The man in the glittering black crown smiled at me, a paternal, placating expression that did not hide the devious hunger in his eyes. Whatever his purpose was for me, I was certain I would not like it.
“After months of delays, the gods smile upon our city at last,” he said. “Where do you come from, champion? What thread of fate brought you here?”
I stepped back from the bars and crossed my arms over my chest. “If there is a task you wish me to perform in exchange for my freedom, then give it to me. I have no time to waste lingering here.”
“In due time, my friend.” His smile did not fade, and the flickering light of his torch deepened the shadows on his weathered face. He appeared carved of wood, a sinister spirit of the forest.
Faintly, the ring of metal tools against stone came through the walls surrounding me. Even at this hour, the digging continued. I entertained a brief fantasy that some unknown benefactor was about to break through my cell from the other side. Though I had enjoyed the favor of at least one of the gods of these southern isles, a sudden rescue was too much to ask.
“I’ve given you my name,” I said. “Tell me who you are and why you have taken me prisoner. I’ve done nothing against you.”
“No, my friend, you haven’t. But you will do much for me and for King Sondassan, ruler of this, the greatest of the isles, now and forever.” His hand went to the largest jewel on his collar, blood-red and nearly the size of his palm, in a gesture of obeisance to the absent king. “I am, by his grace, high priest of Salmacha.”
“Your lord is a generous one,” I said, with a nod to his jewels, “and clearly you serve him with valor. I don’t see why you would need me.”
“That is where you are wrong, my friend.” His smile widened, creasing his face further.
I did not like this man and his smiles. I gripped the bars with both hands, testing their strength. They were as rigid and immobile as the stone walls. “What do you want?” I asked again. “I am undertaking a quest of great import. Tell me what it is that will gain me my freedom, and I will do it and be on my way.”
The high priest nodded, his hands folding around his torch. “Well then, champion, tell me of your deeds. I wish to know how useful you will be to King Sondassan.”
If a retelling of my adventure would allow me to return to the ship, then so be it. I hung my arms through the iron grate and looked into the high priest’s small, dark eyes that glinted like volcanic stone in the torchlight.
“I am a warrior of the far northern reaches, where the sun does not rise in the winter, nor does it set in high summer. On a longship I fought the worm that hunts among the floating ice, and I traveled across the vast steppe to the holy city, Phyreios. I was named champion of the great tournament, and I was there when Phyreios fell along with its gods.”
The high priest nodded, a slow, ponderous motion like the bobbing of a heavy tree limb in the wind. “So Phyreios has indeed fallen,” he murmured. “We had been told the mine had collapsed. It was only a rumor, an excuse spoken by merchants to justify the high price of iron.”
“It was much worse than that,” I said.
The terrible smile returned, and he asked, “What then? Salmacha is a long way from Phyreios, and the iron shortage is a year or more old. Surely you have done other deeds since then.”
All around me, diggers carved at the island’s very foundations, and a faint tremor passed through the stone under my feet. The sound of their picks went silent for only a moment, and it was louder when it began again. I did not trust this man, nor did I have faith that his king would deal with me fairly.
“I spent a year at the Temple of the Dragon, beyond the territory of Xao, and then came south,” I said. “I sought the help of the priestesses at Ewandar, and now I travel west. Is that sufficient?”
“And what is the quest that brings you here?” he asked, his tone light and inviting.
I shook my head. My goal was my own, and it felt as though I was keeping Khalim safe by refusing to speak of him to the high priest. I might not have been able to reach him in the world beyond, but I could prevent this man from doing the same.
The high priest’s smile faded, though his eyes still glinted with some curious pride and satisfaction. “Well, whatever it is, I’m sorry to say that your quest will end here. All is not in vain, however: you will play a crucial role in what is to come. You will help King Sondassan ascend to godhood, and Salmacha will reign eternally over the waters because of you, Eske the champion.”
I stood up and pulled my hands back in through the grate. “What do you mean?”
“Sondassan is the greatest and wisest of all kings,” the high priest said, “and in his wisdom, he will not leave Salmacha without his guidance. Your blood, champion that you are, will not be sufficient, but it will grant him a stretch of precious time–long enough to finally unearth the god that sleeps beneath the island and take its strength and its divinity. He will live forever, and it will be in no small part due to your help.”
He bowed, and he smiled, and revulsion turned my empty stomach.
“You cannot do this,” I said.
“Of course not.” The wavering red light of his torch made his face look like a skull covered in bark, his eyes sunken and his mouth a black hollow. “King Sondassan will do it, with my help, and with yours.”
My hands gripped the bars, and I gave them a futile push. “You don’t understand. This is why Phyreios fell. Seven gods together were not powerful enough to put down what they had called up.”
“That may be so,” said the high priest, “but you are a champion, not a scholar–if indeed the tale you tell is true. I will trust my own readings of the heavens, and the wisdom of my king, before I listen to a barbarian from the North.”
He raised a hand in signal to his guards. Their postures straightened, and they raised their spears from the ground, their eyes forward and staring at nothing.
I struck the iron grate with the palms of my hands. “Listen to me!”
The high priest turned and stalked back to his guards, his scarlet vestment trailing on the rough-carved floor. Darkness fell once more upon my tiny cell. He arrived at the doorway, and the guards turned toward the stairs with a single synchronized pivot.
“I saw it with my own eyes,” I called after him. “Not even the blood of an entire city could grant them control of the great worm when it burst forth from the mountain. The Ascended all died along with their people.”
He paused, but he did not turn to look at me. “I will hear no more of your insolence. You will be fed, and given water, when I see fit to order it, and your blood will be spilled three days’ hence, at the rise of the full moon.”
He mounted the stairs, and all the light went with him.
“The earthquakes are an omen,” I shouted into the blackness, but no answer came.
I felt my way back to the shelf that served as a bed. The stone hummed beneath my hands, a warning of the cataclysm to come.
I placed my head in my hands and tried not to feel the vibrations nor hear the sounds of King Sondassan’s ill-fated workers digging their way to certain death.
I had lost my new weapon almost as soon as I had gained it, and I had lost Bran, as well. I hoped the soldiers would see the use of a good horse, rather than offering him up to be sacrificed. Captain Hamilcar and his crew were safe, at least, and if their gods were kind, they would be well out of danger by the time Salmacha fell.
The night stretched on, the rhythm of picks on stone marking out the passing minutes. I slept a fitful hour and dreamed of the worm beneath the iron mountain, its putrid, pale flesh and the piercing sound of its roar. When I woke, I could smell it, like an open grave.
In Phyreios, I’d had Khalim and his god, and a handful of the best warriors who had ever walked the world, and I lived to tell the tale, as much as it fell upon unhearing ears. Now I was alone.
I would find Khalim again, even in death, I promised the dark and the broken earth. As long as I had it, however, I would use my life to complete my quest to retrieve him. If I had any choice in the matter, I would not allow my tale to end beneath Salmacha.
Hours passed. The digging stopped for a brief time, and it began again with the reappearance of the sun through my solitary window. The light showed the other cells to remain empty, and I suspected I knew what had become of any others who might have shared the dungeon with me.
The sound of booted footsteps came down the stairs. I looked up to see a soldier, a short sword at his belt and a tabard over his mail shirt, carrying a shallow dish. He was younger than I, thin and wiry, with the scars of adolescent pockmarks still on his clean-shaven chin. Clumsy stitches in undyed thread held shut a tear in the hem of his tabard.
He stopped an arm’s length from my cell and held up the dish. It was half-full of a thin, pale gruel, watery where it wasn’t fibrous. I had not eaten in a day, and it would do little to satisfy my hunger.
“Stay away from the bars,” the soldier commanded. His voice shook, belying his confident posture and grim expression.
I held up my hands to show they were empty. He was armed, and I was not. I could best him hand to hand, I thought, but the iron grate prevented that.
He came forward and slid the gruel between the bars and onto the floor of my cell. Before I could even stand, he stood up and stepped back, staying out of my reach.
“Thank you,” I said. There was no reason to antagonize him. With my hands visible, I went to pick up the meager rations.
“Is it true?” he asked.
I returned to my place on the slab. “Yes, all of it,” I said, and I managed a smile that covered my encroaching despair at my circumstances.
The soldier rested a hand on the pommel of his sword and shifted his weight between his feet. I considered trying to get my hands on his weapon, but I saw no keys at his belt. Even if I were successful, I did not think I could hide a sword in the bare confines of my cell without creating suspicion.
“I meant about what happened in the city of Phyreios,” he said. “What you told High Priest Ucasta.”
My false confidence dropped. I looked at him with no pretense. “All that is true. I swear on the gods of my people.” The oath was bitter in my mouth. What good would the gods of the North do here? “I swear on the love I hold for those lost in the cataclysm. Your king and your high priest will doom Salmacha.”
“The villagers all left,” said the soldier. “They fled in their boats when the island began to shake.”
“They were wise.”
A frown troubled his young face, and his hand gripped his sword, as though he could fend off the coming doom with it.
I left the gruel on my makeshift bed and crossed my cell, slowly, to the grate. The soldier took an instinctive step back.
“Why is he doing this?” I asked. “Your king. There is no power in the world or beyond it that is worth the deaths of so many.”
His narrow shoulders went up in a shrug and then dropped, heavy with resignation. “Haven’t you ever wished you could cheat death?”
Back to Interlude Two: The Spirit Wilds
Forward to Chapter XVI: Betwixt Iron and Stone
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