Author: Niall Teasdale
Date: 2023-02-13 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy
Description: Thousands of years ago, the Romar ruled the world. Then their god’s constellation vanished from the sky, their empire fell, and most of the Romar became slaves. Eighteen years ago, Rom’s constellation reappeared, and on that night, a girl was born.

Starlight

By Niall Teasdale

Copyright 2023 Niall Teasdale

Smashwords Edition

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Contents

Prologue

Part One: Gifted

Interlude: The Lord and the Sorceress

Part Two: The Iron Lands

Part Three: The Land of Ice and Snow

Part Four: Kingdom of the Storm God

Epilogue

About the Author

Prologue

Grand Observatory, Mount Estellaris, 20th Day of Yoo in the 85th Year Postwar.

Night watch at the Grand Observatory atop Mount Estellaris was not popular in Yoo, the month of snow. It was cold enough to freeze your eyeballs in their sockets, especially on the good nights for observation when the sky was clear. No one liked doing it, except for Angfa.

Angfa had it down to something close to an art and enjoyed the solitude. He had personally – and very laboriously – sewed double-layered robes with extra long sleeves he could fold his arms into and a pocket for his feet. The other residents at the observatory had laughed at him, but they complained about the cold and that their toes were frigid, and Angfa sat atop the observation tower as snug as a bug in double-layered robes. He had obtained a special flask which kept hot drinks hot, so he had warming tea throughout the night. Basically, if he was going to do this, he was going to make sure he could survive it.

It was not an especially difficult job, when it came down to it, but a vital one. The patterns of stars in the sky were monitored constantly because changes in them could spell any manner of misfortune, or any manner of fortune. The Grand Observatory had been founded during the Romar Empire, thousands of years ago, and had been operating continuously since, always watching the changes in the night sky and documenting them for astrologers across the eight nations. To be honest, there had been no major changes for the last thousand years, but everything was noted down because the smallest alteration in the alignment of the stars could make a difference to someone.

The last big change was coming into view above the eastern horizon soon. The observatory did not exactly sit on the very top of the mountain, because the very top of the mountain was a lake. It was like the peak had been sliced off and a bowl scooped out, and then that bowl had filled with water. Some said that Mount Estellaris was a volcano; the shape, they said, was right. If it was, it had long since become dormant. There were no records of an eruption there, even in myth. The observatory sat on the lip of the bowl, on the western side, so the constellation associated with the god Rom would be rising over the other lip soon. Or rather not, because the last major change in the sky had been the disappearance of Rom’s constellation which was followed quickly by the fall of the despotic Romar Empire. One day, the stars in that group had started going out. Within a matter of days, there was nothing in that part of the sky except dark space.

Angfa looked to the east and waited for the dark spot to appear. He poured himself some tea and sipped it, feeling the warmth spread through his body. He let out a sigh. The night was almost half done. Did he have enough tea to cover the rest?

All thought of tea and warmth fled Angfa’s mind as the first of seven stars appeared over the lip of the caldera. Seven stars which should not have been there. Seven stars which had not been there for a thousand years. The constellation of Rom, God of Invention, was back in the sky, and it could mean almost anything, but none of those things were likely to be good.

All Angfa could think when he saw it was ‘Why me?’

Part One: Gifted

Shouchung, Cheol Uitang, 4th Day of Shonshi in the 103rd Year Postwar.

The farm about thirty li from Shouchung village was a little unusual for the area. The farmhouse had stone walls, and there was a stone wall around the yard surrounding it. Not a high wall, but something which would give pause to beasts and men attempting entry. The land around it belonging to the farmhouse was a little larger than most of the local farms too, but the farmer who lived there was not particularly wealthy. The land had been granted to the family for services rendered along with something else which had held far more value at the time. The man who had been granted that land, the father of the current owner, had been a warrior before he became a farmer, hence the desire for solid walls.

The farmer lived with his daughter, his wife having died when the child was only three. His father had been a little disappointed that his son had preferred tending the fields to learning the combat art which had earned them those fields, but he had not pushed. When the woman of the house, the only one after the death of a beloved wife, had shown an interest in learning about swords, fists, and polearms, the old man had taught her, but she still saw to the needs of the household in more traditional manners. And today that meant…

‘I’m off to the village for groceries,’ Ai called out as she opened the kitchen door.

Her father, Myeong, nodded from the kitchen table. ‘I’ll be out sowing the northeast field by the time you get back. Take care.’

‘Don’t I always?’

‘Well, yes, I suppose you do.’

Smiling, Ai left the house and then the yard through the gate, which was never closed during the day, and set out on the walk to Shouchung. She walked along a cart track through their own fields for thirty li before that joined a slightly wider, more worn cart track which made straight for the village, passing between a number of other smallholdings on the way. She passed a couple of people as she went, some coming out from the village, others going in. She was a fast walker with excellent stamina; outpacing those going the same way was trivial for her, and she had no desire to talk to most of them.

Shouchung existed entirely for the purpose of serving the farms surrounding it. It was possible that some of the residents did not think that way, but it was the truth. If you included the surrounding farms, there were about two hundred and eighty people living there, so it was not particularly large. The village had a smith, who mostly repaired farming implements, a tavern, which was basically a taproom with a side line in cooking, and a couple of stores which provided for the populace in terms of food they could not grow and goods they could not make. There was also a mill, powered by the wind, on the north side of town. Wheat was grown more than rice in this part of the country, and the mill provided flour to the locals.

There was neither wall nor fence around the village. Most of the buildings were made of wood. None were taller than a single storey. The smithy had some stone where the work was done, but the rest of the building was wood. The chimney for the forge was the tallest structure in the village. A river ran through the middle of the village in a stone-lined channel which kept it under control. It was bridged in several places by wooden planks and in one by a stone span, allowing carts to pass along the main road. The main road was little more than a cart track with pretentions for something greater. It was not the most attractive village in Cheol Uitang. Visitors did not stop there for the scenery. The buildings were rough and ready, but the surrounding farmland made up for that a little. You could get better views in many other places with better facilities. If you wanted eggs and flour, however, it was a perfectly good place to go looking.

Ai walked in from the north side of the village and headed straight for Mrs Mun’s grocery store. It had no signage to indicate its purpose. You just had to know that this building sold eggs from those farms with chickens and flour from the mill. It sold other things, of course. Vegetables could be bought there, generally surplus from the local farms. The meat was generally from birds, often hunted by the one or two men in the village who made their living in that way. The quality was variable, and the quantity tended to be spotty. There were a couple of pheasants hanging up near the door today; Ai stopped to look them over, watched all the while by the eagle eyes of Mrs Mun.

‘Will you be buying,’ Mrs Mun said after a few seconds, ‘or just cooking them with your stare?’

‘It’s too early in the season,’ Ai replied. ‘They’re scrawny. I’ll stick with eggs and flour for today.’ Ai’s demeanour was cheerful, even if Mrs Mun looked at her like she was about to steal the silverware. Not that it was likely that Mrs Mun had any silver anythings anywhere on her property.

‘Hmph.’

‘A dozen eggs, two bags of flour.’

‘You know where they are.’

Ai did not let Mrs Mun’s attitude get to her because she was used to it. It was hardly just Mrs Mun who was that way. It came down to the way Ai looked and that, despite having a Cheol Uitang name, she would never be considered a Cheol Uitang citizen by the majority of those who lived there. Or anywhere else for that matter.

If you ignored local prejudice, Ai was a beautiful young woman. She had turned eighteen not long ago, but no one in the village was interested in taking her hand, even if one or two of the younger men had suggested they might like to take something else. She had jet-black hair and eyes which matched. She was not an entirely pure-blooded Romar, so her eyes had a hint of the narrowing on the inside edges which typified Cheol Uitang people. Her face was generally quite rounded, but it came to a point at her chin and her cheeks were narrow. She had a fairly short, fairly flat, pleasingly shaped nose, and very full lips with a pouting quality. She was not at all tall, being not much more than eight chi in height, but she was taller than Mrs Mun, which seemed to displease the woman. Ai also had a bigger bust than the grocer, though she could have lived without that. She felt it broke the rather smooth lines of her body which came with firm muscle hidden away under tanned skin. It was her dark colouration and her eyes which gave her away as a Romar. No one particularly liked the Romar. If they had, combined with her likely inheritance of one of the largest farms in town, she would have been up to her throat in suitors.

‘That’ll be eight chian,’ Mrs Mun said when Ai stepped over with her goods to pay.

‘That’s more outrageous than usual, Mrs Mun. Three. Just like you’d charge everyone else.’

‘Hmph. Three then.’

Ai took a string of coins from her basket. Each was a disc with a central hole, about as wide as a man’s thumb and stamped around the hole with characters declaring that it was an official coin of Cheol Uitang. This was a chian. Ai unknotted the string, lifted off three of the coins, re-formed the knot, and then handed the money over to the disgruntled grocer. ‘Thank you, Mrs Mun. I’ll see you again soon.’

‘Don’t come back on my account.’

Ai and her father had an additional source of dislike among the villagers. Ai’s grandfather had been a bodyguard to the local lord, a slave like most Romar. He had won his freedom and the grant of land upon which he had built his home. Free Romar were not usual. People did not know what to do with them, so they tended to go with general intolerance. Even free Romar tended to have fewer rights than Cheol Uitang natives.

The one place Ai could guarantee that she would not see such prejudice was the smithy, which was her next stop. Gang Yun, the smith, had a Romar slave helping him around the smithy, but Yun treated him well enough, and was generally of the opinion that everyone was to be shown equal respect provided they had the coin to pay for it. He was a gruff man of middle years with not a hair on his head. He had, apparently, once grown a thick beard, but that had been cut off and never grown back following an incident with cinders from the forge. He had muscles you could bounce chian off.

‘You’ll be wanting that hoe,’ he said on seeing Ai. ‘It’s ready. Kyung, fetch Mr Guan’s hoe.’

Kyung was the slave. He was a little older than Ai, but not old enough that he did not look at her with lustful eyes whenever she walked into the smithy. Part of it was that Ai wore an outfit which let her move freely and was, she thought, elegant. Her tunic buttoned down the left breast and was long-sleeved. It stopped well short of her skirt, which was ankle-length but held together on the left hip by red cord, leaving a split all the way down. Her shoes were basically leather panels tied around her feet with thongs. There was a fair bit of flesh on show, but that was not uncommon for young women, and the split skirt worked with her martial arts style which was… dynamic.

‘Stop drooling and get the hoe, Kyung!’ Yun had to break the slave’s reverie with a shout. Kyung hurried off into the back of the shop like a scuttling beetle. ‘I swear the boy’s never seen breasts in his life.’

‘I don’t mind. No one else in town looks at me like that.’

‘Idiots. You’re a good-looking girl to anyone with eyes. You’re going to be a wealthy one when you inherit that farm. They’re all so concerned about your heritage that they don’t realise you’ll end up finding another Romar to marry, and then they’ll have missed their chance to take the place back for Cheol Uitang.’

‘I’m not sure that’s a nice way of putting it, but okay.’

‘Of course, you lot are long-lived, so they’ve got some time to realise their mistake.’

‘That,’ Ai said, ‘assumes I’d take any of them.’

‘Hm… Well, none of them deserve you. You hold out for a nice Romar boy.’

Ai gave a sigh. ‘Like that’s likely to happen…’

5th Day of Shonshi.

Ai was standing in the yard outside the farmhouse, a sword in her hand and her eyes closed. When she felt she was ready, she began to move. Her motions were precise, sweeping, broken by pauses where she held her position for a second before moving on to the next stance. This was the formal dance of the Romar Battle Form her grandfather had taught her, a sequence of combat moves strung together into a stylised, slowed-down pattern of efficient strikes and parries. The aim was precision. Every motion had to flow perfectly, every pause had to have the precise posture dictated by the style. It ended after several minutes with a slow lunge piercing the heart of an imagined opponent, and Ai smiled. She was not yet as good as her grandfather, but she was good. Very good.

‘Skill in combat is a matter of muscle memory,’ her grandfather had told her. ‘Repeating the forms until they are part of your body, that is how you will become a great warrior, Ai.’

Now, happy with that exercise, she proceeded to the next. The motions were the same, but they were carried out at a much higher speed. The precision was not quite so great, but the intent was to kill and avoid being killed. Now, if someone had been opposing her, there would have been harm. This time, when she got to the end of the sequence, she continued, repeating it again, but this time with added flourishes. She kicked off the ground to swing both legs at an opponent’s head. She incorporated acrobatic dodges, ducking under imagined weapons and springing up to avoid others. These moves were her own, not part of the Romar Battle Form.

‘Warriors innovate,’ her grandfather had said. ‘Once you learn the basic forms, once you are an expert in them, then you make them your own. Do not be afraid to make the style your own. That is after you understand the basics and your body knows them better than you do.’

Her grandfather had been a master of the Romar Battle Form. Even the loss of his right arm had not stopped him, though it had made him less useful as a bodyguard. He had lost his arm to the bite of a shadow wolf while saving the life of the local lord’s three-year-old son. The wound had not been too bad, but shadow wolf bites carried with them a dark corruption which, left unchecked, could consume your entire body. The arm had been the price of survival. Granting his slave bodyguard freedom and land had not been something the lord had to do, but it appeared magnanimous and generous, and it removed the need to care for a servant who could no longer adequately fulfil his role. Gyuanyu Guan was by no means a weakling without his right arm, however, and he had been an excellent teacher when Ai had decided that she wished to learn to fight.

‘I can teach you, young lady,’ he had said, ‘but it will be hard.’

That had been on her fifth birthday. Her grandfather had taught her all he could in the six years he had lived after that. She had been learning with his voice a constant tutor in her mind ever since. She was better now than she had been when he had last given his opinion, she was sure of that, but she wished the old man could pass one more judgement.

Breathing hard after her exertions, Ai came to a stop and closed her eyes. Her grandfather smiled at her behind her eyelids. She smiled back.

8th Day of Shonshi.

For once, Mrs Mun was not being vindictive, but that was because she had gossip. ‘Strangers,’ she said. ‘There have been strangers in the village. Asking questions, they were.’

‘Questions about what?’ Ai asked.

‘About the Romar in the village, that’s what. Seems they went to the smithy and talked to Gang about that boy he’s got.’

‘Kyung.’

‘Whatever. Seems they asked the boy’s birthday. One of them was an astrologer. Well, she looked like an astrologer, but not like any I’ve seen before.’

‘So, they weren’t from Cheol Uitang?’

Mrs Mun waved the question aside. ‘Strangers. Never seen the likes of them. Gang says they were from Diyidi, though how he’d know I’m sure I can’t fathom.’

Ai frowned. ‘Diyidi? Hm…’ Diyidi was a small country to the southwest of Cheol Uitang, beyond the Fire Mountains. Small in area, but not in influence. Diyidi was the nation of the Creator, Jiansushi the Architect. It had been spreading its influence over the world since the end of the Romar Empire, and it was well known that both church and state had a poorer opinion of the Romar than was generally the case. There were no free Romar in Diyidi. Even if you had gained your freedom in another nation, you were still considered a slave in Diyidi. If people from there had been here, asking questions about Romar, it could not be a good thing. ‘I assume you told them about us?’ Ai asked.

‘What? I didn’t. Don’t trust strangers. You may be a Romar, but you’re from Shouchung and they weren’t. Not saying no one mentioned you, but I didn’t.’

Ai smiled. ‘Thank you, Mrs Mun. I feel all warm inside.’

‘Hmph. That’ll be eight chian.’

‘Not warm enough to pay your inflated prices, however.’

‘Hmph.’

9th Day of Shonshi.

Ai had mentioned the strangers to her father on returning to the farm, but he had seen no one while out in the fields and did not think it was something to worry about. ‘These walls are strong,’ he had said, ‘and no one from Diyidi or anywhere else has cause to worry about peasants such as us.’

‘I don’t think the people of Diyidi need a reason to hate Romar,’ she had replied.

‘They don’t have a reason to come this far looking for them either.’

And yet, it seemed like someone had. Why had Kyung’s birthday been important? That was still puzzling Ai the evening after when she was sitting in the kitchen with her father. The room was homely. With the thick shutters closed over the windows, most of the light in it came from the fireplace in which a large fire was burning. It was spring, and the weather was warming, but it could still be cool at night. A couple of oil lamps provided a little more light and filled the room with the odour of fish. They would retire soon, but for now there was tea and conversation. Not so much of the latter tonight; it seemed as though neither had much to say.

‘I’ll have finished the planting by the end of the week,’ Myeong said.

‘That’s good,’ Ai replied.

‘Mm.’ There was silence for perhaps a minute, and then he said, ‘I’ve been thinking of your grandfather lately.’

‘I do whenever I train.’

‘I know. I… don’t often think of him, but lately he’s come to mind. No idea why.’

‘I suppose it can just happen. What kind of things have come to mind?’

Myeong was silent for a second, apparently thinking. ‘He was never happy that I didn’t take up the sword as you did. He hid it, but he would have liked me to become a master, like him. That… That was why I didn’t complain when you asked to be taught.’

Ai looked over at her father, smirking. ‘You didn’t complain?’

‘Much. I didn’t stop you, did I?’

‘Well, no, I suppose not. You did say it was no fit hobby for a girl several times.’

‘It’s not. On the other hand, you’ve made it more than a hobby, and it doesn’t stop you from doing your chores around the farm. He would have been proud of you, if he’d lived to see what you’ve become.’

‘Well, maybe. I–’

‘I’m proud of you.’

Ai paused. ‘It must be time for bed. I think you’re tired.’

‘Huh, well. Tired and proud. You go, I’ll bank down the fire.’

Ai got to her feet and, carefully, picked up an oil lamp to guide her to her room. ‘Goodnight, father.’

‘Goodnight, Ai.’

~~~

Something woke Ai from a dream which she could not remember. Maybe the dream itself had woken her. Someone had been speaking to her, but who or what that was, she had no idea. But she was awake and alert now, as though something external had alarmed her. She slipped from her bed and hurriedly dressed, grabbing her sword before she left her room.

Apparently, whatever had woken her had done the same to her father. He was in the kitchen, peering out through a gap he had made by partially opening a shutter. ‘There are men outside,’ he said as Ai approached.

‘Men?’

‘Soldiers. Soldiers and three on horseback. I think one of those is Lord Zhang.’

‘That’s difficult to believe. What would he be doing at a farm in the middle of nowhere?’

‘And with soldiers. That’s not just a personal guard. There’s an officer on horseback, and… I don’t recognise the other two. They don’t look like they’re natives.’

Ai frowned. ‘From Diyidi, perhaps?’

‘Well, I’m not going to say it’s impossible. I suppose I should go find out what they want before they come knocking.’

‘I should–’

‘This is my farm, Ai. It’s my responsibility to greet guests. Lord Zhang knows me. Whatever this is, he’ll be reasonable.’

‘Hm. You have more faith in him than I do. Be careful, father.’

Myeong said nothing, but he was a little slow to unbar the door and open it up. He stepped outside to find himself facing six men with spears, all of them pointing their weapons at the door. ‘My lord Zhang,’ he called out, ‘what brings you to my farm at such an hour?’

The man in question turned his horse and urged it forward, coming to a stop behind not only the ring of soldiers, but the rank behind them who stood there with their spears at rest. ‘Myeong Guan, is it not?’ It had been a lot of years since Zhang had been saved from a grisly death by Ai’s grandfather. He had aged, but then he was something over sixty-five, so aging was to be expected. He had already lived longer than his father and been the lord of the region for over forty years. In his prime, he had had a strong body, and he had been a generous lord, beloved by his people. Age had diminished him in many ways. He was no longer strong, far from nimble, and his attitude to his people had been getting worse for a decade. His memory was not what it was either.

‘That’s correct, my lord.’

Zhang turned his body to look back at the two foreigners. ‘He’s not the one, is he?’

‘He is not.’ The voice was female. ‘A child. Eighteen years of age. Born on the twentieth day of Yoo in the eighty-fifth year postwar.’

It was difficult to tell that Myeong’s face paled at the description. The moonlight was not bright tonight thanks to light cloud. It was not a good night for observing the stars.

It did not matter that Zhang could not tell that Myeong was worried. Sometimes, his memory was good. ‘You had a daughter of about that age, didn’t you, Guan?’

‘I– What might you want with my daughter, my lord?’

‘That is of no consequence to you. Bring her out. Now.’

‘Not without hearing what you plan–’

‘I’ve wasted enough time. Kill him and drag out the girl.’

There was a pause as no one moved. Myeong’s eyes widened. The soldiers looked conflicted. Inside the house, Ai found herself frozen to the spot on hearing the command.

The commander of the soldiers broke the silence. ‘You heard Lord Zhang. Advance!’

Six men took a step forward. Six spears were thrust out. Myeong stepped back, but three of the blades still pierced his chest and stomach and he fell, letting out a scream. The soldiers stepped forward to finish the job, and that was when a wild animal charged out of the house wielding a sword. She battered her way past the array of spears and then twisted, slashing her blade in a long, two-handed sweep which carved its way through each man in turn, leaving only one still standing, and his spear fell to the ground since the muscles in his right arm were now sliced through.

‘My grandfather lost his arm saving you,’ Ai yelled, ‘and this is how you repay him?’

‘Kill her!’ Zhang shrieked back.

‘Gladly,’ the female voice from before answered. Ai looked that way and found herself watching as a figure on horseback, wrapped in a dark cloak, raised a hand full of fire before hurling the burning projectile her way.

Ai’s reflexes took control and she dived to the right, rolling and coming back up to her feet just as the fireball exploded behind where she had been standing, in the door of the farmhouse. Magic. She had heard of it, but she had never encountered anyone who could do it. Well, she had seen astrologers who practised divination magic, but not the kind of thing she had just seen thrown at her. Men were screaming, and one look back told her all she needed to know. She was lucky to have avoided being set on fire herself, and her father… She was ill-equipped to deal with magic. Revenge would have to wait.

‘You’ve doomed yourself, Ji-Hun Zhang,’ she called out, and then she was running. Another fireball struck the ground to her right, but she was out of range of its blast. The woman in the robes had power, but not so much accuracy. Ai kept running. For now, there was no need to hold back tears because her body had yet to catch up with the horror in her mind.

10th Day of Shonshi.

Ai slept fitfully in a wood about twenty li from the farm. It had been surprisingly easy to lose the soldiers. She had been expecting to be run down by someone on horseback, but that had not happened. There had been a lot of shouting behind her, so maybe something had caused problems with the horses. Whatever, the wood was safe enough with some dense undergrowth to hide in. She had slept, but not well. Not until the darkest hours with dawn looming, and then…

‘Seek out the ruins of Romitas on Romat.’ The voice in her dream sounded male, and very distant. Making out what it was saying was hard, but the words seemed to fix themselves in her head anyway. ‘Go north. The southern route is too dangerous.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Receive these Gifts to help you on your way.’ It was not an answer to the question.

‘Gifts?’

‘Exemplify the spirit of the Knights of Rom, and you will never lose in battle.’

‘I don’t–’ But the voice was gone. She could sense it, even in her dream. And she was waking up. There was the slight confusion of waking from dream to reality, and then she was looking up at the sky through a screen of leaves.

Go to Romat. Go to the ruins of Romitas, the capital city of the Romar Empire all those years ago. Romat was an island. She would need to find passage there aboard a ship, and who went to Romat these days? And she had to take the northern route? Going south, she would pass through Sileandau and Heimat. She could take a boat from Heimat across the sea to Romat. It was hardly a short journey, but going north meant passing through most of Cheol Uitang, then Landavis, then Wangguo, and then Gronlandt. She could probably take ship in Gronlandt, but it might mean going on to Heimat anyway. It was insane.

Then again, this entire situation was insane. Why was someone from Diyidi chasing her, and why had Lord Zhang been helping? It made no sense, though perhaps she would find answers if she made it to Romitas.

And what gifts?

Gifts…

‘There are three kinds of skill, Ai,’ her grandfather had told her one day as he drilled her with a short, wooden sword. She had been seven, if she remembered it right. ‘What you are learning now are the skills anyone can learn, given sufficient effort. These are mundane skills.’

‘I don’t know that word,’ Ai had replied.

‘Mundane? Ordinary. Less talking, more cutting. The second kind of skill, which I will teach you if you show diligence with your mundane drills, are the esoteric skills passed down from master to student. These are skills beyond the ability of most people to use.’

‘But I can?’

‘We shall see. If you work hard.’

‘I will, grandfather. Will you teach me the third kind of skill?’

He had shaken his head. ‘I can’t, Ai. The third kind of skill is the kind used by the Gifted, those given Gifts by the gods. To learn them, you have to be gifted them, though using them effectively takes practice.’

‘Are you Gifted, grandfather?’

‘Only heroes are given such Gifts, Ai.’

‘But, grandfather, you are a hero.’

He had laughed.

Ai’s fingers tightened on the sword she had carried with her from the farmhouse. Now both he and his son, Ai’s father, were gone. And someone would pay for that. Lord Zhang would pay and, if she could figure out how to get past the sorceress’s magic, so would the woman with fire at her fingertips.

~~~

There was no sign of Ai’s father in the doorway where he had fallen, but there were charred bones in the ruins of the kitchen. Fire had ravaged the room and caught in the roof timbers. Ai could see sky through the gap above her where part of the roof had collapsed. She would deal with her father’s remains when she had gathered what she could to travel with. Ignoring the tears forming in her eyes, she headed for her room, hoping it was not too badly burned.

Coming back to the farm was probably foolish, but if she was to walk more than halfway around the world, she was going to need supplies. Unfortunately, most of the food had burned with the kitchen cupboards, but there were other things she could take. Clothes, tools which might be useful, money… Her grandfather had had a backpack which could carry a fair amount, and she had inherited it mostly as a keepsake. Now it would serve to carry her worldly possessions to Romat.

With her bag packed, she set out through the kitchen door to find a spade in the shed, and found herself surrounded by soldiers. There were nine of them, but some appeared injured. They were probably the men from yesterday. There was no sign of the two foreigners, or Lord Zhang, but there was an officer on horseback who looked like the one from the night before. The soldiers were all standing back with their spears pointed at her.

‘The sorceress said you would come here,’ the officer said. ‘I’m under orders to bring you before Lord Zhang, but it doesn’t have to be alive.’

‘I want to bury my father’s remains,’ Ai said. She stepped forward a pace. The spears moved to follow her. The men were perhaps three paces from her. The officer more like five. It was close enough.

‘You’ll throw down your sword and be taken prisoner, or you’ll die. You have nothing to say on the matter.’

Ai sighed. ‘I do have something to say.’ She raised her arms, spreading them wide. ‘Let the stars pass judgement upon you!’

‘Wha–’

Sparks of light appeared in the air around Ai covering a circle perhaps sixteen paces in diameter. They looked, just as she had said, like tiny stars brought down to the yard from heaven. They did not stay as small sparks; the light from them brightened rapidly until all anyone could see was white light, and with that light came the cold. Blinded and freezing, most of the men fell to their knees. The officer fell from his mount, which then bolted out of the light, unharmed but scared. Ai was not interested in hurting dumb animals.

For ten seconds, the light filled the area around Ai, and when it was finally gone, there were ten frozen corpses lying around her. She nodded, stepped over one of the bodies, and continued on her way to the shed. She was Gifted now. Maybe she did have a chance of making it to Romitas.

Interlude: The Lord and the Sorceress

Zhangdosi, Cheol Uitang, 12th Day of Shonshi in the 103rd Year Postwar.

She had a name, but everyone called her ‘the sorceress,’ and she did not correct them. She was an attractive woman who might have hailed from Cheol Uitang, but her features were closer to those from Hoyan Zhidi, the desert nation across the mountains. When she was not wrapped in a long black cloak, she wore dresses in the style favoured in Hoyan Zhidi: slim gowns which fell to her ankles, belted by a wide band at the waist. Frequently, she wore them off the shoulder, revealing an expansive decolletage. She exhibited an air of confidence at all times, and one of menace when she was angry. Her magic was enough to intimidate most, and it certainly intimidated Ji-Hun Zhang.

‘As I predicted, she returned to her home,’ the sorceress said. ‘Your men failed to capture her.’ It was the calm that gave away her annoyance the most. She was one of those people who never got visibly angry. She spoke quietly, calmly, and gave off a distinct impression of blinding fury.

‘They were frozen to death,’ Zhang said. He was in his private chambers, his stronghold, and should have felt confident. He did not. ‘The girl is Gifted! You said nothing of her having a Gift.’

‘Because she did not have such when we first encountered her. Your failure to secure her then allowed her to gain Gifts.’

Zhang wanted to say that the sorceress’s use of fire in a rather liberal fashion had caused so much chaos that the girl had been able to run without hindrance, but he did not, because the sorceress scared any thought of rebellion from him. ‘What will you do now?’

The sorceress smiled. That could not be a good sign. ‘Our arrangement still stands. You provided assistance in locating her, I shall provide you with a healthy body. Making you look younger would be… problematic, but I shall ensure that you live a long, healthy life.’

‘I… Thank you.’

‘Don’t thank me. There’s every chance that the girl will come looking for you to exact revenge. She will then be somewhere I know about, so I want you alive so that she can try to kill you.’

‘Ah. C-can’t your magic find her?’

Now the sorceress frowned. The annoyance was still there but its focus had moved away from Zhang, for which he was grateful. ‘No,’ she said. ‘If I could, I would not have needed your help. Even after seeing her, I cannot scry her location or predict her future actions. She is being hidden by someone very powerful. Perhaps that should have been a sign that she had a divine patron… She will make for Romat. The most direct route is through Sileandau, so I shall make my way there and look for signs of her.’

‘And if she’s gone north?’

‘Then I shall be at Romitas before her. She will not escape me. She must not. The fate of the world depends upon it.’

Part Two: The Iron Lands

Cheol Uitang, 13th Day of Shonshi in the 103rd Year Postwar.

Ai walked by the light of the stars. The moon was below the horizon tonight, so the only light came from the stars hanging in the sky above, and Ai could see as well as if it were daylight. It was another Gift, she assumed. When she had discovered her ability to see in the night as well as she could in the day, she had shifted her waking hours so that she could walk for ten hours overnight and sleep during the day. She was less likely to encounter anyone else on the road that way.

The road in question was not actually a road. She was cutting across country toward the mountains, but diagonally, heading east of north, away from the main road which went from Zohwei, the national capital, to Shangye, a trade city on the border with Landavis. She expected to arrive there at the start of Shengshian, the next month and the month of growth. At the rate she was going, it would be a bit more than thirty days until she was out of the country and then she could relax a little.

Walking away from Zhangdosi and her revenge against Lord Zhang had not been easy, but there were all those proverbs about revenge to think of. ‘When you seek revenge, dig two graves,’ was one. She might die killing Zhang, so she would be better off waiting until she had been to Romitas. ‘Revenge is best served like cold cuts,’ was another. She would savour it better if she knew he had been waiting for her to come and kill him for a while. She figured she could probably get to Romitas and back in a year. A year seemed like an appropriate time to wait, and there was every chance that Zhang would still be alive by then.

Ahead of her, and on the right, the Tiankong Mountains were looming like a vast wall of jagged stone. The range was an effectively impassable barrier which ran down the middle of the continent. On the other side was the tallest peak, Mount Estellaris, where there was supposed to be a great observatory, and beyond the mountains was the forest of Ubervaltigent, ruled over by the Waldvolk and barely a part of Gronlandt which technically owned it. No one really owned the Tiankong Mountains. Cheol Uitang claimed the western side, but only really the foothills. Cheol Uitang took its name from the iron mined in those mountains and smelted in towns nestling beneath them. It supplied iron to pretty much every other country.

Ai figured she would come across mining towns on her way north, once she got closer to the mountains. She would take a short break in one of them, if she could be sure of her security there. Thirty nights of walking without a break was something she could probably manage, but there was no need to if she could break the journey without risk.

Dolbyeog, 27th Day of Shonshi.

As dawn began fourteen days later, Ai spotted a town ahead of her and decided that this would be as good a place as any to take her break. It looked like it was probably a mining town. Not especially large, but much bigger than Shouchung. There was no fence or gate to the place, just buildings made largely from stone. It nestled on the lower slopes of the mountain range where the majority of the mining towns did.

Closer up, it was not the most attractive of towns. It seemed that they did some smelting, or had, since there were a couple of large buildings with tall chimneys, and soot blackened a lot of the stonework around them. None of the chimneys were smoking, however, and the air smelled fresh which would probably not have been the case if this were just a short break in the work.

No one paid much attention to her as she walked into town, which she thought was a little odd. Instead, everyone looked down, walking with hunched shoulders. They looked depressed. They looked like things were not going well in this town which Ai had yet to learn the name of. Well, if they could provide her with a bed for a few hours, it would be better than sleeping on the ground.

~~~

The place was called Dolbyeog, and it had a tavern. The tavern had a room where travellers could sleep. It was shared, but Ai was the only stranger in town, so she had it to herself. Besides, anyone else would likely have been awake during the day.

The tavern keeper had asked Ai nothing, which suited her but seemed odd. He had taken a couple of chian for the bed, said that a meal would be extra, and directed her to the guest room. The tavern looked rundown. The windows were dirty with soot, where there were windows. The taproom seemed to be getting swept, but it was empty of patrons. Perhaps that was down to the time of day. Maybe it would be more lively come evening.

Ai had gained the distinct impression that the town was dying. Maybe the ore veins were worked out, or almost. The people here were picking out a living digging out the remains of the iron, unwilling to leave the place they had grown up in. Still, there seemed to be something else going on. There was an oppressive air about the place, as though it was sitting under a black cloud.

Something was wrong with Dolbyeog, and Ai fell asleep wondering what that was.

~~~

The wife of the tavern keeper was a little more open, certainly more talkative. ‘This used to be a great town. The smell was something you never forget, but we had men working in the mines and the smelting sheds around the clock. Then the veins started to dry up. Now we can’t dig out enough ore to keep our own smelting going and provide the ore our lord demands. Next year…’

‘Maybe you won’t be able to supply your lord?’ Ai asked. She was eating a bowl of stew at the bar, mostly to stay away from the few men who had wandered in to drink at the tables. The men looked like they did not want conversation. Actually, they looked like they wanted to drink until they could not remember why they were drinking.

‘Maybe. Then the other thing happened…’

‘Other thing?’

The large woman smiled. ‘Nothing to concern yourself over, though I worry for a girl your age travelling alone like this.’

‘I can take care of myself.’

‘Well, if you say so. Time was I’d be more concerned, but these days I’ve enough to worry over. Not that we’re short of money here.’ The taverner nodded out toward her customers. ‘Drinking is the one thing they spend money on these days. This used to be a fine town…’

It took another hour for Ai to find out what the ‘other thing’ was, and why the town was really sitting under a cloud. The tavern was filling up with customers who all sat at tables and drank silently. Ai was watching this unfold out of sheer curiosity, and because she had nothing else to do and was wide awake.

Then four men rolled in, chatting to each other loudly. They did not look like townspeople, and they were all carrying weapons, if a mismatched array of them. One had a sword, another a spear, and two carried large clubs studded with metal rivets. Their clothes were equally random but featured leather which could have had some protective value. Nothing about them was clean.

‘Woman! We want ale!’ one of the four yelled.

‘Yes, yes,’ the taverner said, turning to the barrels behind the bar.

‘Quickly!’

‘It’ll be there soon as I’ve poured it.’

The four of them had surrounded a table which already had three occupants. The townsfolk got up and moved without comment, even though one of them was left standing. Now the leader turned before sitting and started over toward the bar. ‘You’ll pour faster, if you don’t want to be doing it with only one arm.’

Now that was an explicit threat. Ai watched the man approaching, dragging the studded club he favoured behind him. He was not the biggest man she had ever seen, but he was taller than she was with more obvious muscle. The leather was probably not going to be a significant issue, though it would dull any blows she applied to his torso. Then again, she did not want to be the one throwing the first punch.

He stopped a short pace from the bar and hefted his club. ‘Well, they ready?’

‘Give me a second,’ the taverner said. ‘You can’t rush good ale.’

‘What would you know about good ale? Too slow.’ He raised the club. It was easily long enough to reach the taverner’s head from where he was standing.

Ai stepped into the space between him and the bar before he could step forward to secure the hit. ‘Violence,’ she said, ‘is never the answer.’

‘Who the fuck are you?!’

‘That is unimportant. What is important is that you should not attack someone for failing to perform an unreasonable request. It’s common manners.’

‘Ha! Manners? Who do you think you’re talking to?’

Ai made a show of considering this for a second or two. ‘An idiot?’

The club, which had stopped rising when Ai interrupted him, was raised above his head. ‘You’re going to–’ Ai’s knee slammed up into his groin. He let out a whimper that was almost wistful, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he crumpled to the ground like a bag of sand.

Of the three remaining, only one seemed to have his wits together; he drew his sword as he jumped up from his seat, and then he was advancing on Ai. Reaching behind her, she picked up her own weapon from where it was leaning against the bar.

‘You’re going to regret that,’ the swordsman said.

‘I don’t think I am,’ Ai replied. She shifted into a ready stance and waited.

Behind the swordsman, the one with the spear was getting his act together, but the swordsman was impatient. He attacked. Ai pushed his blade aside and struck in one motion, pushing the point of her own blade through his leather jerkin and into his heart. He looked briefly surprised before the light went out of his eyes and he followed his comrade to the floor.

Ai turned her gaze upon the man with the spear. His remaining companion was still just sitting there, too shocked to move or something. ‘Are you really sure you want to try anything?’ Ai asked.

Apparently, he was. Lowering his spear, he charged. The spear thudded into the bar as Ai stepped aside. Then she turned and swung her sword, slicing deep into his neck. Blood flew and he went down, clutching desperately at the wound. His spear remained stuck in the wood of the bar.

‘Next?’ Ai asked.

The last man was having none of it. He grabbed his club and ran for the door.

Ai turned to the taverner. ‘Two of them are still alive. The last one definitely needs medical attention, or he’ll bleed to death. The first one is just going to find it difficult to have children.’

‘I– I thought you told him that violence was never the answer.’

‘Hm, yes. I lied.’

28th Day of Shonshi.

An angry man was shouting at her. Ai was having trouble working out why. It may have been because, used to travelling at night, she was rather sleepy since it was first thing in the morning. She wanted nothing more than to take a nap.

‘That is not the kind of help we need in this town!’

That sort of got through. ‘What help?’

‘The men you killed yesterday! Are you listening?’

‘Not really. I only killed one of them.’

‘The second one died too. He bled to death.’

Ai frowned. ‘Did no one try to save him?’

‘I– You sliced his neck!’

‘Yes, but someone could have saved him.’ Or maybe no one had wanted to… ‘Why do you seem to be blaming me for dealing with thugs about to attack a woman?’

‘They’ll come looking for you. It’s not just those four. The others will come looking for revenge!’

‘Oh.’ Ai looked at the red-faced man for a second. He was shorter than she was, so pretty short, thin, and not at all powerful. He looked mean. Something about his features, maybe the way everything seemed pinched, made him look like a miserly man with a mean attitude. ‘Well, if they do, I’ll deal with them as they come.’

‘We have to clean up the mess!’

‘Hm. I’d have thought you would want people like that removed from the town. They seemed like they were bandits. I can’t help wondering why you’re so keen to stop me hurting them.’

‘I’m not– You– Others could get hurt when they come for you!’

Ai smiled. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t allow that to happen.’

‘They may have other ideas!’

‘Then I shall just have to disabuse them of that notion.’

~~~

It was approaching sunset when the gang of bandits marched into town. Approaching, but not there, which made the sudden closure of the few shops noticeable. The tavern also closed its doors, which irritated Ai somewhat. Still, she had people to meet and greet, so it was not a major issue.

There were, by her count, a dozen men armoured in a variety of fashions which suggested that they did not come from any form of organised force. Some had looted armour from soldiers. Several of them seemed to be carrying weapons more for the intimidation factor than for practical use. There were several of those huge clubs and a couple of big double-headed axes which were not common weapons in Cheol Uitang. One of the club-wielders was the one who had run from the fight in the tavern, and he was the only one who knew who they were looking for. The one she had kneed was, presumably, still recovering. Ai decided that she would span things out until it was dark, and then go after the bulk of them, but since they were spreading out to search, there was nothing wrong with dropping a few before then.

The first to go was one of the ones with an axe. His weapon was basically a polearm, and he was searching an alley, alone, when Ai found him. She dropped from the roof of one of the buildings, behind him. She was fairly quiet about it, but she did make some sound, so he turned, saw her, and raised his axe, and promptly bumped it into one of the walls.

‘Huh?’ he said.

‘I take it there is no possibility of negotiating with you people?’ Ai asked.

‘You’ll pay for–’ His axe’s long haft caught on a barrel as he tried once again to bring it around to attack her.

‘I’ll take that as a no then,’ Ai said, and then she stabbed him through the heart. ‘If they’re all as stupid as this one, this should be easy.’

Except that the one who got away from the previous evening was sticking with a small group of men, one a swordsman who looked like he might be a problem. He was tall and slim, dressed in loose clothes with a breastplate of hardened leather, and his sword looked like it saw use. It was not particularly ornate or anything. Instead, it looked like a functional, well-cared-for weapon, rather like the sword Ai carried. The fact that the man from last night was sticking close also suggested that this group were the more competent bandits.

Certainly, they were the group who seemed annoyed as Ai dispatched their colleagues, one at a time, without revealing herself. Four were gone before any bodies were discovered, but then the swordsman was the one to examine the wounds and look like he was concerned. Concerned, but not scared. He remained calm and ordered everyone to travel in pairs ‘like he had told them to before they came.’

‘But Xinyi said she wasn’t anything to worry about,’ one of the others said.

‘Is Xinyi here?’ asked the swordsman.

‘Well, no.’

‘So, we can assume that she is something to worry about, and he said that so you’d all come here instead of staying at camp.’

‘But, Bai–’

‘Don’t “but Bai” me. You travel in twos or threes. You keep your eyes open. Pretend you’re dealing with an elite from the royal army instead of a random girl with a sword.’

‘What would someone like that be doing in a place like Dolbyeog?’

‘You’ve never heard of wandering knights, boy? There are skilled warriors who won’t join the military. They wander from place to place, acting as they see fit and fighting for justice or defending the underdog. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re beating down the underdogs, and that makes us targets for people like that.’

‘Yeah, but she’s just a girl!’

The swordsman, Bai, shook his head. ‘Just how stupid are you?’

A wandering knight. Ai did not really think of herself as such, but it was the kind of lifestyle her grandfather had espoused and told her many stories about. There was a philosophy behind it. Her grandfather had told her all about that but had never pushed her to embrace it. Still, she did follow the basic ethics, the code of honour, such warriors lived by, even if it was mostly a matter of ‘that’s how I behave.’

Skill at arms was a given; Ai had that covered, but it was an inherent part of the lifestyle. A humble attitude, keeping your word, and seeking justice were all part of it. Indeed, bravery and a willingness to be hurt to help others were key. Perhaps the most difficult part was the use of force when required; restraint was also an important part of being such a knight. And there was the whole thing of showing respect to your teacher, which Ai had no trouble with at all. Yes, she supposed she could be considered a wandering knight. Now, if only someone would give her a title, she could just walk up to Zhang and challenge him…

~~~

Night fell, and Ai was at a distinct advantage. She could see in almost no light at all while the bandits could not. Four more of them died before the swordsman decided on a specific course of action which was designed to make Ai come forward of her own volition.

Half an hour or so after the sun dropped beneath the horizon, the tavern owner and his wife were kneeling in the dirt in the middle of the road outside their tavern. A couple of torches had been driven into the ground nearby to provide light, and the two townsfolk were encircled by four bandits, the swordsman among them. The idea was pretty obvious, but he wanted to spell it out, just in case.

‘Whoever you are, come out and surrender, or these two will die,’ he called out into the night. ‘I’ll start by cutting pieces off them, but I doubt they’ll last long even doing it slowly. When they die, we’ll just find some more of them. The sooner you come out, the less of them will die.’

Well, that was not going to do. Of course, he did not yet know what he was dealing with. If he had known, she doubted he would have employed this tactic. Well, might as well get it over with… Ai stepped out of an alley beside the tavern and started walking toward them. As she did so, she turned her sword, gripping the end of the blade in her right hand. There was no way she could use it like that, obviously. It appeared very much like an act of surrender.

‘Don’t hurt them,’ she said. ‘I’m coming.’

‘Drop the sword and come closer,’ Bai the swordsman said. He slid his own sword from its scabbard.

Ai bent to lay her sword down, and then continued on her way toward the group. ‘That appears to be a fine sword you have there,’ she said as she got closer. ‘It hurts me that someone who has cared for such a fine weapon so well would employ a tactic like this.’

‘People who follow the code of the knight-errant are fools,’ he replied, smiling. ‘They’re too easy to manipulate. Threaten people under your protection, and you can’t help but give yourself up to save them.’

A pace away from the swordsman, well within reach of his sword, Ai stopped. ‘Well, I certainly wasn’t going to allow you to harm innocents when your grudge is against me.’

‘There’s no grudge. We can’t have people defying us. Our leader sent me to make sure the people of this miserable excuse for a town understand that there’s nothing they can do to stop us.’

‘I see.’ Ai smiled. ‘Well, we’ll have to see about that.’

‘Seriously? You still think you can win? One strike and your head will be lying in the dirt where all these useless peasants can see what happens to anyone who sets their will against us.’

‘Mm, yes. I’m quite close enough. You have me exactly where I want you.’

‘Huh?’

Sparks of light appeared in the air around them. The circle covered all of the bandits, Ai, and the taverners. Bai’s eyes widened for an instant, but it was too late for him to do anything. ‘Starlight Shroud,’ Ai said, and the circle of stars became a blinding blizzard of white light.

There was a scream from the taverner’s wife, but Ai had made sure they would not be afflicted. They were temporarily blinded by the wash of light, but the freezing effect would not touch them. The bandits were another matter. Bai swung his weapon at where he thought Ai was, but she ducked under it easily and then turned, sweeping his legs with her own and depositing him onto his back. He struggled for a second before his movement slowed. After three more seconds, none of the men were moving and ice was forming on their skin. And the taverner’s wife continued screaming until the light dissipated, by which time Ai had walked out of the light to retrieve her sword.

‘I’m sorry to trouble you, but could you see to their burial?’ Ai asked as the two civilians calmed down on seeing their tormentors lying dead around them.

‘We’ll… yes, we’ll see to it,’ the taverner said. ‘You’re Gifted?’

‘Seems like it,’ Ai replied. ‘It’s not something I make a big thing of.’

‘Uh, right. Well, thank you for saving us.’

‘They were after me. It would have been wrong to let you die to save myself. Besides, I knew they stood no chance.’ Bending, she picked up Bai’s sword. The hilt was carved with a draconic design; the head of one of the mythical beasts formed the pommel. There were signs that it had once had gold leaf on it, but that had mostly worn away. ‘Shame. I’d have liked to cross swords with him.’

‘There’s still Xinyi Huang, their leader. He isn’t here, but he’ll do something now that you’ve killed Bai Yi.’

Ai shrugged. ‘Somehow, I doubt their leader is as good a swordsman as this one. If he was, he’d have come here tonight to deal with me himself.’

‘He’s terrifying,’ the taverner’s wife said. ‘He’s a huge man. He uses a club the size of a tree trunk!’

Ai smiled. ‘Perhaps he’s compensating for something.’

29th Day of Shonshi.

The following morning, there was a distinct shift in the attitudes of the townsfolk. The problems with the mines were still there, but someone had demonstrated that the bandits were not as strong as it had first appeared, and that person was eating breakfast in the tavern.

The only person who seemed displeased was the angry man from yesterday. He was angry again. ‘If you leave town now, we can avoid further repercussions,’ he said at some point in his diatribe about the bandits and how they would come for her in force this time.

Ai was basically ignoring him, though he was putting her off her food. This, however, caused her to pause. ‘I don’t think I can do that. These men are preying on the weak. I can’t allow that to continue. If they come here again, I’ll deal with them the same way I did last night.’

‘There are at least another twenty! You really think you can take on that many–’

‘Yes. They’ve lost their best fighter. The rest mean little. They may have numbers, but that will count for little when it comes down to it.’

‘What about the people here? They took hostages last night. Are you going to be able to save everyone?’

‘Hm. A valid point. Perhaps I should go looking for them before they come looking for me.’

‘You can’t do that!’

Ai frowned. ‘Why not?’

‘Because… because we don’t know where their camp is.’

Ai considered that for a second or two. ‘I don’t think it’ll be that difficult to find. Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of them. You’re the mine foreman, correct?’

‘I… I am.’

‘Well then, you go back to worrying about your job. Leave the bandits to me.’

~~~

In truth, Duri Xiao thought his plan was pretty unlikely to work. He was the site foreman of the mining operations at Dolbyeog, a man with responsibilities but no need to expend physical effort on any of them. He was just not that physical, and he was getting on a bit. Age was creeping up on him, not helped by worry and an almost entirely sedentary lifestyle. He knew how to use a sap, he was just not confident that using one on Ai was going to have much effect.

There was also the problem of catching her unawares. The woman was Gifted. That did not mean she necessarily had eyes in the back of her head, but it could do. She was also an expert martial artist, from the evidence left in the wounds on the bandits. Most of them had died with one blow, a piercing wound through the heart. That was the ones who had not been frozen to death on a town street in spring. Who was the woman’s patron? Snyor the Snow King made sense, except that he generally granted Gifts to northmen, and those gifts generally came with snow or ice effects, not stars and bright light.

Whatever, sneaking up on Ai was not a given, but he had to give it a go. She could not be allowed to continue like this and mess things up entirely. If she went out looking for Xinyi, and found him… So, Duri set about stalking his prey, and he was kind of surprised when a perfect opportunity presented itself.

Ai had, so far, not gone hunting for the bandits. The bandits had not turned up in town either, but that was not surprising. Apparently, Ai thought that they would, because she was standing in an alley, looking out at the street, in the dark. It was not easy to sneak up behind her this way, but it was possible. Duri raised his sap, a sock filled with coins, and brought it down on the back of Ai’s head… And there she was, sprawled in the dirt at his feet! Now he just had to get her to the cart.

‘Damn, you’re heavier than you look,’ he grumbled as he hefted her onto his shoulder and set off to where his transport was waiting. There was a tarpaulin to cover her. If anyone saw him leaving town, they would think nothing of it. Hopefully.

~~~

‘I said I’d bring her here,’ Duri said as he hopped down off the cart’s bench seat. ‘I’m a man of my word. You coming into town would have just given her the opportunity to kill more of our people.’

‘Our people?’ Xinyi asked. As advertised, he was a big man. He had a barrel chest, legs like tree trunks, and massive biceps. He loomed over Duri like a mountain waiting to fall. Balanced on his shoulder was something like a cross between a staff and a club, a studded, hexagonal mass with a pole making up the lower third. It looked like it could smash boulders with a single blow, at least when Xinyi swung it.

Duri was not especially impressed by Xinyi’s intimidation. ‘You’d be nothing without my efforts. Your gang owes me. Owes me double now, for bringing this woman to you. She’s still unconscious. I haven’t heard a sound from her all the way here. Do as you will with her, then get back to working the new seam.’

‘We’ve slaves for that,’ Xinyi growled, ‘and they haven’t stopped. Let’s have a look at this girl who’s caused you so much trouble.’

The two men walked around to the back of the cart and, before Duri could do it, Xinyi grabbed the tarp and yanked it off the cart’s bed. ‘What’s going on?’ Xinyi asked.

‘I– She was right there! I put her there myself!’

The bed of the cart was empty. Ai was nowhere to be seen.

‘Fool! You brought her right to us!’ Xinyi did not use his club. His fist smashed into the side of Duri’s head, and when Duri hit the dirt, he was definitely unconscious.

~~~

Ai had dropped out of the cart not long after it had passed through the gap in the little palisade the bandits had built around their camp. There was no gate, but barriers could be dragged into place to block the way in if needed. Since the camp was hidden away in a valley some distance from the town, the barriers had probably never been needed. Finding this place would have been a real pain, but Duri’s betrayal had obviated the need for searching. Now all Ai had to do was defeat the bandits.

Killing them all was probably not required, but the leader had to go. That was the initial plan anyway. Take out this Xinyi and a few others, and the rest would likely make a run for it, especially if they had heard about her Starlight Shroud. The truth was that it was of limited use. It took a lot of power to use, so she was limited to using it once every ten minutes or so. She could use it twice in quick succession, but if she did, she would be left too tired to fight effectively for any extended period. She had tried it out a couple of times while walking, and she knew what her limitations were. Maybe, at some point in the future, she would be able to use it more often, but for now it was for emergencies.

She had another skill she could use too. It was not as effective as Starlight Shroud, but it cost her less energy. The problem with that was that it was single target, and she was not very accurate with it. She could waste a lot of energy missing her targets unless she only used it at close range. Then she was limited to quick throws with no time to aim, which did not help the accuracy. Basically, it was a useful trick which could sap the energy of those it struck, but until she improved her accuracy, it was more of a party trick than a weapon.

Which left her sword and the skills her grandfather had taught her. She could live with that. The bandits, on the other hand, would not be living with it.

The camp they had built was obviously intended to be there for a while. There were tents set up for accommodation, but there were also a couple of houses with more being built. They were simple things, constructed from wood and unshaped stones, but they were there suggesting a desire for long-term occupancy. That seemed… odd. Even if they were planning to milk the town, that would only last until the seams ran out, so why build houses here?

As she circled the camp, looking for openings to take advantage of, Ai began to suspect the reasons behind this long-term plan. What she saw also shifted her focus a little toward killing as many of the bandits as she could. At the back of the compound, she found cages. The cages had people in them. Men. She saw no women here, but there might have been some somewhere. You did not lock up your own people in these numbers. She stopped counting at thirty, but there were more than that. The bandits were keeping slaves.

Further back, she found the reason for the slaves. Right at the back of the palisaded area was a mine entrance. The slaves were being used to dig for iron ore. The operation looked quite well organised, maybe by someone who knew how to organise a mine, like a mining foreman. Duri, Ai suspected, was not simply betraying the townsfolk by colluding with the bandits. He had also hidden a new ore seam from them, and was working it with slave labour controlled by the bandits. He was probably not reporting the mined ore to his lord either. Ai was not really that clued in on this sort of scheme, but she imagined he was transporting the ore out of the area and selling directly to other nations, keeping all of the profit for himself. Well, it was one way to secure a retirement plan.

‘If he isn’t dead already,’ Ai said to herself, ‘I’m going to have to kill him myself.’

~~~

It was night, so the bandits were not at their best. They were discovering that Ai was not hindered by the darkness at all. Tonight, there was a moon showing, so they were not completely in the dark, and it was by the light of that moon that Xinyi and a couple of his lieutenants found the bodies near the mine entrance.

‘Damn it, she’s found the mine,’ Xinyi said. ‘Now we have to find her. Find her and–’

‘Could I be of assistance in that?’ Ai asked, stepping into view from behind a cart laden with ore. She pointed her sword at the huge bandit. ‘You’re keeping slaves. You’re extorting the townsfolk, bullying them. I can’t allow that to continue, Xinyi.’

‘That’s Mister Huang to you. Who am I about to kill?’

‘You don’t deserve that much respect, Xinyi the bandit. You don’t deserve to be called “mister,” and you don’t deserve to know my name.’

‘Die nameless then.’

He was moderately fast for a big man. Then again, he was far slower than Ai. Another thing she had discovered, another Gift, was that she was faster now than she had ever been before. Add in her use of acrobatic embellishments to aid in dodging and Xinyi was entirely outclassed. His clumsy weapon swung at empty space and Ai countered with a slash to his left arm. Having swung the club, he was unable to bring it back to block, and his dodge was useless. Ai’s blade sliced through muscle and left his arm dangling, as useless as his dodge. He was now entirely open, unable to bring his weapon to bear in any meaningful way, but his two friends were not going to let him die so easily.

They were armed with swords, apparently more inclined to be effective in a fight than to intimidate. Ai ducked under a swing, jumped over a second one, and then turned, bringing her sword around to slice one of the men’s throats open. Before the other could respond, she flicked a shining white star at him from her left hand. It seemed to sink into his chest, frost forming on his breastplate in its wake. He let out a gasp and faltered just long enough for Ai to follow through with her sword. The blade pierced his chest, cutting into tissues which would have rather not had a length of metal being inserted into them. And then he was falling. Not dead, perhaps, but certainly out of the fight.

‘I’m not done yet,’ Xinyi said, his voice a growl. He dropped his useless club and pulled a knife from his belt. ‘You’ll not take me alive!’

‘I had no intention of doing so,’ Ai replied. She watched him as he circled, looking for an opening, and then she moved. His knife came up to block the strike, but he was far too slow. His eyes widened briefly as he realised her sword was aimed right at his neck and there was nothing he could really do about it. And then he saw the world tumbling around him, not really realising what he was seeing until his vision went entirely dark.

~~~

Duri Xiao opened his eyes and groaned. Then he realised what he was looking at now that he was awake, and he let out a shriek.

‘Oh, you’re awake,’ Ai said.

‘Let me out of here!’ Duri’s hands gripped the bars of the cage he had been put into and he glared at Ai who was sitting not far away on a stool she had found somewhere.

‘Hm, let me think about… No.’

‘Xinyi will–’

‘He won’t be doing anything. Do you think he’d have let me stuff you in a cage if he wasn’t about a head shorter than he used to be.’

‘You killed…’

‘All of them are either dead or running. I’m not sure how many there were, so I can’t say how many got away. I don’t think it was many. No one is coming to rescue you. I think I know most of what’s been going on here, but if you tell me everything, I might be persuaded to let you live. You can start with this mine and where you got the slaves from.’

Duri sagged. ‘Very well. The slaves were Xinyi’s main job. He kidnapped them from various…’

30th Day of Shonshi.

‘We’ll contact our lord about Duri and the slaves,’ the taverner said. It seemed that he had become the de facto town leader with the foreman under house arrest. It had taken most of the day to get things sorted out with the townsfolk, and then they had insisted that Ai come to the tavern in the evening to celebrate the salvation of the town.

‘Good,’ Ai said. She gave a shrug. ‘I let the foreman live, but I doubt your lord will be so kind.’

‘Probably. With all the records you found, we can prove it was all down to him. We have the production estimates for the new seams. With Xinyi and his bandits gone, we should be able to ramp up production once again. And it’s all thanks to you.’

Ai smiled. ‘I just did what needed to be done.’

‘That may be true, but you’ll still celebrate with us, won’t you?’

‘I can stay for a little while.’

But when the taverner went looking for her an hour later so that he could make a speech and probably embarrass her, Ai was nowhere to be found. It was dark outside, and Ai had slipped away into the night, leaving behind nothing but a cleaned plate and an empty mug to show she had ever visited the town of Dolbyeog.

Part Three: The Land of Ice and Snow

Shangye, Cheol Uitang, 7th Day of Shengshian in the 103rd Year Postwar.

Shangye and Verslun sat on opposite banks of the Kulduvatni River which formed the northern border of Cheol Uitang and the southern border of Landavis. Technically, the two cities were in different countries, but it was more like they were their own country which happened to occupy territory in Cheol Uitang and Landavis. A broad stone bridge joined them with a fortified gatehouse on an island in the middle which could be closed from both sides, but never was. Shangye and Verslun were there to allow trade between the two countries, as well as facilitating trade with Wangguo and Gronlandt to the east. Nothing stopped that trade; the merchants of the twin cities would not allow it.

No one stopped Ai from walking into Shangye through the southern gate. She was clearly not in the business of selling goods – which would have attracted tax – so she was free to pass through and do as she wished. So long as what she wished did not disrupt trade, of course. Shangye and Verslun had their own city guard, not something controlled by Cheol Uitang or Landavis, to ensure that trade was not disrupted. It was the first time Ai had ever seen a soldier who was not dressed in the usual armour of the Royal Army of Cheol Uitang.

Shangye was not far from the mountains, so it was mostly built of stone. There was a wall around it with gates to the south and west. Within, the buildings varied from multi-occupancy structures housing many families, to palatial mansions, but all of them were built from stone in one form or another and looked like they would stand the test of time. Liberal amounts of paint had been used to make the stonework less uniform. If anything, Ai found it all a bit garish, but it was certainly not boring. However, Ai had a goal in arriving in Shangye, so she did not really hang around admiring the scenery.

In fact, Ai did not really stop to take in her surroundings until she had crossed the bridge and was walking through the streets of Verslun. They were different.

There was still a lot of stone construction, but here there was little in the way of coloured render over the stone, so everything was some shade of grey. Colour was on display in the form of signs hanging outside various commercial enterprises. There was not so much writing in Verslun, but the images on the signs were quite indicative of what the shops, taverns, and other commercial outlets did. Ai picked something which seemed to be advertising accommodation, as well as food and drink, and got herself somewhere to sleep for the rest of the day.

Verslun, Landavis.

Apparently, the tavern Ai had selected was favoured by northmen. Not everyone from Landavis was a northman, but the further north you went, the more common they became. It was said that Snyor the Snow King had blessed the northmen with strength and resilience to cold. It was not exactly a Gift given to the entire race, but it was something they needed to be able to survive in Snyor’s harsh realm.

Not that it was that harsh this far south, and even less so when there was a warm fire burning in the taproom with a pig roasting over it. Ai ordered some slices of pork and whatever vegetables they had, along with a mug of light ale, and found herself a corner to sit in so that she could watch the room. Or, more specifically, watch the occupants.

Northmen were big. Whether or not they had been blessed by their god, they tended to be more muscular and taller than people from Cheol Uitang. While they were known as northmen, the women were no different. All of them seemed brash, overconfident, loud, and they did not seem to think clothing was a major concern. Yes, Ai was not exactly wearing a superfluity of cloth, but the northmen took it a stage further. The men were frequently bare-chested and wore fairly lightweight cloth trousers. The women wore light skirts and midriff-baring shirts, though there was one woman wandering around in a fur skirt and a breastband made from strips of cloth, though she had large metal bracers on her arms and was never far from a huge double-headed axe. Generally, the northmen seemed to show their tolerance of cold by wearing as little cloth as they could get away with.

Ai’s main problem with them was that she could not understand a word they said. None of them were speaking Malhada. They had their own language, Norsweka, which was more closely related to the Gronling spoken in Gronlandt and Heimat than to the Jianghua languages spoken in Cheol Uitang and Wangguo. She figured she could manage in Wangguo, given that Malhada and Shoohua were fairly closely related, but she would need an interpreter in Landavis. That was if she wanted to talk to anyone, obviously. Maybe she could get by without.

Really, she could probably make her way to Wangguo with very little interaction with the locals. She would take a couple of days to reset her body clock, start travelling by day again, and just not interact with the northmen. When she got to Wangguo, she could handle basic conversations, she thought. Of course, in Gronlandt she was going to have to find a ship to take her to Romat. That could be an issue, but she would take care of that problem when she needed to. It was not impossible to find people who spoke Malhada in the other nations. The language was fairly common as a trading language thanks to Cheol Uitang maoyi coins being extensively used in trade negotiations. The language and currency had spread together. So, she could probably find a ship captain who spoke at least basic Malhada… Probably.

‘Thu art fallegur. Vad haettir thu?’

Ai blinked and looked around at the speaker. It was the woman with the leather-strip breastband and, up close, those strips were holding in quite a substantial bust. She was a pretty woman, though the muscles detracted a little from what Ai considered beautiful. The northman’s face was actually kind of delicate, though she had a very solid, strong jawline. Her nose was upturned and pert, and her lips were quite full. She had blue eyes. Her hair and eyebrows were auburn, perhaps on the more orange end of the scale, and she kept her hair tied back from her face with some sort of ornament which Ai could not see properly.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t–’

‘Ha! Sorry, I was thinking you would know Norsweka, since you stay here.’ Her Malhada was accented and a bit off, but it was perfectly understandable. ‘I am Rika, Rika Moen.’

‘You can call me Ai. I came here by accident, not intent. I just needed a place to sleep.’

‘Well, it is a good place for that, once the fighting stops.’

‘The–’

And that was when a stool hit the wall no more than two paces from Ai’s head.

~~~

‘Does this happen every night?’ Ai blocked a punch directed at her face, trapped the man’s arm, and locked it behind his back.

‘Pretty much,’ Rika replied. She punched the man Ai had in an arm lock, right in the jaw. Rika’s massive axe was leaning against the wall nearby, unused. No one was using any weapons. It was rather like the brawl had started for the fun of it. Ai suspected that was precisely what had happened. ‘I stuck by you in case you needed help, but you can hold your own here, right?’

Another punch came Ai’s way. This time she stepped around it, jammed the man’s foot to make him trip, and then watched as he knocked himself unconscious against the wall. ‘I can manage in a brawl. I’m better with a sword.’

‘Oh, well, yeah. I am better with my axe. Or in bed.’

‘Pardon?’

‘I’m better with my axe.’

‘Yes, but you said–’ Ai let a fist pass no more than a palm’s width from her face and countered with an elbow to the jaw. When that did not stop him, she followed through with a knee to the groin.

‘Ouch! That had to hurt,’ Rika commented.

‘Well, I didn’t do it to give pleasure.’

‘Right. Save that stuff for later.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Here comes another one!’

Ai ducked, turned, and kicked someone twice in the head in a jumping move which left her back on her feet and her opponent unconscious on the ground. ‘I think I’m missing part of this conversation.’

‘Huh. Well, ask me about it later. I get a lot less tight-lipped after I’ve had a few.’

Ai was not really sure she wanted to know, but she also had a feeling that she was going to find out. Rika seemed like she was going to be hanging around for a while. Whether that was a good thing or not, Ai was going to have to wait to find out.

8th Day of Shengshian.

Rika, it turned out, was basically a mercenary, and she had just completed a job escorting a caravan from Fundarstadr to Verslun. She had decided to rent a room of her own precisely for the purpose of bringing someone back to it. After a lot of drinking, the person she had brought back was Ai. This was probably going to surprise Ai later, but for right now, she was a little too busy to care.

‘W-what are you doing with that fing– Ah!’

‘You shed you’d nefer done thish, but you’re a natral.’

‘I h-haven’t done… Stop expecting me to talk while you’re doing…’

‘Yag sa aldrei at thu mashte prata.’

‘Now you’re speaking N-Norsweka. Oh, I give up!’

‘Bra!’

~~~

‘It isn’t something I’ve done before, no.’

Rika regarded Ai with some degree of disbelief. ‘You must be fast learner. The things you got up to after a little prompting…’

It was morning, quite late morning compared to when Ai was used to rising, and they were eating a breakfast of porridge, bread, and some rather fatty bacon. They were eating together because they had spent the night together, and Ai was not sure exactly what to make of that, but since Rika seemed to think it was fine, Ai was going with it. She was going to milk the situation a little, however.

‘Regardless, that was my first time.’

‘Well, I am happy that–’

‘So, I do hope you plan to take responsibility for your actions.’

‘Responsibility? Now wait–’

‘Seducing a poor, innocent farm girl like that. Is this what the people of Landavis are like? Tut, tut.’

Rika frowned. ‘Just what kind of responsibility am I supposed to take?’

Ai grinned. ‘I’d like to hire you to get me as far as Fundarstadr. I need a guide. And someone who speaks the language, which I do not.’

‘I see. No, I cannot agree to that.’

‘But–’

‘I am going back that way anyway. I will not agree to be hired by someone I like when I would just be doing what they wanted anyway. We will walk to my home village and then go on to Fundarstadr. You have business there?’

‘No, I’m just going that way to pass through into Wangguo. You’ll really do this for free?’

Rika’s grin was wolfish. ‘Well, it is a long journey to Foat and beyond. Many days and nights. I am sure I will find time to take some form of payment along the way.’

Ai shrugged. ‘I think I can live with that.’

11th Day of Shengshian.

‘I was under the impression that Landavis was always buried under snow,’ Ai said. This was the third day of their travels north through Landavis. So far, Ai had seen no snow at all. In fact, what she was seeing was farmland and a plentiful supply of crops.

There was also a road with a good surface. This was probably a necessity if the weather turned bad, but so far it had been quite a pleasant walk under clear blue skies.

‘Ha! It is summer!’

‘Oh, well, good point, but–’

‘Snyor is not the idiot god. We must grow food, so the land this far south is clear of snow in summer. Even as far north as Foat, there will be little snow at this time of year, and that is only because Foat is in mountains. North of Fundarstadr there is always snow. That is reason why Fundarstadr is there.’

‘Oh. It’s some sort of meeting place for the clans, right?’

‘Yes. That is what the name means. It is not capital city like in Cheol Uitang or Wangguo. People live there, but it only really becomes a city when there is clan meeting.’

‘And that happens?’

‘Every year in summer with big one every ten years. Matters of law are decided. Decisions are made about politics and relations with other nations. The clans learned long ago that a unified front is needed when dealing with other nations.’

Ai nodded. ‘That makes sense. It all seems pretty safe here. Do caravans really need protection along this road?’

‘Here, no. Not really. As we go north, there are bandits and beasts and sometimes monsters. We may have more need of weapons. We go east of road later, to get to Foat. Then we may see more dangers.’

‘Okay. Um, Foat… That’s a very… short name.’

‘Ha! Is very short village. Name means bucket. Do not ask me why village is called after bucket. I do not know.’

‘Right. Into the mountains to a village called bucket. Sounds like fun.’

17th Day of Shengshian.

‘I think it is getting colder,’ Ai said as they set out on another day of walking. ‘Aren’t you cold? You’re wearing next to nothing. I know there’s fur under that skirt but–’

‘Northmen do not get cold easily,’ Rika replied. ‘What about you? You are not wearing much more than me. You do not have fur to keep you warm. You have not said anything about temperature before now.’

‘I– Hm. No, you’re right. I don’t feel cold. I’m aware that it’s cooler than it was, but I don’t feel cold. Maybe it’s another part of my Gift.’

‘So, you do have Gift!’ Rika nodded as though this revelation was expected in some way. ‘I thought so, but I was not sure since you have not shown any special skills.’

‘Yes, I’m Gifted. And now you mention it, I should continue practising.’ She summoned up a star of light which she then threw toward a tree growing beside the road a dozen paces away, hitting the trunk and leaving a splash of frost across the bark. She was getting more accurate with these Starlight Strikes, but she was still a little dubious about using them in combat. Tossing them at things while on her walk was her way of training herself.

‘Ah, it looks like your patron is Snyor.’

‘I know what you mean, but I don’t think so. I’m not entirely sure who my patron is, but it seems they want me to go to Romat. Shouldn’t that mean my patron is Rom?’

‘Rom has given no Gifts in living memory. Not since the Romar Empire fell.’

‘I know. That’s why it doesn’t make sense. Uh, the way you talk, I’m guessing you’re Gifted too?’

‘Oh yes! I am Gifted of Shan. I have strength of mountain and rock. This is why I can swing this beast well, and why I can wear little armour in battle.’

Ai grinned. ‘Right, so we have Shan to blame for you being a half-naked axe-wielding barbarian.’

‘Yes! Wait. I am not a barbarian!’

Ai burst into laughter, which Rika joined after a second. Then Ai’s face straightened. ‘You know, it does make a bit of sense that Rom might be my patron. I am a Romar.’

‘Well, yes.’

‘That doesn’t seem to bother you. Most people–’

‘Northmen don’t care about that. Here, you are who you are. That you came from people who ruled the world thousands of years ago does not matter. Who you are now is what matters to us. You are a good person, Ai.’

‘Thanks, I–’

‘And good in bed. That matters a lot.’

‘To you, maybe.’

‘But I am what matters to you right now, am I not?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t be able to talk to most people here without you, so I guess that’s true. Am I really just a good lay to you?’

‘There are worse things to be, no?’

‘Well, I suppose that’s true…’

25th Day of Shengshian.

Ai stood outside a building in a small town which straddled the road, leaning against a wall and watching the passers-by while trying to look like she was not paying attention. Inside the building, Rika was negotiating payment for several wolf hides. There was a value for the hides, apparently, but also a bounty the local clan paid for dead wolves. The creatures could be a nuisance in the summer months and deadly come winter.

That they had pelts to sell was a matter of luck. Not necessarily good luck, but luck had something to do with it. They had come across two packs so far on their travels. Rika said that was unusual, but not unheard of. The pelts they were selling were not all in great condition. Rika’s axe was a somewhat indiscriminate weapon, leaving huge rents in some of the bodies. However, it left a reasonably clean pelt when she could lop the animals’ heads off. In all, they had twelve pelts in reasonable condition and another five which were a bit more ‘some assembly required.’

‘And here is your share,’ Rika said, emerging from the office.

Ai took the coins. It was not a huge amount, but it had been something they had to do anyway, so it was basically free money. ‘Thank you. Are we staying here tonight?’

Rika looked up and down the main street, which was also the main road through to the north. ‘We will see if we can find somewhere with reasonable rates. These places can be expensive.’

‘They know they have a bit of a captive audience.’

‘Yes. The Berge clan are known for being misers. Still, we will look. Having you on a bed tonight would be nice.’

‘I think you mean “having me in bed with you.”’

‘I know what I meant.’

3rd Day of Shooge.

Ai had concluded that Rika’s fighting style was more or less the polar opposite of hers. Ai would fight a bear by dodging its attacks and striking precise blows to cut its manoeuvrability and, eventually, kill it. Rika was fighting a bear by ignoring the swipes of its vicious claws and swinging her axe repeatedly until the beast was dead.

It worked. The fight ended with Rika chopping the beast’s head off, and that was after delivering a nasty blow to its side which probably broke ribs and essentially crippled it. It had got a bite in and a couple of what should have been deep claw wounds. Rika was bleeding a little. There were marks on her skin, but they were not deep.

‘We should bandage–’ Ai began as Rika shouldered her axe and grinned.

‘No need,’ Rika said. ‘In an hour, they will be healed. Part of my Gift, yes?’

‘Ah. So that’s why you don’t dodge much.’

‘Yes! Strength of Stone keeps me safe. Though I admit that I have been badly hurt a couple of times. Nothing that did not heal in a day or so, however.’ She gave the bear a frown. ‘This is a shame. We head uphill to Foat from here. The going will be tough. Carrying the fur will be difficult. Hm…’

‘It’s a big bear,’ Ai said. ‘I’ve never seen anything that big in Cheol Uitang.’

‘These mountain bears stick to the mountains here, and to the snowy lands in northern Landavis. When you get far north, they have white fur, but they are basically the same bears.’

This one was basically black aside from some paler fur over its stomach. The pelt probably would be reasonably valuable, and it was getting cooler. ‘I say we take it. You’re really strong.’

‘Yes, but–’

‘And it’ll be nice to sleep under when we get further into the mountains.’

‘Ha! Yes, you make valid point.’ Rika pulled her knife and stepped toward the bear. ‘Let us hope that we do not run into more of them.’

‘You just made it certain we will.’

‘Yes, you are probably right. Not too many more then.’

8th Day of Shooge.

There had, thankfully, not been more bears. They had run across wolves, but they were easier to dispatch and it was easier to ignore their pelts. At night, Rika made sure to take full advantage of the bear pelt at some point. Usually that was between watches which she said were now necessary. Given the wildlife they were seeing, that seemed reasonable, but a fire seemed to be keeping most things back, and Rika’s late-night recreation was not endangering them.

‘Is this mist often here?’ Ai asked as they climbed the roughly demarked track toward Foat. She said it in Norsweka. Not well, but she had picked up enough of the language from Rika that they could converse that way.

‘It isn’t,’ Rika replied. ‘At this time of year, the skies are usually clear. You’ve really picked up Norsweka quite well.’

‘Not well.’

‘Good enough to make do. You won’t be needing me anymore.’

‘I could manage, if you want to stay in Foat. I would prefer your help to Fundarstadr.’

‘Ha! You’ll have it. When you see Foat, you’ll realise why I only visit. Nothing interesting ever happens in Foat.’

Ai winced and spoke in Malhada. ‘That sounds like you’re dooming us again.’

‘Huh? Oh, the bear? Well, we didn’t run into more bears, did we?’

‘No, but fate can only be tempted so many times…’

9th Day of Shooge.

‘This isn’t right,’ Rika said. ‘We should be able to see the village from here.’

The mist which had clung to the slopes of the mountains for the past day had got denser the higher they went. By the time the sun was setting, visibility was not at all good. Maybe a hundred paces, but that varied and was often shorter.

Soon after rising, they had crested a hill and now they should have been looking down into a shallow valley with the village sitting in the middle of it. Instead, all they could see was fog. Well, fog and snow.

‘There shouldn’t be snow here at this time of year either,’ Rika added.

‘This is your fault,’ Ai stated flatly.

‘Mine! Why is it–’

‘“Nothing interesting ever happens in Foat.” That was just asking for something to happen.’

‘That doesn’t make it my fault.’

‘I beg to differ. Do you think you can find your way down in this?’

‘Yes. I could do it with a blindfold on.’

Ai nodded. She looked back along the path they had taken to get here. There was no snow on the ground where they had crossed into the valley. The fog seemed to have settled within the valley with just a light mist escaping. It did not look natural. ‘The air is colder too,’ she said.

‘Yes. It’s not good. Whatever is going on, we won’t find out about it until we get into the village.’

‘Then let’s move on.’

Foat.

Ai was not really sure what the village of Foat looked like. Visibility within the village was down to a couple of paces. Rika was navigating from memory more than anything else, leading Ai by the hand to the village’s main communal building which Ai was unsurprised to learn was a tavern. It had stone walls and a door of very solid wood, and that was about the only thing Ai could tell about it until they got inside.

Actually, the inside revealed little else about the place. The stone walls were more visible thanks to the lack of fog and the various light sources. The predominant one of those was a firepit which sat in the middle of the floor, the smoke funnelling up through a metal contraption mounted over it as some sort of chimney. This also held a spit which was currently occupied by a pig of some description, though Ai thought ‘boar’ was a more likely descriptor for whatever the beast had been in life.

Aside from the firepit, the majority of the space in the main room was taken up by round tables with chairs and stools around them, but there was also a trestle set up at the back with three large barrels behind it. Many of the tables were occupied, and every face turned to the door to see who had come in. Apparently, they all knew Rika.

‘Rika!’

‘Snyor’s beard, Rika’s back!’

‘Figures she’d be back here when this is going on.’

‘Welcome back, girl. You’ve come at just the right time.’

‘That does not sound good,’ Ai said. ‘I mean, they’re happy to see you, but…’

‘We were going to find out what was happening anyway,’ Rika replied quietly. Then she raised her voice. ‘Elder Geir, what’s going on? What’s with this fog? And the snow? There’s snow up to my knees in places through the village.’

The man who replied, presumably the elder, was a big man gone wiry with age. Ai would not have liked to try arm-wrestling the man, but he had to be more than fifty years her senior and was a little stooped. His beard and what was left of his hair were grey. He had something of a pronounced nose, a little reddened at the tip. Like everyone else in the taproom, he was wearing a lot more clothes than Rika, and Ai could only consider that a good thing.

‘What’s with the fog, you ask?’ Geir said. ‘Are you sure you want to know, Rika?’

Rika stomped over to the table where Geir was sitting with a couple of other old men, yanked a stool closer, and sat down. ‘Would I have asked if I didn’t?’

‘Ah, but you don’t know, so you can’t judge whether you really want to know.’

‘Has age finally addled your brain, old man?’ Clearly, respect for your elders was not a major thing in Landavis culture.

‘Ha! More than you have said it. Juni! Get this girl a pint. And one for her friend who she’s yet to introduce. She’s going to need a drink when I’ve told her.’

Rika frowned at Geir, but she also took the hint. ‘This is Ai Guan. She’s a farmer’s daughter from Cheol Uitang, a master of the sword, and she’s Gifted. I’m helping her get to Fundarstadr and across the border into Wangguo since she’s not much good with Norsweka.’

‘I can understand a little,’ Ai said. ‘It is a pleasure to meet you, Elder Geir.’

‘Ah, a respectful one, unlike this ungrateful whelp.’

‘That’s right,’ Rika said, ‘show me up in front of the old folk.’

A woman almost as big as Rika marched over with two huge tankards filled to the brim with frothing ale. She put them down on the table. ‘These are on the house, since you’re back at an auspicious time.’

‘Thanks, Juni,’ Rika said. ‘Now why do I need a drink in my hand to hear this, Geir?’

‘Ghosts, Rika.’ At Geir’s words, Rika’s tankard stopped halfway between table and mouth. To Ai’s surprise, it actually looked like Rika had gone pale. ‘We’ve got a plague of warrior ghosts,’ Geir went on, ‘and no one has yet come up with a reason for them being here.’

Rika sank half her tankard and then slammed it down on the table in front of her. ‘Right, well, I wasn’t planning to stay long. We’ll sell the bear fur we’ve got and then we’ll be on our way to–’

‘I doubt you will. A few have tried to leave since this set in. None of them can get out of the valley. The fog wraps around them and they find themselves turned around and heading back into the village. We’re trapped here. And now that you two have come in, you’re trapped here too.’

~~~

According to Geir, it had begun a week earlier, though there had been indications that something was wrong earlier than that. Several hunting parties out in the mountains had reported getting lost in areas they knew well. Mists had come in, obscuring the path and making navigation difficult, but more than that, people had just been confused about where to go. A couple of hunting parties had gone missing. Five people had disappeared into the mountains in the week before the mist came to Foat.

Then, one morning when the village had awoken, there was mist filling the valley. By nightfall, the mist had thickened into fog, and when the sky was dark, the ghosts had appeared. Four people had died before anyone realised the danger, frozen to death in the street on their way home from the tavern. The ghosts, it seemed, could not enter a building unless someone let them in, a fact which had only been realised after a couple more people had gone to their doors to investigate strange sounds outside.

In total, thirteen people had been lost to the ghosts so far, assuming none of those lost while hunting ever returned. Now the village was locked down as soon as it got dark, leaving the streets to the ghosts. Wherever you were at sunset, that was where you stayed. No one had managed to leave the village in the last week, not even making it as far as the edge of the valley. Everyone was trapped, and they knew of no way to make the ghosts leave.

That included Ai and Rika who returned to the tavern before sunset having tried to walk out of the valley.

‘I know those paths as well as I know my own hands,’ Rika said. ‘It was like I’d forgotten everything I knew.’

‘Not being able to see further than the end of your arm doesn’t help,’ Ai said, ‘but I thought if we just kept going uphill, we would make it.’

‘Except that uphill stopped making sense after a few hundred paces.’

‘Mm. There’s something supernatural going on. I suppose we wait for dark and see what these ghosts are up to.’

Rika’s face paled again. ‘I… I’ll leave that to you to take care of.’

‘Oh? Why?’

‘I, um, well, I–’

‘Rika, are you afraid of ghosts?’

Rika puffed out her chest. ‘Rika Moen is afraid of no man!’

‘What about ephemeral, non-human entities of a deceased nature?’

‘I don’t know the meaning of… most of those words. Look, I just don’t like spooky things. Ghosts give me the chills. I’m not afraid of them, I just, um…’

‘Don’t want to meet any if you can possibly avoid it?’

‘Yes. That.’

~~~

In a corner of the taproom there sat a woman in her late-middle years who wrapped herself in a lot of clothing and played cards with herself most of the time. Her name was Margrethe Moen and she was the village’s astrologer, for want of a better description. Everywhere with enough people to count as a village had an astrologer because astrology was important. Without an astrologer to give a reading at the birth of a child, no one would know what kind of fate they had in store for them. Margrethe filled that role in Foat, but she was not the most well-liked person in the village by any means. Margrethe had a bad habit of focusing on the negative side of destiny, so everyone took her predictions with a huge grain of salt.

As Ai sat at one of the small windows, looking out at the fog in the street, Margrethe sidled up to Rika. Rika saw her coming and sighed. The story of Margrethe’s predictions at Rika’s own birth had been related to her. Margrethe had said that Rika would die in battle in a far-off land, unknown and never returned to her homeland for burial. It had not gone down too well with Rika’s parents.

‘Be careful of that one,’ Margrethe said by way of greeting.

‘Who? Ai? What would you know about her? You don’t even know when she was born.’

‘There are ways. When someone’s right there with you, there are ways.’

Rika sighed again. ‘And what do your ways tell you about Ai?’

‘She’s dangerous.’

‘So am I.’

‘She’ll bring about your doom, girl. Follow her if you wish, but she’ll bring doom to us all.’

Rika frowned. After leaving Foat, she had encountered other astrologers. She had come to the conclusion that Margrethe was less of an astrologer and more of a fortune teller. Her methods were slipshod, her predictions weak. Astrologers could justify their predictions, and no one ever seemed to ask Margrethe to justify hers. ‘How? How is she to doom us?’

‘What?’

‘You’ve seen her fate, I assume. What about it is to bring doom upon us all?’

‘I…’ The fortune teller frowned. ‘I can’t see her future. Nothing. She has no future. It’s like she isn’t even there.’

‘That is just ridiculous. Everyone has a destiny and a fate. Everyone. How can she have neither?’

‘I don’t know. It’s hidden. Something or someone is hiding her future from me, but I know that she’s the one who’ll bring you to your doom. I know.’

‘Right. And I’m to meet my doom in some foreign land, right? So, how is she to doom everyone here if I don’t die until I’m in another country?’

‘You– I– Mark my words, girl, she’ll–’

‘My name is Rika, not girl. You’ve known it since I was born and you saddled me with an ignominious death. Go back to your cards, old crone. No one’s interested in your tales of doom and despair.’

‘You’ll regret that,’ Margrethe said, but she shuffled off back to her table.

‘I’m regretting listening to you at all,’ Rika grumbled. She turned her attention back to Ai, wondering what would happen when the sky turned dark.

~~~

There were shapes in the fog. It was difficult to tell, but the shapes looked human. They moved randomly, giving off just a little light which showed through the mist, giving away their presence. Ai watched them for several minutes while Rika paced back and forth behind her, pointedly not looking at the window.

‘It’s difficult to tell,’ Ai said, ‘but it seems like they’re searching for something.’

‘People to drain the life from, probably,’ Rika said.

‘Perhaps. Your elder said the victims were frozen to death.’

Rika shuddered. ‘Yes. That’s not a nice way to go.’

‘It’s actually how my Gift kills people, and you suggested that Snyor might be my patron. Maybe these ghosts were Gifted by Snyor.’

‘That’s not a nice thought. Seems like that would make this some sort of divine intervention.’

‘Hm.’ Ai was silent for a few seconds, watching the shapes in the fog. ‘Or retribution. Someone wronged them somehow, but what would bring them here, now? What could someone in Foat have done to bring ghosts to the village?’

The light outside the window suddenly brightened, and Ai found herself looking at a ghostly figure glowing with a faintly green light. It was male, and it looked more like a northman than anything else. Its clothing was wrong, however. There was more of it than Ai had come to expect, for one thing. There was a metal breastplate and leather trousers. This figure wore a helmet with broad cheek plates and a nasal. At its waist was a sword which had more of a Cheol Uitang flavour about its design. Both breastplate and sword looked old, like you might have seen on a soldier from Cheol Uitang during the Eternal Throne period. That put the man’s death at more than a hundred years ago, perhaps much longer.

The ghost stared at Ai for an indeterminate period of time before turning and walking away, still searching. Ai let out a breath she had not realised she was holding.

‘Oh crap!’ Rika said. She had looked. ‘It looked right at you, Ai.’

‘Yes, it did. It didn’t really seem to care about me though. It made no attempt to get in. I… wasn’t of interest to it.’

‘Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose it is. Perhaps we can make use of that…’

10th Day of Shooge.

‘This is insane,’ Rika stated flatly.

‘Perhaps,’ Ai replied, ‘but I don’t think they’ll harm me, and we may learn something. As it is, we’re trapped in Foat along with everyone else until something changes. In all probability, that would mean that everyone dies. How long can supplies last here without anyone being able to leave the valley?’

‘She does have a point, Rika,’ Geir said. ‘We can last another week. Two if we start rationing soon.’

‘Yes,’ Rika said, ‘but–’

‘I’m going out there,’ Ai said, ‘and you are going to stay inside.’

‘What?! But–’

‘You don’t like ghosts, and I think the ghosts are after people from Foat, probably people of the Moen clan. I am neither of those, so I think they’ll leave me alone. Hopefully, they’ll even talk to me.’

‘What if you can’t understand them?’

‘The armour and weapons I saw last night were from the Eternal Throne. Everyone spoke Malhada during that period, even up here in Landavis.’

‘Oh. Well, you have a point. Just be careful. I don’t want to find a block of ice with you in the middle of it come morning.’

Ai grinned. ‘Well, obviously, I’d prefer to avoid that fate myself.’

‘Hmph. Margrethe says you don’t have a fate.’

‘Margrethe says a lot of things which make no sense,’ Geir said. ‘Everyone has a destiny as well as a fate.’

‘Well, except me,’ Ai said. ‘The astrologer in my village claimed he could see neither for me. He said that the stars were unwilling to reveal my future, whatever that means. So, your Margrethe is right in this case. I mean, I must have a fate in store for me, but no one’s ever been able to read it. Still, I don’t think I’m going to die here in Foat. That just doesn’t seem right.’

‘Be careful,’ Rika repeated.

‘I will.’ And then Ai opened the back door of the tavern and stepped out into the fog.

~~~

At first, with just a little light in the sky, there was only the fog. Ai made her way out from behind the tavern and onto the main street. She could see light from one of the tavern’s windows; Rika was probably steeling herself and watching, but Ai doubted anything could be seen. The sunlight was almost gone, and the fog was dense.

Then, from all sides, other lights appeared. There was a faintly green cast to these lights and they each marked the position of a ghost, but even with those to guide her, Ai had some trouble actually finding one of the deceased warriors. When she approached, the lights moved away. It was as though they really were not interested in her at all, which kind of made her being there pointless. It did, however, suggest that her theory was right: the ghosts were there for the people of Foat, and Ai was not one of them, so she was safe, as far as it went.

For what felt like an eternity, but was probably thirty minutes, Ai wandered the street, mostly following light sources and finding nothing. Then, for no reason that she could really determine, several of the figures remained still as she approached, and she found herself looking at the same spirit she had seen the night before along with three others who looked more like common soldiers. They carried short spears and shields, and their breastplates were less ornate. Ai had not really noticed the night before, but the one with the sword had a design carved into his breastplate, the throne-and-sword design which signified the Eternal Throne.

Well, it seemed they were paying her some attention now, so… ‘Hello,’ she said, bowing to the officer ghost. ‘My name is Ai Guan from the village of Shouchung in Cheol Uitang.’ The ghost looked at her. His mouth moved but no sound came out. That was not encouraging. ‘Might I ask why you’ve come to Foat? You seem to be searching for something.’

The ghost reached down and unsheathed his sword. Ai watched, tensing herself to dodge a blow, but it did not seem like that was the ghost’s intention. Indeed, he turned the blade and held it up, balancing it by the blade and hilt as though displaying it to her.

‘That’s a fine weapon,’ she said. It was. It was not especially ornate, but some design had been put into it. The hilt cap bore the same design as the man’s breastplate. The blade had a sheen to it which suggested that it had been forged by a skilled craftsman. ‘Wait, are you looking for this sword? Someone found your sword and took it from you?’

The ghost nodded and replaced his weapon in its sheath.

‘Someone from this village took it? I’ve not seen a weapon like this here. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing they’d use.’

The ghost simply stared at her.

‘Very well. On my honour, I’ll see to it that your sword is returned. I would be grateful if you did not follow me inside when I return to ask about this.’

Once again, the ghost nodded. Then, as though carried away on a breeze which Ai could not feel, all of the ghosts vanished, leaving the street in total darkness.

‘Hm,’ Ai said. ‘Now, which way is the tavern?’ She could see in near total darkness, but this was something else. ‘Okay, let’s try… this way.’

~~~

She was walking uphill on a clear summer day in the mountains. Looking back, she could see the village of Foat in the valley, and she knew it was Foat, even though she had never really seen the place. There was no fog, no sign of ghostly figures. But then, why would there be when she was walking among the ghosts. Which seemed a little odd…

They were walking under a rock outcrop which, from some angles, looked like the head and neck of a dragon. And she could not remember walking toward that formation. So, this was a dream. Time was fractured, disjointed. And, when she looked down, she realised that she was not even herself in this dream. For one thing, she was wearing a breastplate with the emblem of the Eternal Throne embossed into it. It was also rather flat to be sitting over her own chest. And there was a sword at her hip which, while it was like the one her grandfather had given her, it was not the same sword. She was dreaming that she was the commander of the ghosts, before they became ghosts.

She looked up. That outcrop was really quite distinctive…

A clear blue lake had formed from snow melt in a depression in the mountains. It was an almost perfect circle of bright water amid the dark mountains. They were getting deep into the mountains now, further than she thought people generally went. Why? What were they looking for? Why were soldiers from the army of the Eternal Throne up in the mountains above Foat? The Eternal Throne had been a world-spanning empire, but even then the Tiankong Mountains had been theirs only by virtue of them being mountains in the world. The empire had made no serious claim to the land beyond where Foat was.

There were more glimpses of landmarks and scenery. She took it all in, still wondering what they were doing there and why she was dreaming this. It had to be something to do with the ghosts, but whether this was meaningful or just a dream, she could not tell.

And then everything changed. She felt fear and resolve before she realised that she was fighting. There was snow in the air in the middle of summer. It half-blinded her as she fought… The thing was huge. Some sort of supernatural beast. Teeth like swords, claws like polearm blades, white scales. An ice dragon! They were not true dragons, having no wings and being smaller than the mythical dragons no one had seen since the Mythic Age, but they were dangerous. The soldiers had been sent into the mountains to kill the creature. Several had already fallen to its icy breath, but it died when she sank her sword into its eye…

And then she was dying. She had been wounded already, but her blood was freezing against her skin and the cold… The cold was too much. Yes, they had slayed the monster, but it had cost all of them their lives. Every last man fell, frozen or bloody, in a small valley with a high cliff on the north side. She was dying…

Ai’s eyes snapped open and she found herself looking up at the ceiling of a dark room. The shutters were closed over the window, but there was light outside which she thought, at first, was daylight. Then she realised that it had a slight greenish cast, and it was fading. After a second or two, the room was in total darkness, and she could no longer make out the ceiling.

Glancing to her right, she also failed to see Rika, but there was a definite weight in the bed beside her and that was comforting. Getting up would wake the northman, so Ai closed her eyes again and tried to sleep. She was not entirely sure she would manage it.

11th Day of Shooge.

‘A sword, you say?’ Geir had gone home before dark the previous night, so Ai had had no chance to talk to him about what the ghosts were there for. He had, however, appeared soon after Ai and Rika had come down for breakfast. Apparently, his wife had died the previous winter – Rika had been upset about that – so he frequently took meals in the tavern.

Ai took her own sword from its scabbard and placed it on the table. ‘A sword like this, but with the emblem of the Eternal Throne on the hilt. It looked like it was made by a master craftsman.’

‘I don’t think I’ve seen anyone with such a sword in the village, but if they’re here looking for it…’

Ai nodded. ‘I think they know it’s here somewhere, just not where or who took it. It had to be someone who went deep into the mountains before the mist came down. They were sent to kill an ice dragon, and they did, but they all died in the battle. The commander basically ended the dragon with his last– That rings a bell, doesn’t it?’

‘It’s an old story from back before the war. They say an ice dragon was hunting people and livestock around here, so the empire eventually sent soldiers to kill it. A lot of people died before they came, but there were none after they went into the mountains after it. No one ever returned to tell the story, however, so you’ll get different stories about the Lost Company, based more or less on how much the teller liked the Eternal Throne. Landavis was a large part of the rebellion against the empire, so you’ll not find many who tell it as the company killed the dragon but never made it back.’

‘I remember hearing that story,’ Rika said. ‘The way I heard it, the soldiers died, and the dragon just left of its own accord. It had turned up without warning, so why wouldn’t it leave the same way?’

‘Because it had plenty of food here,’ Geir replied, ‘and no one had done so much as scratch it.’

‘Whatever the real story,’ Ai said, ‘they want that sword back. Someone found it and took it, and they want it back. No one is leaving Foat until they get it.’

‘Well then, we’d better finish up our food and go look for it. We’ll go house to house. It’s not going to be easy with the fog out there, but we should be able to manage it before it gets dark.’

~~~

By mid-afternoon, they had got precisely nowhere. No one had seen a sword like Ai’s, especially an ancient one of fine quality. No one knew of anyone who had been deeper into the mountains than usual. Ai had not got the impression that anyone was lying, but more importantly, Geir had not got that impression either, and Ai felt that the old man would know.

‘We’re running out of people to ask,’ Rika said. ‘And it’s going to be getting dark in a couple of hours. Or too dark to see where we’re going anyway.’

‘What about the people we can’t ask?’ Ai asked, a sudden thought hitting her.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, some people are dead. If one of them took the sword…’

Geir gave a grunt. ‘Amund.’

Rika frowned. ‘I remember him. Loner. He’d spend weeks out on the slopes hunting whatever he could find. He might be the type to go far up, and then come back with something he wouldn’t show anyone else.’

‘Not exactly the most reverent young man either. Disturbing the dead wouldn’t bother him a whit. He was one of the first to die after the ghosts came into town.’

‘Where did he live?’ Ai asked.

‘He had a house on the outskirts of the village. He really was a loner. We rarely knew when he came or went. If he hadn’t died on the street outside the tavern, I doubt we’d have known he was dead.’

‘Right,’ Rika said, turning. ‘This way, if I’m remembering right. Let’s hope wherever he hid the thing, we can find it.’

~~~

‘The door’s locked,’ Ai said after trying it. ‘How are we going to–’

‘Move,’ Rika said, and then she barely waited before applying her boot to the obstruction. The lock did not so much as groan but there was the sound of screws bouncing off something inside as the door flew open. ‘It’s not like he’s going to mind.’

‘Well, no…’

‘On the other hand, I can’t see anything in there to find the–’

Ai lifted her hand and a ball of light appeared in her palm. It was not particularly bright, but it was quite bright enough to let them see the entire front room of the rather basic house Amund Moen had called home. The interior was much like the exterior: a basic stone building with a chimney at one end. Inside, the bottom of the chimney housed a fireplace with a long-dead fire turned to ash. There was a table, a couple of chairs, and a door which probably led to a kitchen. As for a bedroom, the rolled-up blankets near the fireplace suggested that Amund had slept on his living room floor.

There was no need to go looking in the kitchen for the sword, however. Ai walked over to the table and looked down at the cloth-wrapped bundle lying there. It sat in the centre of the table beside a plate with dry breadcrumbs on it and an empty mug. Amund had probably expected to return to his house to clean up the day he died, though evidence suggested that he might just have been a bit of a slob.

Ai pulled open the bundle and found herself looking at the real sword the ghost warrior still possessed in spirit form. ‘It’s in remarkably good condition. There’s a little rust on the blade and the hilt could do with a good polish, but for something that’s spent the last century or two on a mountain… This has to be a lot older than I’d first thought. The metallurgy has to date back to the very early empire, when there were still Romar metallurgists who knew what they were doing.’

‘That’s old,’ Rika said.

‘Even older than me,’ Geir added. ‘It’s not my kind of weapon, but that is a fine blade. It’s not surprising that Amund took it, I suppose.’

‘Not surprising, but not a good idea.’

‘No.’

Ai rewrapped the sword. ‘I’ll see what I can do with it. We can give it back in good condition with a little effort.’

‘That would be good. I think it’s the least we can do, under the circumstances.’

~~~

As night fell, Ai walked out onto the main street of the village with the sword in her hands. It took almost no time at all for her to be surrounded by ghosts, the commander appearing right in front of her, his eyes fixed on the weapon he had owned in life.

‘I cleaned it up,’ she said. The weapon had polished up beautifully. With the rust gone, the sheen of the blade was clear, as was the engraving on the trailing edge. The draconic design was based more on the western notion of a dragon, a serpentine beast without wings. It was distinctively a Cheol Uitang design. ‘This is a very fine weapon. We’ve talked it over, and our plan is to take it back to where it was found.’

The ghost looked up. Then he nodded.

‘There’s just one problem. If we can’t get out of the valley…’

The ghost shook his head. He said something and, while there was no sound, his lips moved in such a way that ‘it won’t be a problem’ came across to Ai.

‘Thank you. We’ll be leaving tomorrow, as soon as we’ve decided who’s going.’

Another nod.

‘You already killed the man who took this. There’s no need for further retribution.’

He paused for longer than Ai would have liked, but then he nodded. And then the ghosts faded away, leaving Ai once again in the dark and the fog.

‘At least I have a better idea of which way to walk tonight.’

12th Day of Shooge.

A party of five set out into the mountains the next morning. The fog had lifted somewhat; it was misty, and visibility was bad, but it was possible to see where you were going, and they managed to get out of the valley on the eastern side without trouble.

Along with Ai and Rika, there were three men. Ludvig and Ralph were father and son, both hunters. They looked alike too, both blondes with blue eyes and similar, tough body forms. Ralph had insisted on accompanying his father since Ludvig was getting on a little, but Ludvig was the one who knew the local mountains backward and forward. And then there was Trym, a slight man with darker blonde hair and greyer blue eyes, very good with a bow, who spent a lot of his time deep in the mountains much as Amund had. They were relying on him to get them where they were going once they passed the normal range hunters walked out to. He was kind of like Amund, but more people in the village actually liked him.

Their primary means of navigation, however, was Ai’s dream. She had seen landmarks. Ludvig was fairly sure he knew most of the route the ghost soldiers had followed, based on Ai’s descriptions. It was just a matter of finding the landmarks in the mist.

‘So far, so good,’ Rika said as they crested the edge of the valley and started across a relatively flat stretch of ground. It was not going to last; up ahead, things started to get steeper fairly quickly.

‘This is the first time anyone’s been out of the valley in weeks,’ Ralph said. ‘On the way back, we should take the opportunity to hunt.’

‘We can take things if we spot them on the way there,’ Trym said. ‘We have to eat, and it could start getting difficult to find the place we want once we get past the normal range. Who knows how long we’ll be out here.’

‘You do not sound unhappy about a long trip,’ Ai said. She was speaking Norsweka for the benefit of the hunters, even if she was not that good at it.

‘I like the mountains. Being trapped in the village for this long has been torture. You’re not a northman. How are you okay wearing so little in this weather?’

‘She’s Gifted, Trym,’ Rika said. ‘We’re not sure by which god, but she’s Gifted, and the cold doesn’t seem to bother her.’

‘Sounds like she has the favour of Snyor.’

‘It does, but I’ve seen her go all-out, and what she does doesn’t look like something Snyor would do.’

‘And let us hope that you do not need to see it on this trip,’ Ai said. ‘Though, now that I have said that…’

‘Yeah,’ Rika said, ‘there’s plenty of trouble we could run into between here and where we’re going.’

Trym nodded. ‘Especially when we go east of the usual hunting ranges. There are some things up there that could be a problem.’

‘Then how do you survive?’ Ai asked.

The loner hunter shrugged. ‘Talent.’

~~~

‘That,’ Ludvig said, ‘is Dragon Rock.’ Everyone looked up at an outcrop of rock which seemed to be just hanging there above them. It did seem to have a long neck and an angular sort of head, but…

‘There was more of a snout in my dream,’ Ai said.

‘I’ve never thought it looked much like a dragon,’ Ralph said.

‘Same,’ said Trym.

‘This is where local knowledge comes in,’ Ludvig said, grinning. ‘It did have a longer snout when my father was learning the trade from his father. One day, they came up here and its nose had fallen off. I’d imagine the whole thing will collapse eventually.’

‘Damn, yes,’ Ralph said. ‘I remember you telling me that when I first saw it.’

Ludvig nodded. ‘I did. Try to remember so you can tell your son when he asks. But, miss, that’s the rock you saw?’

‘Yes,’ Ai replied. ‘It looks right. Which means the rest of the dream is probably right too.’

‘Hope so,’ Trym said. ‘Otherwise we are going to be wandering around out here until next summer.’

‘That’s a cheery thought,’ Rika said. ‘Where to next?’

‘The next landmark was a withered sort of tree,’ Ai said. ‘All alone, hanging onto a cliff.’

‘I know it,’ Ludvig said, ‘though I think that’s probably changed since the ghosts saw it.’

‘It looked mostly dead back then.’

‘And it hasn’t got any healthier since.’

~~~

That night, they camped beside the pool Ai had seen in her dream. It looked more or less exactly the same as the dream version. ‘Well,’ Ai said on seeing it, ‘the mist makes it hard to see it as a clear blue pool.’

‘When the sun’s on it, it’s clear and blue,’ Ludvig said. ‘We’ll spend the night here. The water’s good and it’s out of the wind. Tomorrow… Well, by midday we’ll be getting into Trym’s area of expertise.’

The landmarks in Ai’s dream had not been enough for Trym to know where the soldiers’ bodies might be found, but he thought he could narrow it down a lot more if Ludvig could get them far enough in.

‘Do you think you’ll be able to find the place, Trym?’ Rika asked.

‘It’s down to two possibilities. I think we’ll be sure by the time it’s needed. Though, if it’s the place I think it is, it’ll take us more than a day to get there.’

‘We are not in a hurry,’ Ai said.

‘Not much of a hurry,’ Rika agreed, ‘but the village won’t be able to hold out forever.’

‘Then let us hope that we get there on the first try.’

~~~

It was getting close to midnight and Ai was on watch duty. Everyone had insisted that they needed a watch, though Ai was unsure what they expected to see given the lack of light and the mist. On the other hand, she only had the mist to contend with thanks to her Gifts, so it was probably a lucky thing that she was on lookout at that particular point in the night.

Shapes appeared in the mist, indistinct at first. They resolved into something shaped roughly like a dog, but a large dog and clearly prowling closer despite the fire which was burning beside Ai. That was probably not good. Leaning over, she roused Ludvig.

‘We have company. Some sort of wolf or dog. Maybe six of them,’ Ai explained, her eyes on the approaching shapes.

Ludvig squinted into the night. ‘How can you see them?’

‘My Gifts. I can see if there’s any light at all, but the mist is making it difficult to identify them.’

‘Huh. Only one thing they’re likely to be. I’ll wake the others. You watch them.’ Ai was still waiting to find out what she was watching a minute or so later when Ludvig finally said something to clarify the matter. ‘We’ve got night wolves.’

‘Bugger!’ Trym said from somewhere behind Ai.

‘What’s a night wolf?’ Ai asked.

‘They’re a bit bigger than normal wolves,’ Rika said. ‘Stronger. They can see in the dark, but they don’t like the light much at all. The fire would keep them back normally. Uh, aside from that, they’re just strong wolves.’

‘The mist probably made hunting hard for them,’ Ludvig said. ‘There’s six of them and five of us.’

‘Eight of them,’ Ai corrected.

‘That’s still not great odds in their favour, but if they attack, we could be hurt fending them off.’

Ai narrowed her eyes. ‘Ten of them, and I think they’re getting up the courage to attack. What’s their usual tactic?’

‘They’ll rush us. They can’t surround us because of the lake, but we can’t afford to be pushed back into the water. That’s a sure way of freezing.’

‘Right then. Leave them to me.’

‘We can–’ Rika began.

‘You won’t be able to see. Neither will they.’

‘Oh, you’re going to do that?’

‘I’m going to do that. Get ready.’

‘When it starts,’ Rika said, addressing the men, ‘close your eyes. It won’t blind you, but it’s bright and you’ll have no night vision when it’s done.’

Ralph was gripping his sword rather tightly and standing in a ready posture. ‘How will we know when it’s starting?’

‘You’ll know.’

‘Here they come,’ Ai said. Black shapes appeared in the mist, clear to everyone as shapes, if not what of. They quickly resolved further into black-furred wolves, as large as a big dog, rushing forward silently but with clear intent. White stars burst into the air out to around eight paces from Ai, over the land ahead of her and the pool behind. The wolves ignored them and had no time to react when the stars burgeoned into a blinding shroud of white light. Ai stepped forward and slashed her sword across the throat of one animal she thought was a little too close. D spite their thick fur, the animals were falling, unable to keep moving as the cold sapped their strength and drove them to the ground. Ai watched in silence; slaughtering animals was a necessary task but nothing glorious.

A few seconds later, when the light faded, the others opened their eyes and looked around at the carnage Ai had wrought. Eleven wolves lay on the frost-covered ground. Ice covered their mouths and eyes where there had been liquid water to freeze. Only one showed a wound, and its blood had frozen over that.

‘Remind me never to annoy you,’ Ralph said. ‘But I see why you think Snyor might have given you your Gifts.’

‘And why it was maybe not him,’ Ludvig added.

Trym nodded. ‘The cold is right, but the light… Stars. That’s not something I’d expect from Snyor. We should take some time and skin them come morning. Those pelts are valuable and there’s not a mark on most of them.’

‘We can do that,’ Ludvig said. He laid a hand on Ai’s shoulder. ‘Thank you, Ai. Without you here, that would have gone much harder.’

‘Just doing my job,’ Ai replied. ‘Plus, they would have killed me too.’

‘Take the compliment,’ Rika said. ‘Don’t be so humble when you can take out nearly a dozen night wolves in one blow.’

‘Well, I suppose that is kind of awesome…’

14th Day of Shooge.

The following night, they dined on some sort of goat which Trym had shot. Ludvig, Ralph, and Rika had never seen one alive; it was a creature which lived high in the mountains and was, according to Trym, capable of climbing near-vertical slopes despite having hooves. The meat was pretty good, and it saved them eating their travel rations. There were no more wolves, so they had an uneventful night before setting out again in the morning.

They were deep into the mountains now, in Trym’s territory. He was pretty sure of roughly where they were going by now and thought they would arrive there around midday, perhaps a little later. Then it would be a matter of finding the exact spot where the soldiers had died along with an ice dragon. Hopefully, the skeleton of the dragon would still be intact enough that it would provide an indisputable landmark.

Ai’s main complaint was that she could not see anything. What she could see suggested that there was not much to see locally. Everything was rock. There were sudden patches of greenery where enough soil had accumulated to allow plants to put down roots, but mostly the landscape was dark grey or black rock. However, there was the tantalising thought of fantastic views which were entirely invisible thanks to the mist. Maybe on the way down…

‘Another hour,’ Trym said when they stopped for lunch. ‘From your description, I think we’ll find them in a valley about an hour’s walk from here. I say valley, it’s more like a deep crack. Nothing grows down there. I’ve never been into it myself because it’s just not worth it, but Amund might have.’

‘That fits what I remember from the dream,’ Ai said. ‘We’ll know if it is the right place. I think at least the dragon’s skull will be obvious.’

‘Seems likely,’ Rika said. ‘Seems like Amund pulled that sword out of its eye socket.’

‘Probably. We will see when we get there.’

~~~

‘This is the place,’ Ai said as they started down quite a steep incline into what was essentially a crack in the mountains.

‘Glad to hear it,’ Trym said, ‘because if it wasn’t, we’d be walking another couple of days to get to the next best alternative.’

‘They were very wary when they came in here. They heard sounds from below and thought they had found their target.’

‘And they had,’ Rika said. ‘I’m glad we don’t have to face it.’

It was not easy going. The bottom of the crevasse was littered with large boulders, as though it had originally been a cave and the roof had fallen in to lie in fragments on the rock below. It did, however, get a little broader as you went down, so it became a little easier to walk and then, after about an hour, they made it to the bottom of the crevasse and found exactly what they were looking for.

The scene was made all the more spooky by the mist which still clung around them. The dragon had collapsed into a pile of bones after all this time, but its skull lay there on the rock at one end of the pile, bleached white bone looking almost alive in the mist. Beside it was the skeleton of a man. Little was left of his clothing, but the breastplate was still there with the emblem of the Eternal Throne embossed into it. He had, as Ai had dreamt, died right beside the monster he had killed, unable to continue. There were other skeletons around the rock-strewn floor along with breastplates and indications of weapons which had not fared nearly as well as the ancient sword Ai was carrying.

‘That,’ Trym said, ‘is a monster I would never want to see alive.’

‘They still appear now and then,’ Rika said. ‘Rarely, but they’re not like the dragons from the Mythic Age. Ice dragons aren’t entirely extinct.’

‘There are still stories saying the old dragons are still alive in the mountains,’ Ralph said.

‘I’ve never seen any sign of them,’ Trym said. ‘Of course, even I don’t go right up into the high peaks.’

Ai dropped to one knee and unslung her pack. Inside it, she found the sword, wrapped in cloth, and took it out. ‘It seems a shame to leave a weapon like this here, but…’ Lifting the sword, she stepped over to the dragon’s skull and slipped the point of it into the eye socket beside the commander’s skeleton.

A loud roar reverberated through the valley.

‘What the–’ Rika exclaimed, turning toward the sound.

Out of what seemed like the side of the crevasse, a pair of glowing, baleful-green eyes appeared in the mist. As they moved, another shape resolved around them, also glowing with a faintly green light.

‘Oh crap! A ghost dragon?!’ Rika seemed frozen in place. Then again, no one moved as the monster-ghost tramped slowly out of the mist toward them.

Before Ai could get herself together to move, it raised one paw armed with long, very sharp claws, and swung it straight at her head. She had a brief instant of knowing, without a doubt, that she was going to die, and then the claws passed right through her without so much as leaving a scratch.

‘I-it can’t touch us,’ Trym said.

‘No,’ Ludvig countered, ‘but its breath may be another matter.’

It was clearly not the brightest of monster ghosts. It slashed once again at Ai as she dodged away from it, the sword still in her hand. Then it tried raking Rika. She stood there and whimpered as the claws passed through her. And then the beast got a clue. Its mouth opened, and Rika stood there watching it. Ai grabbed the back of Rika’s skirt and yanked her down behind the skull as a jet of icy cold breath spewed out over where Rika had been standing. It left ice and frost in its wake. Clearly, the thing’s breath was still as effective now as it had been in life.

‘It can’t touch us,’ Ralph said, ‘but how are we going to get rid of it before it freezes us to death? If it can’t touch us, we can’t touch it.’

Ai looked around as Rika shook her head and seemed to come out of her trance. Her eyes fell upon the sword still in her hand. It had killed the dragon once… ‘I have an idea. If it does not work… Run and hope it doesn’t catch you.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Rika asked.

‘Something really reckless.’ Jumping to her feet, Ai followed that with a jump which left her standing on the dragon’s original skull. She could manage no more than a stride from there to the other side of the monster cranium, and then she jumped, flinging herself at the ghost dragon. She turned in the air, adding momentum to the blow as she dropped past the ghost’s head and slammed the blade into one of the glowing green eyes. She felt the impact, knew she was hitting something solid, felt the scrape of metal on bone as the blade punched through the immaterial socket and into what passed for a brain in the monster ghost.

It let out a cry and collapsed. Ai, still holding the sword and hanging by that from the ghost’s eye, landed on her feet and then pulled the weapon free. She narrowed her eyes at the monster.

‘I-is it dead?’ Rika asked.

‘Yes,’ Ai replied, ‘it is a ghost. But I do not think it is double dead. Yet.’ She closed her eyes and focused, then she raised the sword high over her head, opened her eyes, and brought the blade down on the ghost’s neck. The blade did not slice cleanly through, but it bit deep and, an instant later, the ghost was dissolving into nothing before her eyes. ‘Now it is dead.’

And then Rika let out a shriek which was not at all appropriate for a woman of her stature as the dragon’s skull collapsed into dust right in front of her. ‘I hate ghosts!’ she added, just in case her opinions were not clear.

‘Yes, but what am I going to do with this sword now?’

‘Oh, uh…’

‘I think,’ Ludvig said, ‘that we should do what we really should have thought of in the beginning.’

‘Huh?’ Rika asked.

‘We should gather the bones, take them down to the village, and give them all proper burials. We can lay the sword to rest with its owner.’

Ai nodded. ‘It was not what he asked for, but I think it might be what he would have wished.’ She lifted her head and looked around at the misty crack in the world. ‘No one should lie in a place like this for the rest of time.’

‘Yeah,’ Rika said, ‘it’s going to be a pain to take them all down, but it’s the right thing to do.’

As though the ghosts had heard her, and were pleased with the pronouncement, the mist began to thin. By the time they were wrapping up the last skull in the wolf hides they had taken, you could see the whole crevasse. Where the ghost dragon had come from was the opening of a cave, a black hole in the side of the cliff.

‘That must have been where the thing lived,’ Ai said. ‘If it were a real dragon, we could go in and see whether it had treasure.’

‘We’d never have managed to carry it out anyway,’ Rika said.

‘No, but it would be nice to have looked.’ Ai settled her pack on her back. ‘As it is, I will have to make do with better views on the way back down.’

‘There are some very good views on the way,’ Trym said. ‘I never look at them anymore.’

‘Well, I for one will.’

17th Day of Shooge.

The fog and mist were gone, and Ai and Rika set out for Fundarstadr the morning after the bones of the dead warriors were laid to rest in the village’s graveyard. It might have been better if they could have been taken back to Cheol Uitang, but Ai was not willing to do it, and the fact that the fog was gone suggested that the spirits of the dead were at rest.

Ai had placed the sword in the ground with its owner somewhat reluctantly. It was a beautiful weapon, one which should be used, not left in the ground to eventually rust into nothing, but it was not her sword.

‘We should get to Fundarstadr in about, um, twenty-five days,’ Rika said as they crested the edge of the valley and started to head down toward the lowlands.

‘That sounds good,’ Ai said. ‘I’m not really in a hurry. Once we’re there–’ She stopped as, without warning, fog descended all around them.

Rika let out a squeak and raised her axe, but a few seconds later, the fog vanished just as it had come. ‘Look!’ Rika said, pointing at the ground in front of them. Lying there on a small, flat rock was the ancient sword, its blade glinting in the sunlight. ‘I think you’re being rewarded. It’s no use to me.’

Ai stepped forward and picked up the sword. She brought it up to her face in a salute, and then down again. She would have sheathed it, if she had a scabbard to put it in. ‘Well, it would have been a shame for it to be left in the ground.’

‘Practically criminal, but isn’t your own sword the one your grandfather left you?’

‘It is, but he was a practical man. This is a superior weapon, a dragon slayer. If he were here, he would tell me to use the better sword.’ With that, Ai set her pack down to put her new sword into it.

‘But you just said–’

‘Practical, remember? I’ll use it when I’ve had a chance to get a scabbard for it. It needs a good one. I hope we can get one in Fundarstadr.’

‘Oh, we can. And if we happen to come across another dragon on the way, you can always get it out of your pack.’

‘We had better not. I could go the rest of my life without seeing another dragon.’

Rika winced. ‘That was just poking fate in the eye with a stick.’

‘Sorry.’

Part Four: Kingdom of the Storm God

Fundarstadr, Landavis, 2nd Day of Chige in the 103rd Year Postwar.

The city of Fundarstadr was not exactly a city. In many respects, it was a city. It had a wall with defensive fortifications. It had a lot of buildings and people within that wall. It was just that a lot of the population only lived there when there was a clan council in operation. That was not now, so huge sections of the city were basically empty, and getting a room for the night was easy and moderately cheap.

‘Are we just staying the night, or shall we take a break?’ Rika asked as they organised a room at one of the many inns to be found in the city.

‘Let’s stay through tomorrow,’ Ai replied. ‘I want to find a scabbard for the sword, and it could take a day to have one made for it.’

‘Two nights then,’ Rika said, turning back to the woman behind the counter.

The inn was basically a place to sleep for multiple guests. There was no taproom or kitchen. If you wanted food or drink, you went somewhere else. The room was not large, but it had a fairly big bed and space to move around in. A couple of chairs provided a place to sit. A wardrobe gave you somewhere to store your possessions.

As far as Rika was concerned, all they needed was the bed. She dragged Ai onto it as soon as the door was closed.

‘I want to go out to find that scabbard,’ Ai protested.

‘We can go out after–’

‘Oh no. If you get started, we won’t stop until you get hungry.’

‘But–’

‘No buts. It isn’t like we haven’t done it since we left Foat.’

‘No, but… I think you might be addictive or something. I can’t get enough of you.’ Despite Ai’s protestations, Rika was still unbuttoning her top.

Ai batted Rika’s hands away. ‘That’s probably my inner focus. It’s what lets me temporarily increase my strength. It’s something my grandfather taught me.’

‘Your grandfather taught you to f–’

‘No! He taught me a way of externalising my inner strength. It can express itself in many ways. I think I noticed it affecting the way we, um, interacted in bed.’

‘Well, it feels like I’m bathing in sunlight whenever you make me come. It’s, well, addictive. I want more.’ Rika reached for Ai’s blouse again, but Ai pulled away.

‘Later. If you’re a good girl.’

‘Woof,’ Rika said, grinning.

‘I should think so too.’

~~~

In the end, Ai won. They went out and had lunch, which Rika decided she needed anyway, and then they went hunting for someone to make a suitable scabbard for the ancient sword.

‘I think,’ Ai said as they walked the streets, ‘that this sword was originally forged as a dragon slayer.’

‘Someone enchanted it when it was made?’

‘That’s what I think. I think the dragon engraving is meant to symbolise that.’

‘But I’m willing to bet they didn’t forge it to kill ghost dragons.’

‘No, I think that came about from it killing the ice dragon and then resting in its skull for over a century. When the ice dragon returned as a ghost, the sword gained the ability to kill it.’

‘Thankfully. Could be useful. Not that I ever want to have to face a ghost dragon ever again.’

‘Agreed,’ Ai replied. ‘I don’t think you really want to have to face any ghosts ever again.’

‘Well, there is that…’

~~~

Rika was howling. Well, something like howling. Her hands gripped the sheets as though letting go would result in her falling off the world. It was not just that Ai had kept her promise about what would happen after the scabbard hunt. It was not just what Ai was doing to her physically. It felt as though, somehow, Ai was sliding inside her, and not just in the physical sense. The heat and power of the smaller woman was overwhelming Rika’s senses, as it did every time they made love. When the climax came and Rika felt the release of orgasm, she was still held in the hot energy of Ai’s inner power for minutes after.

‘I couldn’t give that up if I wanted to,’ Rika whispered when she could make coherent sounds again.

‘Sorry?’ Ai asked.

‘I don’t know whether I’ve made this clear, but I’m coming with you to Romat.’

‘Oh! I obviously won’t say no to the company, but why?’

‘Because I can’t give this up. Because I don’t want to stop being with you in general. Because… Because I think I’m supposed to.’

‘Destiny?’

‘Or fate. Whatever, I’ll be coming with you into Wangguo and beyond.’

‘It might be dangerous, but I don’t suppose that would stop you anyway.’

Rika grinned. ‘Not even a little. Was I good enough today for a second round?’

‘Possibly even a third. Actually, we don’t need to go collect the scabbard until the afternoon, so…’

‘At least I’m going to die happy,’ Rika said on a sigh.

Olumdali, Wangguo, 4th Day of Chige.

Much as was the case with Shangye and Verslun, Fundarstadr was paired with a city on the other side of the bridge which crossed the river into Wangguo. No one really took much notice of anyone leaving Landavis, so Ai and Rika set off across the bridge without even being questioned. Ai figured they looked like a native of Wangguo and her hired guard, or something like that. Whatever, no one in Fundarstadr cared.

On the other side of the bridge, things were a little different. With Verslun, you walked straight into the city. Here, you were stopped at a gate on the Wangguo side of the bridge, checked for anything they did not want coming into the country, and then sent on your way perhaps thirty minutes’ walk to the city gate. Everyone was checked, no matter who or what they were, and two women carrying weapons, one of them a huge northman, were bound to be checked anyway. The two women in question were expecting it, so it was not a matter for concern.

Until the guards began whispering among themselves and looking at Ai and Rika a little suspiciously. Or was it warily? It was not easy to tell, but Rika shifted her axe into a position she could use it from, and Ai’s hand moved down to hold her new scabbard. And then…

‘Excuse me, um, miss,’ one of the guards asked Rika, ‘but are you Gifted?’ he was speaking Shoohua, the native language in Wangguo. It was similar to Malhada, but Rika did not have a perfect grasp of Malhada. She frowned at him, trying to work out what he was asking.

‘We both are,’ Ai said. Her Malhada was a lot better than Rika’s; Shoohua was a lot more comprehensible, but she imagined she sounded like she spoke it with a bad accent.

The guard looked at her, frowned in something which might have been disbelief, and then shrugged. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to wait here and then go to the lord’s residence with some of the Guard.’ He watched as Ai’s hand moved toward the hilt of her sword and held up his hands. ‘You’re not in any trouble. In fact, we need your help.’

Rika got that. ‘You need our help? What for?’

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to speak to Lord Namgung about that. I can say that it’s a matter of national importance.’

‘Do we get to ride a carriage into the city?’

‘One will be made ready now.’

‘In that case, why not?’

~~~

Lord Namgung was a plump gentleman of middling years who probably shaved his head for whatever reason. He clearly ate well, and it did nothing for him. His rather puffed-up features resulted in small eyes and the beginnings of jowls. He wore voluminous robes, possibly to hide the fact that he was fat. On the other hand, there were laughter lines around his eyes, suggesting that he was normally a fairly happy person. These were not normal times.

‘For the past week, a massive storm has essentially divided the country in two,’ he said once the introductions had been made. That sounded serious, but the fact that two nobodies were being presented to the local lord was likely an indication that things were indeed serious. ‘This is the land of Fengbow, the Lord of Storms, but we don’t usually see this kind of thing. The country is crippled.’

‘That’s bad,’ Ai said. ‘I’m here to pass through to Gronlandt, so that would be a problem. I just don’t see what you expect Gifted to do to fix it, Lord Namgung.’

‘Well, I’m not sure either, but we received a magical message from the capital. The king is gathering Gifted on that side of the storm to attack its source. He asked all the lords to do the same.’

‘Its source?’ Rika asked.

‘Yes. This storm has a source. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but a storm dragon has come from somewhere and taken up residence in Wangguo.’

Ai and Rika looked at each other and then back at Namgung. ‘A storm dragon?’ Ai asked. ‘No true dragon has been seen since the Mythic Age.’

‘There are, apparently, witnesses. No one knows where it came from or why it has come to rest where it is, but the storm itself is evidence that such a creature exists. We have to kill it, or at least drive it off. Gifted are the only people capable of such a feat.’

‘Looks like that sword may come in useful after all,’ Rika said.

‘Sword?’ Namgung asked.

‘I was recently, um, gifted a dragon-slayer sword by a ghost,’ Ai said.

‘By a… ghost?’

‘It would be a long story.’ Ai patted the hilt of her sword which she was still carrying in the lord’s presence, much to her surprise. Rika still had her axe. ‘I somehow doubt that it will be of great help against a true dragon, however.’

‘It worked on the ghost of an ice dragon,’ Rika said, shrugging.

‘The ghost of an ice dragon?’ Namgung asked.

‘I said it was a long story,’ Ai said. ‘I can’t continue my journey without helping deal with this storm, Lord Namgung, so I will do what I can.’

‘I am in too,’ Rika said.

‘Thank you. We have prepared rooms for the Gifted we’ve managed to find. I’ll have you taken to them. Tomorrow, a carriage will take you all to Gillesso which will be the staging post for your party on this side of the storm.’

‘Free board,’ Rika said, grinning. ‘I’m liking this mission more and more.’

‘Hm,’ Ai said. ‘And all we have to do to earn it is kill the most dangerous beast seen since the Mythic Age.’

‘Yes, well, there is that…’

~~~

The attendant who took them to their room was a little surprised that they only wanted the one room but did not appear that surprised. Same-sex relationships were not common in Wangguo – or not acknowledged as being – but Gifted were different. Gifted were, well, Gifted and common standards were not something they were held to. Besides, the woman, some sort of maid, could not be sure Ai and Rika were not just close friends. Right.

The room was rooms anyway. There was a reception room, bedroom, bathing room, and another room which had lounge vibes but neither of them could really figure out why there would be two lounges. Anyway, they had far more space than they needed, furniture which was luxurious and probably antique, and a huge bed with curtains. The bathroom had a tub Ai could almost stretch out in, though it would be another matter for Rika. They had to order in hot water since the lord’s mansion in the city did not have running water to everywhere, but the maid seemed to figure they would want a bath and said she would have water sent up immediately.

‘Does she mean we smell?’ Rika asked.

‘I think it might be servant speak for that, yes. But we probably do.’

‘Well… yeah.’

After that they relaxed, taking lunch in their rooms, and generally doing very little while they waited for the following day. But when evening came, they were invited to join Lord Namgung and the other Gifted for their evening meal. It would have been impolite to decline, even if neither of them felt comfortable joining nobility for a meal, so they set off through the mansion to the ‘first’ dining room. Rika was not sure why you needed a second, but that was nobles for you.

There were two other people in the room with the portly noble. One was a large, muscular man dressed in a fine suit of the style worn by many Wangguo gentlemen. It fitted well and yet still managed to look like he was stuffed into it. He was blonde and blue-eyed, fairly handsome, but there was an impression of arrogance about him which was not appealing. The second was a woman. She was quite slight, or lithe. Yes, lithe was a better word for it. She wore a sleeveless dress which came to mid-thigh, also a common design in Wangguo, and that showed off well-developed arms and shoulders. There was a high probability that she was an archer. Her hair was a flaming shade of red and it combined with vibrantly green eyes to give a strong impression, but she seemed quieter than the man, and Rika for that matter. Both of them had the general facial structure of Wangguo, so they were likely natives.

‘Welcome,’ Namgung said. ‘I shall make introductions. Here we have Master Dae-Seong Tse, Gifted swordsman.’ The big man nodded to Rika, seeming to ignore Ai. ‘And this is Shui Yuen, an archer of much repute. And our newcomers are Rika Moen, from Landavis, and Ai Guan, from Cheol Uitang. We are most lucky that they happened to be passing through Olumdali at this time and are available to lend a hand.’

‘The storm is an obstruction,’ Ai said. ‘We can’t move on without helping deal with it.’

‘The northman I can understand,’ Tse said, ‘but there’s no way the other one is Gifted. She’s clearly a Romar. No god has Gifted a Romar since–’

He stopped as Ai lifted her hand. Sitting in her palm was a ball of light which shone bright enough that everyone had to look away from it after a second. Ai flicked her wrist and the light went out. ‘Whatever may be the case historically,’ she said, ‘I am Gifted, so one of the gods must have decided that it has been long enough since the last Gifted Romar.’ She noticed a small nod from Yuen; that one seemed to agree.

‘I hope you can do more than produce light.’ Tse was not to be convinced, it seemed.

‘The pack of night wolves she killed in one strike and the ice dragon ghost she put to rest could tell you of her strength,’ Rika said, ‘if they could tell you anything at all. Ai is a capable swordswoman and a powerful Gifted. All I can do is hit things very hard with my axe.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘Let us eat,’ Namgung said, hoping to break the tension. ‘I, for one, am starving.’

Ai found that difficult to believe. The man could probably survive a month on his body fat alone. ‘Food would be good,’ she said.

‘I’m glad to hear that because I have laid on quite the feast. Eat your fill, please.’

~~~

‘I think I’m going to explode,’ Rika said. She flopped onto the bed in their rooms and, for once, did not look like she had plans to ravish Ai.

‘You should have paced yourself more,’ Ai said, though she felt a little full herself.

‘It was all so good.’

‘When you’re a noble, you can eat that way. I’m sure there are a fleet of chefs in the kitchen producing Lord Namgung’s meals for him.’

‘It does explain why he’s so fat.’

‘No, I think that’s just his inclination. I can’t say I’m looking forward to a carriage journey with the swordsman.’

‘Huh. Eight days with him griping about you being a Romar. No, it’s probably not going to be too much fun.’

‘I can’t imagine he can keep it up for eight days.’ Ai looked down to see Rika looking at her. ‘Well, I can live in hope.’

5th Day of Chige.

The city of Olumdali was kind of uninteresting. The lord’s mansion was a stone building set in walled grounds, but the majority of the construction in the city – seen through a carriage window as they made their way out through the streets – was wood. It made sense. If you went due south from Olumdali, you would eventually find yourself on the edge of the Ubervaltigent Forest. That was a pretty good source of wood, so the city was mostly built of wood.

The stone for the outer wall had clearly been taken from the Tiankong Mountains, however. It was dark and somewhat foreboding. Ai was not particularly sorry to see it behind them, but less happy to be stuck in a carriage with Dae-Seong Tse.

On the other hand, he did not seem to be especially pleased to be there either, but he was keeping his mouth shut for now. Not that anyone was saying anything much. Rika had closed her eyes as soon as the city gate was behind them and, faced with Tse’s disapproving stare, Ai did the same. She had slept just fine, but the rocking of the carriage – it had amazing suspension – was enough to make her nod off until lunch.

~~~

After a lunch which could best be described as basic, Tse insisted on a short break while he went through a couple of sword drills. He said he would get fat if he ate well and then sat on his behind all day. It was arguable whether they had eaten well, but it was probably not a totally unreasonable statement.

Ai decided that, since she had been neglecting her own forms on the journey, she would do the same. So, in a field at the side of the road, she began gliding through her normal drill with first Rika, and then Rika and Yuen watching. Nearby, Tse could be heard grunting and yelling as he went through his sequences.

‘I don’t do anything like this,’ Yuen said. ‘When I train, I just shoot arrows at targets.’

‘Me neither,’ Rika replied. ‘It’s not like I have formal training. I am just good at hitting things with an axe.’

‘What you have is not an axe. I don’t think it’s a polearm, but “axe” simply does not do it justice.’

‘I am going to take that as a compliment. I lack grace. I make up for it with power.’

‘There is a place for both in combat. She has grace.’

‘That is where my argument falls down. She has power to go with it.’

‘We cannot all be perfect.’

‘True…’

7th Day of Chige.

The lunchtime drills became a thing. Ai could not complain. On the first day, she had thought herself a little rusty, so she had put in more effort on the next day, and she had been happy with the results.

On the third day, the sound of Tse’s loud training had not accompanied Ai’s drill. She had wondered why in the back of her mind, but she had been focused on what she was doing. In combat, her awareness was on anything other than herself, but when doing the formal drill, she was only really aware of her own body and how it was moving.

She came to an end and found that she was being watched by more than just Rika and Yuen. Tse was watching, and so were the driver and footman who were handling the carriage, though the latter were doing so from afar while appearing to do their job.

‘You have good form,’ Tse said, which surprised more or less everyone, possibly including Tse himself.

‘Thank you,’ Ai replied.

‘Is that Romar Battle Form? I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone using the pure form before.’

‘It is. However, my grandfather encouraged me to use my own variations in combat, should I find them effective. When fighting, I do not stick to the pure form.’

‘She is a lot more acrobatic,’ Rika said.

‘Yes. I am quite nimble, so I utilise more acrobatic moves to augment my movements and increase my attack power.’

‘I think every warrior eventually deviates from the basic training they’ve received. It makes sense to adapt a style to your needs as you gain experience.’

‘And I just make it up as I go along anyway,’ Rika said.

‘That makes you less predictable.’

Tse gave a shrug. ‘As long as it works…’

8th Day of Chige.

After that, things improved a little in the carriage. There was conversation. Not much conversation, but the silence was broken. Tse was not exactly a great conversationalist anyway and mostly spoke about his great deeds. He had defeated a noted bandit warlord in the north of the country, along with his fifty men. He had killed a monster which had been plaguing villages near the forest in the south. Monsters coming out of the forest were not entirely uncommon; Yuen had killed three, though they had not been as large as the one Tse had killed, assuming you believed Tse.

The swordsman was in the middle of recounting a tale about killing three Gifted bandits in the east when the world turned upside down. Not entirely upside down, but the sudden lurch ending with the carriage lying at a very weird angle resulted in Ai landing on top of Rika, and Yuen landing atop Tse. Ai was happy that it had not been the other way around. Yuen did not look especially pleased with the arrangement, but probably would have liked it less if the carriage had lurched the other way.

‘Were we attacked?!’ Tse asked, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

‘No,’ Rika said, ‘one of the wheels has broken.’

Ai was already clambering out of one of the windows, so she was the first to find out that that was not quite true either. The left rear wheel had not broken, but it had come off its axle. The driver and footman were busy picking themselves up off the grass at the side of the road, the footman heading for the horses to calm them. The driver…

‘Ah! The pin’s broken. I have a spare in the toolbox, and the wheel looks undamaged. But there’s no way we can get the wheel back on out here! It will take a day to get help back here to raise the carriage and Lord Namgung was very clear that there could be no delays. Oh…’

‘Perhaps if we all work together,’ Yuen said, ‘we can lift the carriage.’

‘It’s heavy and difficult to position people around,’ Tse said. ‘It would be very difficult to make it work.’ Ai suspected he just did not want to try.

Rika, meanwhile, was examining the situation. ‘To be clear, if we can lift the carriage, you can get the wheel back on and we will be good?’

The driver looked at her briefly and then nodded. ‘With a little help, we can reposition the wheel and then it’s just a case of knocking the new pin in.’

‘I got about half of that, but okay.’ She walked to the back of the carriage near the fallen axle. ‘I am not holding this up for any longer than I have to, so get everything ready. Can we take the luggage down until it is done?’

‘You’re not serious,’ Tse said. ‘One person can’t–’

‘My Gift, such as it is, is basically being strong and tough. I can lift it. I just do not want to lift it for any longer than I have to.’

‘She can do it,’ Ai said. ‘I’ll start getting the luggage down.’ She made a point of going to the back of the carriage to climb up to the roof where the luggage was stored because that gave her the opportunity to whisper to Rika. ‘You can do this, right?’

‘Guess we’ll find out.’

~~~

‘I do not want to be hit by an axe you have swung,’ Yuen said after they were back on the road.

Rika grinned. ‘It is not like I was lifting the whole carriage. Just a corner.’ The carriage was built to carry nobles. It was very solid, even overconstructed. Rika had managed it without breaking a sweat.

‘It was still a respectable feat of strength, and it got us moving again rather than stuck here for a day,’ Tse said. ‘You have my gratitude, northman.’

‘Then call me Rika.’

Tse bowed his head in acknowledgement. ‘As you wish, Rika.’

And that was another barrier broken.

10th Day of Chige.

No one was performing drills today. Instead, they were looking out at the eastern horizon where dark clouds loomed ahead of them, clearly visible in the distance despite them being two days from Gillesso and even further from where the storm dragon was supposed to be.

‘I have seen storms,’ Rika said, ‘but that looks bad.’

‘Even for Wangguo,’ Yuen said, ‘it is extreme. There have been reports of winds uprooting trees and continuous lightning bursts for hours.’

‘What’s happened to the people living there?’ Ai asked.

‘Some evacuated as the storm expanded.’

‘Many are trapped or dead,’ Tse said.

As they watched, the clouds lit up as lightning blasted across the sky. You could not see the individual flashes from here, but you could see the clouds glowing for an instant. There was no sound, not even a minute or so later, but you got the feeling that you could sense it pressing at your body. This was no natural storm, that was for sure.

‘The sooner we get there and deal with this thing, the better,’ Ai said.

‘Getting there is half the problem,’ Tse said. ‘That storm is not going to make it easy for us.’

‘We must find a way. Perhaps one of the other Gifted can do something.’

‘Perhaps. If not, we are going to be in a lot of trouble.’

14th Day of Chige.

The carriage pulled to a stop at the western gate of Gillesso in the middle of the morning. The guards there ushered them on to the local lord’s manor immediately, not even bothering to check who was inside the carriage. It seemed that things were getting tense as the storm expanded its coverage, creeping ever closer to the city every day.

Despite this, they were shown to rooms to recover from their journey and left to their own devices. Matters were urgent, but not that urgent, and there were still Gifted expected to arrive from other places. There would be a meeting once everyone was there.

When that meeting came, the first thing anyone asked was: ‘How do we actually plan to get through the storm?’ It was Tse who did the asking. Apparently, of the Gifted gathered there, he was one of the most well known, a bit of a celebrity.

‘In this we have great fortune,’ Lord Jiang of Gillesso replied. ‘Lady Xie has come through the storm to gather Gifted from this side and take them in.’ He gestured to a woman in a long tight gown decorated with cloud patterns in silver over black.

Lady Xie stepped forward. She was a beautiful woman, though her looks were marred by the very serious expression she was wearing. Blonde and blue-eyed, she could have been at home in the presence of nobility. Perhaps her title was more than just a measure of respect, but she looked like a noble lady with her hair rolled into a bun at the back of her head, held in place by gold pins. ‘I was able to suppress the storm over a small area, though it was not easy. The dragon’s control is strong, and the effort was considerable. It will not be easy to get through, but we can do it.’

‘What was it like in there?’ asked another of the Gifted present. He was a lithe man, another bow-wielder, though his speciality was, apparently, controlling plants. He had been the last to arrive since he spent much of his time on the nation’s southern border, in the Ubervaltigent Forest. He was of generally dark colouration, much like Ai, though he was not of Romar decent. Or, if he was, it was very distant. He looked like someone from Wangguo. His name was Jianhong Jin.

‘It was… the worst storm I have ever seen. The winds were strong, but not uncontrollable. The lightning is another matter. I had to take shelter at times because the bursts were too much. We will likely have to do the same. And I skirted the storm to get here, not passing through the centre. It will be worse the closer we get to the dragon. There is extensive damage. Entire villages are gone. Towns are nothing but walls. Even some of the walls have been destroyed by lightning strikes.’

‘Are you sure we can get to the centre?’ asked Guanyu Zhou. He was a redhead, heavily built, and known for using a spear from which he could through bolts of lightning.

‘I think we can. We must. Master Zhou, you are able to control lightning, are you not?’

‘I am, though I don’t know whether I’ll be able to ease our passage. I’ll try when we need it.’

‘Good. Our plan is to meet the Gifted from the east at a prearranged location. I know where that is. Another weather controller will be bringing those Gifted through. The capital will just have to do without its sunshine for a few days.’

‘A great inconvenience, I’m sure,’ Lord Jiang said.

‘To hear some speak, it is. Now, after we have found the creature, I will become of little use. It will be up to you and the others to deal with the beast.’

‘We need some sort of plan,’ Tse said. ‘Do you know who will be with us from the east?’

‘Most of them. I’ll go through the list and we can make plans, but I fear that the only real strategy will be brute force.’

‘Now that is my kind of plan,’ Rika said. ‘I’ve never killed a dragon before. This should be quite the experience.’

‘Yes,’ Lady Xie said, ‘if you survive to tell the tale.’

~~~

‘Do you think we can really do this?’ Ai asked. She was in bed beside Rika who had taken the last chance for sex they were likely to have in the next few days.

‘Kill the dragon? I have no idea. In the legends, it took great heroes to slay dragons. I guess we have a lot of lesser heroes…’

‘I’ve heard those legends too. It’s always one almighty hero that kills the dragon. Of course, they are legends and those tend to be exaggerated. I suppose we won’t know until we find the thing and try.’

‘Even if we just make it inconvenient enough that it leaves, we can count it as a win.’

‘I suppose that’s true… Well, let’s just hope it’s a dragon with thin skin. Though, if it was, maybe we wouldn’t have much trouble killing it.’

15th Day of Chige.

Thirty people set off from Gillesso the following morning, bright and early. Twelve of them were Gifted, the other eighteen were troops providing a guard – though Ai was unsure why – and a cart team with food and other necessities who would likely have to stop part way through and go back. At that point, it seemed likely that the soldiers would become packhorses, at least until they could not go on either.

They were walking despite complaints from various of the Gifted. Ai and Rika did not care since they walked everywhere anyway, but several of the Wangguo Gifted seemed to be rather used to luxury, if a carriage could be called luxurious. Rika seemed to think carriages were the height of decadence.

‘Carriages make you soft,’ she said. ‘Plus, walking improves your leg muscles.’

‘And makes your feet tired,’ Ai said.

‘Well, there is that, but to listen to some of this lot, walking will wear their legs down to stumps.’

‘You never can tell with nobles. Maybe it will.’ She said that in Norsweka. It was not a certainty that the nobles in question would not understand it, but it was a fair bet.

One certainly could not. ‘Speak a civilised tongue if you’re going to be around us.’ His name was Ji-Min Tsang. Exactly what sort of Gifted he was, Ai did not know, but he was arrogant and wore a sword.

‘My friend’s Malhada is not sufficient to express everything she wishes to,’ Ai said. ‘Since I speak Norsweka, she resorts to that when required. No offence is meant. What she said was for my ears anyway.’

‘Why we have a northman and a Romar with us at all is beyond me.’

‘Because you need all the help you can get. I thought that was a given.’

‘Hmph.’

‘Arrogant and bigoted,’ Rika said in Norsweka. ‘Why we need someone like that with us, I don’t know.’

‘Because we need all the help we can get?’

‘Doesn’t seem worth it.’

‘At least he isn’t complaining about walking.’

‘Even turds can have their good points, I suppose.’

~~~

Even if they were walking, they could spend the night in a village with an inn. The soldiers and teamsters were sleeping in the stables, but there were rooms enough for everyone else to have a bed, even if they had to share.

After a passable meal – though again there were complaints – Ai went out to stand in front of the inn with a tankard of thin ale and look up at the night sky. There were stars visible through clear patches in the clouds. Ai could make out a couple of constellations. There was Jiansushi, the Creator. There was Snyor, the Snow King. Rom’s constellation was not visible, and neither was Fengbow’s. Somehow, not being able to see the Lord of Storms’ constellations seemed inauspicious. What were the astrologers saying about all this? Had anyone predicted the return of a storm dragon after millennia?

‘The wind’s getting stronger,’ Rika noted as she stepped up beside Ai.

‘It is fall. One would expect stronger winds.’

‘Yes, but–’

‘But it’s getting stronger the closer we get to our destination. I think we’ll have to leave the carts behind soon. Perhaps tomorrow night the decision will be made that we should go on without. We’ll be under the storm by the following morning.’

Rika nodded. ‘Sooner if it’s expanding as they say it is.’

‘I wonder if there’s a limit.’

‘Limit?’

‘To how big it can get.’

‘Um… There has to be, right? It’s one dragon, not a god.’

‘I don’t know. In the legends–’

‘Like you said, the legends exaggerate.’

‘Well, let’s hope so.’

17th Day of Chige.

The carts stayed with them until the end of the third day. By then, the sky was black with cloud, turning day into night, and the greatest source of light was the bursts of lightning high up in the atmosphere. Thankfully, the lightning was staying in the clouds for now, but the wind was gusting stronger and spooking the horses. Or something was spooking the horses and it was possibly the weather.

The village they came to that night was almost deserted. Most of the people had evacuated west, but the innkeeper was still there, at least for one more day. There were few rooms to stay in, but when it came down to it, no one seemed to want to use them. As the wind howled around the building after dark, everyone sat in the taproom nursing ale mugs.

‘There is something oppressive about this storm,’ Yuen the archer said. ‘I do not think the horses are afraid of the storm itself.’

‘It’s a storm,’ Tse said.

‘No, it’s more than that,’ Lady Xie said. ‘Shui is right, there is something oppressive in it. Something beyond the natural. I have seen many storms in my time, but none like this.’

‘Have any of the royal astrologers said anything about it?’ Ai asked, remembering her thoughts from the first night.

‘No one predicted it. Since it began, they have been trying to divine more about it, but none seem able to gather any information about it. They say they don’t have enough detail on its source to make informed predictions. Word has been sent to the Grand Observatory on Mount Estellaris, but there has been no reply as yet.’

‘I see.’

‘Sounds like they’re making excuses for their failure,’ Tse said.

‘Perhaps. Astrology has its own rules, however. Without precise knowledge of the dragon, it may be difficult to predict its actions. Still, that there was no sign of this before it began seems…’ Xie shook her head. ‘We must work with what we have, however little that is.’

‘How many people have seen this dragon?’ This was Seong Pei, a man with light-brown hair and green eyes and Gifts which came from Ho, the God of Justice. Ho was also known as the Cleansing Fire, and Ai did not really trust the man though she was not quite sure why.

‘We have reports from seven eye witnesses, though not all of those are entirely reliable. All describe it as very large. A massive lizard with wings and four legs. Lightning could be seen dancing across its scales. No one has seen it close up. Or no one who lived to tell about it has.’

‘So, we can expect it to use lightning as a weapon.’

‘That seems likely. We will evaluate it when we see it, but I suspect surprise will be important in any attempt we make to kill it.’

‘I am not inclined to sneak attacks.’

‘Then you had best stay back and let the rest of us deal with it,’ Rika said. ‘We will need every advantage we can get to beat it.’

Pei sneered. ‘I would expect nothing less from–’

‘Miss Moen is right,’ Xie said. ‘Let us not fool ourselves, anyone who faces this beast head-on is likely to die a most horrible death before they can scratch its scales. No one has fought a true dragon since the Mythic Age. Great heroes lived in those times, if the legends are to be believed, and even they had to fight hard to kill dragons. If we do not utilise every tactic available, we will all die, and the country will likely follow us.’

20th Day of Chige.

It was slow going. Lady Xie had sent the troops back to Gillesso after another two days because she had to concentrate on keeping the worst of the weather back, and was unable to do so in the usual, fairly large, area she could control. Instead, she narrowed her focus to the immediate area around the party, slowing the winds to something manageable and keeping the lightning from striking near them.

They walked under perpetually dark skies, lit only by lightning, and found only deserted towns and villages to rest in at night. Sleeping in stables and barns was not ideal, but it was better than being out in the open, and it gave Lady Xie a chance to rest. She was exhausted by her efforts and fell into sleep as soon as she had eaten. The rest of the party mounted watches, though it was doubtful that was much use given that the only person who could see anything was Ai. It was also doubtful that it was needed since even the animals seemed to have left the area beneath the growing storm.

Rika stood watch with Ai when it came time to do so. The watches were being divided so that everyone got a full night’s rest every few days, but for some strange reason, the foreigners were last on the list for such a night. Neither Rika nor Ai really cared; sleep was not easy to come by when it came time to sleep. Without Xie to calm it, the wind howled around whatever building they were in, and there was the constant bombardment of thunder as lightning split the air both close by and far away.

‘It’s going to take days to get to the centre of the storm,’ Rika said.

‘Yes. Your Malhada is improving.’

‘It is? That came out of nowhere.’

‘I don’t want to talk about how desperate our situation is. If Lady Xie is having difficulty here, what strain is she going to be under by the time we make it to our destination?’

‘You think she’ll break before then?’

‘That I don’t know. We will meet up with the other Gifted before then. Hopefully, if she can share the burden with another, the two together will be able to hold back the worst of the storm.’

‘You’re right, let’s not talk about that. Um… I spy with my keen eye, something beginning with C.’

Ai grinned. ‘Clouds.’

‘Too easy?’

‘In this light, clouds are about the only thing you can see. I spy with my keen eye, something beginning with B.’

Rika looked around at the darkness. ‘I have no idea.’

‘Barrel.’

‘There’s a barrel?’

‘My point precisely.’

22nd Day of Chige.

There was something in the storm. Ai spotted them first for the simple reason that none of the others could see very much at all. Dark shapes were flying beneath the clouds, black on black. They looked like birds, but they had to be big birds if she could see them so distinctly against the clouds. She moved closer to Lady Xie.

‘What are those?’ she asked, pointing upward.

‘Those? I don’t…’ The normally elegant and now rather bedraggled lady squinted at the sky in the direction Ai was pointing.

‘They look like birds. Big black birds.’

The cloud they were looking at suddenly rippled with light as lightning burst through it. Highlighted against that light, winged shapes took form. There were a couple of gasps from those around them who had heard Ai’s question and were also looking.

‘Thunder birds,’ Xie said. ‘They are rarely seen outside the mountains, but large storms will cause them to fly out. This is a very large storm.’

‘Are they dangerous? They’re about the only animal I’ve seen in the past two days.’

‘They are,’ Jianhong Jin, the plant controller, said. ‘They come into the forest from time to time, when the weather turns bad. They can produce claps of thunder from their wings. Their claws and beak are sharp. They are carnivores, and easily the size of a bear without taking their wings into account.’

‘Why aren’t they scared of the storm?’ Rika asked.

‘Because they actually absorb lightning when it hits them. It heals them and, to some extent, feeds them. It’s possible that without it they can’t make thunder, but no one is sure.’

‘Probably best to avoid them then.’

‘If we can. If they spot us, and their eyesight is exceptional, even in low light, they are likely to attack. There’s not much in the way of food around because, as Miss Guan said, the other creatures have fled.’

As they watched, one of the birds was struck by no less than two bolts of lightning. The twin strikes combined to leave the bird as one, hitting the ground below some distance away and, five seconds later, thunder crashed around them. The bird kept flying as though nothing had happened.

‘I don’t want to fight that,’ Rika said.

‘Then let us hope our luck holds out,’ Lady Xie said. She looked back to Ai. ‘Please keep your eyes on the sky, Miss Guan. You may be the first to notice one of them if we are to be attacked.’

‘I don’t think I can keep my eyes off them now,’ Ai replied.

‘That probably goes for all of us,’ Rika said.

There were mutterings of agreement from all around. The difficult journey had just become harder. No one was happy about that.

23rd Day of Chige.

They had taken shelter for the night in a barn. It had stone walls and, as such, was one of the few buildings in that particular village left standing. Even it had taken damage; a lightning bolt had struck near the apex of the roof at one of the gable ends resulting in a hole which allowed water to pour in. The other end was dry, and it was out of the wind. People got what sleep they could and looked almost the worse for it.

You could tell when Lady Xie had had her breakfast and was fully awake because the wind died away and the lightning backed off. For the past several nights, no one had mounted a watch outside whatever building they were sheltering in. It was too dangerous. Without Xie’s protection, there was every chance of being struck by lightning or hit by flying debris. It was too dark outside anyway, and the only creatures anyone had seen for days were the thunder birds which were keeping themselves to the core of the storm.

And that was probably why, when Ai went outside to check their surroundings, she found two of the massive birds perched on the remains of a building perhaps two hundred paces from the barn. They were, as had been described, as big as a bear, and that was just the body. Behind that was a long tail, thin now, but there was a suggestion that it fanned out in flight. A large head equipped with a hawklike bill was mounted on a long, snaking neck. Their wings were furled, so there was no way to judge their size, but they had to be big to support something that size. Their feathers were jet black with a sheen which made them reflect the light from the lightning in the clouds. Large black eyes watched everything; Ai stepped back inside before she was seen.

‘There are two thunder birds outside,’ she said. ‘They may not know we’re here, but there is little chance of us leaving without them seeing us.’

‘Then we should go through them,’ Tse said. ‘We have a plan for this.’

‘I am not disagreeing. If we are quick, however, we may be able to do them some damage before they know we are here.’

‘Tactically sound. Archers?’

Ai nodded. ‘Since they are birds, I believe Miss Yuen’s skills may be of considerable use.’

‘How far away are they?’ Yuen asked. ‘And how close together?’

‘About two hundred paces and they are sitting on the remains of two buildings, maybe twenty paces apart.’

‘Hm. Too far to get them together. I can probably down one. Maybe not dead but hurt and disabled temporarily. I should be able to hit the second before it can close the distance.’

‘The rest of us will take care of them once they are grounded.’

‘They prefer fighting on the ground,’ Jin said. ‘They will fly to close the distance, but they will fight on the ground. They can’t use their thunder trick in flight. Well, not without falling out of the sky. They will pounce on a target with their talons from flight. You do not want to be hit with those claws.’

‘I saw them,’ Ai said, ‘and you are right.’ The birds had quite heavy, strong legs ending in talons which had to be as long as Ai’s thighs. They looked like they would rip you open very easily.

A group of four had been designated to guard Lady Xie, so they remained in the barn with her. Among them were Sang-Hun Tian, who could create magical shields that were said to be impenetrable around himself and others, and Kun Tang, one of the archers. The latter was excluded from fighting the birds, except as a last resort, because his main Gift was the production of bolts of lightning from his bow. Lightning was the last thing they wanted near a thunder bird.

Everyone else prepared to attack the birds, but it was Ai and Yuen who went out first, Ai to point the creatures out, and Yuen to shoot them.

Ai pointed. ‘Do you see them?’

Yuen narrowed her eyes and looked out into the near-night day. ‘I…’ Lightning flared across the sky. ‘Yes.’ Then, without taking an arrow from the quiver at her right hip, she drew her bow. A shaft of light appeared where the arrow should have been, but Yuen did not loose it, not yet. Her body seemed to relax as she stilled her mind and prepared to fire. The range was long, even for someone of her skill and a target of that size, so she used all of her skill to prepare the shot. Then, when the next burst of lightning illuminated the scene, she fired. The arrow of light crossed the distance to the target bird in less than a second, striking it in the chest. Then it exploded into a swirl of dancing light streams, curling around the bird like a small tornado. The bird’s wings unfurled as it fought to keep its balance. It succeeded, but it was clear from the way it was moving that Yuen’s arrow had caused it some difficulty.

‘Here comes the other one,’ Ai said. ‘Everyone get ready.’

The bird’s flight was not enormously fast. It jumped from its perch and began flapping its way across the intervening space, ignoring the plight of its compatriot. Another bolt of light appeared in Yuen’s drawn bow. She waited a few seconds for it to get closer, and then fired. The bird wheeled to the right in an acrobatic manoeuvre which Ai thought such a creature should not be capable of, and the light arrow passed it by. Quickly, Yuen formed another arrow. Behind her, the others were moving out of the barn and arraying themselves along the wall, ready to fight. A second arrow arced toward the oncoming bird, and this time its aerobatics availed it not; the arrow struck the beast and wind swirled around it. Somehow, it stayed in the air, but its flight speed dropped and, apparently deciding that this food was too much trouble, it suddenly lifted higher and began to flap away.

‘They are both leaving,’ Ai said.

‘Bring them down,’ Tse said. ‘We–’

‘Why?’ Ai asked. ‘If we engage in close combat, someone will be hurt. We need our strength for the dragon.’

‘If we let them live, they may return to try again.’

‘Those ones will avoid us,’ Jin said. He was the one with the most experience of thunder birds, so his voice carried weight. ‘They are not especially intelligent, but they learn. They will avoid us. The same cannot be said of others.’

‘Hmph,’ Tse said, but he did not press the matter. ‘We should get moving then. Hopefully we can get to our destination before more try their luck.’

24th Day of Chige.

The next attack came without warning. One minute the party was walking along a track toward the next ruined village, the next a thunder bird landed right in front of them, its claws lashing out to strike Rika, raking her stomach. Rika let out a yelp and took a step back. Three red lines marred her excellent abs.

Before anyone else could react, the bird’s wings swept forward, coming together before it in a clap which sounded like thunder. A blast of air blasted through the centre of the party’s formation. The effects were explosive. Rika and Ai were spared because, being more or less under the beast, the wind did not hit them, but Tse, immediately behind them, was hit full in the face and thrown backward several paces to land in a crumpled heap on the ground. Others behind him were similarly hurt and thrown about. Lady Xie, several paces back in the party, was thrown less distance as the power of the wind subsided. She kept her balance, and her concentration, but she was hurt along with most of the party in the rear.

Stopping the bird doing that again was of primary concern. Ai’s sword was in her hand and slashing in an instant. Her blade carved through the bird’s left wing near the shoulder joint, cutting flesh and sinew, and the wing flopped to one side accompanied by a shriek from the bird. Dragging its wing, it shifted so that it could rake at Ai with a taloned foot. Ai rolled away from the blow, turned, and slashed at the bird’s extended leg. Again, her blade sliced deeply and, when it tried to stand on that leg, it fell, unable to hold its own weight.

Rika let out a roar and brought her axe down on the fallen bird’s neck before it could do anything about it. The blow cleaved right through the monster bird’s spine. Its head flopped to the ground without even another squawk.

‘And that is what you get for scratching my perfect abs,’ Rika said to the dead bird. Only Ai understood since she used Norsweka.

‘Are you okay?’ Ai asked.

‘Just a scratch. Uh, three scratches. They’ll heal in no time.’

Ai shook her head. ‘A giant bird tries to disembowel you and all it leaves are scratches.’

‘I’m tough. Let’s see to the others.’

It was something of a disaster. Not everyone was injured because the blast had been conical, and some had been outside of the cone. No one was dead, but there were a lot of serious injuries. As with Rika, Tian was basically unhurt. He could generate shields of magic, but he was always protected by some sort of reactive field and it had blocked the wind. He had been tossed back several paces by the impact, however.

‘We need to find shelter,’ Lady Xie said. She was clearly in pain. ‘I am not sure how long I can maintain my control, and we need to treat the injured.’

‘Right,’ Rika said. Stepping forward, she swept the lady up into her arms. ‘You just keep us safe from the storm. I will carry you to the next village.’

‘Th-this is a little embarrassing,’ Xie said, ‘but thank you.’

‘We should get moving. This will slow us down. We will lose the rest of the day.’

‘Yes, but it cannot be helped. We are probably four days from the meeting point. We will be slower if we cannot help those who have been hurt.’

‘Let us hope that there are no more encounters like this one. It almost cut my breastband. Now that would have been embarrassing.’

~~~

First aid could only do so much. When everyone who needed it had been treated, there were still some that were moving with difficulty. It was decided that they should all rest for the night with the five uninjured people taking the watches.

Pei, the fire Gifted, was not happy. He had been injured. He wanted someone to blame. ‘Why did you not see the creature coming?!’ he snapped at Ai.

Before Ai could answer, Yuen took up her defence. ‘Why didn’t you?’ The archer had taken a glancing blow. Her left arm was injured. Not badly enough to stop her using her bow, but it would likely affect her aim.

‘What? I cannot see such things in this light.’

‘No, only Miss Guan can, but she only has one pair of eyes. Could you maintain a watch on the entire sky while walking? I think not. We were ambushed by a flying monster. Keep your recriminations to yourself, or do you think your patron god would consider lashing out at someone who was not to blame to be justice?’

Pei glared at her, then at Ai, and then he walked off to a different part of the building. They had found an inn which was intact aside from a couple of the doors having come off their hinges. There were plenty of places to be.

‘Thank you,’ Ai said.

Yuen gave a shrug, then winced. ‘I would have liked it if you had seen it before it attacked, but there is no point in blaming you for missing it. Pei is prejudiced against Romar. Perhaps I am too, but less so. Still, you were not to blame, and you stopped it striking again before your friend killed it. We all might be in far worse condition if you had acted with less decision.’

Ai gave a small smile. ‘Thank you. I just wish we had a healer with us.’

‘When we meet with the others,’ Lady Xie said, ‘there will be a healer with them. Assuming, of course, that they have all survived getting here.’

‘That is a cheery thought,’ Rika said.

‘Mm, and yet I find my mind drifting to negative outcomes this afternoon.’

‘Yes, well, I think we are all like that.’

29th Day of Chige.

By some skill and some luck, they managed to make it to the rendezvous point without any further damage. It was a small town, fairly close to the storm’s centre, and there were few intact buildings in it. Anything wooden was just gone, swept away by constant gales. Several of the stone buildings had been more or less destroyed by lightning strikes, but the inn was intact aside from no longer having a roof. It had two floors, and what remained of the party from the east was waiting there, on the ground floor, for the western party.

It was not looking good. There were fewer of them than Lady Xie was expecting. Those present looked healthy, but their healer, Seung Ren, was looking tired.

‘We started out with fifteen,’ Guiying Chou, their weather controller, explained. ‘Three were killed when thunder birds attacked. Several more were injured. We… We lost Lei Leung in that attack.’

There were several gasps from the newly arrived party. Neither Ai nor Rika had a clue who the man was, so it was a good thing that someone decided to list his virtues.

‘But he was the Invincible Knight!’ Tse said. ‘He was undefeated in combat. None could break his defences and his skill with a sword–’

‘Availed him not when he was caught by surprise and had a talon driven through his heart.’ The speaker was a tall woman, built a little like Rika, but with just a bit more elegance and a lot more clothing. She was Xinyi Zheng, known as the Iceblade War Maiden. ‘His loss will be felt when we reach the dragon. It is not the manner in which he died which concerns me, however. Our other two friends died to something else, something none of us have seen before.’

‘What kind of thing?’ Lady Xie asked.

‘It looked something like a jellyfish,’ Chou said. ‘It had a hood of some sort of watery substance and three limbs hanging beneath. It floated above the ground. The limbs could lash out to strike with lightning, and touching any part of it caused lightning to arc to your body. Metal weapons are just conductors to kill you faster; they leave barely a mark upon the thing.’

‘Fortunately,’ Zheng said, ‘cold seems to affect them greatly. Unfortunately, I am the only one able to use cold as a weapon.’

‘No,’ Xie said, ‘we also have Miss Guan.’

Everyone’s eyes turned toward Ai. A lot of the looks she got were disapproving, despite the fact that she was being called out as a potential saviour against the jellyfish monsters. ‘I can wield cold in some manner,’ she said. ‘Perhaps Miss Yuen can be of use too. Her arrows produce a region of low pressure which may disrupt them more than ordinary arrows or blades.’

‘I can try, if we meet one,’ Yuen said.

‘We will meet them,’ Zheng said. ‘We have seen more of them as we got closer. You are lucky that you have not met one already. How did you escape more injury from the birds?’

‘Miss Guan can see well, even in this low light,’ Lady Xie said. ‘She cannot have her eyes everywhere, but she has prevented more than one attack which would have hurt us. We have had to be more cautious for the last three days anyway. It is getting very difficult to maintain control over even a small area of the storm.’

Chou nodded. ‘It takes all my strength to keep it back. Working together, we may have more control, but…’

‘It is maybe two days’ travel to the storm’s centre,’ Zheng said. ‘It will not be easier, and you will probably find it harder the closer we get. And there will almost certainly be more creatures. We decided to call them storm elementals, and we expect to be seeing a lot more of them before we are done.’

‘With only two, perhaps three, people able to fight them,’ Xie said, ‘that will be a very large problem.’

‘Perhaps a greater problem is that we have seen no sign of the dragon since we arrived here yesterday,’ Chou said. ‘It is, perhaps, too early, but such a large creature… I would expect to be able to see it, at least occasionally, from here.’

‘And there has been nothing?’ Rika asked.

‘No sign at all. We have identified what we think is the very centre of the storm. According to the maps, it is a small town with a castle in the centre, founded by the Cao clan.’

‘As in Lord Kai Cao?’ Tse asked.

‘The same.’

‘I was expecting to see him here. He would be a powerful ally in this battle.’

‘Lord Cao has not been seen for over a month,’ Zheng said. ‘You are right. His powers over the storm are second to none. He may be the only one able to take on this dragon alone, but he is missing. It is possible that he has already tried, and failed, to defeat the dragon which seems to have taken up residence in his hometown.’

‘If he fell before it…’

‘If he fell, we must not. No matter what, we must fight on and drive this monster off. It is a command from the king, but more than that, should we fail, there will be no country for us to call home.’

‘We should continue the journey as soon as our newcomers have rested,’ Chou said. ‘Lady Xie and I will keep the storm at bay. It will be up to the rest of you to keep anything else back.’ His gaze shifted to Ai once again. ‘It seems we will be relying on you to spot trouble coming.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ Ai replied.

The look she got back suggested that Chou was not expecting much from that.

~~~

‘Three of them,’ Ai said. ‘They’ve seen us, and they are wheeling this way.’

‘Everyone take cover,’ Zheng called out. ‘Archers forward. Shields to Lady Xie and Master Chou.’

Zheng had more or less taken command of the entire party. Ai did not particularly mind because, having demonstrated that she could spot the thunder birds before they attacked, Zheng was treating her as a valuable asset rather than something which she might have to scrape off her heel. The Romar were not well-liked in Wangguo, but even here their treatment was variable. It seemed that anyone who proved themselves useful was just a person to Zheng. Their ethnicity really did not matter.

The approach of the three birds Ai had spotted was not fast. A couple of arrows were fired when they were more than two hundred paces away, and one of the birds dropped out of the charge, apparently not liking being hit with one of the projectiles. Then Yuen hit a second with one of her magic arrows and it went down hard. The last of them seemed to spot this and, before Yuen could hit it, it banked upward and away.

‘Clear,’ Ai said.

‘We will move over to where that bird fell,’ Zheng said. It was off the road, but not too far. The going would be rough but not a problem. ‘It hasn’t risen up yet, but it might still be a threat. Well done, all of you. An attack such as that is what cost us three of our best.’

Ai said nothing. She was just doing her job.

The bird had broken one of its wings falling out of the sky. One of its legs was not working well either. It stumbled toward the approaching group, angry and determined to cause hurt, but it was outgunned without its wing attack. Yuen caught it with another arrow which dropped it to the ground before it could get within range to use its beak. Then Rika brought her axe down on its neck.

‘Light meat,’ she said, ‘or dark?’

‘I don’t think I want either,’ Ai replied. ‘Are they edible?’ she asked Jin.

‘I don’t think anyone has ever tried,’ he replied. ‘I, for one, will not be making the first attempt.’

‘Shame,’ Rika said. ‘There is a lot of meat there.’ Her nose wrinkled. ‘Though I am not sure I like the smell of its blood. I do not think I will be trying it either.’

‘Let’s move on,’ Zheng said. ‘We have a long way to go yet. Miss Guan, we’re counting on you.’

Ai nodded. ‘I am watching.’ There were certainly enough birds to keep an eye on, and now she had to split her attention since there could be other things closer to the ground. She had yet to see one of the storm elementals, but it could only be a matter of time.

30th Day of Chige.

Ai did not get to see a storm elemental until the following morning. She slipped out of the building the party had sheltered in overnight to check their surroundings, doing so through a gap in the wall where a lightning strike had split open the stonework. There, in what had once been the village square, was one of the strange monstrosities.

Monstrosity was, she thought, not quite right. In a strange way, it was sort of beautiful. It had a globular bell for a body, formed of what might have been water though there was a misty quality to it which allowed it to be seen better. The bell undulated softly, as though the creature were swimming through an ocean rather than the air. It floated such that its bell was around the height of a tall man’s head, and beneath it hung three tendrils which looked like animated lightning. They were clearly not material objects. They shifted and undulated like worms, but slowly. There was something of a slow-motion look to the entire creature, just as though it were swimming in water.

That was until it seemed to notice that Ai was there. Then it started toward her at a rate which suggested that it could move quickly enough when it wanted. ‘Storm elemental!’ Ai yelled. Then, because it was closing the distance fast, she summoned up one of her stars and threw it toward the oncoming monster. The glowing projectile hit the creature’s bell and…

The effect was rather more than Ai had expected. The point of impact froze instantly, and then the ice spread through the creature’s body with alarming speed. The electric tendrils stuttered and died out, and then the bell crashed to the ground, shattering into ice shards which scattered across the cobbles.

‘I did say they were susceptible to cold, did I not?’ Zheng said from behind Ai.

‘I was not expecting something like that,’ Ai replied. ‘If I had known, I would not have bothered you.’

‘It was best that you did. They move surprisingly quickly for something which appears so slow on first sight. It might have overwhelmed you before you could use that attack.’

Ai gave a head twitch which more or less acknowledged the point. ‘Now I know what I’m looking for. If one of those is able to surprise us–’

‘We will take casualties. It seems I must rely on you more than I thought, Miss Guan.’

‘I shall try to live up to your expectations.’

~~~

It was getting to the point that even Ai could only see when the lightning lit up the clouds. In daylight, there was some light filtering down through the clouds, but come night there was nothing. The party came together in the taproom of an inn which was barely standing. A fire was lit in the middle of the room, the smoke escaping through a hole in the ceiling. There was little conversation; the howling of the wind outside made hearing anything difficult.

‘There’s still no sign of this dragon,’ Rika said. ‘We aren’t that far from the town they say it’s at. I’d have thought we would be able to see something capable of making a storm like this.’

Ai nodded. ‘Some sign of it anyway. It makes me wonder whether we’re dealing with something else.’

‘What? Dragons are the only things capable of– Well, gods, I suppose. If it’s a god we’re dealing with, we stand no chance.’

‘I don’t think a god would do this. If it were any of the gods, it would be Fengbow. Why would he destroy so much of his own country?’

‘You never know with gods. Tomorrow we’ll probably know for sure. Tomorrow we should reach the town.’

‘Yes. I don’t think I’m looking forward to that.’

‘Huh. No. I don’t think it’s something to look forward to. Still, it should be exciting.’

‘I think you and I may have different definitions of excitement.’

‘Well, maybe…’

31st Day of Chige.

As Ai had suspected, Yuen’s wind arrows were effective against the storm elementals. They created some sort of implosive wind storm where they struck, and the result was that the rather flimsy bells of the creatures were torn apart in an instant when she hit one. This was becoming important because, as they approached the town at the centre of the storm, there were more and more elementals.

One other thing was becoming clear, however, and that was possibly of more concern. ‘Just where is this dragon?’ Tse asked.

They were almost at the town’s wall, or what remained of it. It was not especially tall or well fortified, but a dragon might have been able to hide behind it, assuming that it lay down flat and avoided waving its tail or wings around. No one had seen even a bit of a dragon. Not even something which might have been a dragon.

‘Could it be inside the castle?’ Ren, the healer, asked.

‘It seems unlikely,’ Lady Xie said, ‘but where else could it be?’

‘It’s a dragon,’ Zheng said. ‘It can take whatever form it wishes, so it could be in the castle. The question would then be: why?’

‘Could it be something to do with this Cao you mentioned?’ Rika asked. ‘This is his castle, right? It seems odd that he is missing, and the dragon is in his castle.’

At the gatehouse now, the vanguard of Ai, Rika, and Zheng, with Yuen just behind them, moved past the shattered gates and found themselves looking out over a courtyard area. There were half a dozen storm elementals floating around. That it was a courtyard of some sort was only really discernible because most of the buildings around it were stone. All of the surviving buildings were stone; the wooden ones were gone, leaving little more than stumps of wood and foundations. Even the stone buildings looked the worse for wear. Doors and shutters were gone. Stonework, especially the taller chimneys, had been brought down by repeated lightning strikes. However…

‘It’s calm,’ Ai said.

Zheng blinked. ‘What? Wait.’ She raised her voice. ‘Everyone get in here. The storm isn’t inside the walls. Miss Yuen, would you please start taking care of those elementals.’

Yuen raised her bow while the other members of the party rushed forward. Xie and Chou relaxed visibly as they crossed the boundary of the town and passed into the eye of the storm.

‘It’s a good thing it’s calm,’ Chou said. ‘It’s been getting progressively more difficult to keep control for the last hour.’

Xie nodded. ‘I think we almost lost it at least twice.’

Ai launched a star at an onrushing elemental. It clattered to the ground in a spray of ice. ‘You did not mention that,’ she said.

‘There was no point in adding to your worries. Can we get to the castle? Are the elementals going to be a problem?’

‘We seem to be able to deal with them for now,’ Zheng said. ‘It might be best if you and Master Chou take shelter somewhere and wait for us. There is no point in you going further.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. If we stay behind, you’ll feel obliged to provide us with guards. Besides, we may prove useful within. We don’t know what we may have to deal with.’

‘You do make a good point… We move forward. Everyone should keep their eyes open. We may find ourselves in narrow confines. The creatures may be able to ambush us.’

And that was exactly what happened five minutes later as they negotiated a street where buildings had been toppled on both sides leaving large piles of rubble. An elemental popped up from behind the rubble, right beside Ai, and its tendrils flailed at her almost immediately. Despite the surprise, she dodged the first two tentacles, ducking under one and stepping aside from the second, but the third was too much. She threw up a hand in a futile attempt to stave off the inevitable, and then the tentacle hit some sort of barrier. Sparks danced across an invisible shield, not reaching Ai.

Rika’s axe sliced through the creature’s bell. Lightning danced over the huge blade, but the wooden haft kept her safe. That was why she was in the vanguard. It had only been a theory, but it seemed that it worked. The huge axe head barely left a mark in the watery bell, but it clearly had some effect on the creature which backed off, its bell shuddering.

Then Zheng’s sword slashed through the air and a spear of ice flew out to pierce the monster. The physical damage was negligible, but the ice carried with it a deep and biting cold which froze the elemental to its core in an instant. It crashed to the ground, shattering into ice shards.

‘I didn’t know you could do that,’ Rika said, looking at Ai.

Ai was looking at her hand. ‘That makes two of us. It’s never happened before. I don’t intend to rely on it, but it may save me if the situation is dire. Like just now.’

Rika nodded. ‘Never look a gift horse in the mouth. If it works, it works.’

‘Are you hurt, Miss Guan?’ Zheng asked.

‘Miraculously, no. I seem to have a Gift I was unaware of.’

‘It can be like that. It’s not as if Gifts come with written instructions.’

‘That would be useful,’ Jin said. ‘I would have really liked a manual for some of my skills.’ There were mutters from various others. Apparently, surprise Gifts were not at all uncommon.

‘I suppose the gods do as they will,’ Ai said. ‘If they want to give us protection without telling us, that’s up to them.’

‘Indeed,’ Zheng said. ‘We’re almost at the castle.’

‘Which seems strangely intact compared to the rest of the town,’ Rika observed.

‘It… does. Let us continue.’

It was less of a castle and more of a keep. There was no outer wall, just a four-storey building with crenulation at the top and a single tower, a storey taller than the main structure, on one corner. All of the windows were shuttered. The large double door was intact. There was no sign that the building had been struck by lightning at any point. It was as if the storm had never been there, though it had clearly ravaged the town at some point. The town, in fact, looked like it had been struck with worse conditions than anywhere else, yet within it, the castle sat undamaged.

‘And there’s no dragon sitting on the roof,’ Tse said.

‘Let’s get inside,’ Zheng said. ‘We can deal with whatever is there when we find it.’

Rika’s axe was needed to breach the door. She split the wood with a couple of strikes and then used the head as a lever to tear the door open on one side. The shape of an elemental’s bell became visible almost immediately, but the creature remained inside the room beyond the door, not straying out to attack.

‘How did they get in there?’ Rika asked.

‘Perhaps they came from there,’ Zheng said. ‘That is not the problem. There are far more of them in the room behind it.’

‘I can handle them,’ Ai said.

‘Those stars you throw will–’

‘I won’t use them. I’ll need to get to the middle of the room, but I think I can do it.’

‘Ai,’ Rika said, ‘that is too–’

‘It’s the only way we can get past them. I just hope there are no more rooms like this one, because I can’t do this very often.’

‘You believe you can make it in there unhurt?’ Zheng asked.

‘I believe so.’

‘Then I won’t argue further.’

Ai nodded, turned, and tossed a star at the jellyfish in the doorway. It froze and fell, and Ai was moving before it had fully destroyed itself against the flagstone floor. She dashed in, dodging a tentacle on one side, evading a bell which came too close on the other. Her focus was on the centre of the room. The elementals were simply obstacles to be avoided. The room was some sort of hall with a high ceiling and stairs rising up from the back, but right now it was just a barrier to their progress into the castle.

Making it to the middle by dropping to the floor and rolling beneath the tentacles of three elementals, she paused and set her will, and the entire room filled with cold white light. A sound like an entire gallery of crystal chandeliers falling to their destruction filled the air. When the light faded, there was nothing left of the elementals except for shards of ice littering the floor, sparkling in the light from several torches mounted on the stair rails.

‘We’re clear,’ Ai said, looking back toward the door.

‘Yes,’ Zheng said. She looked up at the top of the stairs where there were two doors. There were another three doors on the ground floor. ‘We will check the rest of this floor together. Then we can divide our forces to check the rest.’

‘It is a good plan,’ Rika said, ‘but you know that we will not find anything until we get to the top.’

Zheng gave a sigh. ‘Yes, but we cannot risk leaving the rest of the building unchecked.’

‘Oh, I know. It’s just that we will not find anything until we get to the top.’

~~~

As it happened, that was not entirely true.

For one thing, there were the bodies. The staff of the castle seemed to have died before they could run. The kitchen on the ground floor was particularly full of burned corpses. From the looks of it, they had all been struck by lightning inside the building. They were all at least partially charred. Some seemed to have caught fire thanks to the discharge which had killed them. Then they had stayed where they fell.

In the kitchen, it appeared that everyone had been caught entirely by surprise. They were lying in places which suggested that they had been working right up until the point where they died. There was food still on chopping boards, though it had all gone off in the weeks since this had happened, filling the air with a rank odour. The bodies themselves were mostly too burned to rot.

There were more corpses on the floor above, but fewer. Maids and footmen had died in hallways. Someone who looked like a more senior maid, perhaps the primary housekeeper, was lying at the foot of the stairs from the next floor up, a crumpled, charred mess. All of them had been struck by some form of electrical attack. It seemed unlikely that the elementals were responsible; this was something of far greater power than the creatures’ tentacles could produce.

Gathering into one group again, they climbed to the next floor, the one below the topmost level, and there something else made itself known.

‘What was that?!’ Tse asked, his head darting from side to side. Everyone had enough light to see because someone had apparently been going around lighting the wall sconces. It was not exactly brightly lit, but it was quite possible for everyone to see their surroundings. And yet, Tse seemed to have seen something the others could not.

‘What did you see?’ Zheng asked.

‘It was…’ Tse frowned. ‘I’m not sure. I thought I saw a dragon, but there’s no space for what I saw in the room I thought I saw it in.’

Zheng moved back through the party to the open door Tse was standing beside. It was an ordinary wooden door set in a stone doorframe. The room beyond was a bedroom, its contents nothing out of the ordinary. There was definitely nothing draconic in there. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, turning back toward where Ai and Rika were waiting, ‘you are jumping at–’ She jerked back, frowned, and shook her head. She stared at the corridor ahead of the party. ‘Or perhaps you saw something which was not really there.’

‘You saw it?’

‘I saw something which could not possibly be there. A dragon, though I could not tell you anything detailed about it. Except that it was far too big to be in the corridor ahead of us.’

‘Perhaps,’ Lady Xie said, ‘this is what all the witnesses saw. An illusion. Some trick of the mind. Perhaps we are not dealing with a storm dragon at all.’

‘Then what?’ Pei asked, sounding a little annoyed.

‘We won’t know until we find it,’ Zheng said. ‘We continue onward. All of you, check that what you may attempt to strike is really there before you strike it.’

~~~

Ai saw the dragon at the bottom of the stairs to the top floor. Briefly, she thought she could have described it. It was huge, far beyond the size of anything which could have fitted into the space it seemed to occupy. Its scales were black with blue lightning flashing along the edges of each. Its eyes glowed blue. Its mouth was a mass of cruel teeth in a maw which could have easily swallowed her whole.

But even as she saw all of this, her brain was rebelling against the idea that such a creature could be there in a corridor barely wide enough for three people to walk side by side along it. As soon as she thought of that, the dragon was no longer there, and only a vague impression of it remained in her mind.

‘You saw it?’ Zheng asked.

‘The dragon? Yes. But no such beast could be there. As Lady Xie suggested, it was an illusion of some sort. The witnesses who saw it outside were probably better able to believe it, hence they spread the rumour of a great storm dragon, convinced that they had seen the beast.’

‘Yes. That seems to be the most likely explanation. But what could be causing the illusions?’

‘One more flight of stairs and we will find out,’ Rika said. ‘We are almost at the top.’

‘Unless we have to go up to the top of the tower,’ Ai corrected.

‘I am betting on the next floor.’

‘And we would be best to assume that you are right,’ Zheng said. ‘Everyone get ready. We are about to face our foe.’

‘About time,’ Pei said.

‘Do not be so quick to meet your death, Master Pei. Prepare yourselves. We move as soon as everyone is ready.’

~~~

The top floor of the castle was built differently from those below. It followed something of a circular pattern. Triangular rooms had been built into the corners, and a corridor ran around the entire floor. It suggested that there was one big room in the middle, and that room appeared to have only one door.

They checked the other rooms first, just in case. One was an office with a desk and a lot of bookshelves, and also the charred corpse of a man dressed in formal clothing.

‘I think that was Cao’s seneschal,’ Chou said. ‘I only met him once, but I saw him several times backing Cao up.’

‘No one was spared,’ Zheng said. ‘The question is, where is Cao?’

‘There is one room left to try,’ Ai said. ‘I think we will find him there, dead or alive.’

‘What? He must be dead. He would never allow this to happen without a fight.’

‘Of course.’

The door to the central room was not locked. Zheng stopped with her hand on the handle and looked back. ‘Tian, put your shield up as soon as we go through. Miss Yuen, I’d like you close to the front and ready to use your arrows. I’ll go in first, followed by Miss Guan and Miss Moen. Everyone else comes through as soon as there is space, but be sure that we have cleared any storm elementals first.’

There were some nods, some affirmative sounds, and then Zheng pushed down the handle and pressed on through the door. Ai and Rika were close on her heels. Ai was the first to see an elemental darting toward them from the left, and one of her stars hit it. It crashed to the stone floor, shattering instantly, and then silence fell. A faintly orange sphere of light appeared around them all as Tian walked through the door, but there seemed to be no reason for it.

The room was circular. Much of the ceiling was glass, and the storm overhead was clearly visible through it. Presumably it was designed to allow someone to look up at the stars, but it was not even possible to see the sun up there. Around the edge of the room, bookcases predominated, but there were also tables and chairs, some set before a large fireplace off to the right. The centre of the room was carpeted, and in the centre of the carpet was a bed. Most nobles had canopied beds to keep them warm in winter, but this one was open, and lying in it under an embroidered comforter was a man.

He lay on his back, eyes closed. He could have been sleeping or dead, but he did not react at all to the sudden arrival of a large group of armed people and the destruction of the elemental. He looked to be in his middle years, but handsome and well built. The blankets made it hard to tell, but there was definitely the suggestion of a strong body under there. His hair was a reddish blonde and fell across his pillow as though it had been carefully arranged.

‘Lord Cao?’ Zheng asked.

There was no response. There was nothing to fight. There was just a room at the top of a castle, with an occupant who might be dead, and no sign at all of any kind of dragon.

Tian’s shield flickered out; there seemed to be no point to it. Zheng and some of the others walked closer to the bed. Ai and Rika held back. This was a hero of Wangguo and the two foreigners were better off letting the locals check for signs of life.

‘Is he breathing?’ Chou asked.

‘I can’t tell,’ Tse said. ‘We should… hm.’

Zheng reached out a hand, placing it close to Cao’s mouth. ‘Lord Cao?’ she asked again. ‘I think… I don’t think I can feel his–’

‘All I wanted…’ The voice was soft and rather dull. It came from beneath Zheng’s hand. ‘…was to be left alone.’ Lightning exploded form the bed, striking most of the people standing around it. They were scattered back by the blast, but it seemed like most of them were just stunned. They were moving, if sluggishly, though some, including Zheng, were not.

Above the bed, a dragon appeared. It was not real. In fact, it was composed of lightning in the shape of a dragon. Baleful eyes of pale blue regarded the scattered Gifted and, before anyone could react, lightning arced from its mouth to strike Dae-Seong Tse who was struggling to his feet. He screamed, the sound cutting off suddenly, and what fell to the ground was barely recognisable as the man it had been.

One of Yuen’s arrows hit the electric dragon, exploding into a swirl of air. The covers were ripped from the bed, sucked up into the tornado. The man on the bed twitched as the wind ripped at him. The dragon turned its attention toward the few people still standing.

‘Now we are in trouble,’ Rika said.

‘Yes,’ Ai said, and she darted forward.

‘Ai!’

But Ai was concentrating on covering the ten or so paces to the bed and dodging the lightning strikes.

‘I just wanted to be left alone,’ Cao said. He still had his eyes closed, and he had not moved from his position in the centre of the bed. He was dressed in silk pyjamas, gold with a red dragon design printed over the jacket. He looked like an ordinary gentleman, lying in bed, entirely relaxed and happy with the world. The thing hovering above him suggested otherwise.

Ai rolled and a bolt of lightning lanced over her. She regained her feet and kept running. Another bolt flew her way, and she twisted to her right, wheeling her body down and away from the destructive energy. She reached the bed and raised her sword, two-handed, above her head.

Cao’s eyes opened and he glared at her. Except that his eyes were now dark pits filled with boiling electrical energy. ‘I am the dragon of the storm,’ he said. ‘You are the pawn of the Stars. You are nothing to me. I am the dragon–’

‘This is a dragon-slaying sword,’ Ai said, and she brought her blade down on Cao’s neck. The blade sliced cleanly through, but Cao was not going down without a fight. Lightning blazed around Ai’s sword, arcing up through her arms. She went rigid and then fell backward. She thought she heard Rika calling her name, but the world was going dark and soon she could hear nothing.

~~~

‘She should be dead, but she’s not.’

A voice permeated Ai’s awareness. She opened her eyes and looked up at a sky which was hardly free of clouds, but it was clearing. She was looking at the sky through glass, which probably meant she was still in the room at the top of the castle. ‘Why am I not dead?’ she asked. ‘What happened to Cao?’

‘He is dead,’ Zheng said. ‘You killed him, according to those who were awake at the time. As for how you survived doing that…’

‘I don’t know,’ Seung Ren, the healer, said. ‘I’d swear you were dead. Your friend insisted I try healing you and… It worked… I’m glad, but I can’t explain how it worked. I can’t bring the dead back to life. If I could, we would not have lost Master Tse.’

‘Tse didn’t make it?’

‘We will carry his body back for an honourable funeral,’ Zheng said. ‘I was lucky to survive, I think. Most of the others have minor burns, nothing to worry about, though it could have been far worse if you had not acted decisively.’ She sighed. ‘To think Lord Cao could have fallen to the Gifted Madness.’

‘I have never heard of that,’ Rika said, finally speaking. She was looking very relieved, but she seemed to be saving any demonstration of her relief until she could get Ai alone.

‘It is rare, and I have never heard of anyone’s power being driven to such extremes by it. Some Gifted go mad, usually after a long time with their Gifts. No one knows why. No one has been able to predict who will turn. Most turn homicidal. Some destroy themselves. I have never read of any gaining this kind of power in their madness, but he was always a powerful Gifted. Perhaps it is simply that no one this powerful has ever gone mad before.’

‘He was practically a god,’ Rika said. ‘We are lucky that his power was mostly concerned with building the storm.’

Ai sat up. Parts of her ached and there was a vague smell of singed hair about her. She gave a nod. ‘With his attention on the storm, he had less to spare on close defence. He expected that no one could get this close to him. And now that he is dead–’

‘The storm has been clearing since I woke up,’ Zheng said.

‘Since he died,’ Ren corrected. ‘The lightning in the clouds stopped almost immediately. I would imagine it will take longer for all the clouds to go.’

‘Yes. Miss Guan, you have saved Wangguo.’

‘I could hardly have done so without everyone else here.’

‘Perhaps, but you were the one who put an end to this. That is what I will be telling the king.’

Ai’s cheeks coloured a faint red. ‘Thank you.’

~~~

‘Why did you force Ren to heal me?’ Ai asked. They had found a room without a corpse in it and made use of the bed. To be fair, every member of the party was resting up in various parts of the castle, intent on leaving in the morning when the weather was fully clear. Ai was still a little stiff, but the exercise Rika had just put her through was helping to work out the aches.

‘Hope,’ Rika replied. ‘Hope and what Cao said to you.’

‘What Cao said? What did… Wait, something about me being a pawn of the stars?’

‘Yes, that. I don’t believe your destiny ends here, and I don’t believe whoever Gifted you would allow you to die like this.’

‘That… I’m not sure I like that.’

Rika gave a shrug. ‘You are alive, and that is all I care about. Now, why is it that it seemed like you did not want to take credit for killing Cao?’

‘Oh, that. I just don’t want to stand out that much. They’re going to make a big fuss about it, and I could live without that.’

‘Maybe they won’t. You are a Romar and Wangguo is not that fond of the Romar.’

‘With Lady Zheng crying my virtues from the rooftops? Somehow, I think they may overlook my heritage…’

Baogong, 2nd Day of Feng.

Rika looked uncomfortable in a gown. Her rather broken linguistic skills were not helping, so Ai was having to do most of the talking, and there was a lot of talking.

The king had greeted the returning Gifted with enthusiasm, having already received reports that the storm was gone. He was less pleased to discover the real reason for the storm, and he was not entirely happy that a Romar had ended it. However, he had grown warmer over the past two days, and the banquet they were now attending had been arranged anyway. The fact that Lord Cao was responsible for what happened was being kept quiet. Officially, there had been a dragon, and Ai had been the one to deal the final blow.

So, everyone wanted to meet the nation’s dragon slayer. Even when they realised she was a Romar, they still wanted to meet her, they just did their best to suppress their unease. It was like watching people eating food they found distasteful. It was just that words were being swallowed rather than tasteless dishes. Ai found it amusing. Rika was glad she could hide behind her faulty Shoohua.

Mostly, people stuck with greetings and a little small talk before wandering off, happy to have given what passed for their thanks to the woman who had saved their country. The other Gifted were more open about their praise. They had spent more time with Ai, and even the ones who did not like Romar had come to see her as another Gifted rather than one of the cursed race which had once ruled the world.

Zheng, in particular, made a point of finding Ai and Rika at various points in the night. On the fourth round, she had something particular to say. ‘The king is going to appoint you to a position in the royal guard.’

‘Really?’ Ai replied.

‘He sees it as a two-fold advantage. He will have a strong, capable swordswoman providing him with security. Added to that, as a Romar, you will be seen as a figurehead for your people. It will show that Wangguo treats all with equality, and demonstrate to the other Romar in the nation that they can rise to high station if they try.’

‘I see.’

‘What about Romat?’ Rika asked.

‘What about it?’ Zheng countered.

‘We–’

‘I would, of course, be honoured if the king asked me to take such a position,’ Ai said. Rika glanced at her but took the hint and said nothing more.

Until Zheng had gone off again, anyway. ‘You won’t really consider it, will you? You’re supposed to go to Romat.’

‘Yes.’ Ai frowned. ‘First the storm, and now this. It’s almost as if someone is trying to slow me down or stop me from getting there at all.’

Rika gave a shrug. ‘Fate is fickle and prone to twisting your future as it sees fit. What are we going to do about this?’

‘The king won’t ask until tomorrow. We will be gone before he can.’

‘Sneaking out of the city in the middle of the night?’ Rika grinned. ‘Sounds great. And the sooner I can get out of this dress, the better.’

‘You look good in that dress.’

‘I do not. I look like someone stuffed a mountain bear into a sack.’

‘Oh no. I mean, I don’t think you look that bad…’

3rd Day of Feng.

The road from Baogong to the border with Gronlandt followed a route which was more or less due south from the city. As it went south, it curled a little toward the east, mainly to avoid the Ubervaltigent Forest. Traders and others wishing to go to Gronlandt always went out through the city’s south gate and then followed the road – which was very well maintained – because it got you there as fast as it was possible to go.

Ai and Rika left through the west gate, sneaking past the guard even though stealth was not exactly one of Rika’s strong points. Then they turned south and west, avoiding the southern road and heading for the forest.

‘They know we’re headed for Gronlandt,’ Ai said, ‘so they’ll assume we took the road. Going through the forest will mean it’s unlikely they’ll find us.’

‘Ubervaltigent Forest is not exactly a safe place. We’ll have to go through parts where the Waldvolk hold domain.’

‘Yes, but I think we’ll be safe enough if we keep ourselves to ourselves. Besides…’

‘Besides?’

‘I feel like there’s a reason I should go through their lands.’

Rika winced. ‘That doesn’t sound good. Why do I think that means we’re going to find ourselves in more trouble?’

‘Because we probably will. You can’t fool me; you like the kind of trouble I get you into.’

‘Hm. It’s a good thing you’re good in the sack.’

Epilogue

Heimatort, Heimat, 20th Day of Feng in the 103rd Year Postwar.

So, they had taken the northern route. She had suspected that was the case because they had not passed through Heimatort. The sorceress was sure she would have known if they had come through Heimatort. Absolutely positive, given the number of informants she had watching for them.

The report from Wangguo mentioned no names, but it stated that a Romar girl had been part of a small army of Gifted who had killed a storm dragon. The girl had been the one to deliver the final blow. She was being lauded as the saviour of Wangguo, not least because Lady Zheng, who was mentioned by name, was backing her.

The country was in turmoil, even if the threat of the dragon was gone. Thousands had died, tens of thousands had been displaced. No one had predicted the coming of the dragon. No dragon had been seen since the Mythic Age. That was worth looking into. Were the dragons back? Had they been lying dormant and now awakened? Was the story from Wangguo a fabrication to cover something else? She would send spies to look into it.

Now, however, she had other tasks to take care of. She needed a ship to take her to Romat. Trying to catch up to the girl in Gronlandt would surely result in missing her, and the sorceress knew exactly where Ai Guan was going.

‘You will not escape me a second time, girl,’ she said to her room. Then she climbed to her feet and set out to make preparations.

###

About the Author

I was born in the vicinity of Hadrian's Wall so perhaps a bit of history rubbed off. Ancient history obviously, and border history, right on the edge of the Empire. I always preferred the Dark Ages anyway; there’s so much more room for imagination when people aren’t writing down every last detail. So my idea of a good fantasy novel involved dirt and leather, not shining plate armour and Hollywood-medieval manners. The same applies to my sci-fi, really; I prefer gritty over shiny.

Oddly, then, one of the first fantasy novels I remember reading was The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper (later made into a terrible juvenile movie). These days we would call Cooper’s series Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy and looking back on it, it influenced me a lot. It has that mix of modern day life, hidden history, and magic which failed to hit popular culture until the early days of Buffy and Anne Rice. Of course, Cooper’s characters spend their time around places I could actually visit in Cornwall, and South East England, and mid-Wales. In fact, when I went to university in Aberystwyth, it was partially because some of Cooper’s books were set a few miles to the north around Tywyn.

I got into writing through roleplaying, however, so my early work was related to the kind of roleplaying game I was interested in. I wrote science fiction when I was playing Traveller. I wrote “high fantasy” when I was playing Dungeons & Dragons. I wrote a lot of superhero fiction when I was playing City of Heroes. I still love the idea of a modern world with magic in it and I’ve been trying to write a novel based on this for a long time. As with any form of expression, practice is the key and I can look back on all the aborted attempts at books, and the more successful short stories, as steps along the path to the Thaumatology Series.

Recently I took the big step of quitting my day job and taking up full-time writing. My favourite authors are Terry Pratchett, Susan Cooper, J.D. Robb, and Kim Harrison. Kim’s Hollows books were what finally spurred me to publish something, even if the trail to here came by way of Susan, back in school, several decades ago.

For More Information

Take a look at the Witches and Ray-guns blog: http://witchesandrayguns.wordpress.com

Links to book vendors and other information can be found there, along with a view on what I’m up to and when it might happen.

Other Books by this Author

The Thaumatology Series

Thaumatology 101

Demon’s Moon

Legacy

Dragon’s Blood

Disturbia

Hammer of Witches

Eagle’s Shadow

Ancient

Dragonfall

The Other Side of Hell

For Whom the Wedding Bells Toll

Vengeance

Anthologies in the Thaumatology Universe

Tales from High Towers’ Study

Tales from the Dubh Linn

The Aneka Jansen Books

Steel Beneath The Skin

The Cold Steel Mind

Steel Heart

The Winter War

The Greatest Heights of Honour

The Lowest Depths of Shame

Hope

The Ultrahuman Books

Ugly

Shadows

Hunting Mink

Frostburn

Guardian

True Dark

Liberty

Royal Flush

The Unobtainium Books

Kate on a Hot Tin Roof

King Solamet’s Mines

The Fox Meridian Books

Fox Hunt

Inescapable

DeathWeb

Criminal Minds

Emergence

The Ghost in the Doll

Eden Burning

Dominance

The Hellas Find

Dancing with The Devil

The Princeps Venator Books

Hunter’s Kiss

Be My Valentine

Blood Magic

The Misfits Series

Misfit Magic

Misfit Witchcraft

The Twilight Empress Trilogy

The Iron Princess

The Death’s Handmaiden Series

Death’s Handmaiden

Bitter Wind

Freedom, Humanity, and Other Delusions

Futures

The Aquaria Incident

Loyalty

The Tatsu Yamada Series

Sign of the Dragon

Mask of the Demon

The Fallen Goddess Series

Fallen

Demonscourge

Other

Reality Hack

The Zanari Inheritance

The Vanity Case

The Eyes of the Huntress

Gunwitch: Rebirth

The Girl Who Dreamed of a Different World

Age of Atlantis: Return

The Empress’s Mage

Titans

Starlight

Table of Contents

- Cover Page
- Starlight
- Prologue
- Part One: Gifted
- Interlude: The Lord and the Sorceress
- Part Two: The Iron Lands
- Part Three: The Land of Ice and Snow
- Part Four: Kingdom of the Storm God
- Epilogue
- About the Author