Touch of Iron (The Living Blade #1) (46 page)

O
wen took a deep breath,
turning the last page in his book. Then he put the book down before him, palms of his hands flat on the cover, and stared off into space, as though savoring the fleeting moment of accomplishment. Nora watched him. It was quiet in the library today. It seemed she and her brother were the only ones there.

“And? Better now?” she asked.

“Nora?” Owen looked surprised to see her. His red eyes focused on her face. He had been going strong for some time now, keeping himself awake with a concoction that smelled divine but tasted bitter as hell. Nora had tried some herself, but it made her heart race and her fingers shake. Owen stretched.

“Ah. You know that melancholic feeling when you’re nearly finished with a book and know that afterward there will be nothing left to read? And it makes you happy and sad at the same time?”

“No,” Nora said, licking the tip of her finger to turn a page. “Is it like: ‘
post coitum omne animalum triste est
’?”

“How do
you
know that?”

She grinned at him over the cover of her book. “Read it.”

“But who translated it for y—never mind. I don’t even want to know.”

She laughed and poured him a glass of water as he rubbed his eyes.

“What
are
you reading?” He squinted at the title of the leather-bound book in her hands.

“Words.” Nora flicked back a few pages. “Lots of words. Here, listen to this: ‘She moaned lustfully as he thrust his quivering love lance—’”

“Ew. Why do you even read that stuff?” Owen clasped his hands over his ears. “And no, I don’t want to hear your answer.”

Nora chuckled and placed a bookmark between the pages. The table in front of Owen looked as though he had been trying to build himself a book fortress but had failed because someone kept opening the bricks. She drew herself up and put on a serious air.

“Shade doesn’t know,” she announced.

Owen stared at her with wide eyes. His hair was ruffled like the feathers of an owl.

“You didn’t tell him, did you?”

“No.” She frowned. “Should I have?”

“No.” Owen looked shocked. “That’s not your business.”

“Amazing how often people tell me that.”

Nora leaned back in her chair and stared up at the domed ceiling. Ages ago, someone had stained the red stone a rich dark blue to depict the night sky. It was flaking in spots, leaving blood-red gashes in the painting. You could see constellations of stars imprinted within the outline of an enormous man who stretched from one horizon to the other, his back arching to hold the heavens up, stars scrawled onto his blue skin. Specks of light in night’s dark cloak. Light and dark conjoined, though forever apart. A paradox. A divine mystery. The fixed star was the man’s navel, but the most prominent constellation was just below: the Axis, a row of four large stars with a heart-shaped trace of smaller stars below. Typical. Even the heavens revolved around some guy’s testicles.

“Does Master Diaz know?” Owen asked.

“Why does everyone believe we’re together?” Nora’s voice rose a pitch higher in exasperation.

“Aren’t you?” Owen peered at her down his long nose.

“No, for fuck’s sake.”

“Fine. Why are you so mad, then?”

“Because…” She stopped and held her head in her hands. Because she wanted what Suranna had had. Because she wanted Diaz unreservedly. Because it wasn’t fair to use Shade as a substitute. Because she knew that Diaz would never be with her the way he had been with Suranna. He couldn’t. Because he was the master and he didn’t see her as his equal. And because being with him would change everything between them, and she didn’t want that either.

She took a deep breath before continuing in a more calm and dignified manner: “Tell me why you’ve crawled behind all these books the last few weeks, Owen. Tell me about the Blade. Suranna told me the sacrifice for it had to go willingly. That the Blade somehow…remains the person who was turned into it. Why hasn’t Bashan told Shade yet?”

“Maybe he is waiting for the right time.”

“Bashan?”

Owen shrugged and offered another theory. “Maybe he is so sure that Shade will want to volunteer that he hasn’t told him yet.”

“How so?”

“I’m not sure, Nora. Do I look like I know what Bashan thinks? Or Shade?” Owen ran a hand through his greasy hair, ruffling it even more. He was paler than usual, making the curved scar on his cheek stand out. There were shadows under his eyes and was that…? Was that the ghost of a beard around her brother’s mouth? Did he have to shave already and hadn’t? She used to be indistinguishable from him, snotty-nosed, charcoal-smeared face and all. Nora folded her arms. She’d never tell him they had narrowly escaped a life of whoredom by grace of a mother they didn’t know.

“Even if you don’t know, I’m sure you have a theory. So share,” she said instead.

He swallowed a gulp of water and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Where should I start?”

“Tell me of the treasures of the gods. Tell me of the prophecy and the quest you’re on to find the Living Blade.”

“So you can mock me and them?”

“Owen.” Nora fixed her eyes on her brother’s face. “There are thousands of people, maybe even tens of thousands, who would mock you. They say the gods are dead, that magic is gone or dormant. They say we should put our faith in men. We should follow the pilgrim’s order. We should bow our heads to the Kandarin Empire. Should, should, should. These people would say your search for cauldrons and blades and cloaks and horns is so much nonsense it betrays a deluded mind. Belief is frowned upon; faith is for the gullible. They would mock you, Owen. But I won’t. I am here. By your side. And if they dare mock you to your face, I’ll kick their ass. So you owe me.”

Owen stiffened while she spoke, but he smiled at the last and then nodded, hunched forward between his books.

“Owe you? Interesting line of reasoning, that. So. The treasures,” he said, never able to resist imparting his knowledge, “are what remains to us of the gods. For a long time, the wights kept those treasures from us, which is why we saw them as messengers from the gods, their mouthpieces. And the wights taught us that in the beginning, before the dawn of men, there was only one land, the ancient Blessed Isle, Nessa. No other lands existed, just Nessa and the wide sea, covered with swirling mists.

“There were seven tribes of wights then, seven kings, seven great feasting halls, and seven gods. And the gods walked among the wights as they do, in physical form on the land. And one of the gods, Arrun, fell in love with a wight maiden. To keep her at his side forever, knowing she was mortal, Arrun gave his woman the first treasure. The Cauldron of Arrun. Whenever she began to grow old and feel time’s sting, she only had to fill the Cauldron with water, immerse herself, and be young again. Thus, in all her beauty, she could walk beside him always. They were married, and the First Empire was forged from that marriage.”

“And thus love conquers all. The end,” Nora interrupted. Owen gave her a dark look. She knew it wasn’t how the stories went and so gestured for him to continue.

“The other tribes were jealous, resentful of a forced unification of what seemed so diverse. So each tribe prayed for their god to give them a treasure matching the power of the Cauldron. But the Cauldron had been forged not only by Arrun, but by Dalem the Forger, who had brought humans to the Holy Isle. And he hid himself in his mantle of sky while his brothers and sisters searched for him to help them with their treasures, so that they were left to make their own treasures.

“Soon each tribe but Dalem’s had their own treasure, and each tribe could use its holy gift to summon their god. Only once a year could they summon their god, but when they came, the summons gave the tribes great power in the terrible wars that followed. The lands were sundered. The world was broken. The seas were swept up in tempest and forever subjected to the push and pull of the moon. Many died. Many more were enslaved. Every time a god’s spear fell from heaven, thousands perished, until Dalem could no longer watch in the shadows and came out of hiding. The son of the king of Dalem’s tribe had fallen in love with a human woman, and he bade his god to give him the means to protect what he loved from extermination.”

“Wait.” Nora sat up. “That’s not how the story goes. I know the ‘Lament of Deeyan.’ His lover is the woman warrior Scyld, and
she
asked Dalem to protect humans. In return for her firstborn child, he forged the Living Blade for her. You can’t make it about a guy when it’s about a girl hero.”

“There are as many versions as storytellers, Nora.” Owen raised an eyebrow. “Now the prophecy?”

“What about the Blade itself? What do you know?”

“I just told you what I know. The Blade was made so long ago, even the wights don’t remember it clearly, only in creation myths and legends. The last time it was reforged was two thousand years ago. What we know is mere guesswork, an approximation of the truth.”

“Approximate away. I trust your educated guess.”

Owen sighed. “The Blade and the Cauldron are the two greatest of the treasures. The one gives the wielder the power to stand against the gods, and the other bestows everlasting youth. The Blade itself, when dormant, is some kind of fluid. There’s a transcript of an ancient Nessan scroll somewhere here in which the dormant form is described as the Tears of Indis, also known as quicksilver.” He started looking through his book heap but only managed to topple a few to the ground. “Anyway, the fluid encompasses the sacrifice whole and incorporates the living body to remake itself.”

“How?”

“Magic?” Owen scrunched up his forehead. “There’s the transference of matter that puzzles me, to be honest. I mean, a sword is never as long as a body or as thick. Where does all the…leftover stuff go?”

Nora pulled a face.

“Anyhow,” Owen continued, “the Blade, now no longer dormant, can somehow communicate with the wielder. They become one. A perfect union. More than the sum of their parts. But it also destroys the wielder from within. Maybe it’s the guilt of the sacrifice, maybe just the strain of holding all that godlike power inside you, maybe the secret knowledge of the makeup of the entire universe fries your brain—whatever the case, every wielder has gone insane and taken his or her life after a span of a few years. So, the sword of destiny is a two-edged one.”

“Is this something you really want to be finding for Bashan? Because the more you tell me about it, the more it sounds insane to be doing this. If we ever do find it, we should destroy it before it falls into his hands.”

“How would you destroy it, Nora?” Owen scoffed. “It’s an artifact of awesome power and ancient knowledge and—”

“It’s called the Living Blade. Anything that’s living can die, Owen.” Nora slumped in her chair. She took a moment to think about what Owen had told her. “Suranna told the prophecy to Bashan’s father, didn’t she? That his son, his only son, would destroy the empire by finding the Living Blade. Bit too much of a coincidence.”

“Well, that brings us back to the Cauldron. It was lost in ancient Nessa, but I think someone must have found it. It has survived through all the centuries.” Owen sat up straight. “I had this thought when we first reached the Temple of the Wind. Why try to find the Blade, with its many downsides, when you could find the Cauldron instead? Imagine having the lifespan of a wight, or even longer, and everlasting youth and health—think of what good you could achieve if you steered the fortunes of a kingdom or empire over centuries. One man. One vision. One direction to greatness. Or one woman, in this case.”

Owen paused for dramatic effect, but Nora took the wind out of his sails.

“I know Suranna has it,” she said.

“You—what do you mean, you know? I had to sit here reading three-hundred-year-old tax reports to find the evidence that she has been ruling here for at least that long.”

Nora lifted a shoulder.

“She bathed in it while talking to me. She’s also been Diaz’s wife for the last twenty years, and since she doesn’t look a day older than twenty-five and he doesn’t seem the type to marry little girls, I figured she must have access to some pretty powerful magic. Ta-da.” She threw up her hands dramatically, seeing Owen’s disconcerted look.

He scratched his chin.

“Don’t be clever, you,” he said after a while. “I’m the smart one.”

S
un Dust. Nora gazed at
Suranna’s moving lips from a faraway place in her mind. It was tempting to numb herself with drugs. They should be an escape from the queen’s ongoing effort to win Nora for her god. But they simply lowered her mental barriers and allowed Suranna to trespass on her most intimate thoughts. No retreat. The same with alcohol. It didn’t seem fair. Nora felt cheated, having to sit through the audiences with the queen entirely sober and well rested. Falling asleep was not advisable when the one sitting opposite you could walk into your mind and wreak havoc.

She slouched while tuning out the lecture. How could you block someone when you couldn’t use your physical body? How could you stop the breaking and entering when every time your thoughts wandered you not only left a door unlocked but opened it wide? Nora had been practicing over the last few days. She found that if she focused on the speaking without actually hearing the words, Suranna didn’t bother her. Drunk on her own power for too long, she didn’t even consider that anyone listening might not be paying rapt attention. That was a lesson learned on leadership, right there before Nora’s eyes. One that Bashan would do well to ponder, too. Power was just as addictive as any other drug. And Suranna was high as high could go. Had been for the last few centuries, according to Owen. Three hundred years of life and power, everlasting youth and beauty. There was no other way she could live now. Maybe she had once been a young, innocent girl. Or maybe Suranna had been like Nora. Regardless, she could never go back.