Scarlet Seas

The creaches have grown bolder this winter. A caravan of supplies and food was dispatched to Dail, along with twenty loachs. The supplies never arrived. When the ice began to thaw, a goatherd and his boy found evidence of a creach camp site in the hills where they disappeared. They found piles of gnawed human bones and a signet that belonged to the captain. – Letter from Scribe Luka to High Chieftain Aile, spring of 439.

Amon hardly noticed that Slaine had left the room. His mind had drawn into itself. The cold, creeping horror of the news transfixed him.

The storm had ended.

That was devastating enough but made far worse by the fact that it was his fault. It was like something had lodged itself in his chest, just behind his sternum, like an invisible, choking bone.

It was impossible, though. How could the storm be over?

Around the feasting hall tables, when winter layered foot after foot snow at their doors, he’d heard the druids and loachs talk of the great Cassadan mages. They said they’d marshalled their strength and sacrificed their very lives to create the Eternal Storm. These great warriors of Illia spoke of Cassadan mages with disgust and fear in equal measure, but no one ever doubted their god-like power to control the forces of nature.

How could Amon have undone the storm, then? How could anyone? Hadn’t it only been a dream when he’d reached into the storm and stilled it?

Yet somehow he’d done it. It had all been real.

“Amon,” Lucia hissed, driving an elbow into his ribs.

Amon came back to himself, feeling suddenly as if he couldn’t get enough air. The two of them were so close, the air around them stifling. He tried to speak but found he couldn’t.

This couldn’t be real. He couldn’t let it be real. He wouldn’t let it happen.

Lucia’s eyes flashed concern and confusion. “Amon! I’m scared, too, but get a hold of yourself.”

Of course she was scared. Any Cassadan thrall would have been horrified at the Eternal Storm’s ending. It meant the dragon ships would soon sail. They’d heard from Odrin himself that Beckhead’s loachs would leave for Karrakdun within days. The Long Reaving – the great tide of Illian raiders – would resume once again, spreading untold misery across Cassada and beyond.

Every Cassadan thrall in Illia had been a victim, either violently torn from their homes by reavers or sold by their Cassadan lords as tribute. Or they were the descendants of those who had. He’d brought their worst nightmares to life again. For the last ten years they had been trapped here behind the storm, but least they had the peace of knowing the Long Reaving had ended and whatever family and friends they had back home were likely safe.

Lucia started backing her way out between piles of stacked crates. She pulled at his pant leg. “We need to leave.”

Amon followed. Together they climbed out of the loft, came out into the main hallway again, and nearly ran into Kessen.

The pale, bald man stared at them but said nothing as they apologized and slipped out one of the side doors into the yard, but his unblinking gaze followed them until they were out of sight.

The sun was starting to disappear behind the stockade wall that ringed Odrin’s longhouse.

What should he do? Should he keep quiet? Never speak a word of it to anyone for as long as he lived? A tempting option. No one would ever know that he’d brought about the second great massacre of Cassada.

Coward.

Or he could tell Amara. If he could trust anyone it would be her, but even then he didn’t know how she would react. The other thralls would kill him in the most excruciating way they could imagine if they ever caught an inkling of what he’d done.

The thought of Amara turning on him crushed him. He tried to imagine how she would take it. She was the closest he’d ever had to a mother since the purge. If she didn’t turn him over to the others, she would be furious at him for not telling her of his dreams. She’d been giving him herbs to suppress them, but it hadn’t worked and he’d been too afraid to tell her. Afraid at what she and the others might do if they found out they couldn’t suppress his magic.

Then he tried to imagine how his true mother would take it. He remembered his her fondly, though it was harder and harder to recall her face with each passing season. Those memories were so old now, practically from another life. Filled with warmth, but tattered. He’d clung to every detail he could, though – recollections of the sunbaked garden and the red stone wall and mother laughing in a white dress while he splashed in the fountain water.

If she was alive out there across the sea, he’d probably condemned her to death or worse.

Unless he could somehow undo what he’d done. If he had ended the storm by accident, did that mean he could recreate it?

If there was anyone in all of Illia that could show him how, it was Amara.

“What’s got into you?” Lucia asked, the annoyance plain in her voice. “You keep staring off into space like an idiot. We should go back. There’s no reason for us to be here. They’ll get suspicious.”

Amon nodded. She was right. They had to get back to their village.

And when they reached home, he would have to tell Amara what he’d done. If there was any possibility at all that he could restore the storm and keep the reavers from leaving these shores, he would have to make that gamble. Maybe he would die, but he couldn’t live with himself if he did nothing. He would do it for mother, for the memory of warmth he still clung to.

Lucia yanked him by the arm and together they passed through the gate.

###

Amara will know what to do.

It had become almost a prayer, repeating itself in Amon’s head as he and Lucia followed the dirt road until the words hardly made sense anymore. It kept him grounded, at least, gave him something to hold and keep from spinning off into his own horrible imaginings.

Mostly.

He had visions of the Cassadan cities of his youth. He’d walked those streets so long ago and they were so starkly different to his life in Illia today that he could no longer know for certain it had ever been real. Still, the visions came. He saw winding, hilly streets tiered with houses of red sunbaked stone and blue-tiled roofs and the Cassadan sun shimmering with heat in a pure sky. He remembered walking beneath white arches, the precise stonework marbled with veins of black. Those arches held the ducts that carried streams of fresh water down from the hills into the city’s gardens and bubbling pools.

He’d never known a more perfect place, but what came after that was not a memory, but foresight.

He saw Illian reavers, baring axes and swords, running through the streets, staining the stones a darker shade of red while smoke poured into the sky.

You’ve sentenced your people to death. Your mother, too, if she still lives.

He tried to block those thoughts, replacing them with another.

Amara will know what to do.

Except maybe she wouldn’t. She was the strongest mage he’d ever known, at least here in Illia among the thralls, but she’d once said she had no idea how the Eternal Storm had been created.

Lucia pinched Amon. “Come on.”

He’d fallen behind again, his thoughts pulling him away, but the pinch brought him back to the road again, back to the real world the real world of turnip fields and gnarled trees. “Sorry.”

Lucia stared at him hard for a moment, but her gaze softened. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but you’re not the only one that will be struggling. Everyone is going to be terrified. You need to get your head clear. Others will need you.”

Amon nodded. She was right, of course. The elders of the thrall village seemed to be all that held their little community together. They kept them from succumbing to despair, but even elders with all their wisdom would have no answers for this. He would be needed, possibly to stop others from acting rashly. He tried to keep his attention on his feet and concentrated on putting one in front of the other.

A rustle of leaves caught Amon’s ear as they came to a wooded copse between fields of potatoes and turnips. He looked up in time to see Kessen step out from behind a tree.

The man been waiting for them. He stepped out into the narrow road and smiled at them. Smiles always looked off on him. The bald hair and the dent in his template – from where a creach had thumped and nearly killed him with a rock – made his smiles seem too broad. The fact that he never seemed to blink didn’t help either. They’d run into him at the Longhouse, but Kessen must have cut across the fields to head them off.

But why?

“Amon,” he said.

Lucia instinctively took a back, moving closer to Amon.

Amon fought his own instinct to step behind her and use her as a shield. Kessen had been making trouble with them since he showed up with Slaine a year ago. Every thrall would have had the same reaction. Most around Beckhead had probably seen his brutality firsthand by now, even if they hadn’t been a victim themselves.

Kessen adjusted the bronze torc around his neck. He was reminding them of its presence, reminding them that Slaine had appointed him head of his loachs, not that he had many at the moment.

That would change the day Odrin died, though.

“Did you hear anything interesting?” Kessen asked.

“What do you mean?” Amon responded. He heard the slight quiver in his own voice and hated himself for it.

Kessen’s pitch rose a little higher with something like glee. The ugly smile had become fixed on his face. “You were eavesdropping, listening in on our Chieftain’s private conversations. What did you hear?”

Amon felt the adrenaline start to seep through him, making his heart dance. He tried to think. Should he lie? Deny it outright? “Leave us alone, Kessen. You have no authority over us. We belong to Odrin, not you.”

“And how much longer do you think that will last?”

Not long. Everyone in Beckhead had been talking of the chieftain’s impending death for over a year now, though he’d somehow held out far longer than anyone could have hoped. Everyone dreaded the day of Odrin’s passing, so much so that it was hardly ever spoken of aloud. No one looked forward to Slaine’s ascendency. The thralls instead lived in denial. It wasn’t like they could do anything about it, anyway.

“We haven’t done anything,” Lucia said. Anger and fear bled into her voice. Lucia never hid any part of herself and Amon loved her for it, but it was unwise to show anger to an Illian. Probably even worse to show fear.

“But you have,” Kessen said, advancing a step. “I watched you. I saw you climb out of the loft. I wanted to see if you had an innocent explanation before I tell. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen over a simple misunderstanding.”

Amon tried to hold himself steady. Deny everything, he decided. Keep the course and just deny everything. “We didn’t do anything. Go ahead and complain about us, but we didn’t do anything.”

Amon’s faked indifference must not have been very convincing. Kessen laughed and took a casual step closer. “You are assuming I would tell Odrin, and that’s why you’re so confident. But I won’t. I know you’re one of his favorites. Why does he have such a special place for you, I wonder? Always getting such special treatment.”

Amon opened his mouth but found no words to say. Fear had made his tongue numb and heavy.

“What do you want, Kessen?” Lucia asked.

Kessen’s smile grew wider, almost impossibly so, but his eyes remained soulless fisheyes.

He wasn’t looking at Amon, though. He was staring at Lucia, who took another half a step back just as Kessen took another one forward.

“Odrin will kill any man who touches his thralls without permission,” Amon reminded him.

Kessen advanced another step. He’d closed most of the distance between them already, now little more than an arm’s reach away. “That would require you to tell him. Even if you did, he wouldn’t kill me, but you would have an enemy for life. It could get very difficult for you when Slaine becomes our Chieftain.”

“Just tell us what do you want, then.” Lucia said, the loathing plain in her voice.

“This news of the storm’s ending will cause some commotion among the thralls. Your elders will meet and discuss. I want you to listen and watch closely. Tell me everything. We can’t have another show like what happened a couple winters back. Lots of blood spilled. And for what? It only made it worse on the rest of you. Think of it as helping yourself and your people. And you’ll be rewarded. Maybe you’ll even keep your work in the longhouse. Much better than field work, I can promise. Eventually, maybe we can help you become leaders among your people. It’s a better life than you could otherwise hope for.”

“And if we don’t?” Amon asked.

“I’ll tell Slaine about your spying. I think he’ll remember it well when he becomes Chieftain. I’ll be sure to remind him.”

Despair seized Amon. How could he ever stand up to this? No matter what he did, a life of subjugation was all he could hope for, all the fates would ever afford him. It disgusted him, but the sad reality was that Kessen was right. Following his commands would give him the best future he could ever hope for in this life.

But how could he betray everyone in the village like that? The last thrall who’d been caught feeding information to their masters had been so ostracized he’d fled into the creach-filled mountains.

“And you,” Kessen said, one hand reaching out for Lucia. “You could have a very nice life with me. You would hardly have to work at all.”

Lucia pushed his hand away.

Kessen’s smile dropped instantly. His hand shot out at Lucia, more aggressively this time.

Some ancient echo of who Amon had once been – who his father had meant for him to be – stepped forward. He stepped between them.

Kessen’s hand curled into a fist and sank into Amon’s gut.

The explosion of pain doubled Amon over, ripping the air from his lungs.

That was a mistake, he thought, and tried to shield himself from the second punch. “Run!” he yelled to Lucia.

She did, while Kessen rained punches and kicks on him. Amon did as he’d learned from hard experience. He curled himself up into a ball, tried to cover his most vulnerable places, hands shielding the back of his head. There was no escaping the damage, though.

The blows kept coming until there was only pain.