Chapter Seventeen The Lands of the Kindred #2
“A type of metalworking that takes iron ore and combines it with pure valerium ore—only found in the mines east of the city of Vale—at extraordinary temperatures. When the alloy cools, what’s left behind is then reheated and oxidized—the same way that steel is made—and the result is a pure white metal that is denser than steel and can be honed to a razor’s edge.
It’s powerful. A weapon made of valerium is as much better than the best Tynian steel as steel is over the copper or bronze weapons people used at the beginning of the Cumrunian Era, which was nearly a millennium before—”
“No history lessons,” the Prince said through a tightly clenched jaw. “Why don’t you use it then?”
“It’s deadly against any kind of magic and stands up well against other weapons. But it’s extremely difficult to wield, owing to the fact it’s heavier than steel and that if it’s struck just right, the blade shatters.”
“What?” the Prince asked. “I thought you said it was denser than steel?”
“It is,” Leah’s brow furrowed as she continued, trying to remember, “but something about the way the blades are forged makes them brittle when struck at the right angle. That’s why all valerium blades are curved and single-sided.
It actually makes better axes than swords—you saw Lorna’s?
Good—but daggers made from it are terrible.
The smaller the metal, the weaker the alloy, for a reason that I knew at one point but I can’t remember.
Daggers made from it are good for throwing, but not much else.
They’re just too heavy for quick work. And the swords made from it have never felt right to me.
So, I stick with steel. I’ve never had problems.”
The Prince nodded. He had been trained in single-edged swords and found them easier to wield then their double-edged cousins, but if you could handle daggers like the girl could, why bother with anything else?
“So Anchors are made of valerium. How do you make it unique to a person?” he asked.
The conversation was helping him keep his mind off the shifting landscape, which had settled for the moment on a narrow mountain pass that must be from the Elmist Mountains, and he wanted to keep it that way as long as possible.
“When the metal is forged, the first person to touch a drop of their blood to the Anchor becomes linked to it.”
The Prince looked up sharply and the world spun round him. He closed his eyes for a second before speaking to let the vertigo pass.
“Blood magic?” he asked.
“Not the way you think of it,” Tomaz rumbled.
“Bloodmages are a corruption of the art the Council has perfected.” Leah said hotly. “Their magic involves blood of others, sacrifices, even sometimes—”
“I know,” the Prince said, and then lowered his voice. “It’s me, remember?”
She cleared her throat. “I suppose you might know more about it than I do.”
“I’ve seen it,” he said darkly. To his surprise the world remained stable even though he was thinking of a distinct place in his memory. There was a brief silence as both Tomaz and Leah seemed to contemplate what it was he was talking about, but neither of them questioned him about it.
“How’re the illusions?” the girl asked.
“Good, as long as I don’t focus on them.”
“Well, hold on a bit longer,” Tomaz said. “They only exist around the borders with the Empire. A few hours into tomorrow and you’ll be fine.”
“Tomorrow?” the Prince asked weakly.
“You’re lucky,” Leah said. “The enchantments used to cover the whole land south of the mountains, days in every direction.”
“What changed?”
“No one knows,” Tomaz rumbled. “But the world’s moved on, and some things start to fail.”
“What happens when it fails completely? What do you do?”
“Hopefully we have a long time until that happens,” the big man said. “But when it does… I pray that we’re strong enough to face the Empire on our own.”
They lapsed into silence, and the Prince closed his eyes. It was easier that way, and with his horse obediently following the rest of the group, he was able to remain close.
That night they camped in the middle of a lake. Or at least that’s what it looked like to the Prince. A lake complete with waves rolling beneath and around his feet, and fish that stared up at him in alarm as he sat on the glassy blue-green surface.
When Tomaz asked what he was seeing now—the big man seemed to have a sick fascination with the illusions—the Prince said as much, and Leah’s brother Davydd began to make jokes at the Prince’s expense, until Leah told him to stop because the Prince was looking decidedly green in the face.
Which, of course, only encouraged another round of jokes from the red-eyed young man about seasickness.
The Prince was distinctly starting to dislike the man, no matter whose brother he was.
In the end, even when Davydd had stopped mocking him, the Prince found he couldn’t choke down any food at all, and so he simply curled up in his bedroll and blanket—thankfully, both of these were solid objects that did not shift—and closed his eyes.
But in the middle of the night, he woke to find himself back in the Seeker’s lair, with the Lord Seeker himself standing at a nearby table, unrolling a long collection of metal implements in a leather sheaf.
Each implement was longer and sharper than the last, and the Prince knew, beyond a doubt, that he would be tortured to death for what he’d done.
As this thought solidified in his head, the Seeker pulled out a long, wicked, three-tined instrument, crossed to the Prince, and bent to begin his work.
In a matter of seconds, he’d woken the rest of the group with his screams. It wasn’t until Leah and Tomaz came, inexplicably walking through the walls of his prison and shouting at him to close his eyes, that he was even able to grasp what was happening.
Tomaz grabbed him by the shoulders and was able to convince him to stop screaming, but it was Leah who managed to bring him out of the vision altogether by unexpectedly taking his hand and holding it tight, giving it a quick, almost apologetic squeeze—and then slapping him so soundly that his ears rang and his brain did a somersault.
The shock blanked out his mind, and suddenly the world resolved into a long, rolling grass plain, with the moon high above them, and wind flicking back the girl’s hair.
“What… how did you do that?” he asked her.
“Well, you cock your arm back like this—”
“No no! Please, no need to demonstrate.”
“Good,” she said with a sly smile. The wind gusted again and blew her hair back, and his mind seized this thought and started working again—and just that quickly, the plain had disappeared, replaced by a mountainside, a river, and Leah without her clothes.
He recoiled in surprise, thinking she’d be angry, but she just stood there. Which, of course made sense, because only he could see the illusion. Except, this time it was also real. He suddenly felt extremely guilty about what was happening, and he quickly looked away.
“Is everything all right?” Leah asked cautiously, taking a step forward.
“Yes!” he exclaimed, his voice an octave too high. She reached out toward him, and he jumped back as if she were wielding a burning brand instead of offering a friendly shoulder pat. Keeping his eyes firmly on the ground, he turned, went back to his bedroll, and covered himself with the blankets.
“Thank you, but I’m fine now. Time for bed. Good night.”
For a long moment there was just silence, and the sound of wind blowing across the plain/mountainside. And then Davydd spoke:
“You brought us a halfwit.”
“Go back to sleep, idiot brother,” Leah said.
The Prince managed, after a time, to sleep as well, and this time he slept until morning, when he was awoken by a huge hand covering his eyes.
“AH!”
“HEY!” roared a voice like a crashing waterfall as the Prince jumped up and moved to attack the source of the hand, “don’t panic, it’s just me. It’s Tomaz. Don’t look around yet, just remember where you are and what’s going to happen when you open your eyes.”
The Prince realized what a fool he’d just made of himself, but then decided that, with his nerves as frayed as they were, he was lucky he hadn’t done something truly stupid. He took a deep breath and nodded beneath the hand, steeling himself.
“Right. Thank you, Tomaz.”
He opened his eyes and found himself in a world covered in a thick white blanket. He must have gasped, or made some sign, because Tomaz tensed, and asked him a question, but the words didn’t register as more than sound.
“Snow,” he whispered.
And so it was, piled high all around them.
He had seen it before, particularly in the streets of Lucien when winter came, but the snow there was fast to melt, and often gray or black with the soot in the sky or the grime on the streets.
Here he found himself in the middle of a picture that he had seen when he was barely old enough to walk, a picture of perfect, new-fallen snow.
Everything was covered in the soft, white blanket, making the world look fresh and clean.
“What are you seeing?” asked a voice. He looked up at Tomaz and shook his head.
“Snow, I think. But like I’ve only ever seen it in paintings and drawings. And parts of it I don’t think I’ve ever seen. Then again, with all the… ”
Suddenly the Prince was conscious of Davydd standing nearby, and he changed the end of his sentence.
“… stories people have told me, maybe what I’m seeing is some kind of amalgamation.”
Tomaz nodded after a brief hesitation, understanding.
“Stories?” Davydd asked. “That’s not how it’s supposed to work. Only things you’ve seen can be shown to you—only memories.”
“He’s got an overactive imagination,” said Leah, coming up on the Prince’s other side. “And he certainly does hound people for stories. And tells them to you too, whether you want to hear them or not. We couldn’t get him to shut up on the way here—have you heard this one, have you heard that one.”