Blood Storm: The Books of Blood and Iron (3 page)

“He still looks dead. This is disappointing.” Aisa dropped the ink sac on the damp sand with a flopping noise. She wore a loose-fitting red tunic and trousers instead of a dress, done in the style of her homeland across the Iron Sea to the west. Although she bared her face these days, she usually wore a hood or scarf over her hair. Right now everything was sticking to her, and Danr forced
himself not to stare at the outlines of her body, though he still peeked. She caught him, and shook a mock finger at him.

“Never mind Talfi,” Danr said, flushing a little. “How’s your head?”

“Achy.” Aisa touched the spot where the stone had hit her. The sea had washed the blood away. “I will have a bruise beneath my hair, and it would be best if someone woke me at least twice tonight, but I will be fine.”

“I am fine as well, in case anyone wants to know,” Ranadar complained. “Only my
Talashka
is dead.”

“You are a prince among elves,” Kalessa said. “Surely your head is harder than any rock. Talfi’s is another matter.”

“You know, sister, Slynd would have been an enormous help back there,” Aisa said. “A wyrm would have destroyed that squid without trouble.”

Kalessa shrugged. “It is mating season back home in Xaron. As the saying goes, ‘You can’t keep salmon from the spawning grounds, and you can’t keep wyrms from the mating nests.’ Slynd will find me when he is finished.”

“My
Talashka
,” Ranadar repeated, and kissed Talfi on the lips. Danr shifted uncomfortably and glanced away. Learning that his best friend was
regi
—not a nice word, but Danr had never learned a polite one—had caught Danr off guard, but he had finally forced himself to realize it was foolish for anyone, especially a half-blood, to judge someone based on who he fell in love with. Still, it looked odd to see two men together like that, especially a human and an elf. Danr supposed eventually he would take it in stride, but for now he had to remind himself not to flinch. And he would remind himself. Talfi was his best friend, and Danr wasn’t going to give that up over a few strange kisses.

“What is taking him so long?” Kalessa drummed her fingers on the squid beak. “Usually, he’s—”

Talfi gasped hard in Ranadar’s arms. He jerked once and sat up, blinking in the sunlight and the surf. “What—? Where—?”

“You’re with me, my
Talashka
,” Ranadar said, touching his hair. “Everything is fine.”

“Vik!” Talfi massaged his neck. “And, ow!”

Everyone breathed a relieved sigh. Danr felt a little weak. Last year, Death had awarded Talfi half of Ranadar’s remaining days to keep Talfi out of the underworld, which apparently meant that Talfi couldn’t die, but no matter how many times Talfi came back to life, a small part of Danr always wondered if this death would be the last, and it was always a rush of relief when he came back.

“What do you remember?” Aisa asked.

Danr leaned closer to hear the answer. Aisa’s question was more than academic. At one time, each of Talfi’s deaths also wiped his memory clean. That had changed, but only last year.

“I remember you.” Talfi pointed to Ranadar, then to Danr and Aisa and Kalessa. “And you, and you, and you.”

It was an old joke, but they laughed anyway.

Talfi continued to rub his neck. “That was not a fun way to die.”

“Are any of them fun?” Kalessa inquired. “I only ask because one day, I am sure it will happen to me, and I want something to look forward to.”

“None of them are fun,” Talfi said, then looked at Ranadar and smiled. “Well, maybe the little death isn’t bad.”

“The little death?” Danr said.

“It’s an elvish phrase,” Ranadar said, “for that moment when a mama and a papa—or just two papas—become very close to each other, and they—”

“Let’s get back to town,” Danr interrupted, standing up. “Before another squid comes looking for a meal.”

“Hello, little one,” Aisa said.

For a moment, Danr thought she was talking to him, and that was strange. Not even his mother had called him little. Then he realized she was looking past him to a small boy. He looked to be five years old. His fair hair was bleached by the sun, and his skin tanned by it. He had inquisitive blue eyes and a pug nose.

“Hello,” the boy said. “What are you people doing so far away from the city?”

“We might ask you the same question,” Talfi said. He was still sitting on the sand with Ranadar’s arm around him. “Are your parents nearby?”

“They’re back home.” The boy carried a stick, and he poked at the damp sand with it. “I come down here sometimes to see if Lady Bosha has washed anything up onshore. Sometimes I find bottles or even a barrel from a shipwreck, and we can sell it. We don’t have much money.”

The boy didn’t seem the least bothered by finding a group with a half-blood troll in it, or two men with their arms around each other. Danr said, “I’m Danr. What’s your name?”

“Joshuah.”

“Well, Joshuah, we just killed a monster squid in the tidal cave down there, so if you’re in the habit of wandering around this beach, you’d better keep an eye out.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “Really?”

Kalessa obligingly held out the squid beak, and Joshuah touched it with the awe only a little boy could muster. “And you’re an orc, aren’t you?”

“A tribal princess,” Kalessa said. “And he’s an elven prince. And he”—she pointed to Danr—“is a prince among trolls, though he likes that as a secret, so don’t tell.”

“And what are you?” the boy asked Aisa.

“The commoner who worships at their feet,” she said.

Now recognition rushed over Joshuah’s face. “Wait! You’re the heroes of the Twist! Danr, the half troll! I heard all about you from my dad! Are you real?”

Here we go,
Danr thought. “Real as you,” he said gruffly.

“You killed a giant squid all by yourself?” Joshuah asked.

“They helped a little,” Danr said.

Talfi shot him a mischievous look. “He tore the beak and the ink sac out of the squid with his bare hands. You’re the first one to see it.”

“Wow!” Joshuah said breathlessly. “Wait’ll I tell my brother! He’ll never believe it.”

“Here.” Talfi took the ink sac and squeezed a dot onto the back of Joshuah’s arm. “Now they will. Go tell them.”

Joshuah ran off, trailing laughter.

“What did you do that for?” Danr groused. “We were trying to avoid more stories. By the end of the day, the whole city will be saying I tore the squid in half with my bare hands.”

“You
did
tear the squid in half with your bare hands,” Aisa pointed out. “I was impressed.”

“Really?” Danr said, a little surprised. Aisa was rarely impressed by anything.

“Really.”

“Thanks,” Danr said with a laugh of his own. The last of his tension was evaporating and his mood lifted despite the sun headache. He tried to put an arm around Aisa to hug her close, but she abruptly drew away. Vik. She did that a lot. Just when things were getting good between them, she pulled away, and he didn’t know why. Danr dropped his arm as if it had turned into a dead fish, and his
face grew hot. The others studiously failed to notice. After a moment, Kalessa cleared her throat.

“We must get back to the city and clean up,” she said. “Seawater will eat my armor faster than that creature.”

“Can you walk,
Talashka
?” Ranadar asked.

“Always.” Talfi scrambled to his feet, sending sand in all directions. “Coming back from the dead always fills me with energy. It’s like drinking sunlight.”

“How is it to die and come back?” Kalessa asked curiously.

Talfi spun in a glorious circle. The rising surf washed at his feet, and a flock of seagulls cried overhead with a high, free sound. He dashed back to Ranadar and caught him in a breathless embrace. Danr gave Aisa a sidelong look and tried not to get jealous. Talfi and Ranadar had gone through more than one hell, including separation for more than two hundred years and Talfi losing his memory, before they’d been united, so it wasn’t as if they didn’t deserve what they had. But Danr had gone through a number of hells himself, and why didn’t he have this with Aisa? He glanced at her again. She gave him a small smile, then sighed and looked away. He wasn’t sure what to do. Always caught in between—troll and human, love and neglect, half of one and not quite the other, that seemed to be his lot in life.

“Happy,” Talfi said. “It makes me happy. I don’t remember everything that happens, though. I remember the squid grabbing my neck, and then I was here with all of you. With Ran. Now I want to run to the moon and back.”

“Let’s run back to the city to clean up,” Aisa said. “We have dinner with the prince tonight, remember.”

“Blargh,” Talfi said. “I should have stayed dead.”

“The city,” Danr sighed. “What am I going to look like this time, Ranadar?”

A
isa threaded her way through the crowded streets, trying to look in all directions at once without trying to appear that she was doing so. She had pulled her wet scarf over her sodden hair, and she kept her face down as best she could. Normally, she favored a hooded cloak, but she had not brought one to the squid’s cave. Kalessa came a little behind her, proud and upright and refusing to hide her face. Farther behind were Ranadar and Talfi. Ranadar’s face was schooled in concentration because he kept the glamour on Danr, who walked in the center of them.

At the moment, Danr looked like a pudgy, balding human in a brown robe, utterly nondescript, which was the way they wanted it. If anyone waved their hand in the air above the “man’s” head, they would have encountered a half troll’s chest. Elven glamours could change only appearance, not shape. No one, not even the Fae, could change shape. A powerful trollwife had once told Aisa a story about the Kin having the power to change shape, long ago and before the Sundering, but Aisa had never seen any evidence of such a power and now she found
herself deciding that the story was nothing more than a legend. A pity, too—such power would come in handy.

She hurried forward, eager to get home and change clothes. Danr called for Kalessa, and the orc woman dropped back so the two of them could converse in low voices.

The city of Balsia dozed in the sun like a warrior gone to seed. Streets sprawled lazily in all directions, without plan or purpose, sprouting buildings of wood and stone as they went. Here and there, the bones of an ancient stone palisade rose several stories, providing a back wall for some buildings. A mass of people, mostly human, shouted and laughed and rang little bells and begged and cried and created a cacophony that continually assaulted Aisa’s ears and mixed with a continual pungent miasma the place belched up—garlic and oil and body odor and waste. Always the waste. Didn’t people know how to dispose of personal sewage other than to throw it into the streets?

Despite the noise and smells, Aisa still found this place exciting and interesting. Balsia slurped everyone in—young, old, wealthy, beggar, pious, vulgar—and mixed them into a glorious tangle she had never understood until now. Even here she watched a woman in a blue dress drop a coin into a beggar’s bowl below. Years and years ago, she mused, the woman in blue had been a child and made many choices, all of which had brought her to this spot at this moment, where that beggar, who had also once been a child and who had made an equal number of choices, was sitting. And all those years ago, neither of them had any idea that one day their lives would intersect in even this small way.

The woman in blue turned away from the beggar, and her face dripped with blood. The beggar fished the coin from his bowl, and blood ran down his hand. The standing
water in the street turned scarlet. The cacophony turned to screams of fear. Aisa froze.

And then it all snapped back to normal. The woman in blue ambled on her way, the beggar pocketed a perfectly normal coin, the water was only scummy water, the noise was only street noise. A scream, however, echoed inside her mind. Aisa tried not to listen.

Kalessa broke away from Danr and hurried forward. “Are you all right, sister?”

Aisa coughed and forced herself forward. “Fine. Just lost in thought.”

“Troll,” Talfi said, oblivious. He jerked his head at a hulking figure who stumped down the street like an angry cartload of stone. Every inch of skin was bundled beneath rags and bandages. Heavy gloves and boots covered hands and feet, and a heavy cloak with a deep hood was pulled across its head, pushing the features into shadow. It—he?—kept well to the shady side of the street.

It was unusual to see an actual troll out in full daylight. Even the tiniest ray of sunlight caused the Stane great pain. Danr’s human side allowed him more free passage through the day. He was also better-looking, with that strong chin and that husky voice and that smooth, dark skin she wanted to run her hands over. And those eyes. Those brown, soulful eyes that turned her insides to sweet butter whenever she looked into them. It was probably a good thing that Ranadar’s glamour changed them, or she would melt right here on the street. She almost smiled at the thought.

A pair of nut-brown figures pushed a cart piled high with bread over the cobbles. They chattered and snorted behind knotty fingers while their saillike ears quivered in the dank air. “And there, two fairies,” Danr said in that wonderful voice.

“Don’t say it,” Ranadar warned.

“Would we dream of it?” Aisa shot back, feeling better with the banter.

“And here, an orc.” Kalessa tapped her own chest as they walked.

Aisa smiled. “Did anyone ever think Kin and Stane and Fae would live together in the same city?”

“Not even the Nine foresaw such a thing,” Kalessa admitted.

Danr twisted around to watch the troll disappear around a corner. “Huh. Out in daylight,” he said, echoing Aisa’s earlier thought. “I wonder why.”

“Everyone has emergencies,” Ranadar said. “Perhaps he—”

What happened next came so fast, it was not until later that Aisa was able to fully sort it all out. A man carrying a small keg slipped—probably on excrement—and dropped his burden just as he passed Ranadar. The keg burst open on the stones, flinging hundreds of nails everywhere. Iron nails. One of them flew up and landed in Ranadar’s collar. He cried out. Talfi, acting on instinct, snatched the nail away and yanked the white-faced elf free of the debris. But the damage was done. Danr’s glamour burst like a fragile bubble, and he stood in full view of the street. The man with the nails yelped and scuttled away.

“What the—?” Danr looked down at himself.

“Oh no,” Kalessa moaned.

“Quickly!” Aisa said. “We have to get him out of here.”

It was too late. A man pointed. “Hey! Half troll!”

“It’s Danr the Hero!”

“Danr! He’s on our street!”

“The Iron Axe.”

A crowd swirled toward them like a gathering storm as word rippled up and down the street. People boiled out of shops and leaned out of windows. Traffic came to a halt.
Kalessa drew her knife and it sprang into the shape of a broadsword nearly as tall as she was.

“Stay back!” she barked.

The crowd faltered, then someone said, “It’s Kalessa! And Talfi—the boy who can’t die!”

“The Nine,” Talfi swore. Twice in the past year, people had unexpectedly killed him just to see if he would come back to life. It was alarming, but Aisa did not find it in the least surprising. People could show wonderful acts of compassion and wonder, but more often they were selfish and thoughtless. Talfi continued to prop Ranadar upright. Now that the elf wasn’t so close to the cold iron, he was recovering, but slowly.

Aisa flicked a glance up and down the street. They were trapped smack in the middle of a block, with a wall directly behind them, street in front of them, and no handy alleys or intersections to make good an escape.

“It’s all right, Kalessa.” Danr faced the crowd, forced a smile to his face, and waved a meaty hand. “Good day, everyone! We’re just out for a walk! Nothing special.”

“Tell us about the Battle of the Twist!” someone shouted.

“As if a half-blood could be that brave!”

“How did you face down the Queen of the Elves?”

A pregnant woman thrust her belly toward him. “Will you bless my baby?”

“Don’t let a half-blood touch her!”

“I don’t think—” Danr began.

A girl, not yet twenty, dodged around Kalessa and snatched the hat from Danr’s head. Aisa saw how the pain sunlight struck his face, and she grabbed angrily for the girl, but she was already gone.

“Half-blood, all monster!” shouted someone else.

“He’s so ugly.”

“Is it true you talk to Death?”

The crowd pressed forward, half in admiration, half in hostility. Kalessa swung her sword in a short arc, causing the people in the front to flinch back, but those behind pressed forward. Aisa desperately looked about. It was always like this. Half the crowd adored him, half the crowd hated him. She and Danr had never met another half-blood, and for all either of them knew, Danr was the only one. But the Stane—and the Fae—were mistrusted at best, despised at worst, and just the idea of mixing one of them with the Kin set off waves of revulsion among otherwise peaceful people.

“Ranadar!” she hissed at him. “Can you—?”

“I can try,” Ranadar gasped. “But not all of us, and not far. That iron hurt.”

“Half-blood filth!”

“He’s a hero, you Vik-sucking pig!”

“Don’t call my wife a pig.”

A glob of mud flew at Danr. He ducked, and it struck the wall behind him. The street before them was a mass of people, pushing and shoving. Aisa’s heart pounded.

“Back away!”
Danr roared.

Suddenly, Aisa was back at the Battle of the Twist. The Iron Axe sizzled in Danr’s hand. The crowd was an army of Fae, and they fell in clouds of blood beneath the Axe’s blade. Flames devoured entire trees and fairies dove screaming into the lake. A cloaked figure watched from the flames. Then Aisa was back beside Danr, her heart pounding so fast her head ached. She forced herself to keep control. Danr’s face was tense, and Aisa understood that he was balanced between fear and anger, just as he had been during the Battle of the Twist. Vik. The crowd was provoking someone who could tear a squid in half
with his bare hands. A roar rose, half cheer, half growl. Danr made fists.

“Ranadar, now!” Aisa snapped.

Ranadar made a small sound. There was a flicker, and Danr was gone. So were Ranadar and Talfi. The crowd fell silent again, then set up a confused babble. Aisa took advantage of the moment to wrap her head scarf around her lower face and melt into the crowd. Kalessa, she knew, was well able to handle herself. Aisa eeled through the crowd toward home, trying not to shake.

Sometime later, both she and Kalessa crept through the side door of a tall, blocky house whose back wall was one of the original city palisades. The moment they entered the main room inside, Danr caught Aisa in a relieved embrace.

“Thank the Nine!” He held her tight. “I was so worried. Again.”

“
You
were worried?” She disentangled herself lightly. “I had to run all the way here and wonder if the Twist had killed you.”

“We just got here ourselves,” Danr said. The main room of Mrs. Farley’s rooming house had a fireplace, a long table with benches, and a few other pieces of furniture. Danr liked it, Aisa knew, because the windows were small and the room was usually dimly lit. He dropped to one of the benches. “Ranadar only managed to Twist us to the other side of the wall the crowd had pushed us against. It wrecked him. We had to carry him home without being seen, and that was a trick. Talfi’s upstairs with him now.”

“That boy has it bad,” Kalessa said.

“So do I,” Danr added, reaching out for Aisa’s hand. “Let’s not do this again.”

“Gladly.” Aisa squeezed. “Though it will make for good conversation at the prince’s celebration tomorrow.”

Danr groaned and put his face in both his hands. “Could we just send him a note saying I’m sick?”

“We could,” Aisa said, “but we would still have to attend. The event is in your honor.”

“You avoided the prince’s invitation for nearly a month,” Kalessa added. “No small feat.”

“I’d rather avoid it forever,” Danr sighed. “I’m a farmer, not a . . . whatever it is the prince thinks I am.”

Aisa nodded. This was not something they had foreseen. Word of the half man, half troll who had wielded the Iron Axe, killed countless Fae, razed the elven city of Palana, and faced down the Queen of the Elves herself had spread with incredible speed. The stories were embellished with every telling, until Danr became twenty feet tall, the son of Olar the bird king and a trollwife, able to tear mountains from their roots. Talfi figured in a number of stories as the boy who could not die, as did Kalessa, the warrior orc whose sword could cleave an oak tree. Somehow Aisa was largely missed, and for this she was glad, though a few stories mentioned a slave girl who stopped the angry troll from sundering the continent a second time. Ranadar had escaped notice entirely.

However, vanishingly few people had ever seen a half troll, which made it easy to pick Danr out of a crowd. Talfi and even Kalessa could hide their identities, but Danr attracted attention no matter where they went. Whenever they passed through a village, town, or city, the local lord or mayor or other person in charge insisted on showing hospitality, which sounded nice at first—free food and shelter were never a bad thing—but such events often evolved into problematic celebrations that lasted days or even a week. Danr was asked to judge jousting events, attend special religious ceremonies, bless marriages, and even battle local champions. Danr did his best to be
graceful, but he had the manners of the farmer’s thrall he had been until just last year, and he was never comfortable in the center of attention. After a particularly embarrassing incident involving a wedding and a pair of kittens, Aisa had appointed herself his social assistant, and she had learned to steer him through difficult waters.

She had definitely learned the value of the polite
no
, but the receptions and parties and parades had delayed them over and over, which was why it had taken them more than a year to get to the city of Balsia. They had hoped that in a city as large and cosmopolitan as this one, they could blend in, but they had quickly learned that more people in a city just meant more people to recognize them, and the local ruler—a prince—was that much harder to refuse.

“You’ll do fine, my Hamzu.” Aisa stroked his hair. “I’ll be right there to ensure it.”

He grabbed her hand. “Don’t leave me alone for a moment. You remember the kittens.”

“We
all
remember the kittens,” Kalessa said.

“I will not dare leave you,” Aisa promised with a laugh. “Except to change out of these wet clothes.”

Upstairs, Aisa poked her head into the room Talfi shared with Ranadar to ensure that they were indeed all right. Ranadar was resting, and Talfi assured her he would be perfectly fine in a few minutes. Twisting was draining enough, let alone under duress and with so much iron about.