Touch of Iron (The Living Blade #1) (28 page)

“Are you even listening?” Owen asked.

“Hmm?”

“Noraya!”

“I’m sorry, you lost me there a bit.”

Owen muttered under his breath and searched through the mess of papers spread over his table until he found a book with illustrations. He ruffled through the pages in a huff and then held the book under her nose. His finger tapped on the picture heading the chapter titled “Of the Living Blade.” She dutifully studied the picture and saw a bulky witch of a woman, face scarred, nose hooked, and hands like claws holding a baby aloft. At the top of the picture, leaning down into it, was the huge face of Dalem the Forger, god of smiths. He was easily recognizable by his broad, kindly face and pure black eyes. Also, he wore a crown around his brow with a hammer crafted on it, his sign. The same sign that had hung over Nora’s father’s smithy and that she had seen so often she had become blind to it being there.

“Is that Scyld offering up her child?” she asked. “Doesn’t look much like her statue outside.”

Owen tutted.

“And how would you know that the statue looks like her? Anyway, this is a book from the Henan Period in which Scyld’s unnatural deeds often led to her being depicted as uncouth and inhuman. And yes, it’s Scyld offering up her firstborn to Dalem to trade it for power to free mankind from its yoke of slavery. And Dalem—”

“Forged the Living Blade.”

“He crafted the Blade from his blood and that of the child’s, uniting all three kinds into one substance: the gods, the wights, and humans. You remember her child was half-wight? The first mixed child to ever be born of a human-wight relationship. It was a very special firstborn.”

“I know the story, Owen. Just get to the point.”

Nora looked at the baby in the picture. Its eyes were drawn closed as it cried a silent scream. Did it have the black eyes of its wight father? She thought of Diaz. Did all half-wights look like him, or were there some who were simply very tall but with human eyes?

“The power is in the blood. In the sacrifice,” Owen continued. “All three kinds know the value of death, the power when one turns over the most valuable possession. All three kinds understand the need for sacrifice. I heard of the death pit you and Diaz found, and the one near here. In times of yore, the old gods demanded much blood, and usually it was human. We know so little. So much knowledge has been lost, become legends, stories we tell children as moral guidance. Because they all have the same principle in common: if you want something dearly, you must pay for it dearly. How many times did Mother Sara take you up to the Shrine of Hin?”

“The shrine?”

“Didn’t she pray there for a child of her own?”

“She did. She bought the prayer ribbons at the shrine and tied them to the branches of the trees.” Nora remembered the branches around the shrine being so full of red ribbons from all the blessing seekers that they drooped their fake autumn crowns like weeping willows.

“Why were the ribbons red, Nora? Reminiscent of blood, of course.”

They weren’t. The ribbons were white cotton stained dark red by the blood of the desperate women who would cut themselves to get divine attention. Sacrifice. But she had never told Owen this. Not all secret knowledge was to be found in books.

“Only through the death of this firstborn half-wight and the blood of the gods did the Blade pass through death and come alive,” Owen said. “No longer an inanimate object, it retains the consciousness of the living sacrifice and can meld with its wielder to unleash a power so great it can change the course of the world. What would you give to change the world? The Blade has never again been as strong as that first making and the slaying of the gods, of course, but it has always been strongest when there is a direct bloodline between wielder and sacrifice. Mother and child.” Owen tapped the picture again. “Brother and brother. Father and son.”

“You mean like Kandar, who offered up his third son by the Prophetess Hin, right?” she asked, the hairs on her arm rising.

“I meant,” Owen said, “like Bashan and Shade.”

N
o fires were lit. It
was the shortest day of the year, and from this day forward the light would slowly return to its zenith. Evening fell and all was dark. The dining hall was now full, with people pressing against each other, murmured conversation filling the air. It was so crowded that it was already warm in the hall, although the moment had not yet come when a flame would be lit and the extinguished fires rekindled. Nora stood at the back with some of the hired serving girls, closest to the exit so as to be the first to file out. Once the feast started and was humming along, Nora could delegate her duty of oversight to one of the older serving girls and join Calla and Shade. Owen was nowhere to be seen.

It was time. Master Cumi rose from her place on the dais and held her hands up high. The hall fell quiet. Nora craned her neck to see over the heads and shoulders of the people around her. But since everyone else was doing the same, it was still hard to see. Master Cumi held a short sermon, thank the gods. Nora didn’t think she could endure a long sermon on change and hope and a bright dawn.

“The Darkness has ended.” Master Cumi said the ritual ending words in a loud voice that rang across the hall. “And we welcome back the light.”

A cheer arose, drowning the hush. As she spoke the word
light
, Diaz struck a flint stone and ignited a dry twig wrapped in cotton that he then gave to Master Cumi. She in turn ignited another twig wrapped in cotton and gave one each to two young girls, who stepped off the dais and over to the fireplaces to ignite the logs piled there.

With the fires lit, the song began. The sun hymn. It was a beautiful but haunting melody for two voices, one female, for the darkness, and one male, for the light. An invocation. Nora had heard it sung every year on the Ridge. It told of the battle between light and dark, of their yearning for each other and how they had loved and brought forth their children into the world, the ancient gods, only to lose them and then each other by the power of the Living Blade. So light and dark abided forever apart from all things, yet forever looked on, always following each other, their constancy and watchfulness a sign that the end of all time had not yet come and that one day their children would rise again. Strange how the light returning to the earth had so sad a connotation and was turned into such a mournful melody.

Calla sang with a clear, ringing voice. Shade Padarn had taken the male part—the God of Fire, Shinar—and his and Calla’s voices intertwined and wove between each other like the passing of the seasons. But Nora’s focus was on his face, not his voice. She saw the traces of his father in his features, in the shape of his body, in the way he carried himself. Why had Shade agreed to be killed for Bashan’s glory?

“What kind of a question is that?” Owen had scoffed when she asked him earlier.

The logical one? Did he even know? If he did, who would do such a thing? Willingly, at that? What kind of a person would you have to be? Bashan stood at the foot of the dais, watching his son sing with his nose turned up at the proximity of the humble folk. He should count himself lucky there was a crowd between him and Nora. She hadn’t thought it possible, but he had sunk even farther in her opinion.

The song ended and was followed by long applause. Nora watched Calla and Shade push their way through the crowd, stopped now and then by words of praise and congratulations for a task well done. When the three of them met at the temple’s entrance, the bonfire beneath the statue of Scyld was already catching fire. They ran down the stairs in the cold, clear night while high above them, the bell in the temple tower rang out twelve times. As they reached the square in the lower courtyards, the throng of people around the bonfire shuffled out of the way for the torch-bearer. He paused at the pile of wood that was higher than his head and held the torch aloft for everyone to see. A murmur went through the crowd. Then a hush fell.

“The Darkness has ended.” The torch-bearer echoed Master Cumi’s words, and his voice rang clear over the courtyard. “And we welcome back the light.”

He thrust the torch into the pile. It must have been prepared with pitch, for the flame immediately roared tall and everyone stepped back as it burst into its own crackling firesong. What followed was what a celebration of the return of light should be like, Nora thought, a celebration of life. A band began to play, drums were beaten, and young people started whooping as they danced around the fire. There was cheering and laughter and lots of alcohol. Fathers with their children balanced on their shoulders stepped forward to the fire with brands of their own to light their fireplaces. The impromptu marketplace was filled with the smell of caramel and spiced wine and beeswax candles. A hand passed Nora a cup of hot wine. She smiled at Shade as he bent over to her and yelled over the din.

“Do you dance?” He had a steaming cup of his own and was grinning from ear to ear.

“Only when I’m drunk and don’t know any better,” Nora yelled back and raised her cup to drink a sip. The strong wine rushed through her body, warming her.

“A challenge I like! Come on!” Shade pushed her closer to the music.

Nora pulled back, shaking her head.

“And you?” Shade asked Calla.

After a moment’s hesitation, Calla nodded. With a whoop, Shade pulled her into the dancing ring. Nora watched them dance together for a while. They seemed to be talking over the music. Though Nora couldn’t hear a word, she doubted they were having a serious conversation about Shade’s darkness within. He was laughing as he twirled Calla. He was a good dancer, Nora thought. He kept the beat, led on, and danced at ease, making his partner comfortable. At least, Calla didn’t seem to want to let him go, blushing dark red.

Around the roaring fire a wide space was filling with some dancing couples but mostly young girls holding each other’s hands as they leaped to and fro, their cheeks flushed with excitement. The boys stood at the brink of the circle, watching them, working up the nerve to break their cool and dance along. Nora saw a few young couples steal away into the shadows of the stone houses on the quiet side streets. She smiled. It was as it should be.

Another circle of people enclosed the dancers, families with yawning children on the shoulders of their fathers or curled up sleeping already in their mother’s arms, as well as the older crowd who stared into the fire with wistful smiles, seeing entirely different people in the flames, entirely different times. Some of the faces Nora knew from her rounds with Master Cumi. She moved through the crowd, greeting the mothers of the serving girls to praise their daughters’ abilities to the skies and beyond until the mothers smiled and lifted their chins in pride. Two smiths were having a wrestling match off in a corner. Some men were placing bets on the outcome, but Nora joined in the mockery going on around the wrestlers. They were both already too drunk to actually topple their opponent, so they just stood there, hands clapped on the other’s shoulders, grunting like stags locked in battle. Everywhere she went she was offered mulled wine or hot mead or cool ale, moon-shaped cakes, star-shaped biscuits, and sugar-coated roasted almonds until she was reeling with it all.

She pushed through the crowd, into a side street full of vendors, and drifted with the pull of the people around her into a small space of a former house, now crumbled and roofless, filled with rows of benches. It was quieter here, and she sat down in one of the last rows, surprised to find yet another cup of warm mead in her hand. She’d lost count of how many she’d had. The noise of the feast was a dull throb throughout her body. The smell of woodsmoke on the chill air was peaceful and cleared her head a little. She took deep breaths, the cold burning in her lungs. Away from the fires, all was held tight in winter’s grasp.

Families sat here, parents with young children, the elderly, all staring at a small group of people kneeling before Master Cumi, who had come down to the lower courtyards to give a blessing. Nora took a sip of the mead. The first sips were sickly sweet, but the more you drank, the more powerfully it hit. Her legs felt heavy and a small fire kindled in her stomach. She shook her head to clear the fumes, but it didn’t help. She splashed hot mead over her dress as the families on the benches around her broke out into applause and whoops of joy. A stir of movement from in front revealed the kneeling couples rising, their backlit faces turned to each other to exchange kisses, some with a hunger, some with chasteness in front of such a crowd. Four couples stood before beaming Master Cumi now, and they all looked a bit sheepishly into the rows of rejoicing and weeping people.

A cold hand gripped Nora’s heart. Of course. That was Solstice, too. A good day for making a match, for marriage. Her hand reached for the silver wolf’s head chain her betrothed had gifted her at their handfasting. But it was no longer there. She had given it up. Along with the life it had promised.

“Ah, such a lovely night for a wedding, and just think of all those autumn babies made tonight!”