Fireborn Champion (7 page)

Thyra laughed and beat a fist against her sagging chest. “You think the world is stupid? All lands know of the obsession Eloia’s king has finding the thing that eluded him on the Godfall.” Her features hardened, her lips pressing together into a wrinkled prune. “We mourned their loss. Even in frozen Skaard, we mourned them. I mourned them, more than many. But they are gone, and now the Serpent Sun rises. You are a curse, and I should never have let you into my home. You and your tongue, Sander, they’ve always brought me ill fortune.”

Iron swallowed and sat up. He used a bandage on his bed to wipe away the salve. Where the wolf’s bite once festered, now only pink skin remained. He tested his leg. The knee strained to bend and flex and his toe ached, but the movement brought no flash of pain. “Thank you, Thyra. We didn’t mean—”

“Bah! No words from you. Why did the wolves attack you? They only hunt the king’s enemies. Who are you? Why has a man I have not seen in years come knocking at my door with a boy whose veins blacken with cursed poison?”

Iron looked beyond Thyra to his master. Sander’s eyes glittered beneath his shadowed hood like quartzes. The slightest shake of his head told Iron to be a sinner, not a saint.

Sol. She said Sol. Good King Sol? The man who rules Eloia to the south
. He recalled reading about the kingdom. It was a smaller one, not anything more than a regional power and surrounded on its northern side by the Sapphire Sea and isolated on the southern side by the Simmering Sands. Sander never spoke much of it, only that their king hated the gods more than most other heretics.

“My parents worshipped the Six.” Iron swung his feet onto the floor. “The king hated them. They tried to start an uprising, but it failed. Now he hunts me because he thinks I’ll start another.”

Thyra smacked her lips like she’d eaten the lie to see if it tasted sweet or sour. “So you and your addle-brained master don’t carry any sort of weapon?”

“No. I have nothing but an old sword. I think if we’d carried anything magical, you would’ve known by now.”

Thyra laughed and refilled her cup. “Of course I would have. It would be the first magic used on Urum since the gods fell. I think that’d be a sign even a blind fool would see.”

“There’s no magic left? At all?”

Sander lifted his chin. Iron flashed him a look.
Remember your promise
, his eyes said.

“You can’t be this dense.” Thyra downed her drink. “Magic died years ago in the Godfall when King Sol toppled the Six. We are at his mercy now. The world is at his mercy now. One by one, little Eloia grows into a titan worth fearing. So…you have no way to stop him? No weapon he fears that can kill his demon alp?”

The alp, the demons of the Second Sun who’d returned to fight the Six. The Six destroyed them once. Iron had faith they’d do it again. “I might,” he blurted.
 

Both Thyra and Sander’s eyes widened; one from shock and one from anger. Thyra shuffled forward. “What have you discovered? What is the key to his undoing? Tell me, tell me please. The Council of Ice and Steel fears he’ll turn his fleets upon our shores. Now that you have come, I know they’re right. But if you have a weapon, maybe we can fight them! We are Skaard. Our ancestors stepped from the ice and made this land of winter ours. We will not give it up to some him southern heretic easily.”

“I…my weapon…it’s a, ah, secret.” He cursed himself as soon as he spoke the words. No doubt that lie tasted particularly sour.
 

Thyra’s nostrils swelled as her sigh poured from them. “You lie to me. You will let Skaard fall if you have a weapon. I think now you probably don’t have one anyway. My hope has blinded me. You are as much a Sinner’s man as Sander, all full of lies and half truths, leaving bodies in your wake. There is a good reason he hasn’t shown his face here in years. Ask him about
that
.”

Sander muscled past Thyra and grabbed Iron’s bicep, yanking him from the bed. “We need to leave.” He tossed a purse onto the table. Gold coins spilled out, glittering in the light.
 

Iron grimaced at his soreness, but it was that kind of soreness felt after a long day of swordplay—a satisfying ache. He glanced behind him. Thyra stared at the payment on her table, plump, wrinkled fingers lingering above the open purse. “Eloia coins from before the fall?”

“They’re still good,” Sander grumbled, reaching for the door.

“You fool! He’s had these smelted.” The purse hurtled over Iron’s shoulder and smashed in a tinkling pile by the door frame. “Your coins are from
before
the fall. Tell me: How long have you two been in Skaard?”

Sander remained silent. He slammed open the door. Tongues of chill, salty wind licked at Iron’s sweaty cheeks. Above, bird cries warbled in shrill notes, the soft rhythm of water lapping the shore kept a steady beat beyond the wall of mist greeting them. Iron didn’t recognize the bird, but he’d heard water make that sound when the wind was high and summer briefly melted the lakes around their home.
 

“How long have you been in Skaard,” Thyra demanded, her heavy footsteps thumping toward the door.
 

His master twisted, yanking Iron outside. The man jerked the door shut, grabbed the sleigh propped on the outside wall, and wedged it beneath the knob.
 

A weight smacked the door. The knob twisted. The wood muffled Thyra’s angry scream.
 

Sander sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “The world’s changed since we’ve been hiding from it. I’m more ignorant than I thought.”

“Are we just going to leave her locked in there?” Iron scanned their surroundings. They stood on a wide catwalk, beyond which only pale fog speckled with snowflakes swirled. His heart sunk at the sight. He’d hoped for a city, not another world of white and grey. He twisted to the door and gasped at the gargantuan wall hewn in shades of translucent blue. He stepped toward the barrier and looked up. Another catwalk a few yards above theirs blocked his view of the top, but he thought he caught another catwalk beyond that one, and then perhaps another.
 

Iron pressed his hand against the wall. “Cold as ice,” he whispered.
 

“Stop gawking at the glacier. She’ll get out soon enough and summon the fucking guards, and trust me when I say they’re no baby greyhorns. Thyra’s a gasbag like I said, but she’s about as slippery as we are when she needs to be. Don’t believe anything she says.”
 

Thyra’s slapping quieted. Iron thought that probably was not a good sign, even though her words piqued his interest in his master’s past. “Where do we go? I thought the sun was out.”

“Reflected sun from above the glacier. There’re mirrored shafts carved down the ice to light the lower apartments and keep them livable. Fog’s thick and unpredictable in Ormhild. It doesn’t make a pretty view, but it does makes an invasion difficult, especially considering how the city’s built. Follow me, we’ll go higher, and if you’re lucky, the wind will clear the fog for a few breaths.”

They struck down the catwalk. Door after door revealed the homes carved into the glacial wall. Oil lamps set in even intervals promised light once darkness fell. Every so often, they’d pass a barrel or crate, or brutish, fiery-haired merchants selling fish or clams.
 

Sander had to constantly grab Iron’s arm and tug him along. Iron wanted to touch that hair. It was like sunlight sprouting from their scalps or fire threaded by the Six and woven into men. The townsfolk didn’t return his looks of curious wonder. Even the merchants narrowed their eyes and quieted their calls when the two dark-haired men passed them by.

His master cocked his head and impatiently yanked Iron onward. “Ormhild’s not like it used to be. We need to find a way out of the city before Thyra’s able to raise the alarm. We’ll need to climb to the top of the crevasse then back down to the docks. They’re on the other side since bigger ships don’t fit in the crevasse’s shallow waters, and when it’s crowded and a storm comes it can cause some nasty wreckage.”

“Crevasse?” Iron followed Sander to where their wall met another in a sharp point. The catwalk climbed the angle in steep switchbacks. They ascended in a rush, pushing past grumbling locals.
 

As they climbed, the wind gained strength. So did his heartbeat. “Is the fog going to clear?”

“Maybe,” Sander said. “And just in time. Keep your head down, and when we get to the top, have a look. Your first city, Iron. Take a really, really good look. We might not be in another place this size for a spell or two until I learn more about what that heretic Sol’s been doing.”

“Thank you!” All other curious thoughts vanished behind his excitement. Their feet pounded up the ramps at a slower pace than he liked even though his breath came in hot puffs. Eventually, he glanced up and spotted the final ramp before the open sky.

Iron bounded past Sander and leapt onto the flat ice. His shoes crunched in a soft layer of snow. Wind whistled through his hair. Above the crevasse, a flat plain dotted with the odd shanty home here and there stretched into eternity. He turned, rushing along the ground to a cobbled path with a railing lined by lanterns swinging gently in the wind.
 

He grabbed the rail and leaned against the wood as a gale whooshed into him, blasting the fog that had filled the crevasse in an enormous wave that spilled over Iron and blotted out the world for a few thrilling heartbeats.

The last trails of fog drifted over his shoulders, and Ormhild crystallized. He stood above an enormous crevasse shearing deep into an equally vast glacier. Catwalks lined the walls, the walkways strung with sagging ropes and dotted with lamps, some lit, most not. More people than Iron had ever imagined milled on the thin bridges running along different levels of the wall and zigzagging over a sea churning with foam and dark water.
 

Voices drifted into the sky, a song of society with its own wonderful rhythm. These voices carried emotion, so much emotion. Love, hate, hurt, joy, frustration, impatience—he heard them all on the low thrum bouncing off the deep glacial crack. “There are so many of them.”

“Thousands,” Sander said, idling beside him. “Tens of thousands.” He swept his arm toward the sea. “Welcome to Ormhild, seat of power in Skaard. Look to the horizon, Iron, and see its guardians.”

Iron pressed harder into the railing as he angled over the precipitous drop. In the distance, towering even above the mighty glacier, two skeletons held an archway carved of ice. Massive lanterns dangled between them, tied around the ice by ropes wider in diameter than Iron. The skeletons held the arch high and faced the open sea. These things, they did not fear. Even in death, they laughed at the tiny creatures beneath them.

Iron’s knuckles whitened on the rails “Titans.”

“Titans. The giants of the First Sun. Not even the alp matched them in power.”

“Why do cities make them monuments? The titans were evil and fought the Six. They should be ground to dust, not glorified.” Iron leaned back from the drop.
 

“Spoken like a true priest and apprentice to a wise and handsome master. They say it proves the dominance of man over all things.” In the crevasse, clunky bells began to ring, followed by distant shouts reverberating from the lowest levels.
 

Sander groaned and waved Iron down the path. “C’mon, the docks aren’t far.”

He walked behind his master, head down. “But mankind
does
dominate the world. The titans were of the First Sun. We’re in the Third. It’s us who rule Urum. Right?”

Sander tugged his hood in a friendly greeting at a passerby who pointedly ignored him. Iron wished at least someone in this city remembered how to smile. Instead, he felt their suspicious eyes on him.

“Eh, who knows. I left my scrying mirror to the Six in my other pants when I fled here with you in my arms.” Sander chuckled and brushed past a group of men that reeked of fish. “I don’t think people really see titan corpses as a sign of mankind’s power. More likely they’re afraid of what else might lurk in the world. The more power we have, the more we fear there’s something out there that will take it from us. Believe me when I say not all things that are dead are always gone.”

“Thank the Sinner, the titans aren’t haunting us. Their Sun set.”

His master paused at the first ramp sloping toward the docks. He looked at Iron with sad memories swirling in his eyes. “So did the alp’s once, Iron, and they’re back. Dark days are these, and darker yet the days before us.”

Like a bolt of black, Sander dashed down the ramp, but Iron hesitated. It was a rare day when Sander spoke to him like that. The city, the people, the majestic skeletons guarding the horizon—they all grew a little darker then, and for the first time since they’d left, Iron missed home.

Each harried step took Iron and Sander closer to Ormhild’s raucous dock district. The harbor sat on an open side of the glacier where black stones formed a thin beach at its icy base. Long, wide docks stretched into the ocean. On either side, ships bobbed in the rough waters of the Sapphire Sea’s northern shores. Many of the ships looked similar to one another: long, narrow hulls ending in ornate prows and sporting a single towering mast on which a great sail flapped in the chilly breeze.
 

Iron knew a Skaard ship when he saw it. He’d often studied these ships in Sander’s journals. They fascinated him, how they sailed over the waters as easily as he skated over snow whenever he used the Sinner’s magic. But unlike him, the ships got to see the world while he withered away in isolation. Maybe now that would change.

 
A smattering of unfamiliar vessels disrupted the uniform lines of Skaard’s ships. Some of the foreign boats had tall hulls and masts for many sails. Others were clearly built for speed with their low, shallow frames and few masts. Flags of every kind and color fluttered in the stiff wind, each one bearing a symbol of its origin.

Structures lined the black beach, crowding each other on tiered platforms. Each building had an angled roof over long, rectangular walls. Chimneys cast smoke in lazy fingers from their mouths, but the sea breeze quickly disbursed the dark lines. Here more than anywhere else squawking birds wheeled through the sky with their curved yellow beaks and pointed white wings.