Hordrön

The first thing you notice about Hordrön is the voice. Thin, metallic, and coming from somewhere behind a great door you are not permitted to face. You enter his presence on your hands and knees, crawling backward through two hundred feet of corridor with armed guards on either side, and you do not turn around. The floor of the corridor is warm under your palms. Not uncomfortably so. Just enough to notice. This is the protocol. Anyone who requires that you enter a room this way has already told you a great deal about themselves. Van was not impressed.

When he permitted Van to look upon him — framed as a gift, delivered as a sentence — what Van saw on the great steel throne was gelatinous. His face bent and extended like treacle in forge heat, dripping, oozing, rivulets hissing where they struck the flagstones, igniting the stone beneath him. The floor under the throne had been burned into a shallow bowl by the same process, repeated across uncounted years. His eyes glistened. His mouth was a crimped line of pain. He referred to himself in the third person. Hordrön will see the manner of your fighting. Hordrön commands your immediate presence. Hordrön will dine well tonight.

Those who look upon him are told they will survive one cycle of the forge. I do not know how long a forge cycle is. I know that none who serve in the Woad temple at dunlockslyn lasts more than a year. The monthly rites pit prisoners against each other and against wild beasts — smeln, among others — in a pit amphitheatre below the gardens. The Tribute, held at the same rites, dispatches those who looked upon Hordrön exactly one year prior. They are led from the arena to the kitchens. The plumpest are selected first. He eats the best-bred milting and clowns. The others go to his guards' plates. What he calls "other dainties" I have not been able to establish.

The woad have no peasantry. Every member of the First Born is a noble, served by slaves, fighting and dying for Hordrön as a matter of religious duty. The stainless steel that edges their weapons and furnishes his throne exists nowhere else in The Dark Peak — it is the material foundation of his theology, the proof of divine favour. In an organic world, metal is a miracle. Miracles are always useful to someone. When Van and a young clown fighter drove toward the throne, Hordrön screamed high-pitched commands, hurled curses at those seeking to desecrate his godhood, and then fled through a trapdoor in the dais floor. I find this the most important detail about him.

Field note: the forge cycle sentence is delivered as though looking upon him is a privilege. It is not. Do not turn around.

Free eBooks

COMING SOON

COMING SOON

NEW