A Discourse in Steel

  “Nix,” Mere said softly. “It could be some…residuum of this dead civilization that I’m perceiving. I can’t be sure.”

  Nix whirled on her. “You can’t be sure? You can’t be sure?”

  She recoiled, eyes wide, and Egil stepped protectively in front of her. His frown and narrowed eyes told Nix what his mouth did not: Back off.

  A growl and hiss sounded from out in the trees, the growl and hiss that had plagued them since Channis had fled into the night. Nix drew his falchion and hand axe and stalked toward the trees. He wanted to kill something; he needed to kill something.

  “Show yourself!” he shouted. “Come on! Come on!”

  He walked along the tree line, staring into the shadowed foliage, the muddy earth sucking at his boots, but the creature answered him no more than had Odrhaal.

  “Fak! Fak! Fak!”

  He gathered himself as best he could and walked back to his friends. He could not look them in the face. He stared at his boots, his weapons limp and useless in his grasp.

  “I…fakked this up, Mere. I thought…I thought it would go like everything always goes for me, like it would work out. I thought I could save her.”

  He looked up to see Mere looking at him, tears in her eyes.

  “You’re not at fault,” she said.

  “You’re not,” Egil said.

  Mere looked at her sister, at Egil, at Nix. “But what do we do now?”

  Egil spared Nix the need to answer. “We camp here and then try to go back…”

  He trailed off and no one filled the silence for him. There was nothing to be said.

  They’d have to face the guildsmen and Rose would die on the way back.

  —

  Even Trelgin fell silent as the boats carried them over what looked like a submerged necropolis. A metallic spire poked out of the water in the center of the lake, like the hand of a drowning man reaching up above the waterline to grasp at air he’d never breathe again.

  “Has to be a lot of swag down there,” Mors said, leaning over the side of the boat.

  Aye’s around.

  “Unless you’re a fish, that’s just where it’ll stay, too,” Varn said.

  “Keep your voices down,” Rusk said.

  When they reached the far end of the lake, they found Egil and Nix’s boat, pulled up on a muddy beach at the base of one of the hillocks that ringed the lake. They pulled their boats up beside it and hopped out. Quickly, Trelgin activated the dowsing rod and took a sense.

  “That way,” he said, nodding up the rise. “I think—”

  He stopped and inhaled sharply, the sound wet with drool. Rusk followed his eyes and saw at the top of the rise a tall figure standing in the shadows of the cypresses, partially hidden by the undergrowth. It was bipedal, with dark, scaled skin and overlong, muscular arms and legs. It was hairless, its eyes set in ridged sockets, and the whole of its features gave it a reptilian cast.

  Rusk cursed and fumbled for his weapon. Varn and Mors unslung their crossbows, but by the time they had them in hand, the figure was gone.

  “What in the Eleven Hells was that?” Mors asked, his voice even more high-pitched than usual.

  “Looked like a…” Varn said, and shook his head. “I don’t know what it looked like.”

  “Swamp’s got all kinds of secrets,” Rusk said, feigning confidence. “Just stay sharp.”

  “We leaving the boats?” Trelgin asked.

  “You said they went that way,” Rusk said, nodding up the rise. “Unless we plan to turn back now, we have to leave the boats.”

  “We could leave a guard,” Trelgin said.

  “I ain’t staying at the boats with that thing out there and a drowned graveyard behind me,” Varn said, and the other men nodded.

  Rusk looked a question at Trelgin. Trelgin’s eyes went to Rusk’s tattoo, its seven blades.

  “We can’t turn back, now,” the Sixth Blade said, resigned. “Come too far.”

  “Get the gear out of the boats,” Rusk said. Night was falling. They’d have to camp at the top of the rise. Rusk did not welcome another night in the swamp, especially with an unknown creature out there in the dark.

  “What do you think these boys are even doing out here, Rusk?” Varn asked.

  Rusk could only shrug. The Deadmire was no place for a man, and if guild law hadn’t put him in such a bind, he’d never have come at all.

  —

  Egil set up their camp inside the empty spire.

  “It’s shelter,” he said over Nix’s protests. “Fewer bugs, no wind. It’ll be better for Rose.”

  Nix had let the matter go, but better for Rose seemed almost a moot consideration.

  Night soon shrouded the swamp. Nix knew he’d be unable to sleep, so he stood watch. For hours he stared at the inky air inside the ruined tower of a lost civilization, listening to Rose moan and thrash, listening to Mere fret and weep.

  Nix and Egil sat in silence and did nothing, for there was nothing they could do. After a few hours Rose quieted and slept. Mere and Egil soon dozed off, too.

  Nix sat alone with his thoughts, his regrets, the darkness of the tower his own personal Blackalley. He clenched his fists, his jaw, cursing himself for letting it all go so wrong. Maybe they could have gotten Rose to Oremal in time, or maybe they’d have encountered a mindmage en route. Instead Nix had led them into the stinking, sodden sewer of the Deadmire, where Rose would die, another ghost haunting the swamp.

  He stood and paced because he had to, because he couldn’t sit still, because he despised himself for his arrogance. He treated everything like it was a game, like no matter how the pieces moved, it’d always turn out all right for Nix the Quick, for Nix the Clever.

  “Nix the stupid fakker,” he whispered.

  He walked to the doors and slouched down in the doorway, staring out at the swamp. Insects sang, the cadence rising and falling. Fireflies winked on and off out in the darkness, a constantly changing constellation. Kulven’s silver light leaked dimly through the canopy. The breeze whispered among the vines and leaves, carrying the stink of decay.

  Nix felt like he was standing on the grave of an old world, a secret world buried under the stink and filth. He’d tried to dig up Odrhaal for Rose and all he’d ended up with were hands covered in mud and stinking of shite.

  “Fak,” he whispered.

  He loved Rose the way he’d have loved an older sister. And he’d failed her.

  “Fak, fak.”

  He stared out into the darkness, spent. He still refused tears. He’d carry it, bear the grief because he deserved to bear it.

  His eyes grew heavy as the day’s events weighed down on him. He knew he’d soon fall asleep. He tried to rise, to go rouse Egil to take a watch, but he could not move his body. Alarm spiked his adrenaline but still he could not move. He opened his mouth to call out but couldn’t summon a sound.

  Fak. Fak.

  He felt a tickling behind his eye, a pressure against his skull. He turned his head—he could at least turn his head—and found himself eye to eye with the face of a serpent.

  No, a serpent man.

  His heart leaped against his ribs. Sweat formed on his brow when he looked into the vertically slitted, yellow reptilian eyes, filled as they were with an alien intelligence. Deep green and black scales and bone ridges formed a sloped, sleek head with deep eye sockets. Two ridged gashes formed a nose and the mouth.

  The alienness of the creature shook Nix. His thoughts went jumbled. He wanted to move, to cry out, but he could still do neither. He could simply sit there and shiver.

  The serpent man wore green robes made from a fabric that glistened in the moonlight as though it were slick. Triangles within triangles were sewn into the sleeves and collar.

  Nix had seen the creature and the robes before and in a flash realized that it had been the statue. The statue of the serpent man had come to life.

  But the statue was still there, looming beside him. But it had spawned the serpen
t man somehow.

  Or Nix was dreaming.

  Was he dreaming?

  The serpent man reached up and placed his clawed, scaled hand on Nix’s head, the touch cold and dry.

  The pressure in Nix’s skull grew. His eyes went wide and he opened his mouth in a silent scream. A presence nested in his thoughts, ancient and alien. He felt it probing at his thought processes, flipping pages to read the book of his mind. Nix’s stomach fluttered and he tasted bile. For some reason he thought of Blackalley.

  He gritted his teeth as the serpent man dug deeper into his thoughts. His heart was going to burst. He had to try something, anything.

  Are…you…Odrhaal? Nix asked, daring to hope.

  His thoughts seemed to echo through his own consciousness, as if the serpent man’s violation had left Nix’s mind as empty as the tower.

  Need…your…help, Nix projected. We need…to see…Odrhaal.

  Ssseee, said a voice in his head, the power of its projection much stronger than Mere or Rose’s, strong enough to make Nix wince. He felt something pop behind his faceplate, felt blood trickle from his nose.

  Yesss. Ssseee. Seee.

  And Nix did see, things he could not have imagined.

  Images formed in his mind, rapidly shifting, images of Ellerth when it was young, when an empire of serpent men built basalt towers that soared to twice the height of the Archbridge, when flying cities floated through Ellerth’s skies, when creatures of myth prowled primeval forests and grassy, windswept plains and mountains that reached the roof of the sky.

  He saw a great war between that empire and another, the latter an island empire ruled by pointed-eared human wizards in red robes, wizards who rode dragons and brought fire and ruin and commanded soldiers who carried weapons of sharp steel that glowed with magic. And Nix saw the serpent men answer with weapons that infected the mind, that trapped the thinking. He saw cities fall, saw men and serpents die on great battlefields by the tens of thousands.

  Stop, Nix said. Please stop.

  He saw the human wizards respond with an army of constructs, animated men of stone and metal that marched on the soaring cities of the serpent men and left heaps of cracked stone in their wake. He saw the serpent men answer with tubes of strange metal that vibrated in a way that destroyed the wizard’s magical constructs, that shattered their flesh.

  Nix’s mind was swelling with the knowledge. He could feel his heart pounding against his eardrums. He thought his skull must soon burst. Surely it would burst.

  He saw the war go on for decades, saw mountains of corpses, the enormity of the conflict changing the face of Ellerth, drying lakes, destroying mountains, diverting rivers. And he saw it end, finally, in the defeat of the serpent men. Most were killed, but some fled and some were imprisoned.

  Imprisoned.

  Imprisoned, the serpent man said.

  The images vanished, leaving Nix gasping.

  Free me, projected the serpent man, and Nix heard in the mental voice an echo of the same plea he’d heard while leaving Blackalley.

  You’re Odrhaal?

  I’m Odrhaal, yes. Free me. I know what you seek. I can help the girl. Free me, Nix Fall.

  How? Free you from what?

  The chime is in the tower, the serpent man said. Get it and bring it here. Free me.

  What chime? Nix asked. This tower? The one that’s here?

  Not this tower, Odrhaal said, and showed him, and Nix understood.

  There is a guardian, Odrhaal said, and showed Nix a sleeping horror of eyes and toothy mouths and grotesque, trembling mounds of flesh.

  Nix awoke in the deep of night, gasping. He lay at the base of the statue of the serpent man, the statue of Odrhaal. He was freezing and had a headache worse than any hangover headache he’d ever had. But that didn’t matter. He also had hope. He climbed to his feet, dizzy for a moment, Odrhaal’s mental voice echoing in his head.

  Get the chime, bring it here. It’s in the tower.

  He ran into the tower, stumbling in his excitement. “Egil! Wake up!”

  The priest sat up in a flash, hand on a hammer. Seeing no danger, he rubbed his head and eyes. “What is it? I dreamed—”

  “I know what we need to do,” Nix said.

  “The tower in the water,” Egil said distantly. He looked at Nix sharply. “That fakking tower.”

  “Get the chime,” Mere said, also awakened by Nix’s call.

  “Bring it here,” Nix said, almost jumping up and down.

  They’d all had the same dream or vision or whatever the Hells it had been.

  “Odrhaal, he’s here,” Nix said. “You were right, Mere.”

  “No, you were right,” she said.

  “He’s trapped in that statue,” Nix said.

  “They froze him in stone, to imprison him forever,” Mere said. “The men with pointed ears.”

  “And we need to free him,” Nix said. “And then he can help Rose.”

  “Then let’s get him the fak out of there,” Egil said, standing.

  “Aye,” Nix said, grinning. “Gear the fak up.”

  “It’s the middle of the night,” Mere said.

  Egil was already loading up his gear.

  “We’ve got to backtrack,” Nix said. “Which will take us toward the guildsmen.”

  “We can sneak past them at night,” Mere said, understanding.

  “Aye. And they won’t be checking that dowsing rod at this hour. Egil and I get into the tower, get the chime, and come back here. We free Odrhaal, he helps Rose, then we deal with the guildsmen.”

  Egil dropped his hammers into their loops on his belt. “And if we have to deal with them before that…”

  Nix nodded. “They get between us and that tower and they get a hard go.”

  “Aye, that,” Egil said. “Though we could just ambush them now.”

  Nix considered it. “We don’t know how many they are and we can be sure there are good blade men among them. Won’t be like in the guildhouse. We get Rose fixed first, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Egil said, grudgingly.

  “We can’t find our way in the dark,” Mere said.

  She was right. The moons were down and the darkness was like tar. They’d have to risk a light. Nix took his magical eye from Mere, spoke in the Language of Creation, and awakened it. It opened and its beam split the night. Nix tapped the eye with his forefinger.

  “Dimmer,” he said.

  The etched eye bunched up in a glower but did as Nix commanded. Nix would keep it pointed at the ground and shielded with his hand. The guildsmen wouldn’t see it unless they were looking for it.

  “Let’s move,” Nix said. “And be as quiet as possible.”

  They started off and every damned sound they made seemed amplified by the night’s relative quiet. Even Egil’s breathing sounded loud in Nix’s ears. Even so, Nix couldn’t stop smiling.

  Sleep eluded Rusk. Wrapped in his bedroll, he listened to Varn’s and Kherne’s snoring, listened to the sounds of the swamp. He searched his thinking for some play to get the situation to work in his favor, but other than something obvious and risky—killing Trelgin, for example—nothing came to mind. He found himself circling back to the same conclusion again and again. Rusk would have to rescue Channis unless Egil and Nix killed Channis for him. Hells, maybe Channis would be less of a bunghole if he owed Rusk his life. Doubtful, though.

  He heard a sharp, wet intake of breath from Trelgin, saw the flabby faker tense and lean forward, as if hearing or seeing something out in the night. Rusk thought of the scaled creature they’d seen earlier and sat up himself, his hand on his blade hilt. He followed Trelgin’s gaze out into the darkness. At first he saw nothing more than the ink of the undergrowth, but then he saw it, too.

  A light, far out in the swamp. It appeared and disappeared now and again, probably blocked by the undergrowth or shielded with a hand. But it was definitely someone bearing a light.

  Rusk eased up beside Trelgin.

  “You
see it, too, yeah?” Trelgin asked.

  Rusk nodded.

  Trelgin pulled the dowsing rod from his inner pocket, activated it with a word, and let it pull in the direction of their quarry. Its pointer settled in the direction of the light.

  “That’s them,” Trelgin said, sucking drool.

  “They’re heading for the boats,” Rusk said.

  “Probably,” Trelgin said. “Must have spotted us. They’ll sink our boats, go rabbit in theirs, and leave us to die in the swamp.”

  “Let’s move,” Rusk said. He moved through the camp, rousing the men. Trelgin did the same.

  “Back to the boats,” Trelgin said softly. “Those fakkers are going there now. We go quiet and fast and end this right now. They’re walking right into it.”

  The men were awake, on their feet, and armed in moments.

  “No lights,” Rusk said.

  “And no stray shots,” Trelgin said. “Remember that they still have the guildmaster.”

  They set out in the dark, heading back to the lake and the boats, to Egil and Nix and Channis.

  —

  Even before they reached the lake, Nix said to Mere, “We’ll all row out to the tower, but when Egil and I get out and take our run at the place, I want you to row back to shore.”

  “No, I can wait for you there.”

  “Row back to shore,” Egil said to her.

  “Odrhaal said there’s a guardian,” Nix said.

  “I had the same vision, Nix,” she said.

  “Then you know what it looks like. I don’t want you nearby if…something happens.”

  Mere said nothing so Nix took her silence as agreement.

  When they reached the lake, they instead found three boats.

  “We ought to sink these fakkers’ boats,” Egil said. He pulled a hammer and moved toward the first. Nix grabbed his arm and halted them

  “Too loud,” Nix said. “Just flip them and let them fill.”

  “Aye,” Egil said. The burly priest stepped into the water and flipped the guildsmens’ boats. The water pulled them down. It’d take a long while to pull them out and get them drained.

  Afterward, they placed Rose in their boat, Mere took her place, and Egil shoved them off. They moved quickly over the dark water. Nix imagined the graves below them, hidden by the dark. The metal dome of the tower rose out of the water before them.