Blood Storm: The Books of Blood and Iron (24 page)

“The wyrms,” Grandfather Wyrm added slyly. “Yes. But all this shaping takes power. You will find that you can borrow power from other people. It flows better if they let you, but the truly talented can even take it from the unwilling.”

“Is that where the legends of vampires come from?” Aisa was clearly interested despite herself.

“You are intelligent, yes. It is much easier to take power from someone who has changed his shape, which is why in my day, witches had familiars. Toads and frogs and cats that had once been Kin.”

“How do we start?” Danr asked impatiently.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you.” Grandfather Wyrm’s eyes were clearing of the ink’s influence now. It had been a small dose. “The Kin have helped ruin the world once already, yes. Why should I help them do it again? Especially when I am so
hungry
.”

Talfi stepped in front of Aisa. Confidence flowed through him. “If you eat us, you’ll never learn your wife’s name.”

Grandfather Wyrm reared back a little. “My wife’s name? It would keep me warm, so warm to know it, yes.”

“I was there,” Talfi said firmly, “and I remember it now. Give us the secret to the power, and I’ll tell you her name. I swear on the dagger that took my life.” Here, he touched the hilt at his belt.

Grandfather Wyrm paused only a moment. “Very well, yes. I agree. But I cannot give it to you, Talfi. You have no talent. You never did, and that is why our continent lies in ruins, yes.”

“I don’t understand,” Talfi said.

“Did you never wonder why this most careful spell wrought by the world’s most powerful trollwives should go
so badly wrong? Did you think it was
meant
to sunder both the Axe and the continent, yes?”

“I never thought about it,” Talfi said, but he backed up a step.

“Yes.” Grandfather Wyrm slitted his eyes. “The sacrifice was supposed to be a changeling boy, one filled to the brim with talent, yes. I believe his name was . . . Gavren. Strange that I remember that, but not my wife’s name, yes.”

Talfi felt the blood drain from his face. “Gavren? He was supposed to be the sacrifice?”

“But you ended up on the altar instead, yes, and why did that happen? I never did learn. But I do know that without the blood from a child of the shape, the spell took a bad turn, yes.”

“My father.” Talfi’s lips were numb around the words. “He didn’t know anything about magic. He sent Gavren away and put me on the table instead. Because we were . . . because
I
am . . .
regi
.”

“Is that why?” Grandfather Wyrm blew bubbles from his nose. “Such a small reason to destroy the world.”

“The world turns on petty desires,” Danr muttered.

“Petty indeed, yes.”

Talfi swallowed. He couldn’t take it all in. The ruined city, the cracked continent, the sundered world. It was his fault so many people had died. His fault the Stane had gone underground for a thousand years. It was him.

Aisa touched his shoulder. “You are weaving poisonous vines about yourself. I can see it. Do not. You are not responsible for your father’s choices. He did this, not you.”

“If I had been more careful with Gavren—”

“It was your father’s job to be a father,” Danr said, “and a general to his people. Not a petty person. He betrayed you. You didn’t betray him or anyone else. I know.” And Danr tapped his eye.

Danr and Aisa were right. Talfi straightened his back and some of the guilt drained out of him. Not all of it, but enough.

Grandfather Wyrm said, “That was a long time ago, and right now I have a bargain to fulfill. The power, yes.”

“I’ll go first,” Danr said quickly. “Show me.”

“The secret is in the blood. Stand before me, little one. Talfi, bring the knife, yes.”

The pair obeyed, more than a little nervous. It was hard to maintain their balance whenever Grandfather Wyrm inhaled.

“This requires a much smaller sacrifice, yes,” he explained. “Talfi, you must cut my skin so I bleed into the air and water. Use that knife and no other, yes.”

Talfi hesitantly cut at a bit of scaly hide near Grandfather Wyrm’s snout with the dagger’s point. It barely made a mark, and Grandfather Wyrm chuckled scornfully.

“Cut, boy,” he said. “This is magic, not a baby’s game.”

Talfi tightened his mouth and drew back his arm. This time the cut slashed deeper, and a stream of dark blood gushed into the water.

“Very good, yes,” said Grandfather Wyrm. “Ready, little one?”

Before Danr could respond, Grandfather Wyrm bit off Danr’s right hand.

P
ain flashed up Danr’s arm. He didn’t even have time to react. Almost instantly, a cloud of dark blood enveloped him, and he tasted copper. The white-hot pain went to his shoulder and rushed over his body, sending him to his knees. He realized he was screaming. His bones filled with hot lead, and he writhed on the slimy stones. The pain swallowed his entire world. It raked over every nerve with red coals and poured boiling poison into his gut. He screamed and screamed and if Death had asked to come for him, he would have begged her to take him. His strength drained into the airy water around him. His arms and legs shrank and pulled into themselves. A line of fire ants pulled his jaw inward and his forehead up. Danr felt his bones crack and reform themselves, and he screamed through it all.

And then it stopped. The pain ended as if it had never been. Weak and exhausted, he lay gasping airy water on the cold stones. He became aware of Aisa kneeling next to him with her cool arms around him. When had she gotten so large, her arms so thick? The back of her left hand had
an open cut, and tiny streams of blood twisted upward from it.

“What did you do to him?” Aisa demanded.

“He has what he wanted, yes,” came Grandfather Wyrm’s voice somewhere above him. “You are naive to think it would come easily or painlessly.”

“I’m all right,” Danr said, and his voice sounded strange in his ears, higher and reedier. He pushed himself upright and for the first time he noticed his hands. He had two of them again, and they were different. Smaller. Thinner. The skin was pale, and the hair had disappeared. Tendons stood out like strings when he flexed them, and all his calluses were gone. Pale blue veins snaked down wiry wrists.

“What happened to me?” he demanded. His clothes were too large. They half hung, half floated about him. His hat drooped over his eyes, and he pulled it off.

“You’re . . . human,” Talfi said in awe. “Look at yourself!”

“Allow me, yes,” said Grandfather Wyrm. A large rock lifted from the ocean floor beside him. Its shape went soft as taffy. It stretched and flattened itself with the sound of a finger running around the edge of a crystal goblet until it was an oval just as tall as Danr. The surface silvered over, and it rotated over until Danr could see his own reflection. Danr gasped through the bubbles around him as a dark-haired, brown-eyed young man came into view. His body was much thinner and leaner than before, and he couldn’t have weighed more than a third what he did before. His clothes still enveloped him, and he had to catch at his trousers so they wouldn’t fall. Danr was now perhaps an inch taller than Talfi, who was a little short anyway. Short. Danr had never in his life been so short. It was the strangest feeling. In awe, he put out an arm. The sleeve fell back, revealing wiry, nondescript muscles and none of the dark
body hair he’d been growing since he was ten years old. His skin was so pale.

Thick dark hair floated about his head. That was the same. But his eyes looked so much bigger. And his nose was smaller. And his jaw had pulled so far back. He worked it back and forth. No teeth thrust upward, and he felt them with his tongue. He was Kin. He was
human.

He turned to Aisa in wonder. She was so . . . tall. He was used to her head coming up to the middle of his chest. Now he could look her in the eye. It was disconcerting, and the world wobbled a little.

“Your face,” she said softly. She put out a finger and ran the back of it down his cheek. He shivered a little at the touch. “You look your age—eighteen or maybe nineteen. You have a pug nose. I never thought I would see such a thing. But your hair has not changed, and I can reach it.” She touched his hair, too, creating another shiver. “And your eyes. They are the same, too. Big and brown and . . . you. I am glad for that. I can see you are the same person inside.”

“Do you like it?” he asked softly.

“Your voice is so different. You sound like a boy who is still becoming a man instead of a troll speaking from under the mountain.”

“But do you like it?” he pressed, nervous now.

“You are handsome as a human, Hamzu,” she said, “but I love you, not your shape.”

She leaned in, her face turned up, but only a little. Danr’s heart beat faster, and he leaned in as well. Desire for her flowed over him like silk and water, and he put his hand on her cheek. Their lips came closer.

“It is not just you,” interrupted Grandfather Wyrm.

They both jumped and pulled apart. Danr had forgotten
Grandfather Wyrm was there, indeed he had. Talfi, too, for that matter.

“She has the power like you, yes,” Grandfather Wyrm continued. “The cut in her hand.”

Startled, Aisa held it up. The cut was already fading.

“I jumped when he bit you and accidentally scratched her with the knife,” Talfi explained.

A dreadful thought struck Danr. “How am I surviving here in the Key, if I’m Kin now?”

Grandfather Wyrm chuckled. “You can change your shape, yes, but you cannot change your nature. You are still half-blood, yes. You are still a truth-teller.”

“Can I . . . change back?” Danr asked, not sure if he wanted to know the answer, and equally unsure what he wanted the answer to be.

“Perhaps you can, perhaps you cannot, yes,” Grandfather Wyrm answered. “The power of the shape is chaotic. You will find yourself drawn to Tikk.”

Danr automatically stamped his feet twice at the mention of the trickster god’s name and he tried to spit, but met with mixed success underwater. “Or maybe I won’t.”

Grandfather Wyrm rumbled, “My blood now runs in both you and Aisa, yes. You can wake the power of the shape in any Kin. All you must do is share the blood, yes. If the recipient has the talent, he—or she—will be able to use the power. Whether they do or not, the power may pass to any children in their line, yes.”

“So we have to run around bleeding on people?” Danr said incredulously.

“And they in turn must bleed on others, yes. Nothing comes without sacrifice, young one. Great Ashkame tips once every thousand years, moving between the Stane and the Fae with the Kin caught in the middle. But now that the Kin have their power back and they have their champion,
perhaps the Tree could stop tipping, yes. The wars could end, if the Kin use their power wisely.”

“A sacrifice,” Aisa said softly, and Danr caught a strange note in her voice. “Is that why you gave us the power? Because we can stop war from breaking out between the Fae and the Stane every thousand years?”

“I think you
can
, yes,” Grandfather Wyrm said, “but I do not know if you
will.
And now, Talfi—” Grandfather Wyrm turned his massive head toward the other young man, who reflexively backed up a step. “You will fulfill our bargain and give me the name of my wife.”

“No.” Talfi folded his arms.

A stab of fear went through Danr’s chest. “Talfi—”

“I said no,” Talfi said. “You broke the bargain, Grandfather Wyrm. You said you wouldn’t eat us, and you ate Danr’s hand.”

Grandfather Wyrm managed to look miffed. “He has it back, yes.”

“You still broke the bargain,” Talfi replied stubbornly.

Grandfather Wyrm roared. Every tooth in his massive maw gleamed like a sword, and a wave of water shoved them all several yards backward. Grandfather Wyrm rose high above them.
“You challenge me, boy?”

Heart pounding, Danr regained his feet. His mind raced. The creature was going to attack, and he needed to get its attention so Aisa and Talfi could find cover, get away. Automatically, he tried to pick up a nearby chunk of rubble, intending to throw it at Grandfather Wyrm’s head. But the rock didn’t budge. He strained, and his muscles popped. The rock, which wasn’t even the size of a sheep, was too heavy. Then he remembered—his troll’s strength was gone.

Talfi also got upright, looking unfazed. “You kill me, and you’ll never learn your wife’s name.”

Grandfather Wyrm hesitated. Danr helped Aisa to her feet—she was so
heavy
now—and edged away with her as best he could.

“What do you want, then?” the great wyrm asked at last.

“Get us back to our friends unharmed,” Talfi said, “and your debt will be repaid.”

“That is all?” Grandfather Wyrm sounded surprised. “Very well, yes.” He blew a bubble. It expanded until it encompassed all three of them. Danr found himself standing in open air on the ocean floor, his sopping clothes hanging off his lean body. Fluid gushed from his mouth and nose, and a series of wild coughs shook his body. The airy water cleared quickly from his lungs, and it was a fine thing to breathe thin air again.

“Tell me her name,” Grandfather Wyrm said in a soft grumble, “that I may be warm again, yes.”

“Bathilda.” Talfi wiped fluid from his own mouth and chin. “Her name was Bathilda.”

“Bathilda,” Grandfather Wyrm sighed. His golden eyes closed and his massive head sank back to the ocean floor. “That was it. My Bathilda. Thank you, Talfi and Aisa and Danr. Perhaps we will speak again, yes.”

The bubble moved, and Danr’s stomach lurched. Aisa reached out to steady him, and he marveled that she was strong enough to do it, and then he remembered how much smaller he was. It was something he constantly tripped over. But he was
human.
No one would look at him and see a monster or a Stane or a troll. He was a human among humans, a key in a lock. He felt as light and free as the bubble that coasted slowly upward with them in it.

“You look so happy,” Aisa said. “You smile so.”

“Do I?” Danr put a hand, a human-sized hand, to his
face and felt human-sized teeth in a human-sized grin. “I can’t think of any other way to feel, Aisa!” He swept her into a hug, drenched clothes and all, that should have lifted her off the bottom of the bubble, but she was too heavy for him. He flushed a little and settled for dancing around a bit with her instead. “Look at me!”

“You’re a good-looking man,” Talfi said rakishly. “Take it from someone who knows.”

Danr ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah?” He didn’t know what to think of that, either. All his life, he’d been the ugly one out. In a stroke, that had changed.

“Why didn’t you change shape, Aisa?” Danr asked. “Grandfather Wyrm said you have more power than I do, and you got his blood, but nothing happened to you.”

Aisa held up her injured hand. The wound had healed completely. “I do not know. But you went through considerable pain, and I am not sure I wish such a thing for myself.”

“We still don’t know why Aisa was able to survive the Key, either.” Talfi poked the side of the bubble with a finger, and Danr caught at his wrist. His fingers barely wrapped around it.

“What the Vik are you doing?” Danr demanded. “If you pop this thing, we’re dead.”

“Sorry.” Talfi grinned. “I can’t seem to help poking.”

“Hmm,” said Aisa.

“Maybe we could find out why she survived and why she didn’t change shape,” Talfi said brightly.

“How?” Danr was examining the rubbery sides of the bubble and discovering his own urge to poke at it. Damn Talfi.

“You could
look
at her.” And Talfi tapped his own left eye meaningfully.

Aisa inhaled sharply. Danr turned, his stomach tight. The air in the bubble was getting hot and stuffy. Unbidden, his thoughts fled back to the last time he had looked at Aisa with his true eye, when he had learned of the depth of her hunger for the Fae and of the private pain she had lived with. He had seen her longing for the ocean and seen a strange, fluid strength that he hadn’t understood. Aisa, however, had felt violated beyond measure, and it had nearly cost their love, their friendship, everything. It had been the worst month of Danr’s life since his mother’s death, and since it had happened, he did his best not to think about what he had seen. Now he did think about it. What was that fluid strength he had seen? The power of the shape, hidden inside her?

“I promised I would never do that to her again,” he said shortly.

“Unless Aisa gives permission,” Talfi replied. Poke, poke. “Don’t you want to know?”

Talfi had, perhaps deliberately, directed the question so it could go either to Aisa or Danr. Aisa said nothing, but Danr was forced to respond.

“Of course I want to know,” he retorted. “Only a fool wouldn’t. She might have power we can’t dream of, power we need, and this is one way to find out, and while I’m at it, I’m going to add that you’re licking Vik’s balls by asking me that and making me answer.”

“Keeps my mind off Ranadar,” Talfi said with more than a little heat. “The love of
your
life is standing right next to you, and you’re a human now. You have what you want. Does either of you care if Ranadar lives? Or Kalessa?”

Danr’s words flew like darts. “Of course we care. You’re so wrapped up in whether or not the world accepts you,
regi
or not
regi
, that you can’t see true friends when
they’re standing in front of you. All you care about is the elf that’s behind you.”

Talfi’s face went white and he made a fist. “You’re not so big now, and I can bloody your damn nose. I can—”

“No,” Aisa said quietly.

Both young men turned. “What?” Talfi said.

“I do not grant permission for anyone to gaze at me with a true eye,” Aisa said.

“But—” Talfi said.

“Just like a man,” Aisa sniped. “He can’t hear
no
from a woman.”

“Hey!” Talfi said. “I didn’t—”

Danr crossed his arms, and noticed how much thinner they were. “If she says no, it means no.”

“Fine.” Talfi turned his back, but Danr didn’t miss the glimmer in the corner of his eye. Hesitantly, he put a hand—how long would it take before he stopped noticing how small his body was?—on Talfi’s shoulder.

“We’ll get him out, Talfi,” Danr said in his new tenor voice. “Both of them. I . . . I . . .”

“You can’t say that you promise,” Talfi said with his back to them both. “It’s not the truth.”

“We are near the surface,” Aisa said suddenly.

It was true. Sunlight was penetrating the bubble and the water around it. Danr automatically threw up a hand to shield his eyes—he had lost his hat somewhere back with Grandfather Wyrm—but found to his surprise that the light didn’t hurt. Before he could consider this astonishing development further, the bubble breached the surface like a strange whale and sailed across the border of the Key into normal water. Danr had time to glimpse the wide blue ocean stretching in all directions before the bubble popped and all three of them dropped into the sea with a splash.