Blood Storm: The Books of Blood and Iron Read online

  PRAISE FOR IRON AXE

  “Exciting… . Turning common tropes on their heads, Harper portrays orcs as valiant warriors and elves as despicable slavers. His reinterpretations of trolls, giants, and fae folk give this series opener a fresh feeling, while his nods to Norse mythology and folklore root it strongly in fantasy tradition. Readers will be eager to see what’s in store for Aisa and Danr.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Brought back fond memories of a classic fantasy book while still offering a wonderfully unique take on the genre… . Steven Harper created a world that I never got tired of exploring.”

  —The Qwillery

  “The story holds all of the adventure, magic, and mystery I have come to expect from the genre… . [It] follows a hero’s journey … with energy and artfulness.”

  —Wicked Little Pixie

  PRAISE FOR STEVEN HARPER AND THE CLOCKWORK EMPIRE SERIES

  “If you love your Victorian adventure filled with zombies, amazing automatons, steampunk flare, and an impeccable eye for detail, you’ll love the fascinating (and fantastical) Doomsday Vault!”

  —My Bookish Ways

  “Harper creates a fascinating world of devices, conspiracies, and personalities.”

  —SFRevu

  “Inventive and fun … a fantastic amount of action… . If you are looking to jump into steampunk for the first time, I would recommend these books.”

  —Paranormal Haven

  “The technology is present throughout the story, making it as much a character as any of the people Harper writes about.”

  —That’s What I’m Talking About

  “Steven Harper seemed to have this magical way of taking this crazy, awesome, complex idea and describing it in a way that anyone could follow.”

  —A Book Obsession

  “A fun and thrilling, fast-paced adventure full of engaging characters and plenty of surprises.”

  —SFF Chat

  “The Clockwork Empire books are changing what we know as Steampunk! … An exuberant novel that takes the reader on an action-packed, adventurous thrill ride.”

  —Nocturne Romance Reads

  BOOKS BY STEVEN HARPER

  THE BOOKS OF BLOOD AND IRON

  Iron Axe

  Blood Storm

  THE CLOCKWORK EMPIRE

  The Doomsday Vault

  The Impossible Cube

  The Dragon Men

  The Havoc Machine

  ROC

  Published by New American Library,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  This book is an original publication of New American Library.

  Copyright © Steven Piziks, 2015

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Roc and the Roc colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  For more information about Penguin Random House, visit penguin.com.

  ISBN 978-0-698-14630-3

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  CONTENTS

  Praise

  Books by Steven Harper

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Note on Pronunciation

  Map

  THE STORY SO FAR

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  About the Author

  To Michelle Singer, who unwittingly dragged me into a new phase of my life. Thank you.

  NOTE ON PRONUNCIATION

  The people of Erda tend to sound out all the letters in their names. Aisa’s name therefore has three syllables and rhymes with “Theresa.” Most vowels have a European flavor, so the A in “Danr” is more like the one in “wander” than in “Daniel.”

  THE STORY SO FAR

  Well, really! A standing ovation, and I haven’t even said anything yet!

  Yes, I’ll get to the story. But you have to expect at least a little lead-in. Do you have any idea what I went through to get it? How many hours I spent translating manuscripts in stuffy studies and moldy book rooms?

  So. The story we have tonight—and the next several nights—details more history for Danr of Balsia, the Second Great Hero of Erda, and of Aisa the Slave, who became … Well, we know what happened to her, don’t we? And yes, folks, the rumors are true. Aisa did confront Harbormaster Willem near Bosha’s Bay, and Aisa did take up Kalessa’s magic sword, and—

  Er, sorry. I don’t mean to give things away.

  Let me assure you all that this story, called Blood Storm, stands alone all by itself, and you can follow it fine, just fine, without hearing Iron Axe. But does anyone want a quick refresher? Raise your hand if you do. Ah. Right, then.

  If you haven’t heard Iron Axe and do not like a good story being spoiled, how about you trot over to that inn over there and get something to drink? Tell the barkeep I sent you and he might even give you a discount. I’ll wave this little red flag here when I’m ready to start the next bit, so you’ll know when to come back, yeah? And I wouldn’t say no if someone brought back a nice mug of something foamy.

  All right—Iron Axe, the short version. Hard to decide where to begin, you know? Does the story start when the downtrodden Fae went to war against the oppressive Stane? Maybe. The king of the Stane ordered the dwarfs, craftsmen extraordinaire, to create a weapon so powerful it would destroy the Fae—elves, sprites, and fairies—forever. But when the dwarfs created an axe of iron, the Fae stole it and used the weapon’s power against its own creators. In desperation, the Stane worked out a way to destroy the Axe, though it would require cooperation between the trolls and the Kin—humans, orcs, and merfolk. The trollwives provided the magic, and the Kin provided a blood sacrifice. Together, they slaughtered a young human on a stone table and gathered enough power to crack the Axe into pieces. Unfortunately, something went wrong. The spell not only broke the Axe; it sundered part of the continent itself. The land dropped straight down, creating the Iron Ocean, with the Nine Isles poking up like dead fingers.

  The Sundering drove the Stane under the mountains, which allowed the Fae to do as they liked. At first, the Fae worked diligently to restore the world, but over time, a taste of power drove them to want more of it. They enslaved humans and used glamour to force their slaves to love them. They kept the Stane in their underground caverns, never to see the light of the moon or taste the good fruit of the mountainside. They grew in their power and their arrogance, and they were draining the world dry.

  A thousand y
ears after the Sundering, one troll managed to push open the Great Door that led out from under the mountain. He slipped out to explore and encountered a human woman in the forest. After she got over her fright, she found him more attractive than horrific, and they fell in love. But when she became heavy with child, it became clear that neither Kin nor Stane would accept them, and the troll abandoned her. The woman bore a baby she called Danr but whom everyone else called Trollboy.

  As a half troll, Danr grew up an outcast (this was long before the enlightened era in which we find ourselves, folks), and when his mother died, he had one friend—a young slave named Aisa, who came from the land of Irbsa across the Iron Sea. Aisa was once owned by elves, and she became addicted to their glamour, but she angered her master and he sold her away. The sudden separation from her beloved (and behated) elven master nearly tore her apart.

  Aisa was eventually charged with witchcraft, and Danr was exiled from his village for defending her. They both fled and spent some time with the trolls, where they learned that the Stane were slowly starving under the mountain and planned to free themselves. Through a complicated series of events involving a trio of dreadful giants, Danr was blessed, or perhaps cursed, with the power to see truth through his left eye.

  At this point, Death herself intervened. The Stane had bound her with a mystical chain nothing could break, and it meant no one could die. The trollwives were harvesting the power of the ghosts stranded in the world of the living to force all the mountain doors wide-open and make war against the elves again. Death asked Danr to reforge the Iron Axe, the only object that could break the chain and set her free.

  More complicated and fascinating events followed. Danr and Aisa were joined by Talfi, a young man who turned out to be not so young after all. Indeed, every time he died, he came rather shockingly back to life. Unfortunately, every resurrection wiped away Talfi’s memory, and he had to content himself with what he could remember of his life since his most recent revival.

  The little group traveled to Xaron, the land of the orcs, in search of the pieces of the Iron Axe. There, an orc princess joined them and became close friends with Aisa. They found one piece, the haft, and discovered the head was in Palana City, where Aisa had been held as a slave. Reluctantly, they traveled to that town and learned that more than two hundred years ago, Talfi had been involved with an elven prince named Ranadar, who still harbored deep feelings for Talfi. Ranadar’s love for Talfi forced him to betray his own people and help the growing group recover the head of the Iron Axe. In a dreadful twist of fate, they also learned that Talfi, who was the original sacrifice that had broken the Axe in the first place, was the third piece. Only his final death would fully reforge the Axe.

  Meanwhile, it turned out Ranadar’s parents, the elven king and queen, were themselves harvesting the power of the dead in order to Twist—that is, teleport—the entire Stane army cross-country the moment they emerged from under the mountain. In their weakened state, the Stane would be easy to slaughter.

  Danr and Aisa somehow found the strength to slay Talfi and reforge the Axe just in time to stop the war, though they destroyed most of Palana City in the process. Aisa also killed her former elven master and discovered that his death released her from the terrible addiction.

  Armed with the Axe, Danr and the others visited Death and cut her free. As a reward, Death allowed Ranadar to give half his remaining days to Talfi so he could come back to life one more time.

  Danr returned to his village something of a hero, but he realized he couldn’t stay. Ranadar, as an elf, wasn’t well liked in a human habitation, and Talfi’s love for him only made matters more complicated.

  Besides, Aisa wanted to see mermaids.

  All right, let me wave the flag here so the folks who are drinking can—ah! Here they come. And there was a discount after all? Well, the night can’t get better than this.

  Unless we add a giant squid.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The orc woman flew backward and landed in the cave pool with a great splash. Danr didn’t even have time to shout before a great tentacle slammed into him and swept him aside like a toy. He crashed hard into the tunnel wall. Air burst from his lungs and stars danced before his eyes. Vik! It was always monsters, always fighting.

  “To the left!” Talfi shouted. “Aisa! It’s going to the left!”

  The great squid at the back of the cave pulled in its tentacles and struck again, this time to the left. Aisa ducked, and for a heart-stopping moment Danr thought the creature had hit her, too, but the tentacle went over her head and smacked the stones with a nasty, rubbery sound. The tunnel rumbled. Bones and skulls from the squid’s previous victims tumbled about the cave floor. Maybe this was the reason Death had sent them after the creature—she was tired of collecting its prey.

  Ribs aching, Danr yanked himself upright. The body of the squid was enormous, at least fifteen feet long and twice as high as Danr, who himself topped nearly seven feet. It filled the rear of the tunnel with writhing tentacles and a fishy, salty reek that turned Danr’s stomach. The creature made no sound when it attacked—tentacles whipped through the air like gristly lightning and no noise at all emerged from a wicked beak that was easily big enough to crush a human skull. The creature took up the entire rear wall of the tidal cave, which was damp because the tunnel rose a little here. Opposite the squid, hard daylight filtered in from the distant—much lower—mouth of the tunnel, which was filling with seawater as the tide came in. Damn it, they had to move.

  Danr caught the sound of Kalessa, the orc woman, splashing about, probably looking for her sword. If she was disarmed, they were in trouble. Although Danr’s troll half made him feel perfectly at home in caves, the confined space gave the squid a definite advantage.

  “Ranadar!” Talfi shouted from the edge of the water. He had brown hair and sky-blue eyes and didn’t look more than seventeen, though Danr knew he was much older. “Twist in there with your knife and—”

  The squid snatched up a large rock and flung it at Talfi. Shit, shit, shit, Talfi didn’t see it coming. Danr shouted a warning, but the rock caromed across the cave straight for Talfi’s head at lightning speed.

  There was a flash of light. Next to Talfi, an elven man with longish red hair flicked into existence. He tackled Talfi, shoved him to the ground, but the rock clipped the side of the elf’s head. He staggered and rolled, gasping, into knee-deep water.

  “Ran!” Talfi shook the elf’s shoulder.

  The squid threw another rock, this one at Danr. He ducked. It exploded against the stone wall where his head had been. His heart pounded, and he could barely think. The squid’s beak snapped between its enormous eyes, eyes that looked strangely human, but also cold and hungry.

  Water continued to rise higher in the tunnel and lap Danr’s toes. In a few minutes, the squid would win by default. He cast about in desperation. His club was gone, knocked from his hand in the first moment they had found the squid, and he hadn’t gotten around to learning sword work. He felt slow and out of his element.

  Kalessa emerged from the tunnel, water streaming from the weave of her armor. She held a small knife in her hand. Her orcish yellow eyes and faintly greenish skin created a striking contrast with her long auburn braid. Kalessa charged the squid, and her battle cry echoed off the walls. The squid flung a tentacle at her. Kalessa dodged neatly to one side and swung at it with her little knife. In midswing, the tiny blade flickered into a full-length broadsword. It sliced neatly through the tentacle, spewing purplish ichor across the tunnel floor. The severed tentacle, easily as thick as Danr’s leg, writhed like a dying serpent. Kalessa gave another high-pitched shout. A second tentacle flanked her and caught her hard in the solar plexus. Kalessa’s shout died in a burst of air. Her sword clattered to the ground and changed back into a knife as she dropped beside it.

  “Sister!” Aisa ran to her. The squid pulled back its tentacles again, ready to strike at both of them. Oh no, it didn’t. Danr snatched up a rock of his
own and threw it as hard as he could. It bounced off the squid’s rubbery head near the beak.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “Over here!”

  Both eyes focused on Danr, and he saw his own reflection in hungry pupils the size of dinner plates. He looked both big and tiny at the same time, and he swallowed. Maybe that hadn’t been such a good—

  The two tentacles snapped at him. Danr waited until the last second, then jumped. His leap carried him above both tentacles, and he pointed his toes to land straight on one. Danr’s weight was considerable. His mother might have been human, but his father was a troll, and even as a child, he had been heavy. As an adult, he used that weight to his advantage and crushed both squirming tentacles to the cave floor.

  “Do something!” he barked. “Ranadar! Twist closer and get it in the eyes!”

  “He’s hurt,” Talfi yelled back. “No Twisting!”

  Talfi’s shout got the squid’s attention. It flung out another tentacle, and this one wrapped around Talfi’s neck. He gasped and clawed at the thing, but the squid jerked hard. Bone snapped. Talfi went limp, neck broken. Vik! But no time to deal with that now. The tentacles squirmed beneath his bare feet like angry worms, and he danced on them, trying to keep them under control.

  Aisa produced a vial from her pocket and was fumbling with the stopper. It was probably something to wake Kalessa. He felt a swell of pride at her skill as a healer, and a simultaneous stab of fear that she might get hurt. Before he could consider the situation further, both tentacles freed themselves from Danr’s weight and wrapped around him. It was like being engulfed by a pair of muscular, smelly snakes. The cold suckers pulled at his neck and bare arms. He struggled, but could barely move.

  The squid snatched up another rock. Where in all Vik’s realm had it learned to do that? It didn’t seem fair. It threw one at Aisa, who was just rolling Kalessa over.