The Iron-Jawed Boy

  Ion had been so shaken by the woman’s words he hadn’t given any notice to the carriage standing beside him. He hadn’t noticed its walls of pure gold, or the many peacock feathers blossoming out the top, or even the eight colossal horses that pulled it, their golden armor twinkling under the moonlight.

  All he could think about was how, in a matter of minutes, he’d be standing in the presence of the Skylord—the same god who’d called for the Detainment, the same god who’d torn Ion’s life apart.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE ACROPOLIS

  After thirty minutes of riding in the carriage, Ion began to wonder if this was going to be a new hobby of his: nervous carriage rides to places he didn’t want to go, with people he severely disliked, or—in this case—didn’t even know. If this was going to be an ongoing thing, he didn’t like it one bit.

  “Not one bit at all,” he growled, watching the Protean buildings pass by.

  “Excuse me?” said the cloaked woman sitting across the way.

  “Oh—um—it was nothing,” he lied. “It was just a...a burp.”

  He swallowed and looked anxiously about the inside of the carriage. Four golden walls with ivory-white seats wrapped around three of them and a big door to his left. It smelled like what he thought the inside of a witch’s bazaar would smell like, which seemed off to him since everything else was so beautifully crafted and cared for.

  “I apologize for the odor,” said the woman. “A bucket of sea slugs tipped over on one of the seats the other day—your seat, I believe—but that ridiculous smell won’t seem to take a bow. I’ve tried everything. I think I’ll just have to replace the cushions.”

  The more the woman spoke, the more familiar she sounded.

  “If you have any questions,” she went on, “I would be more than willing to answer them now. After all, I’m sure this situation is strange for you.”

  “Strange is an understatement,” Ion grumbled. “But yes, I have questions. For starters, who on earth are you?”

  “Ugh, I hate those questions! Who are you? What am I? What’s this thing on my back? Another question, please.”

  Ion rolled his eyes. “Fine, then can you tell me why I’m here, in this carriage, on the way to the Acropolis? I don’t even like Othum.” Ion managed to say it, though visions of Othum frying him with lightning quickly came to mind.

  “The Skylord wishes to free you of your slave status, Ionikus. He’s seen something special in you. That’s why you’re going to the Acropolis—more or less.”

  Ion laughed. “Something special? Out of all the Callers that pompous, old man has enslaved, I’m the only special one he could find?” Good gods, I hope he didn’t hear that.

  The woman crossed her legs in an uncomfortable sort of way. “Grudges aren’t healthy, Ionikus,” she said. “You know, they’re the second most likely reason for the early on-set of wrinkles in Eldanarians? Interesting study, really—”

  “I don’t care about wrinkles!”

  She looked quietly down at her hands. “You will when they start to show up.”

  Ion took a deep breath and counted the lampposts lining the streets as they sailed by. “What’s so special about me?” he asked, his voice suddenly soft. “Why should I be freed?”

  The woman sighed, deep and thoughtful, and when her hands fell upon the folds of her hood, Ion’s heart gave an extra beat.

  “I suppose this would help better explain,” she said. “But if I show you, it’s essential you remain calm.”

  “Okay,” Ion said.

  A hundred thoughts sped through his mind—the one that seemed to linger: what if she looks like a monster? He dreaded how awkward that would be. And, oh, how he hated forcing smiles.

  “Remember,” said the woman, “you must remain calm, oinker.”

  Oinker? But...only one person had ever called him that...

  The woman grabbed hold of her hood and dropped it to her shoulders, and suddenly everything became clear. His wishes of her not having gills and fins left his mind with a breath-taking poof, for she was no monster, nor was she a woman...yet.

  Ion’s jaw dropped, his mouth open and ready for some bug to fly right in.

  Oceanus wore the kindest smile on her freckled face—a smile Ion hadn’t seen in five months. “How is this—why are you—” His heart warmed. “I’ve missed you so much! I thought you were taken like the others.” And then he panicked. “This isn’t real. Am I dead? Did Solara kill me? Good grief, Solara killed me.”

  Oceanus wrapped Ion’s hands within hers. “Stop,” she said calmly, her blue eyes so bright, her brown hair so long. “Solara didn’t kill you. I’m real, and believe me, I’ve missed you, too.”

  “But how are you even here?” Ion asked. “You were in line with the other Callers. Everyone your age was drafted.”

  She flipped her hair over her shoulders. “It seems fate had other plans for me,” she said. “After they put Father in shackles and gave him a good zapping, they hauled you out of sight into town. Father was nearly unconscious from all the electricity, and Mother couldn’t stop crying. The guards continued working even in General Tirius’s absence, and started walking down the lines of Callers, one by one, making us hold this...” she reached into the shadows of her robes and pulled out a silver pocket watch, except it only had one hand, and there were only ten numbers written around its circumference. Oceanus placed it in Ion’s hand and the arrow started spinning. “The guards were looking for something,” said Oceanus, “you could just tell. They’d go from one Caller to the next, handing them that device, trading disappointing glances when the arrow wouldn’t budge. Then they got to me. The moment it touched my hands, the arrow spun just like it’s doing with you. And soon, it landed on that number...”

  Oceanus pointed to the device, and Ion warily looked down. The arrow pointed firmly at the number ten.

  “The device you’re holding was recovered from the Outerworld ages ago,” said Oceanus. “It measures radiation levels.” And Ion’s stomach gave a miserable twist. “But no need to be alarmed. It turns out, gods emit quite a lot of radiation.”

  Ion stared for a moment, then another, and another after that. After quite a lot of moments, he threw his head back in a nervous fit of laughter.

  “That’s funny!” he snorted. “I think you just said we’re gods, which I’m sure is not what you meant.” She stared. “Right?”

  A smile split across Oceanus’s face as she leaned back in her seat. “As it turns out, there are two special Callers in this carriage.”

  Oceanus swept her hand through the air and a small torrent of water came swirling into existence, right there, in the center of her palm. She dropped her hand to her lap and the ball of water—twisting and turning so elegantly into itself—drifted over to Ion.

  “We’re gods, Ion,” she said with a voice as solemn as Father’s. “When the guards saw my radiation level, they threw me in another chariot, and before I knew it, I was standing before the Skylord. And today you’re going to experience the same thing.”

  Ion stared into the sphere of water. “You sound crazy.”

  At that moment, the churning ball of water sped up and collapsed into thin air.

  “I’ve been watching you at Dread’s for some time now,” said Oceanus. “I wasn’t allowed to make contact, but when I saw you summon that blizzard I was sure you weren’t just another Caller. You were special. Important. Like me.”

  “I’m hardly special,” Ion said. “And that blizzard was—”

  “Beautiful,” said Oceanus. “Once I saw that, I immediately asked Othum permission to retrieve you and he gave the word. Then poof, there I was, saving you from certain death.”

  Ion rolled his eyes again. The thought of being a god was ridiculous. It was betrayal on so many levels. The gods took everything from him and Oceanus! How could she say this? And with a smile!

  “I’m not a god, Oceanus,” Ion said.

  “Oh, yes you are. Your little blizzard and t
hat arrow on the ten proves it.”

  Ion glared down at the device and chucked it back at his sister. “I’m not a god,” he repeated, firmer this time.

  Oceanus took a deep breath. “Actually, you aren’t just a god.” She hesitated. “Like me, you’re one of six reincarnated gods—the ones we call Guardians.”

  Ion suddenly felt like puking. “Guardians? The protectors of the Illyrians? You really are mad!” If there was room to stand up in an infuriated manner he would have.

  “I had a hard time with this, too,” said Oceanus, “so I understand why you’d think that. But it’s true. We’re Guardians, Ion. As reincarnated gods, our spirits jump from one physical body to the next when the original one has grown too old. It’s been going on for two hundred years now, since our creation.”

  Ion searched for a memory of the Guardians...none, beside visions of Solara. He had never seen one before, so if they were being reincarnated, no Eldanarian would have known. “I guess...I guess it’s not entirely impossible,” he said.

  Oceanus smiled. “Exactly.”

  Ion’s head was spinning. All he could think about was how much he had to think about. And the questions! “You really think we’re gods?”

  “I know we’re gods.”

  “But not just gods,” he said, his eyes darting about the carriage, “but reincarnated ones? The Guardians?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And you’re sure?”

  “Yes, Ion.”

  “I’m a Guardian?”

  “Yes! Now get ahold of yourself!”

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” he said, his lips bulging out in a pre-puke face.

  She rushed to his side and rubbed his back. “You better not puke in this carriage!” she said. “One more weird smell in here and we’ll have to toast it.”

  The carriage came to a sudden halt, and the door on the left swung open all on its own.

  “Thank Othum!” she said. “This is our stop.” She climbed out, and when Ion stayed inside—his stomach still twisting—she popped back in and chirped, “Well I don’t have all night! Come on!”

  Slowly, Ion climbed out of the carriage. And when he looked up, he tried so hard to take in the towering walls before them, he fell flat on his back with an embarrassing oof!

  For twelve years, Ion had only seen the Acropolis from afar. It sat—proud and mighty—on a plateau, in the center of the city, protected by fifty-foot tall, white marble walls.

  During the nights when the moon was round and bright, Ion would watch from his room in the house atop the highest hill of Eldanar, as the shadowy guards patrolled the tops of the walls. Mother had always called them the Deadly, but their true names were the Sentinels—nymphs employed by Skylord Othum to protect the Acropolis. Rumors claimed Sentinels were different from other nymphs. They never smiled, or danced, or ate, or breathed for that matter. But what use would any of that be to the dead?

  So as one could imagine, when a Sentinel appears over you, blocking out the light of the stars with her bulky, black armor, with every breath laced in ice, and her hand wrapped around the hilt of a sword as long as you are tall…you might scream just as loud as Ion did.

  Oceanus yanked her brother to his feet and dusted him off just as Mother would’ve done. “I see you’ve been working on your screech,” she said, straightening his belt.

  But Ion wasn’t embarrassed. He was far too busy being intimidated by the ominously silent, eight-foot-tall Sentinel standing only a few feet away.

  “No cause for alarm, Sentinel,” Oceanus assured the guard. “This is my brother, Ionikus. Brother, this is Amora.” Then, she whispered out the side of her mouth, “No, she doesn’t have a last name,” before returning to her regular voice. “She oversees the security of the Acropolis gates. No one enters without her permission.”

  Ion nodded nervously. “N-nice to meet you.”

  “This is the boy?” Amora asked. “Looks a bit underfed, if you ask me.”

  “Yes, well, we’re going to fix that right up!” Oceanus said. “He’ll be eating all day and night!”

  “How...gluttonous,” Amora said.

  Oceanus cleared her throat. “Right...well, could you open the gates now?”

  With a nod, the Sentinel approached the gate, her heavy armor clanging with each step. She took off the glove on her right hand and ran her bony, icy-blue finger down the center of what appeared to be just another section of Acropolis wall. There was a moan, like one of a falling tree, and the wall separated at Amora’s fingertip. The two slabs of marble slowly receded into the turrets on either side, until the section of wall had completely gone.

  “All right,” Oceanus said with a smile. “In we go!”

  Taking the first step onto the grounds of the Acropolis and listening to the gate moan as it closed behind him, Ion felt his jaw warm. He couldn’t help but be amazed, astonished, completely taken aback by the fields upon fields of blossoming flowers and flourishing trees, each with leaves that burned with their own beautifully hued light. The towering oaks smoldered with brilliant purples, the lumbering maples blazed in brilliant blues—even their much sadder willow cousins sparkled in electric pinks.

  “The trees!” Ion gasped.

  “They’re enchanted,” said Oceanus, guiding Ion down a straight road of stone. “These gardens are the Jovian Fields. The trees were a gift from Lady Illindria to Othum for his four-thousandth-and-fiftieth birthday. Or was it his four-thousandth-and-sixtieth? Anyway, each leaf is infused with a bit of starlight, so they shine just as brightly on earth as the stars do in the heavens.”

  Halfway down the stone road, Ion felt his fascination fade and worry take its place. Being here warmed him like never before, but what would Mother and Father say? He was treading on the grounds of the Illyrians, the gods who now welcomed him, but only hours ago saw him only fit for slavery. How dare he feel excited when Mother was dead, and Father was busy fighting in chains outside the walls of Eldanar in the deadly Outerworld?

  “I can’t do this,” Ion said, stopping. Oceanus turned around, confusion heavy on her face. “Othum and the Illyrians took everything from us,” he said. “I can’t be expected to set that aside and be the Guardians you say we are. It’s dishonorable to Father, to Mother. I mean, she died, Oceanus. And all for them! We can’t just look past that.”

  Oceanus took hold of his hands once more. Ion felt comfort here, with the light of the trees shining all around, and Oceanus’s expression now pleasant and understanding.

  “This will come as a shock to you, Ion, but Othum was not responsible for the Detainment.” It was settled: she was the worst. “The gods vote on those types of things, and the outcomes are recorded in books—books I’ve found here, on the Acropolis. I saw who voted in favor of the Detainment and out of the seven who did, Othum was not one of them.

  “It’s okay to be angry about Mother’s death and Father still in the war, Ion, but being angry with the wrong person won’t help anything, and it certainly won’t reverse what happened.”

  Ion saw truth in her eyes—honest, real truth. He’d never thought about Othum not being responsible for the Detainment, and he realized Mother would have scolded him for assuming something so horrible about the god. She would have agreed with the rest of what Oceanus had said, too.

  Ion swallowed his argument. “Fine. I’ll go along with this. But that doesn’t mean I’ll fall in love with Othum like you have.”

  Oceanus smiled and led him down the rest of the road. At the end of it, Ion stood at the foot of the godliest fortress he had ever beheld, its walls made of obsidian—a stone as black as night but as shiny as the stars—crowned by roofs of copper. The fortress had more windows and columns than Solara had locusts, while twisted spires rose everywhere he looked, the largest one rising at the very back, topped by a pair of massive, golden wings.

  Oceanus stopped them before the entrance hall: a gaping, marble tunnel lined with floating lanterns, which glowed an eerie blue. “Th
is is the beginning of the Achaean Academy,” Oceanus announced, her smile wider still. “The school year starts tomorrow, so consider yourself lucky your powers surfaced when they did. By the time I was finally brought here, I was about five months behind, so I only got to take a few classes.”

  “Wait,” said Ion. “You mean...I’m going to school here?”

  “Of course! Why else do you think you’re here? To just hang out?”

  “…Maybe.”

  “Listen,” she said, “every creature of magic—especially a Guardian—needs training. How else would you learn to control your powers? To properly serve the gods? Well, that’s why this academy was made. The past two generations of Guardians have trained and learned here, and now you will do the same.”

  He gave an exasperated sigh. “If you had said school was a part of the deal, I would’ve jumped out of that carriage a long time ago.”

  “Blah, blah, blah!” said Oceanus. “Look at me, I’m Ion, I hate school. School is a necessity, Ion, and one day you’ll learn to love it…like me! Now onward we go.”

  As Ion followed his sister through the long hall, he began to think more about school, and then wondered if Dread would ever let him come back as a house slave. At the end of the hall, the siblings entered a rectangular courtyard also lined with hovering lanterns. Ion drew his gaze up the towering walls around him and the ivy that kept them in shadow.

  “This is just the courtyard,” said Oceanus, carelessly waving her hand about. “Gets pretty busy during the day; lots of nymphs and elves and such passing through on their way to classes. Nothing too special about it. Nice floors though, yes?”

  Ion looked down at the shimmering glass tiles at his feet. “So very nice,” he snickered, just soft enough so Oceanus couldn’t hear.

  They walked across the courtyard until they stood before a pair of golden doors, both etched in strange, wispy letters. “These are the doors to the Creator’s Sanctum,” Oceanus said, before turning to Ion. “Now, I don’t want you to be nervous. Really, I don’t. But I do need to go over some things with you before introducing you to whoever might be behind these doors.”