action.
Delil spoke, and for that briefest instant he was taken aback by the soft voice. The weather in the Blasted Lands, never gentle to begin with, had been stormy, and all of them were virtually buried under layers of armor and cloaks. Well, except for Andover. He didn’t have any armor. Just a lot of clothes and the gamey hide of a Pra-Moresh. “They will be with us soon, Andover.”
“Who?”
“The guards of the pass.”
“What will happen?”
Delil turned to look at him and her eyes wandered over his form, assessing his appearance and taking his measure. “They will challenge you.”
“Why?”
“You are tiny.”
“I’m taller than you!”
“No. At best you are my height, but you are tiny. They will challenge you just because it is fun to see you squirm.”
Andover nodded his head. So really they were bullies. He had met his fair share of them over the course of the years, hadn’t he? Memories of Purb and Menock flashed through his mind: recollections of a dozen times they had shoved him around and brought him to the edge of tears because he’d let them. And then of course, there were his hands…
He remembered the hammer coming down, the pain of flesh and bone exploding under the impact.
He remembered how it’d felt to return the favor after he had been granted his new hands.
They stepped out of the shadows. He’d been looking but had not seen them. The four men were dressed in black armor and sported black weapons. Two carried axes and two more had swords. All of them had bows. The two furthest back, the swordsmen, had their bows readied. The men with the axes stepped forward and rested hands on the handles of their weapons.
Drask called out sharply and the men looked to him. Once again they spoke in whatever language the Sa’ba Taalor shared with themselves and with no others, as far as Andover could tell.
The closest guardsmen looked at Andover and came closer, their eyes glowing with the odd and unsettling light that all their kind seemed lit up with inside. One of them came closer and Andover let himself relax as he looked the man over from top to bottom.
None of the Sa’ba Taalor seemed to have uniforms, not as far as Andover could tell. They’d explained their beliefs of weapons and armor alike: that it was best a person make their own, the better to be certain the tools of war were as close to a perfect fit as they could be.
This man was no exception. His armor appeared rough, but Andover immediately understood why. It was designed to imitate the walls of the great cavern they were traveling through. At a distance the stone seemed almost smooth, and in the areas where volcanic glass was lit with the rage of Durhallem it was often closer to smooth, but the stone had been carved by the Sa’ba Taalor after their god Durhallem demanded it. They’d expanded the tunnel the god had created until it had satisfied him. In the process they had left the marks of their tools and that is what the armor mimicked. It was an impressive level of craftsmanship.
The axe he carried sported an equally rough looking blade of obsidian. A really very large blade, to be sure, cut from the black volcanic glass. From what Bromt had explained to him, the followers of Durhallem were occasionally gifted with an offering of obsidian by their god. According to what the man had told him, the obsidian was harder than steel and considered a great honor.
The man was enormous – which seemed to Andover one of the two sizes of most Sa’ba Taalor men: enormous and gigantic – and carried himself with as much strut and posture as the most offensive of the City Guard back home. Purb would have been proud.
“Why do you come before Durhallem today?” The man’s voice was rough, his use of the common tongue was adequate but with a thick accent. Had Andover not grown accustomed to the accents of the Sa’ba Taalor, he’d have been at a loss for what the man said.
He answered in the language that the Sa’ba Taalor shared with others, an archaic form of the common tongue according to Desh Krohan, but different enough that Andover had spent as much time learning it as he had how to fight. “I am here to pay my respects to your gods and to thank them for the gift of my hands.”
His voice was much calmer than he’d expected. His eyes looked the man over continuously, reading the man’s motions, his stance, and what little he could see of the stranger’s face behind the black veil hidden under his black helmet.
The man stared back and was likely doing the exact same thing. And then the guard stepped forward and looked down at him, physically, as he was easily a head taller. He switched to the same language that Andover was using. “Why would the gods care about you or your hands?”
Andover sighed and pulled away his gloves, revealing the cold iron of his miraculous limbs. The eyes of the guard looked from the hands to his face and back again, studying carefully.
And when the man’s hand reached for his axe, Andover stepped in close and drove his right fist into the guard’s throat as hard as he could. It was purely reflex. He did not stop to think if the guard was reaching for a weapon or scratching at an uncomfortable part of his armor, he just stepped in and struck as soon as the man moved.
And as the man gagged and stepped back, he hit him again. There was a part of Andover that was perfectly fine with his actions, but it was a small part, really, barely large enough to notice. The rest of him was horrified. The guard had merely asked him a rough question. That was hardly reason to attack.
And yet his left hand dropped down and caught his enemy’s wrist in iron fingers. His hand clamped down on that wrist with all the power he could muster and broke skin, tortured muscles, and crushed bone before the hand reaching for the axe could pull the weapon from his belt and drive that lethal blade through his face.
Andover Lashk used his other hand to strike the guard’s jaw savagely and felt bones breaking against both of his iron hands.
And that little part of him roared in triumph as the guard staggered back from the pain.
The other guard was moving now, heading for him, and his weapon was already drawn as he came closer.
Andover shoved against the guard he was fighting and staggered him backward toward his companion. The first guard was bleeding and broken, the second stepped to the side, moving around his wounded friend.
Andover shrugged a shoulder and his hammer dropped to his waiting hand with practiced ease. As the second guard pushed past his injured companion, Andover was already bringing his hammer around from a lowered position, his muscles straining and accepting the demands he made. The grip felt as natural in his hand as if it were part of the same metal. In truth, it was, as he’d forged it from the remains of the very iron used to create his amazing hands.
The second of his enemies blocked the punishing blow from his bladed hammer and snarled something in a language Andover did not speak. Still he could understand an insult by the tone used and he stepped in closer, crouching down and pushing toward the man with his weight.
The guard was larger than him and had a longer reach. From any sort of distance the man had an instant advantage. Delil had explained that and Bromt had reinforced it. Drask had listened to their words and watched their actions with barely a change in is expressions, but he nodded his head now as Andover swept the heavy head of his hammer at his enemy’s knee, instead of using it conventionally. The guard hissed as the heavy weapon slammed into his knee and sent him staggering, trying to keep his balance.
Andover let out a hiss of his own as the axe came up in a hard arc aimed at his face. His free hand caught the edge and he felt the metal surfaces scream across each other. Say what you will and call it a blessing that his hands were metal, but he still felt that edge trying to cut and it still hurt enough to make him scream.
His adversary had reach and he had weight advantages, too. Andover saw his arm coming and could do nothing but try to get out of the way as a fist the size of his face smashed into the side of his head. He was not fast enough to get away clean, but he avoided part of the damage. His ear burned and his head rang but he was conscious.
As Andover reared back, trying to shake off the blow, his enemy pushed into him, limping from the blow to his knee but not nearly stopped by it. Andover hissed into the man’s face as he pushed back and felt himself sliding across the ground, unable to resist the sheer bulk of his enemy.
He pushed himself in close again and used his left hand to scrape and claw at the man’s face, pulling at the veil covering the lower half. Metallic fingers caught cloth and flesh alike and ripped.
The guard howled in pain and pulled back as much as he could. His face was bloodied and Andover felt wet heat spilling across his iron fingers. There was a certain dark, visceral satisfaction in the man’s agony.
Andover hauled his hammer up in a tight grip, letting his hand slide up the long haft before he brought it around. The hammer’s uneven head brushed his fingers. Close to his thumb, the rounded head pushed down with comfortable familiarity. The heavy blade on the other side of the hammer covered his fingers like a shield and he heard himself screaming as he drove the entire affair up into his enemy’s face.
The guard fell back soundlessly, bleeding from the great gash Andover’s hammer had opened across his nose and his mouth alike. Whatever the veil had hidden was ruined beyond his ability to identify any features. Teeth and blood alike slopped over his hand.
He was horrified by his actions, but that little voice that was so pleased to be in a fight was crowing with joy now.
No time for that.
The first guard came at him again, and this time he was better prepared. The axe blade skidded down the length of Andover’s hammer and then took a slice out of his outer thigh, just above his knee.
The pain was impossible to ignore, but, despite that fact, Andover had no choice. If he took the time to think about the pain he would be a dead man. The same rules applied as had before: the man was larger and had a better reach. Up close and personal was the only chance he had of surviving this.
The hammer was tight in his hand and he stepped in closely and used the blade of his weapon, ramming the wetted edge into his enemy’s armored stomach with all the force he could muster. It was a small wound , but it was a starting point, and as the man grunted and tried to get away, Andover bent his knees and dropped a bit lower, then lifted with both legs, forcing the hammer’s head into the wound with all of his body’s weight.
The axe caught in the heavy hide of the Pra-Moresh and was lifted and brought down one time, twice and a third time, each blow smashing into Andover’s bound ribs with crushing force.
Andover used his free hand and sought to catch his enemy’s wrist, but failed. His close-quarters tactic was working, but not completely. The axe wasn't getting through his thick cloak but each impact was agony. He either finished this quickly or he was going to die.
The hammer’s blade was still pushed into the man’s torso and warmth slicked his fingers. He pulled the hammer free and let it drop down. He felt the heavy weight sink into his enemy’s thigh, the blade cutting through muscle and sinew and catching on bone.
The guard only grunted and stepped back, pulling his axe free from the hide that had impeded it. The obsidian blade whipped back and the guard went with it, dropping into a defensive posture.
Andover stepped back and felt a grin pull at his lips. “You’ve lost. Yield.” The wound in the man’s stomach was moderately worrisome. He would heal from it in time, barring infection. But the hammer had cut deep into his leg and a heavy flow of blood poured down his trembling, weakened calf. He would bleed out very soon.
The man shook his head and spat.
Andover could not believe that any sane person would continue to fight until the words Delil and Drask had both used a hundred times rang in his mind: Durhallem does not believe in mercy and neither do those who follow him. The guard brought his axe around and let loose a bellow that shook the walls of the pass. Despite his readiness, Andover flinched and then did his best to block the blow.
The axe’s blade screeched along the iron rings wrapped around the hammer’s haft and carved into the wood of the handle. It stopped against his iron fingers and caused a bark of pain. Andover let the hammer drop and rammed the palm of his hand into the guard’s face, felt bones crack and bleed under the veil and watched the man’s head snap back at the impact.
The other hand he used to block the axe again. And then he stepped back as the guard tried to come for him and fell to one knee, his leg giving out. Andover did not let himself think. His foot caught the handle of the hammer and he hooked it upward, catching with his right hand.
Then he brought the hammer up over his head and brought it down with all of his might. His enemy looked on, trying to bring his weapon up to defend himself, but failing as the axe fell from blood-starved fingers.
The helmet on the guard’s head let out one loud clang as the hammer crushed it into a new shape and the man fell forward, dead.
Andover looked over the dead men and reached for his hammer. Two more. Two more and he might have a chance of surviving the fight long enough to meet up with Tusk.
King Tuskandru. The man whose guards he had just killed. No. Only one. The second guard’s face was a bloody pulp, but he was still alive. He still breathed.
Andover looked at Drask and saw the two other guards behind him. They had arrows aimed at him. He was not foolish enough to think that he would survive if they fired the arrows. He was also not foolish enough to think they would accept his surrender. There was a compromise, he knew that, but he could not wrap his mind around what it might be.
And then the words came to him again: Durhallem does not believe in mercy and neither do those who follow him.
He took three steps toward the fallen guard and brought his hammer down upon that ruined head. The man died a moment later, his body shuddering.
Drask Silver Hand looked at him for a moment and then nodded. He did not speak. He did not have to. Since they had left Fellein, Drask and his associates had spent their time schooling Andover on the ways of the Sa’ba Taalor. This test, at least, he had passed.
Both of the remaining guards kept their eyes on him and one of them spoke in harsh tones. “You will wait here. You will not move. King Tuskandru will be here soon.”
Andover nodded his head and rested his weight on the handle of his hammer. The other guard blew several harsh notes into a horn, the sound echoing madly down the length of the pass.
Drask walked closer to him and pointed at the bodies. “Whatever of theirs you like you may take if you wish.”
“What?” The idea of taking from the dead did not sit well with him.
“They are your kills. According to Durhallem if you wish to take what they have, you have earned it. That is not the way with all of the gods, but Durhallem accepts it.”
Andover looked at the two corpses for a long moment and then reached down and took the obsidian axe. The blade was impressive. If nothing else, he intended to study it.
Delil walked closer to him. She looked at the blade and shook her head.
“What?” He couldn’t keep the defensive edge out of his voice.
“You should worry less about trophies and more about the fact that you are bleeding badly.” Her eyes looked pointedly at his leg and he followed to where she was looking, surprised to see a thick runner of blood streaming down to the ground. The cut he’d taken was far worse than he’d guessed originally.
Until that moment he’d been only vaguely aware of his wound, but upon looking at the damage he felt the pain he’d made himself ignore before. The axe fell from his hands and he let out a groan.
Drask looked at the wound from where he stood and sighed.
Bromt dug into his various bags, not speaking at all, but searching. “I’ve not got any.”
Delil spoke, “Of course you don’t. You never have any. You just hope to scab up and survive.”
“Am I alive today?” Bromt’s voice was low and filled with irritation.
“That is up for debate.” Delil’s voice, in contrast, was amused. She pulled a satchel from her back and dropped it before her, pouring the contents out on the ground. Half a dozen different objects fell out and she sorted through them with care, as most had sharp edges. He had never seen that large a collection of knives and arrowheads left in a pile on the ground before. What she reached for was a stick made of silver, which she then tossed toward Drask without looking up.
Drask caught it effortlessly and looked from the four-inch long rod to her, and then to Andover’s leg.
“How do you have this?” There was no accusation in Drask’s voice. He was merely curious.
“You gave it to me.”
His brow knitted with concentration. “When?”
“A long time ago. Before my first Great Scar.”
“You have a better memory than me.” Drask shrugged and walked over to Andover. “You are bleeding. I can stop the bleeding, but it will hurt.”
Andover looked up at the man and gritted his teeth. The last time Drask Silver Hand had told him something would hurt he’d had the new hands bonded to his flesh in a moment of the greatest agony of his life. The pain had been so overwhelming that he’d been buried alive by it and had woken several hours later.
On the other side of that coin, Tuskandru was the king here and he’d just killed two of the man’s guards. There was a very real chance that the man would want to rip him in half with his bare hands and if he wanted to defend himself from that particular pain, he’d need to be as intact as he could be.
“Do what you have to.”
Drask nodded his head and pulled at the gaping wound in his pant leg. The larger man yanked at the cloth until it tore, allowing him better access to the torn flesh beneath. Then he held out the silver. “This will touch your wound. If Ydramil decides you are worthy, he will mend you. If not, nothing will happen.”
Andover shook his head. “How can he decide if I’m worthy? We have never met.”
Drask stared at him for a long second, shaking his head slowly side to side. “Ydramil is a god. He knows what he wants to know.” He slid the metal between his metallic fingers. “Besides, I’ll be asking on your behalf.”
“Oh.” It was all he got out before Drask’s thick fingers were pinching the wounded edges of his flesh together roughly. A yelp slipped out before he could stop it and Drask shoved the silver rod against his skin and spoke softly in words that made no sense to Andover.
And then the world went momentarily too bright for him to see as the silver between Drask’s miraculous fingers melted and poured directly into the wound on Andover’s leg.
“If you move, I will stop and you will bleed.” Drask’s words were loud enough to get past the pain. “Do not move.”
The hands on his hammer’s haft gripped harder and he winced, but made himself stand still. The pain was great, but he had endured greater in the past.
A moment later the pain was gone and Drask was leaning away, looking at the wound and the long line of reddish metal that was rapidly cooling. His skin should have blistered and blackened from the heat. Andover knew that for a fact. He had burned himself more than once as a blacksmith’s apprentice. Still, the pain was fading and his flesh was undamaged. In fact, the line of metal was cooling quickly and as it dropped in temperature the pain vanished.
A thick line of silver was clear across the sealed cut, a metallic scar on pink flesh. But the pain was gone.
He had just enough time to marvel at that thought before the riders came, the great beasts of the Sa’ba Taalor and the riders who commanded them. They seemed larger than he remembered. That was always the case with the mounts and their riders alike, as if his mind refused to accept the fact of their scale.
They came at a leisurely pace, Tuskandru at the head of the column. It was impossible to forget the helmet of the man and he couldn’t imagine anyone else in similar garb.
The group came forward at slow pace, not hurried and not concerned about the people they were facing. When Tuskandru dropped from his mount, his hand rested on the hilt of a weapon. Andover could see nothing but the hilt and the sheath and that was enough to leave him worried.
Drask Silver Hand lowered his head and held his hands away from his weapons. When Andover saw both Delil and Bromt doing the same, he mimicked the gesture. Tusk looked at the bodies of his guards and then looked at each member of their party, waiting until the last to look at Andover.
“Who killed my people?” Tusk’s voice was lower and deeper than Andover remembered, but that could have just been the terror that was eating at him. He had held his own against the Pra-Moresh and successfully survived not one but two separate battles against multiple opponents, and not a one of those situations worried him as deeply as the King of Durhallem’s Forge.
“I did.” He could barely believe it when his mouth opened and started making noises.
Tusk looked at him for a moment and then looked at Drask. “And did he have help?”
Drask stood up and shook his head. “He had training, that is all the help he needed.”
“They were good guards.” Tusk looked at the bodies again.
Delil shook her head. “Not that good. They underestimated him.”
“He’s tiny.” Tusk gestured toward Andover with one hand. “He is smaller than you, and you are a runt.”
Drask laughed. Bromt laughed. The Sa’ba Taalor with King Tuskandru laughed. Delil made what Andover assumed was a rude gesture.
Andover did not laugh.
He looked at the bodies and reached down, once again taking the axe he had chosen as his prize.
Tuskandru watched him as he lifted the weapon. It was a very heavy blade and lifting it was not as easy as he might have hoped.
The King walked up to him and held out a hand, gesturing for the axe. “May I?” Andover was surprised to hear the man ask.
Just the same, he handed the weapon over.
Tusk looked at it for several moments, moving the blade so that he could look at it better in the red light of the great tunnel. And then he handed it back.
“That is a fine piece of obsidian. When you use it, you should place it within a weapon that you make yourself. Do you understand?”
Andover licked his lips and nodded. When they had met before Tuskandru had not spoken directly to him. And now the King had addressed him.
“I will, your Majesty.”
Tuskandru looked to Drask and spoke several words that meant nothing, followed by the phrase “Majesty”. Whatever he said, Andover suspected it was a question.
Drask made a few gestures and spoke a few words of gibberish back. When he was finished Tusk nodded his head and looked to Andover again. “I am King Tuskandru. When you speak to me as a leader that is what you call me. When you address me as a person you may call me Tusk. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“I am not ‘Majesty’. I am Tusk.” There was no room for discussion on the matter. “Now, come. You are welcome in Durhallem and you need to clean yourself and make yourself presentable.”
“I do?”
“You are going to meet a god. It is best to be prepared for that.”
“A god?” he shook his head. “I’m going to meet a god?”
Drask spoke softly, “Durhallem wishes to meet you. You will meet a god.”
Andover nodded. He could think of no words to say to that.
“What did you call this? An ‘adventure’?” Nolan’s voice was a harsh crack as he looked to his left at Darus. His friend was crouching lower over his horse and holding the reins for dear life. The horse below him slid and stumbled on the icy, rough ground, but managed to keep running. He did his part by not falling from the saddle. His hood was up around his face and his eyes were squinted half shut. Beneath him the horse was squinting, too. That was almost inevitable. The winds of the Blasted Lands were utterly miserable to contend with and the cold had long since numbed Nolan’s exposed skin.
Darus waved one arm to the blackness coming their way from behind. “That will undoubtedly be an adventure.”
Vonders Orly was riding up on Darus’sother side and he bellowed to be heard. “We’re making camp!” Nolan started to say something but Vonders shook his head. “No choice! These are cutting winds! We stop now, or we will likely die out here!”
Vonders was from the Wellish Steppes and, if he was to be believed, he and his family had made several raids into the Blasted Lands in the past. They’d gone looking for anything they could sell and they’d found things on a few occasions. He wore a ring made from a very odd piece of metal: misshapen and hammered by wind and worse, the circle around his middle finger was heavy and the myriad fragments of what looked like melted gems that ran around the edges and fused together into a multicolored lump at the center were unusual enough that Nolan did not doubt the origin.
There were two ways to get that sort of piece: be very rich or go find it yourself. Vonders came from a family that had gotten wealthy selling the pieces they found.
“How long?” Nolan’s voice sounded like a distant mumble to his own ears.
Vonders pointed back the way they’d come and Nolan saw that the wall of blackness coming toward them was eating the distances at a terrifying pace.
Seen from the top of the Temmis Pass the Blasted Lands had looked almost calm. There were whorls of mist and cloud, but they were hardly violent in appearance. The pass went far deeper than most people realized, several hundred feet down into the lower levels that held the raging storms of the Blasted Lands at bay. From the inside, the clouds of mist revealed themselves for the tips of the endless winds and the nightmarish dust and frigid air. Nolan preferred the view from above, really.
The four men rode only a hundred feet further before they scrambled to pull blankets for themselves and their animals. While Nolan and Vonders drove spikes into the merciless ground to anchor their tent, Darus and Tolpen quickly set about sliding the heavy cloth of the blankets around the horses and securing the straps that would keep them from blowing away.
Calling their shelter a tent was a bold exaggeration. It was shelter, yes, but hardly as noble a structure as a tent. The horses gathered together at one of the three posts that held the structure up. The supplies stayed at the second post and the men gathered at the third. Darus had pissed and moaned about hauling the posts along for the ride. Each horse had trailed one of the heavy beams, and Vonders’s horse had hauled the heavy leather sheets on a small wagon. As the beast had been bred for hard work, it also carried several heavy stones that they were using to anchor the sides of the shelter, now that it was built.
Darus looked to Vonders and shook his head. “I was wrong.”
Vonders did not gloat. Instead he merely nodded. “Brace yourselves. It’s coming.”
A few seconds, later the harsh hiss of wind and grit and small stones slapping the leather and canvas sides of the structure drowned out nearly all other sounds.
Nolan shook his head, shocked by the violence being unleashed against their protection. The walls seethed and buckled and whipped in a frenzy as the winds tried to tear them down, but Vonders’s instructions had been very detailed and Nolan had listened. He was almost certain the tent would hold.
The horses stayed surprisingly calm and Nolan thought that a good sign. Not that he could be certain. He’d seen horses many times, and he’d been trained to ride one without falling off, but they were still a fairly new experience to him. His thighs and hips and backside were likely never to forgive him the sin of taking up riding.
When they’d been summoned to the palace in Tyrne, he’d thought they were going to be questioned about the beasts that they’d hauled with them from the battle. Nolan could not have been more mistaken. He’d expected to see Merros Dulver, and on that front too, he was disappointed.
Instead of meeting with a general he met with the Empress and her advisor, a sorcerous thing called Desh Krohan. He’d heard of the wizard, of course. Nearly everyone had heard stories, but the truth was so much worse. The wizard towered above them in a great cloak that seemed alive, and no matter how hard Nolan had stared he’d never been able to see a face within the cowl of that hood.
He’d almost ignored the wizard, he’d been so busy looking at the Empress. That she was a beauty was a given. She had reddish hair and a lean body, and she’d been wearing a crown on her head, but she didn’t seem like she was capable of ruling the whole of the known world.
Tolpen was the one who figured out how to bow properly and the others followed suit very quickly. There were two guards at the doors of the immense room where they met the Empress and the sorcerer. The throne she sat on was surely elaborate enough, and he supposed that the fact that she sat there should have been his warning, but the notion of bowing to a girl barely any older than him had not sat at all well until Tolpen did it and made him realize what was supposed to be done.
Empress Nachia did not show the least bit of concern over whether or not bowing got done. The wizard seemed less interested in that notion and more concerned with talking to the four of them.
After that it all sort of blurred. One moment he was focused on the Empress and the next he was trying to figure out what sort of nightmare was hiding under that sorcerer’s cloak and then Tolpen was nodding and promising that they would not disappoint the Empress or the wizard.
It was only when they were choosing horses from the royal stables that Nolan realized they were going somewhere.
Turned out they were going to the Blasted Lands. Something about being heroes of the Crown and needing to go to protect a young girl who was on a mission to find out more about the enemies of the Empire.
Nolan cursed himself for not paying better attention.
Vonders had opened his bedroll and was sorting himself. His ring kept catching the light from the lantern. They didn’t quite dare a full fire, but two lanterns burned in the tent with them and kept the entire assortment of soldiers and animals in semidarkness.
“How much did you say a ring like that costs?” Darus kept eying that ring like it was the crown on the Empress’s brow.
Vonders shook his head. “Didn’t cost me a thing. Found it out here in the Blasted Lands. Keep your eyes aware and maybe we’ll find you a treasure of your own.”
“You think so?” Darus managed to sound both hopeful and dubious at the same time. Like he couldn’t quite believe the pretty girl he’d been looking at might like him in return, only more so.
Vonders yawned and curled his furs around his shoulders to keep the cold at bay. “Trust me. It ain’t so hard to find stuff. You just have to know how to look.”
That was the last word spoken during the night. The winds were shrieking and being heard was impossible.
The next morning was more of the same and the men sat in their shelter and ate dry rations and drank water and then tended to their horses. Fresh water and oats, and the animals seemed perfectly content to stay put. Vonders said that was a sign it was time to stay where they were, and not a man among them much argued with his logic. The winds and the screaming hail were enough to stop anyone from being foolish.
The tent was holding well enough, but Vonders instructed them on several occasions to beat at the sides when the storm seemed to grow quieter. His reasoning was sound. The silence was brought on by a thick sheet of ice building on the outside of the structure. Had it been left there was no doubt the entire thing would have collapsed under the weight. By the time the worst of the storm finally abated there were splits along a couple of seams and the taste of ash and dirt coated the inside of every mouth.
So far, the beauty of the Blasted Lands did not impress Nolan.
Darus spoke up as he carefully rolled his gear back into a bundle that could be carried on his shoulders. “So, where are we going again?”
Vonders pointed in a direction that meant nothing at all to Nolan. “That way. The Mounds.”
“What are the Mounds, exactly?” Darus did like his questions. No two ways.
“No notion as to what they might be, except they’re big and the Sa’ba Taylers ain’t much for ’em.”
“Sa’ba Taalor,” Nolan corrected.
Vonders nodded, taking the correction in stride. “The bastards that killed the Emperor don’t like ’em and that wizard sent his sister to go look ’em over. We’re supposed to make sure she gets back in one piece.”
“What? He sent his sister into this?” Darus’s voice squeaked at the very notion.
“Maybe they aren’t close.”
Nolan shook his head. “Long as we get there soon and get back. I don’t care much beyond that.”
Vonders shrugged and then secured the supplies in his wagon. The tent itself went over the top of the supplies and Nolan helped him tie the furs and canvas in place. Whatever else he might think, he’d never doubt the man from the steppes when it came to the weather again.
They were on their way within another fifteen minutes. An hour after that the horse that Tolpen rode slipped the wrong way on the ice and broke its hind leg. Tolpen managed to roll free before the animal could crush him.
If Nolan needed proof that the man was a hunter he got it right then. Tolpen put an arrow through the screaming animal’s head, killing it instantly. Within ten minutes after that, he was hiding the carcass and cutting thick slabs of meat from the animal’s body. Much as the notion horrified him, Nolan’s stomach rumbled at the thought of fresh meat. Their dried rations kept them alive but tasted like the air in the Blasted Lands.
They packed away as much flesh as they could on the supplies and Tolpen took turns riding behind the others to avoid exhausting the other horses. That night they ate fresh meat.
Not much more than a day later they met the woman, Tega, and the two guards who’d been watching over her.
When she was a young girl, Tega’s parents had worried about her. They felt that she was too serious to be a child. Really, that was something that never changed. Even when she was lying to them and telling them that she was going to Trecharch and planned to visit with the amazing flora of that area, her parents felt she was too serious.
They’d have been far more worried along those lines if they’d known she was heading for the Blasted Lands.
There were six men traveling with her. All of them had eyed her with appreciative looks. They did so when they thought she wasn't looking, just as they saved their uncivilized comments regarding how well they could warm her nights for when she was in her private wagon and they thought she could not hear them.
She did not let the way they looked at her or spoke of her affect her ego. As Desh had said more than once, the least attractive can be a beauty when compared to solitude.
In the public times, they were very proper, but ultimately they were men and they were soldiers. In other circumstances, the two often led to a problem with crude humor and occasionally with inappropriate behavior. The latter was not a worry. Fear of Desh Krohan and of sorcery in general was enough to make sure they behaved, even if they hadn’t each been watching the others for foolish behavior.
They were soldiers, true enough, but they were also men who were promised extra monies if they returned their charge undamaged to her mentor.
Their expedition was much smaller than most that attempted to enter the Blasted Lands. Not small enough to be foolish, but very close to that in most eyes. The Pra-Moresh were a danger and a very real one. Several people had allegedly seen the great beasts in the northern areas of late, and Pella had heard them up in the Wellish Steppes. While it was not unheard of for the nightmares to wander those areas, it was a rarity.
The guards did not complain about their small numbers, not even when they thought Tega was too far away to hear them. They were grateful for the money and the opportunity to prove themselves to Merros Dulver. The new head of the Imperial Army was a harsh man to please, but gaining his favor and his trust could surely not hurt a soldier’s career chances.
The men with her were all chosen by Desh himself as examples of brave soldiers with a powerful sense of duty and a proven talent for defending their charges.
They had fought some sort of abominations on the road to Tyrne. They had done so well, in fact, that Desh had sent them to meet up with her by way of the Temmis Pass. She had ridden down the narrow cut away in the vast pit that held the Blasted Lands, and sweated the entire time. Twice she’d traveled that stretch now and both times she’d wondered if the wagon she was in would survive the trek. So far, her luck was holding.
The group had stopped for the night, such as it was. The wind and ash blew just as hard and the cold tried to sink through the wood of her wagon even more vigorously at night than in the daytime, the only other difference was that the darkness was more solid than before. The faint light of the sun was gone; the great orb set for the evening and the light of the Great Star that often shone down at night was lost behind clouds and grit.
Outside her shelter, the tents had been set up and the animals had been protected as best possible against the howling storms.
The storms did not seem to care. The winds were harsh enough to batter and shake her wagon.
A hard knock at the door of her wagon had Tega nearly ready to let out a yelp before she caught herself. The sound was simply so unexpected that she had no idea how to respond to it.
When she could breathe again she answered the door, one hand held behind the wooden barrier and holding a dagger. Just because the men had behaved themselves so far did not mean they would continue to follow that trend. In any event she did not want to take any foolish chances.
The winds tried to rip the door from her grip and the dust from outside entered the cabin in a rush. Tega squinted her eyes against the worst of it and looked at her unexpected guest.
The man on the other side of the threshold nodded his greeting. “According to the best guesses we can make in this weather, we should be at the Mounds tomorrow, if this storm lets up.” That was very likely the most words Maun had spoken to her since Desh had introduced them. He was a lean man, and hard, with several scars on his arms and his neck alike. He was unsettlingly quiet at the best of times. When they’d left Tyrne he’d said nothing, leaving most of the comments to the other man guarding her, a burly fellow named Stradly Limms. Stradly liked to talk and had filled her with a dozen stories about the City of Wonders. She enjoyed each of the tales, having never once been to the area often called the Old Capitol these days. The actual palace remained there and the majority of the Krous family lived there, but she’d never been herself. The stories Limms told honed her curiosity.
“Do you think the storm will abate?”
Maun stared at her for a moment without responding and finally gave a very small nod of his head. “Likely. At least according to Vonders.” Vonders was as close as they came to an expert in the area. He was, aside from her, the only person who’d ever entered the Blasted Lands before.
Tega thanked the man, but he did not leave. Eventually she decided to ask him why.
“We can’t tell for certain, the storm is too bad, but it’s possible there are others out here. Might even be some of the enemies are following us at a distance.”
Tega nodded her head. “Thank you for the warning. We’ll talk again after the storm lets up.”
Maun nodded and slid backward and into the winds, his hair flipping madly around his face. A moment later he was gone.
She did not like the man. There was something about him that was unpleasant, though she could not quite decide what it was. She would trust him only because Desh said she could, but she could not bring herself to be comfortable around him.
The winds continued their screaming fit and the wagon shuddered and groaned along with it, a victim of the raging abuse the wind delivered.
Outside the winds calmed for a moment and then a low noise thrummed through the air, through the ground itself, and set her entire body to vibrating along with everything in her shelter. Tega closed her eyes and felt her lips drawn down in a scowl of discomfort. The sensation was unpleasant at best and bordered on painful.
She knew what it was, of course. The sound – low vibration that rattled her bones in her flesh – was nothing other than the target of her investigation. The Mounds.
There were stories about what had happened in the Blasted Lands. Those different tales were one of the reasons she’d chosen to apprentice with Desh Krohan in the first place. He was supposed to be wise and ancient and if anyone would know the mysteries behind the ruined area it would surely be the man nearly old enough to have been there.
His tales were as broken and sporadic as the rest. There had been a great war, that much was a given. There had been sorceries on a scale not seen since and those powerful spells had caused the devastation. But what, exactly had happened? No one knew for sure.
According to Desh there was a very real possibility that the Mounds rested over the remains of Korwa, the greatest city that had ever existed. Korwa, where magic was first studied and taught, where the seat of the known world had been before the Cataclysm. Vonders and his family scavenged the Blasted Lands for the tiniest relics, but what might still be waiting if there was anything left of Korwa? Certain sorcerers, like Desh, had long since prepared their most important items to withstand amazing damage. It took time and power, of course, but according to Desh there were a few items of his that could not be destroyed by lightning, by fire, or sword. They could be hurt, yes, but it would require an army’s worth of effort.
What might still wait where sorcery got its start?
Despite herself, Tega felt her heartbeat faster at the thought of the Mounds. Not with apprehension, though surely there were plenty of reasons to be worried. Not with dread of what might be waiting in the place that could make noises low and strong enough to rattle her teeth in their sockets.
No. Her pulse quickened at the thought of what she might find if she could, indeed, discover a way to enter the area that the Sa’ba Taalor were forbidden to seek by their gods.
Ultimately, she knew that Desh had sent her for his own reasons, but in this case, she had decidedly a secondary purpose of her own.
She had questions, and now, by the gods, she just might have a way to get answers.