Page 9 of Ironhold, Trial One

“Your feet are bleeding,” Naia whispers. She bends to them, at the limits of what the chains will allow, and half closes her eyes. I feel power moving across my skin, like the touch of a feather. My blistered and bleeding feet heal in front of my eyes.

“You!” a soldier calls out. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Nothing, sir,” Naia says. “Her feet were bleeding, and-”

He strikes her. “Aetheria owns you. It owns your magic. To use it without permission is to be punished. Understand?”

Naia nods, but that doesn’t seem to be good enough for the soldier. He takes out a whip, ready to deliver a beating to her. Can I do anything to stop it? Can I shield her with my body? She is going to suffer this because of me, after all.

Even as I think about it, though, there is a commotion from the other end of the line. I look around and see that a young man has somehow broken free from his chains and is now running, trying to make it across the broken ground of the wildlands.

He doesn’t make it far.

After a day of walking hard with no food he hasn’t got the stamina to stay ahead of the soldiers who move to chase him. One of them throws out a hand and choking dust rises up in front of him, making him cough and stumble, a casual display ofminor magic that is nonetheless more than enough to slow the fleeing youth. Two of the soldiers bring him down to the ground, then drag him back. The grey-robed official waits for him, with a stern expression, as the rest of us look on.

He addresses us, not the young man who has run. “You will need to come to terms with your situation. You have been claimed in the name of the emperor. You are not free, and you have no protections under the law. You cannot flee, and you cannot fight back. The empire has more magic, and more power. If you are too strong to contain, your power will be dampened until it is needed. Those who own you may do as they wish with you. They may break your bones, take your bodies, kill you if they wish. You will obey every command given to you, or you will be punished. If you try to fight against that, you will lose. And if you try to escape…”

He turns to the soldiers holding the young man, nodding.

They pull him down to the ground, holding him still, as the official approaches.

“In Aetheria, you might die a dozen different ways. Out here, our options are more restricted.”

He takes out a knife and a purple stone, kneeling by the young man. I feel a wave of horror running through me as he sets the stone on the young man’s chest. I strain against my chains, a part of me feeling that I must do something, but there is nothing I can do.

“Oh great emperor, we offer this one in sacrifice. Accept his power for the stone of Aetheria!” the official intones, as solemn as a priest. A second later he, draws the blade across the young man's throat, swift and sharp.

I gasp in horror at the sight of it. The guards hold him in place while he dies, and there is nothing any of us can do to save him. Just like that, they have killed him. They could have puthim back in chains, could have forced him to march, but they killed him.

Almost as soon as it is done, the official stands, cleaning his blade and heading back to his cart.

“The break is over. Get them moving again.”

The true horror of what has just happened is as much the casual way in which the official has treated it as the fact of the young man's death. It doesn't seem to matter that he has just ended someone's life. That he has killed someone there in front of the rest of us. It is one more inconvenience along the way for him.

And it is a warning. It shows us just how ready to kill us the Aetherians are. I can see terror on faces all around me, including that of Naia. For the first time I believe that everyone there truly understands the danger of their situation.

The guards leave the young man where he has fallen, as food for the crows. We march on, leaving him behind, and I try not to look back, because every time I do a sick feeling rises in my stomach.

We walk for days. I had not realized how vast the Aetherian Empire could be, that anyone could rule a space that could not be crossed in a day or two. At night we make camp, and we are given brief rations, chained to stakes hammered into the ground. I huddle close to Naia as the guards move by. I can feel their gazes on us, hungry and frightening, but they do not do anything to us.

I lose track of time. We walk along dirt tracks, then paved roads, occasionally passing carts coming the other way. The first couple of times, I hope that someone might stop and help us, but it is soon clear that no one will. We walk until I feel I cannot walk any longer, and still we keep going.

I’m not sure how long it is before the city comes into view. We march over a rise, and it is simplythere,spread out beneath us like a map.

“Behold the city of Aetheria!” the official says, in a tone demanding awe. “Greatest city of the world.”

I can believe it, standing there. It is vast in a way that I did not know human settlements could be. It has walls but it also sprawls beyond those walls, slums and suburbs reaching out like the tendrils of some great beast. There are buildings built on a scale that I cannot fathom, palaces and towers and temples, along with huge square buildings that I guess must be either warehouses or barracks. There are statues many times the height of a man, and roads wide enough for half a dozen carts to drive side by side if needed. There is a great circular construction near the center of the city that is festooned with flags.

And there is magic. Magic on a scale that dwarfs the hints of it from the guards. I see flickering lights held between the hands of statues, illusions spread across the sides of buildings. Flames burst in the air in one spot, for no reason I can see.

We do not head for any of that. Instead, we are made to walk towards a structure on the edge of the city, clinging to the surrounding hillsides like a limpet. It is a fortress of grey stone, whereas the rest of the city seems to be built mostly from marble. It has towers and bastions that seem to impose its will on the surrounding landscape, a threatening shadow standing next to the brightness of the rest.

We walk to a set of great gates, and they swing open as we approach. Our caravan stops, and the soldiers take our chains, leading us towards those gates as if they are the maw of a great beast waiting to swallow us.

One of the soldiers gives me a cruel smile as we get closer.

“Welcome to Ironhold. I’m sure they’re going to love you here.”

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