We, humans, will question the means and chances of the things that are written and known. I, too, wonder this. It is a change of things. A flux of events. All of which began with a moment. —First Age. Author unknown
The buzz came from the base of the walls, white light spilling out from square lamps embedded in the stone, where Merrin stared at them longer than he should have. They reached toward him like pale fingers—familiar, strange, hypnotic things.
"Uhm!"
The sound snapped him back. He blinked.
What an imaginative mind I have, he thought, sighing. How could something as small as a lamp steal my attention?
He refocused. Ahead, a strip of light had carved a narrow path through the cave. Hundreds—maybe thousands—of people walked it alongside him. All moving the same way. All with the same empty expression. There was a sameness to it that unsettled him, as he had never been part of something like this before.
He had been an Ashman once. Free as soot, free as the steam that rose from the earth into the sky. He could still remember it—the taste of cold rain, the churning clouds high in the mountains.
How long has it been?
Too long.
That freedom was gone now, stripped from him the way cloth is torn from flesh. It left something behind, though, something that ached.
The corridor swallowed him whole. Its walls hewn from crude black stone, jagged and rough. The floors, though, were smooth—worn flat by the countless feet that had passed through before his. The heat came up through the stone, licking at his bare feet with every step.
This is wrong, he thought. So wrong. How were men supposed to survive in a place like this?
He had spent days—or months, he couldn't tell—aboard the black ships. And even after all that time, he still longed for the simple things. The open sky of Eastos, always dark. The quiet.
Here, there was none of that. Only stone, and more stone, endlessly repeating. The sameness was enough to drive a person mad.
He sighed and walked on, looking up at the crude ceiling.
It's almost like where he di—
He stopped himself.
You mean where you killed him, the thought finished for him. Sprawled across the hot ground. Dead. You killed him.
He pushed the thought away, focusing instead on the froststone fitted to the left side of his clothes—a blue glowing gem that glinted against the stone walls. Without it, no one in this world would survive. Not the lowlanders below the mountains, not the Ashmen. The natural heat of the world would consume everything.
Maybe that would have been better, he thought. Being a slave seems so much worse.
He bumped into the man walking ahead of him. A groan escaped him. The man didn't react—just kept walking, head bowed, eyes on the ground.
"Sorry," Merrin whispered.
The man didn't answer. None of them did. They all shuffled forward with their heads down and their eyes empty.
I wonder how long before my eyes look like that.
Soon, most likely. Merrin almost laughed at the thought.
There's no escaping it.
Then he saw the imprinter.
The man sat slouched on a three-legged stone stool to the right of the path. His head round and fat. His stomach bulging like a bloated carcass—pale green and oily. His eyes were bloodshot beneath a heavy brow, and he wore little more than a brown loincloth. A foul smell escaping off him in waves. Merrin nearly gagged.
In his thick, scarred hands, he gripped a heated iron pole. At its end was a triangular brand, etched with strange markings. One by one, each slave had their arm grabbed and pressed against the hot iron. Each contact released a sizzling sound and the smell of burning flesh. Each slave screamed.
What about me? Merrin wondered. Unlike the others, whose arms were thin and bony after the long voyage, his still had some meat on them. And rumors said the Night Clan sometimes turned away slaves with fuller bodies.
I don't want to go back, he thought, gritting his teeth. I can't. Not after what I did. They would know.
A dot of light drifted past his eyes.
He blinked. More of them floated through the tunnel—glowing, drifting, hovering near the heads and arms of the slaves. Each one a different color.
Servs.
He remembered what they were. Red for rage. Blue for sadness. Other colors for whatever emotions were nearby. Servs were what these lands called them—a strange name for what the Ashmountains (Ashmen) considered eyes of the Almighty. They were drawn to human emotion. They saw, and they reflected.
A sound erupted from ahead—a scream, then thrashing.
Merrin stiffened. Not again.
It happened sometimes. Despair would crack a slave open, and they would lash out—fighting, fleeing, breaking from the line. It never ended well, of course. The Excubitors—the guards assigned to control the slaves—were fast and merciless. They would cut down anyone who caused trouble and drag the body away to be burned. Even the froststone was stripped first. In Eastos, where constant rain made the ground too hard for graves, the dead became ash. That was the fate of darkCrowns here.
Merrin wasn't sure if brightCrowns were treated differently, given that they had brighter hair than the common people. He suspected they were.
The line stopped while the commotion was dealt with, then resumed. Ahead, the sound of iron on flesh continued. The imprinter drawing close.
Merrin closed his eyes. I shouldn't scream. I don't get to scream. Leim screamed louder than—
"Raise!"
He opened his eyes.
The imprinter sat right in front of him now. Seated, fat, reeking.
"What?" Merrin muttered.
"Mmmm." The man grunted, jabbing the iron rod toward Merrin's arm. "Raise. Raise."
"Ah—" Merrin pulled up his sleeve.
The rod pressed down. And his mind went white. The heat cut through skin, through muscle, deep into bone—charring through everything it touched. He gritted his teeth, bit his lip, and made every sound except the one fighting to get out. He would not scream.
The rod was removed, and the imprinter had already moved on to the next person without a glance.
Typical.
Merrin clutched his branded arm with his other hand and kept walking. The froststone did nothing for this kind of pain. It only shielded against external heat, not the kind scorched directly into the skin.
So, he breathed through it.
Time passed, and when he finally looked down at the mark, it was black and throbbing—a triangle with strange glyphs carved inside.
That's it, then.
I'm a slave now.
His heart went cold and still.
Not an Ashman anymore. Maybe I should just—
The ground shook.
It was violent and sudden, a tremor rolling through the tunnel and buckling everyone's legs. Merrin braced himself. Cave-ins weren't rare in the mountains. They collapsed paths, sealed exits—sometimes killed everyone inside.
He looked up at the ceiling and whispered, "Only me. Take only me."
He didn't deserve company in death.
The shaking stopped. The ground went quiet. But the line had halted—ahead, a section of the tunnel wall had collapsed from the quake, blocking the path.
Ah...
A figure moved past Merrin along the left side of the line, where space had been kept clear. A slender man with faint white hair, froststone glinting on his clothes.
A brightCrown. A Caster.
Excubitors—tall men in silver helms—flanked him immediately and escorted him to the front. When they reached the collapsed wall, the Caster spoke a quiet command and the guards stepped back.
Then he placed one hand on the stone and uncapped a small water container with the other.
Silence fell over the tunnel. Total, pressing silence—as if the sound itself had been pushed aside.
Then a scream split through it.
The stone exploded into rushing water, flooding down the tunnel floor, sizzling against the hot ground, steam rising in thick white tendrils that curled up to the ceiling and filled the air. Warm water lapped at Merrin's legs before it turned to vapor, and the vision cleared.
The wall was gone.
A dusky green serv drifted close to Merrin's face, as if leaning in. Disgust—that was what it was reflecting. These powers that brightCrowns flaunted so casually should belong only to the creator of the world. The church said so. Humans should not have such abilities.
And yet here we are.
The march continued. The servs drifted away one by one, fading—returning to the Almighty, according to the church, to show him what they had witnessed.
But why would the Almighty care about a group of slaves? Merrin wondered. Why would he?
Something ahead pulled him from the thought.
The gates of the Iron Mines.
Even from a distance, everyone could see them. Obsidian black, rising like a mountain between two stone walls as tall as hills. They were smooth and sleek as dark glass, and yet they rippled—moving like the surface of a lake disturbed by a stone. A wave rolling out and returning, only to repeat.
Eltium. The material was called eltium—found underground, then altered by Casters who forced human spirits into it to power the metal. darkCrown spirits, of course.
Why do men insist on imitating the Almighty? Merrin thought. Creation belongs only to god. We should all just accept our smallness.
A loud creak filled the tunnel, and slowly, the gates opened. The sound was deep and heavy. Beyond them was only darkness—vast and total. Just then, a gust of wind pushed out from the black, thick with a pungent smell.
Merrin shuddered.
He had prepared himself for this moment. But standing at the edge of what little freedom remained to him, there was a chill that preparation hadn't accounted for.
He breathed in.
What can I even do?
Nothing.
He couldn't fight his way past the Excubitors. And even if he could—why should he? There was no point. He deserved this. Fear was there, yes, but accepting his reality was all he could control now. When he sold himself into slavery, he had known the outcome.
At least this is better than home, he thought weakly. I can't face them. This is better.
The line moved. His steps followed.
Then his eyes caught something at the mouth of the gates.
Women.
They stood in tight black dresses, tall and slender. Their faces hidden behind pitch-black veils, elegant and still. He knew immediately who they were.
Sisters of the Gresendents Sonitras.
Even in the Ashmountains, their name had reached them. Female Aspirants in the Church—female priests.
Each wore a single glove reaching to the elbow, stopping at a silvery ring inscribed with gray glyphs that rippled like eltium. Set into the silver circle atop each glove was a white, glowing gem.
What are they doing here?
They were selecting. Pointing at certain slaves, separating them from the line while the rest were ushered into the darkness. Those chosen moved to the side of the gate and stood quietly, watching the others disappear into the black.