Iron Axe (32 page)

“There,” she breathed. “In there.”

Kalessa was standing at one of the doors with her sword out. “No one is coming. Be quick!”

Danr stood before the box, not quite believing it. After all this time, it didn't seem possible or real. The box didn't even have a lock. Aisa was standing beside him with the haft, her face looking tight with eagerness and apprehension. In the end, he had done all this for her.

And he couldn't imagine doing anything else. Because he loved her. Oh yes, he did, and he couldn't imagine living without her by his side.

But she had never once said how she felt about him. Suddenly he had to know. He had done all this—fought White Halli, become an exile, faced the Three, spoken to Death, Twisted to Xaron—because he loved her, couldn't imagine a world without her in it. None of it, not even the Axe itself, meant a thing if she didn't feel the same way. His hands trembled and his heart was heavy. He was tired of walling himself off. Tired of running away. Tired of being divided. The truth always hurt, but he had to know it, and he had to know it now. He pulled back from the box.

“What is it?” Aisa asked tightly.

“We should not wait,” Kalessa said from the door. “The stars—”

Danr swallowed. It had to be fast, and it had to be now. “How do you feel about me, Aisa?”

“What?” She looked startled and puzzled both.

“How do you feel about me?” His heart was pounding and his breath came in short puffs. “I came all this way—we came all this way—together, and now I need to know. How do you feel about me?”

“I . . . this isn't the time, Hamzu.”

She was avoiding his eyes. That meant only one thing. His heart became hollow clay in his chest. All right, then. When this was over, he would walk away. He could go under the mountains, or perhaps join the orcs. It didn't matter. Nothing did.

But how much of this was his fault? Had he told her how he felt? He searched his memory. He had not. But how could he, who was always forced to tell the painful truth, tell Aisa even a lovely truth without causing pain?

And then he knew.

“Danr,” he said quietly.

“I'm sorry?” She looked up at him.

“My name.” His voice was husky and thick with emotion. “It's Danr. The name my mother gave me. The name I've never said aloud to anyone. I can only say it to people I love.”

She stood up on tiptoe. He leaned down, and their lips met. The drums swelled, and the entire world rushed through him, propelling him upward, higher and higher until his soul joined the stars. For the first time in his life, he felt complete, whole and undivided. He pressed himself to her and felt his strength merge with hers until they were the only ones, god and goddess, in the entire universe. Nothing finer could come after this. When they parted, there were tears in Aisa's eyes.

“Danr,” she said, and the sound was music. “I love you. I always have.”

“And I love you! By the Nine, I love you.” Danr picked
her up and swung her around. She gave a breathless little laugh. Aisa loved him! And the world was a fine place, drums and axes and all.

“But—” Aisa added.

Danr set her down, wary and unhappy again. “But what?”

“But I'm not ready for you. Not yet.” Her face softened. “I need more time to sort myself out. If that's all right with you.”

Oh. That was all? Relief came back to him, and he felt as if he were floating. She still loved him. It was all that mattered. “I can wait forever,” he said, “as long as I know you're coming. And that's the truth.”

“We should move,” Kalessa said.

“Yes!” With new energy, Danr opened the jade box. For a dreadful moment, he thought it might be empty, that this was a trick, but inside he found the head of a plain double-bladed battle-axe. He drew it out. Ranadar sucked in his breath and drew back. The head was battered and pockmarked, barely a foot across, with a cruel-looking spike set into the top. At first, Danr thought rust streaked its surface, but then he realized it was ancient blood.

What gives you the right?

“Give me the haft,” Danr said shakily.

Aisa passed it over. Everyone, including Kalessa, gathered around to stare in awe. When the head came into his hand, Danr felt it pull toward the head like a lodestone toward iron. Outside the window, the two stars grew brighter in their merging.

“We are changing the course of the world,” Kalessa breathed.

“The Nine and the Three move through us,” Ranadar said.

Danr let out a breath and slid the wood into the socket at the bottom of the head.

Nothing happened. He looked at Aisa, who gave a small shake of her head by way of a shrug. Danr swung the Axe
carefully once or twice. It seemed small in his hand, more like a hatchet, and not at all potent. It didn't seem like the weapon that had—

The Axe wrenched him around. New knowledge flooded Danr's mind. The power, the third piece, was nearby, so close the Axe could almost touch it. The Axe thirsted for it, wanted to drink it in and become whole so it could do what it was forged to do—destroy.

What gives you the right?

Sweat broke out across Danr's forehead. As the sun sank halfway beneath the horizon on the projection, the Axe's spike pulled Danr clockwise around the circle until it was pointing.

It pointed at Talfi's heart.

Aisa gave a small cry. Danr felt all the blood drain from his face in an icy wash, and his legs went weak beneath him. Talfi. The power was Talfi. Danr pulled back. It was too much, too big an idea, like trying to understand the sun itself. But it also made a terrible sense. Danr had just been avoiding the truth.

Talfi's blue eyes were wide. “It's me? How can it be—no, it has to be me, doesn't it?”

“It was right there in front of us this whole time,” Danr said in a weak voice. On the projection table, the sprites were rushing about like shooting stars. “The Axe's power keeps you alive, but it takes your memory every time you die. That's why I couldn't see you with my eye—you aren't really there. You've been drawn to me as a friend from the beginning because the power somehow knew that I would find the Axe, even if you didn't understand that.”

Ranadar looked at Talfi in awe. “You're the actual one. The squire they sacrificed a thousand years ago. It is
your
blood on that blade.”

As if in response, the Axe swung itself at Talfi. Talfi
jumped back with a yelp. For a moment, Danr saw Talfi on the floor, split in half, while the Axe drank his blood. Then the vision was gone.

“The only way to fully remake the Axe,” Danr said in horror, “is to kill Talfi with it. How can we—”

A spear point emerged from Talfi's chest. Blood colored his tunic. Talfi looked down at his chest with a surprised look on his face. Then he crumpled to the floor.

*   *   *

“Talashka!”
Ranadar flung himself to the floor beside Talfi. Aisa stared down at them, not comprehending what she was seeing. Talfi lay on the wooden floor, a floor she had once spent hours polishing, his face already pale. A scarlet pool spread beneath, and for a wild moment, Aisa thought she would be required to clean it up.

Then Aisa heard a metallic sound. Vamath, the elven king, was standing in the doorway. The spear had come from his hand. Bronze links gleamed like gold in his armor, and his sunshine hair flowed carelessly down his back. His fine eyes and perfect face made her breath catch in her chest and her skin ache with desire even as her stomach roiled with nausea. After all these years, his smooth fingers, perfect in every way, would touch her face and make her shiver with happiness again. Behind Vamath came a troop of six elves in armor of their own.

Danr—not Hamzu—roared. He rushed at Vamath in an avalanche of howling thunder, the Axe raised high. The king stepped smoothly aside at the last moment, and Danr slammed into the elves behind him. Three went down like ninepins. The others raised their swords. Kalessa's sword flicked into the shape of a steel great sword and she charged. Ranadar stayed with Talfi's body.

Kalessa's blade stabbed—and went through Vamath like empty air. His image vanished. Vamath, his true self, appeared
behind Kalessa, and he cracked the back of her head with his pommel. She sprawled across the floor, dazed. The six elven guards piled on top of Danr. He struggled, and flung two of them off. The Iron Axe flew through the air, flipped end over end, and bit into the floor at Aisa's feet with a
thunk.
Aisa held her breath in a panic. She wanted to fight, but she could no more have raised her hand against her former master than she could have slit her own wrists. Ranadar continued to weep over Talfi's body.

One of the guards hit Danr on the head again, and then again. The blows dazed him. King Vamath reached into the fight and stroked his face. The rage and fear left Danr, and he relaxed in the guards' grip. Aisa recognized the signs, and horror washed over her in a black wave.

“No,” she whispered. “Not him, too. Please, no.”

But when Vamath stepped back, Danr followed him with utter adulation in his eyes. They had been wrong—his Stane blood hadn't kept him immune after all.

“How do you feel toward me, boy?” Vamath asked him.

“You're beautiful,” Danr said, his husky voice rising from a dream. “I adore you.”

“Good,” Vamath said. “What's happening to the Stane?”

Danr shuddered hard. “I feel the drums. The doors are opening now. Right now. I want to be with them. But I love you more, master.”

The awful words slammed into Aisa like a hammer made of stone. But she wanted even more for Vamath to pay attention to
her.
And she hated herself for it. Most of the injured guards were trying to recover. Two of them bound Kalessa's hands. Vamath ignored Aisa and strode over to the projection table, which showed the last bit of sun vanishing from the horizon.

“What are you doing?” Aisa asked.

Vamath continued to ignore her. Instead he touched the
table and his eyes went blank. “My queen, we have the Axe here and the Stane have opened the doors. Let it begin.”

The tiny queen raised her scepter. A streak of light shot from the top and burst in a scarlet flower over the lake. At this signal, the bright sprites and bronze-armored elves and brown fairies who had insinuated themselves among the humans sprouted knives and axes and swords and fell on the surprised humans. As Aisa watched in horror, blood flowed in miniature, and dozens, hundreds, of soldiers and officers and camp followers—cooks, servants, grooms, porters, squires, and more—died in fountains of blood. Many fought back, but the elves, sprites, and fairies had caught them completely off guard, and the resistance was short-lived. The flashing swords hacked and sliced. Heads and arms dropped to the ground. Aisa saw a boy, barely old enough to squire, flee in terror, only to be cut down by an elven sword. A female cook with brown braids flung a cauldron lid at an attacking sprite, but the fairy behind her ripped open her back. A flock of thin screams filtered up through the high windows of the throne room.

“What are you doing?” Aisa cried. “Rolk, what is this?”

Then the
draugr
appeared. They rose from their bloodied corpses by the hundreds. Ghostly hands reached up to the darkened sky.
“Release!”
they howled.
“Release!”

Gwylph, the elven queen, raised her scepter again. Countless firefly lights from the
draugr
flickered through the forest and up the beach. For a moment, Aisa thought she had it. The power and terror of it shook her through.

“You lured the humans here with trickery and false promises in order to slaughter them and harvest their
draugr
,” she gasped.

Vamath had released the table. “The trolls can do it in their lands,” he agreed absently, “and we Fae do it here. Very nice of the Stane to give us the chance. With this kind of power, we'll slaughter them with ease.”

“But the Stane aren't here,” Aisa said. “They'll find out in due—” But even as the words left her mouth, she realized she hadn't worked it all out. The fireflies that traveled up the beach weren't filling the queen or her scepter. The queen in the projection gestured gracefully with her scepter, and the lights gathered together into a river of silver light. The river flowed like mercury away from the beach and into the city of Palana. In seconds, it was rushing through the windows of the throne room with the sound of a billion whispering leaves. Vamath raised his hands and it flowed over—into—him. A bit of nausea crept through Aisa's stomach, just like the way she felt during a Twist.

“The doors are opening,” Danr said in his dreamlike voice. “The Stane are climbing out.”

“Father!” Ranadar said from Talfi's body, a corpse with no
draugr.
“Don't!”

“Go below,” Vamath ordered his guards. “These whelps are no threat, and we will need every sword in the city.”

The guards left, and Aisa had the last piece. Her knees went weak and she sagged to the floor next to the Axe. Vamath, a master of Twisting, was harnessing the power of the
draugr
to Twist the Stane to Palana as they emerged from under the mountain. The Twist and the long distance would separate them from the
draugr
in Balsia, and the Fae would slaughter the surprised, weakened Stane just as they had slaughtered the humans.

“You can't do this,” she begged. “My lord, you must not.”

But Vamath was glowing like a silver star. Light streamed from his eyes and mouth and fingertips. He was beauty and power and terror all at once, and Aisa felt as helpless as a baby in his presence. She knew it was nothing more than glamour, but that didn't change a thing. Vamath's hands swept in an arc, leaving a bright streak of pure light behind, and Aisa felt the sickening nausea of the Twist.