“How is it that you can do that?” I asked. I would not have believed it, had I not seen it with my own eyes, and felt the heat of Jora’s fever and smelled the putrescence of his wound. He had surely been close to death, and now he walked back to his house under his own power.
“Khalim has a gift,” Reva said. “When the time is right, the people will follow him to the ends of the earth.”
Khalim was grim. “There was no need for him to suffer.” He folded the blanket Jora had been wrapped in and set it on the table, not looking at Reva.
“Jora was prepared to die for the cause. In either case, it’s of no matter now. He’s healthier than he ever has been,” Reva said with a dismissive gesture.
“He was dying of fever for five days, and I was only a few houses away. I could have spared him so much pain.”
Reva gave him an imperious frown. “Enough. I’ll tell you what I told you when I found you: when the Ascended learn of your abilities, they will do everything in their considerable power to capture you. I’ll not have you thrown in the dungeon for your own foolishness.” More gently, she added, “Soon, Khalim. You’ll be under the auspices of the Cerean tournament, and no one will harm you. Everything is unfolding according to plan.”
Khalim nodded, submissive, and his shoulders dropped in a defeated pose. I had an errant thought to comfort him—he had done something beyond the capabilities and even the imagination of anyone I’d seen in my long journey, and Jora the miner was hale and healthy—but I said nothing. My head spun with the feeling that Aysulu and I had wandered into something much larger than ourselves, something we did not understand and could only see a small part of, and we were now in its inexorable path.
“And what is this plan of yours?” Aysulu asked. “You did agree to tell us. We will be of little help if we don’t know what we’re doing.”
Reva turned to us. “What I intend to do is no more and no less than the overthrow of the Seven Ascended.”
“And so you need a sword that can kill a god,” Aysulu concluded.
“Precisely,” Reva said, with a smile like the edge of a knife. “The Ascended are not true gods. They are usurping their power—they have been for a thousand years. Soon, they will try for more magic than they’ll be able to control, and if they succeed, they’ll bring Phyreios down in flames. I mean to stop them before that happens.”
“How do you know all this?” I asked.
It was Khalim who answered. “I know it,” he said. “The gods grant me visions. That’s why I came here.”
“And you’ve seen this?” I said. “The city burning? The Ascended—”
He nodded, his eyes locked with mine, and his face held such guileless candor that I could not hold in my mind the possibility of a doubt. It was all the more unnerving that he was telling the truth.
“Now you understand why I cannot allow him to fall into the hands of the watch,” Reva said. “I need his visions, and I need his magic. He’s what will make all of this work.”
If Khalim found it troublesome that she spoke of him as if he were not present, he gave no indication.
“I hope that the four of you will win the tournament,” Reva continued, “but whatever happens, I want you to get that sword. While the awards are being presented, the miners will raid the armory and the granary, and go to a place I’ve been preparing in the mountains. There, we’ll have a defensible position to recruit more citizens and work against the Ascended’s forces. It will be difficult; I have no illusions about that. It begins with the miners, but I intend to save this entire city.”
I turned to Aysulu. It was too late for us to extricate ourselves now. Whatever happened, we would be a part of it. In all my youthful foolishness, I thought I was ready. Perhaps I was seeking a purpose, a heading of my own to follow. It may have been that I was only chasing adventure yet again.
“We will help you,” I told Reva. “Let us win this tournament for you and for the people of Phyreios.”
The Cerean Festival was held at the alignment of the seven planets visible in the skies of Phyreios, every seven years. It was, above all else, even more so than a contest of skills, an exchange of gifts between the Ascended and the people of the city. True to form, it was seven days long, a jubilee of games, feasting, rest from work, and the forgiving of debts, while the people offered sacrifices to their gods both privately and in the arena. The city was undergoing its customary ritual cleansing, and the arena itself received a great deal of attention. On this occasion, no expense had been spared, and I began to see the truth in the idea that this was being done to assuage the miners’ anger.
With Khalim in tow, and an admonishment from Reva to keep him safe and out of sight of the guards, Aysulu and I went to a house in the industrial district, inside the city walls, which was maintained by the miners’ guild. It stood in the shadow of the great forge at the southwestern corner of the city, and the noise and smoke hovered around it all hours of the day and most of the night. There, we met Garvesh, our fourth teammate and the poet Reva had hired. He was nearly forty, with a few gray strands in his meticulous beard, and he had come from the east, where he had been a scholar of some renown. There had been some manner of ideological difference between him and his elders, and so he had departed his halls of learning and come west. This is all he would tell us on our first meeting, and it was clear that he, an educated man from a city nearly as populous as Phyreios, did not appreciate being required to associate with a trio of rustics and barbarians, but he was cordial enough.
We also met Beruz, who had filled Reva’s position as the head of the miners’ guild when she had lost it after the riot. Even though she had been forced into hiding, it was clear that she was still the one to whom the guild answered.
“We’re very honored to have you representing us,” Beruz said, with a shallow but respectful bow. When he straightened again, he gave Khalim an appraising look. I wondered if he had seen something like what we had just witnessed that morning, or if he had only heard secondhand from Reva about the young man’s importance.
Beruz took us to the arena in the late afternoon, when the sun streamed between the mountain peaks and the spires of the palace but left the city in shadow. Only the very top of the arena caught the light, and there the white stone gleamed in the sun. The banners hung around the colosseum fluttered merrily in the wind. Beruz was given a parchment from an official in pale blue robes, and he wrote several lines upon it before handing it to each of us in turn.
“Have you given thought to a name for our team?” he asked.
I had not. What could best represent what we were to do, and have a pleasing sound for the songs that would be sung of us for ages to come? After some consideration, I asked, “What is the name of the mountain?”
“We call it Father Aegid, and we call it the Iron Mountain,” Beruz said. “It is the great protector of our city, and it gives us the iron from which we create our wealth.”
“Then the Iron Mountain we shall be,” I declared.
Beruz smiled broadly, his weathered face cracking in delight. I made my mark last, and the Iron Mountain team formally came into being. The festivities would begin at last the following day, with a parade to present the competitors to the city and a great feast. I was eager to begin the games, but I would have to be patient.
“Your horse will be stabled by the arena,” Beruz told us. He bade us farewell after we returned to the house, saying, “If there is anything you need, my home is two streets away.”
It was a simple, undecorated house, with four small rooms arranged around a hall with an open fireplace and a rough-hewn table. Each room held a narrow cot and nothing else, though they each had a small window cut into the earthen wall. An outhouse was constructed behind, away from the street, and a simple pump provided water. The house was supplied with simple fare, grains and dried meat and a few tubers and other vegetables, as well as pots and pans and a kettle with which to cook them. I was grateful, though I could have done with more meat and some strong drink.
I lit a fire and put water on to boil. It was evident that the house had not been occupied for some time, as a number of small spiders fled the heat, emerging from between the stones and scattering across the room. Garvesh exclaimed as they came near and swatted at them with a shoe.
“Stop that,” Khalim said quietly, and he dodged Garvesh’s flailing and gathered several of the spiders into his hands. He carried them outside, pushing the back door open with his elbow, and set them free in the ragged grass beside the water pump. When he returned, the rest of the spiders had hidden elsewhere, and Garvesh had put his shoes back on.
I realized I had no idea how to cook dried grains, and Aysulu firmly but gently pushed me out of the way and started adding things to the pot. I busied myself with cutting up a portion of the meat. Aysulu handed Khalim a knife, and he set to work on some strange green vegetable beside me.
I watched him from the corner of my eye. I was wary, though by all appearances I had no reason to be. Those chosen by the gods, I knew, were given to heroic feats and deep madness—all blessings contained within them a hidden curse of equal weight. Khalim was far too quiet, and it unsettled me.
“Have you been in this city long?” I asked, in an attempt to break the silence.
He looked up from his task, fixing his huge dark eyes on me. His features were delicate, more pretty than handsome, and he looked younger than I, though I would learn we were of an age. “Nine days,” he said. “Seven of them I spent in Reva’s hiding places. I am glad to be out of the dark and the cold.”
“That room was cold to you?” I had barely noticed the difference between that and the heat of the city.
He nodded. “It’s much warmer where I come from.”
“And where is that?”
“Nagara,” he said. “It’s a village far south of here.”
“I’ve never heard of it.” This was the farthest south I, or any of my people, had ever been.
Khalim turned back to his vegetables, placing them into the pot. “I would not expect you to. It’s very small, and doesn’t appear on any maps. I left…it must have been six months ago, now.”
So we had both come to Phyreios after long journeys. “I am from the far north,” I told him. “From the mountains at the edge of the world, where there is snow and ice for most of the year, and the great whales migrate in the summer.”
His eyes widened even further. “What’s a whale?”
I was at a loss to explain. How could he not have heard the stories of the giants of the waves, even if he had never seen them himself? “It is a great behemoth that lives in the ocean,” I said, “and eats only the smallest of sea creatures, filtering them through teeth like great sieves.”
“I’ve never seen the ocean,” he said, and I thought it a great sorrow.
Aysulu took a stack of chipped clay bowls down from above the fireplace and portioned out our meal. Khalim refused my offer of a share of the meat, and I was happy to eat his. Garvesh took his bowl and closed himself in his room to pore over his collection of leather-bound books, and what knowledge or wisdom he found there, I did not know. What use is a book, a flat, dead thing? Knowledge only lives in the flesh and the memory of those who pass it on.
“Perhaps you will see it, someday,” I said to Khalim. “Reva said you will participate in the contests of magic. Is there another kind of craft that you do?”
He shook his head. “Only healing. It seems a bit vulgar, to try to enter a contest with it, but it’s forbidden to attack participants in the tournament. This way, I will not disappear into the dungeon, never to be seen again. Or so Reva tells me.”
Aysulu doused the fire and sat down beside me, setting her bowl on the cooling stones. “What gods do you pray to, Khalim?” she asked. “Who has given you this power?”
He looked down at his hands. “The many gods of my people,” he said, “and the god who has chosen me as his, though he speaks to me more than I pray to him.”
“My gods are the four winds and the empty sky,” Aysulu said. “It’s probably for the best that they tend not to speak to us here below. The seven gods of the West are kinder, I think.”
“Seven? Are they like the Ascended?” I asked.
“They don’t live on the earth in a palace, that’s for certain.”
“In the North,” I said, “our gods are great warriors and hunters, and they are the mountains above us and the sea below. They are the beasts of legend, larger than the hills. When we die, our deeds will be measured, and if we have acted with courage and kept all our oaths, we will be permitted to join them in the afterlife.”
“I fear I would not be brave enough for your gods,” Khalim said. “I’m no fighter.”
Reva had implied as much. “Worry not,” I said. “I will keep a close watch out for danger, and you’ll have nothing to fear from the guards.”
He smiled then, and I found my fears receding, though I still felt a sense of trepidation at the prospect of coming face to face with a god, whether it was Khalim’s or the Ascended.
The next morning, we left the house at dawn, and walked in the soft early sunlight to the arena. The streets were still empty, and the city had not awoken from its night-time silence, and the gray edifices of the market quarter leaned over us in the quiet. The palace and the mountain beyond stood watch over the sleeping city. As we neared the arena, we found we were not alone, as the other participants came in alongside us.
The arena was partitioned off into separate areas, where we were waited upon by attendants in soft robes the color of the morning sky, and our equipment was polished and the horse was brushed until she shone. A champion must look the part, the attendants explained, and we were to begin the festivities by being paraded around the city. Aysulu and I dressed in our armor, and Garvesh and Khalim were given new clothing in vivid colors, and we were washed and combed and oiled until we no longer looked like road-weary travelers and started to resemble proper competitors.
When that was finished, we were brought to the center of the arena, where we assembled with the rest of the contestants. I made a great effort not to stare, to maintain my composure and not appear too impressed. Aysulu watched them, stoic and suspicious. She touched my shoulder and nodded to a banner raised behind us: a snarling lion’s head, splattered in red paint on a black field, facing the bared teeth of the face of a wolf. The reavers were here, and though we did not know where the rest of the tribe was hiding, I counted four warriors beneath that banner who would be our foes.
Khalim was openly staring. Though he had new clothes and a comb had been wrestled through his hair, his wide-eyed look made him every inch a rube from the countryside. He had been given shoes, in the style favored by the nobles, but they had since disappeared. He turned in a slow circle, taking in the display.
There was much to be seen. The Tribe of the Lion and Wolf, with their furs and crude weapons and elaborately braided beards, glowered in one corner. The Hounds of Malang, whom I had met in the inn, were dressed in fine red silks, their burnished arms bared and silver ornaments in their hair; Artyom and Rolan gave me a nod of recognition when I caught their eyes. Another noble house had put forth a team dressed in blue, and their armor was polished bronze, bright as the desert sun. The merchants’ guild had sponsored a team; their weapons were sharp iron and they wore a riot of colors. A collection of sober-faced men and women from the East stood beneath a banner embroidered with a golden dragon, and they carried swords of a length I believed impossible—an iron weapon, forged by the best among my people, would have snapped in two with the first strike. Another team, from far to the south, wore heavy gold jewelry around their necks and wrists; their faces were painted in bright patterns, and they were led by a man with the head of a lion.
The Ascended had their own champions, and their armor shone more brightly than all the others. They surveyed the rest of us coolly, secure in the promise of their victory; though they did not claim first place every championship, these contestants and their predecessors had won a majority of the tournaments since the Cerean festival had come into being. I sized them up surreptitiously—they were sure to be our most difficult opponents, and they represented everything Reva and the miners’ guild for which we were competing stood against.
There were beasts, as well, brought in by the merchants’ animal tamer. They were caged on wheeled carts in preparation for the parade: a pack of six wolves, a giant bear like the one I had met at the river, in another life, a pair of tigers with paws as big as a man’s face, a rhinoceros with a gilt horn, a beetle with pincers as long as my two arms, and a great lizard, the length of one of the boats that sailed the northern seas, with steam hissing from its maw. I was looking forward to meeting them in the arena more so than any of the other competitors, and as I sized them up, I began to lose sight of my worries. Gods and magic were beyond my ken, but beasts I knew well, and I knew the slaying of them.
A hush fell over the arena as the Ascended themselves made their first appearance, in the elevated box above the western side of the stands, filing in and looking down upon us below. They were tall and slender, with a pearlescent gray pallor to their skin. Their eyes were huge and unblinking in their long, thin faces, and their clothing shimmered with metallic thread. They were beautiful in the way the northern lights were beautiful—I did not wish to look at them too long. One of them stepped forward; his voluminous robes were gold, and his headdress was the tallest among them. I would learn later that this was Andam, the leader of the Seven and the Emperor of Phyreios.
He spoke, and his voice echoed through the colosseum, but I could not see his mouth move from where I stood far below him. “People of Phyreios,” he proclaimed, “honored guests, esteemed competitors. The planets are in alignment over our fair city, and the time of the Cerean Festival is at hand. Let the gates be opened!”
There was a crash of a gong, and the gates at the north side of the arena groaned apart. The music began with the trill of pipes and the beat of drums, and we fell into line to begin the parade.
We filed out into the market district, where the citizens were lined up on either side of the streets and waving flags out of their upper windows. I rolled my shoulders and hefted my axe, basking in the cheers and the fanfare. I was receiving a hero’s welcome in this strange land, and I thought that I had not yet earned it, but I could not help but enjoy the attention. This was what I had wanted when I had set sail with Fearghus and our companions—how strange it was, to be receiving it now.
“Were those the Ascended?” Khalim asked behind me. Having never seen the inner city before, he maintained his astonished expression as he walked along beside Garvesh. “Was that his voice back there?”
“Quiet, boy,” Garvesh snapped. He tucked his hands into his sleeves and held his head up, walking with heavy, measured steps.
Khalim was taller, and his strides longer, but he stopped every moment to stare at some new marvel and had to run a few steps to catch up. “I’ve seen them, but I’ve never heard them. Is it a spell that they do?”
Garvesh ignored him, and Khalim eventually fell silent. We passed through the market and into the industrial district, where our safehouse was. The miners were gathered outside of the forge, which was still and without smoke, as no work was done during the festival. They cheered the loudest for us, and Aysulu gave them a show, standing in her stirrups and hanging from first one side of the saddle and then the other as she rode a loop around us.
From there, the procession made its way to the nobles’ quarter. The music decreased in volume, and the atmosphere became more somber. A chant began among the assembled citizens, and it followed us as we wound through the wider streets and between the taller buildings. Here, the difference between the city that was within the walls and that which was without was most pronounced. We passed through the ceremonious stillness and reentered the arena.
This time, the gates opened on the smell of spices and the heat of dozens of cooking fires. A feast had been prepared, for the competitors and the citizens, at the expense of the palace: delicacies from across the region, sizzling cuts of meat, wine in every hue, including the bluish Cerean spirits, and a hundred delicious-looking things I could not identify. I was both amazed and disheartened to look around and see that I could not possibly try everything. The parade dispersed into the arena, and after a good deal of deliberation I piled the wooden trencher handed to me by an attendant as high as I could and found a bench near the south gate to sit and enjoy my bounty. Khalim followed at my heels, glancing nervously up at the box where the Ascended looked down on the crowd. I handed him two dumplings and a cup of sweet wine and told him he would only be noticed if he kept staring.
The blue-clad attendants kept our cups full, and soon Khalim’s face was flushed red under his brown skin, and he had forgotten all about the Ascended. Aysulu had entered a game with Artyom and the others from House Kaburh, which involved a knife stabbed between fingers splayed over the top of a barrel of rich ale and the tossing and snatching of coins. She and Artyom seemed an even match, alternately laughing and declaring challenges as their money exchanged hands. Garvesh was exchanging bawdy poetry with one of the men from the east, a tall fellow with a squarish jaw and long black hair gathered into a knot atop his head.
I felt a touch on my arm, and looked to see Khalim tracing a finger along one of my tattoos. “Did it hurt?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” I said. “But it’s a sign of bravery, and the favor of the gods. Many of the warriors of my clan have them.”
Khalim nodded and took his hand back. He had, quietly as he did anything else, become very drunk.
I had looked forward to continuing the festivities, but the responsibility of keeping him safe had apparently fallen to me. “I should take you back to the safehouse,” I told him. “Reva wouldn’t want you getting lost.”
“I’m fine,” he said, and to his credit he only slurred the words a little.
I hauled him to his feet, and on second thought, picked him up and slung him over my shoulder. Garvesh was nowhere to be found, but I did locate Aysulu, now seated in Artyom’s lap and engaged in a spirited discussion of chariot racing. She bade us farewell and returned to her conversation. From my shoulder, Khalim waved in her general direction before we turned to leave.
I set him back down once we had left the press of the crowd, and we walked out of the arena and into the still evening streets. The noise of the arena died away as we walked. With most of the city folk at the feast, Phyreios was as quiet as the mountains.
“I’m sorry,” Khalim said when we reached the door of the house. “I didn’t mean to drink quite so much. You’re very kind.”
“Happens to all of us, some time or other,” I said. It was for the best, anyway; I would be the one participating in the contests on the morrow, and I would perform better if I had a full night of rest.
“Still. Thank you for looking after me.”
I wished him a good night and went to my bed. Morning came quickly, and with it the first day of competition.
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