They force me to walk, stumbling and chained. Each time I slow, they yank the chain connected to my manacles, forcing me forward. Soon, I see the space they are heading for, and the sight of it only fills me with more fear.
There are soldiers waiting there, a whole squadron of them, dressed in dark iron and leather, ready to take on any threat. Illusions flicker between a couple of them, reminding me that they have magic as well. They are guarding everything the official has taken so far: money, goods, livestock… people.
A whole crowd of men and women stands in chains, guarded by the soldiers, looking as if they do not know what will happen to them next. Each wears an iron collar around their neck, marking their status as something owned by Aetheria.
The soldiers drag me to an anvil, taking such a collar and setting it around my throat even as I try to pull back. Another soldier puts his hands against the metal, and I feel a flash of heat, the pain of it sudden and excruciating as the metal seals together. He uses magic easily, a reminder of just how common it is meant to be in the empire.
“She's a pretty one,” he says, as he pushes me back to the others. “Pity they’re all off limits until we get them back to Ironhold. What’s her talent?”
“Beast speech,” the soldier who catches me says.
“ Just speech?” the one at the anvil asks, looking briefly worried.
“You think we’d have brought her if she had more?”
The one at the anvil scoffs. “Then it’s hardly even a talent. She won’t make anything there other than a plaything for some gladiator.”
Fresh fear fills me at the thought of what he's implying. At the fate I'm being dragged to. The soldiers take me to a line of others, connecting my manacles to a chain along with the rest, which is in turn attached to a cart.
“We've been here too long,” the official in charge declares. “We have enough. It's time to head back to the city.”
The soldiers seem happy about that. My guess is that they don't like being out in the lands beyond the city of Aetheria, out in the wider empire it claims. I don't know what to think about it. I'm still stunned by the speed with which all this could happen, that I could be taken from my home simply on the say-so of some official from the capital. It's obvious from the others around me that doing so was the point of his visit.
I am chained next to a young woman perhaps my own age. She has dark hair, shaved on one side and sweeping to her shoulder on the other. Her dark eyes stare out fearfully, her slender frame making her seem far too fragile for this.
“I’m Lyra,” I whisper to her.
“Naia,” she replies.
“Where did they take you from?” I ask.
“I was traveling with my family when we ran into the soldiers. I was healing my father's leg after he broke it, and-”
“Quiet there!” A soldier snaps a whip near us. “Time to get moving, all of you. You should be happy. Most of you scum would never get to see the wonders of Aetheria if it weren’t for us.”
He makes it sound as if he's doing us a favor by capturing us like this. Does he actually believe that? How could anyone believe that Aetheria is so wonderful that even being taken there in chains is better than living elsewhere?
The cart in front of us rumbles into motion so that now we must march or be pulled from our feet. I fall into step with the others, tears still running from my eyes.
“Try not to cry,” Naia whispers to me. “The guards target the ones who are weakest.”
“You said before you were healing your father's leg,” I say. “You've trained as a healer?”
Naia shakes her head, though. “I just have a talent for it, for healing wounds. Vitomancy, the Aetherians call it.”
Someone else with magical potential, snatched by the soldiers. I wonder if we all have such talents. They say such things are more common in the Aetherian empire than in other parts of the world, power flowing outwards from the city, even as the empire Aetheria has built conquers more and more.
“Be quiet, I said!” the soldier snarls, and now the whip runs across my shoulders in a burning agony that makes me bite back a cry of pain.
I trudge forward with the others, knowing I have no other choice. The whole convoy of taken things rumbles forward, carts holding goods and valuables, livestock driven forward by the soldiers, captives like me forced to follow. The hot sun beats down on the plains, but there is no respite. We must keep walking.
I think about the possibility that everyone here has some kind of talent. Doesn’t that make us strong? Doesn’t that give us the chance to break free? I can see the problem with that, though. I’ve already seen that the soldiers have magic of their own, and they are the ones with weapons. Meanwhile, we are the ones in chains. We have no choice but to do as they command and march.
I know only a little of the landscape beyond the village. In twenty years, I have left it just a few times for fairs and markets at larger villages nearby. The sea provides everything in Seatide, so we stay close to it. I have traveled further on water than on land, but that knowledge does not help me now.
The landscape around us is wild and bleak, punctuated here and there by farmsteads and walled villages, but mostly empty. The track beneath my feet is mud and stone, and since my feet are bare, I am quickly covered in dirt, my feet hurting from the hardness of the rocks. I am not sure how long I can walk like this. If I fall, will they simply whip me until I rise again, or will they just drag me, not even stopping?
It seems like forever before we come to a brief halt. The soldiers pass around water, but do not give us food. The grey-robed official is sitting on one of the carts, drinking from a wineskin and eating roasted meats. He does not even look at us. We are not important to him now that he has claimed us.
“Your feet are bleeding,” Naia whispers. She bends to them, at the limits of what the chains will allow, and half closes her eyes. I feel power moving across my skin, like the touch of a feather. My blistered and bleeding feet heal in front of my eyes.
“You!” a soldier calls out. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Nothing, sir,” Naia says. “Her feet were bleeding, and-”
He strikes her. “Aetheria owns you. It owns your magic. To use it without permission is to be punished. Understand?”
Naia nods, but that doesn’t seem to be good enough for the soldier. He takes out a whip, ready to deliver a beating to her. Can I do anything to stop it? Can I shield her with my body? She is going to suffer this because of me, after all.
Even as I think about it, though, there is a commotion from the other end of the line. I look around and see that a young man has somehow broken free from his chains and is now running, trying to make it across the broken ground of the wildlands.
He doesn’t make it far.
After a day of walking hard with no food he hasn’t got the stamina to stay ahead of the soldiers who move to chase him. One of them throws out a hand and choking dust rises up in front of him, making him cough and stumble, a casual display of minor magic that is nonetheless more than enough to slow the fleeing youth. Two of the soldiers bring him down to the ground, then drag him back. The grey-robed official waits for him, with a stern expression, as the rest of us look on.
He addresses us, not the young man who has run. “You will need to come to terms with your situation. You have been claimed in the name of the emperor. You are not free, and you have no protections under the law. You cannot flee, and you cannot fight back. The empire has more magic, and more power. If you are too strong to contain, your power will be dampened until it is needed. Those who own you may do as they wish with you. They may break your bones, take your bodies, kill you if they wish. You will obey every command given to you, or you will be punished. If you try to fight against that, you will lose. And if you try to escape…”
He turns to the soldiers holding the young man, nodding.
They pull him down to the ground, holding him still, as the official approaches.
“In Aetheria, you might die a dozen different ways. Out here, our options are more restricted.”
He takes out a knife and a purple stone, kneeling by the young man. I feel a wave of horror running through me as he sets the stone on the young man’s chest. I strain against my chains, a part of me feeling that I must do something, but there is nothing I can do.
“Oh great emperor, we offer this one in sacrifice. Accept his power for the stone of Aetheria!” the official intones, as solemn as a priest. A second later he, draws the blade across the young man's throat, swift and sharp.
I gasp in horror at the sight of it. The guards hold him in place while he dies, and there is nothing any of us can do to save him. Just like that, they have killed him. They could have put him back in chains, could have forced him to march, but they killed him.
Almost as soon as it is done, the official stands, cleaning his blade and heading back to his cart.
“The break is over. Get them moving again.”
The true horror of what has just happened is as much the casual way in which the official has treated it as the fact of the young man's death. It doesn't seem to matter that he has just ended someone's life. That he has killed someone there in front of the rest of us. It is one more inconvenience along the way for him.
And it is a warning. It shows us just how ready to kill us the Aetherians are. I can see terror on faces all around me, including that of Naia. For the first time I believe that everyone there truly understands the danger of their situation.
The guards leave the young man where he has fallen, as food for the crows. We march on, leaving him behind, and I try not to look back, because every time I do a sick feeling rises in my stomach.
We walk for days. I had not realized how vast the Aetherian Empire could be, that anyone could rule a space that could not be crossed in a day or two. At night we make camp, and we are given brief rations, chained to stakes hammered into the ground. I huddle close to Naia as the guards move by. I can feel their gazes on us, hungry and frightening, but they do not do anything to us.
I lose track of time. We walk along dirt tracks, then paved roads, occasionally passing carts coming the other way. The first couple of times, I hope that someone might stop and help us, but it is soon clear that no one will. We walk until I feel I cannot walk any longer, and still we keep going.
I’m not sure how long it is before the city comes into view. We march over a rise, and it is simply there, spread out beneath us like a map.
“Behold the city of Aetheria!” the official says, in a tone demanding awe. “Greatest city of the world.”
I can believe it, standing there. It is vast in a way that I did not know human settlements could be. It has walls but it also sprawls beyond those walls, slums and suburbs reaching out like the tendrils of some great beast. There are buildings built on a scale that I cannot fathom, palaces and towers and temples, along with huge square buildings that I guess must be either warehouses or barracks. There are statues many times the height of a man, and roads wide enough for half a dozen carts to drive side by side if needed. There is a great circular construction near the center of the city that is festooned with flags.
And there is magic. Magic on a scale that dwarfs the hints of it from the guards. I see flickering lights held between the hands of statues, illusions spread across the sides of buildings. Flames burst in the air in one spot, for no reason I can see.
We do not head for any of that. Instead, we are made to walk towards a structure on the edge of the city, clinging to the surrounding hillsides like a limpet. It is a fortress of grey stone, whereas the rest of the city seems to be built mostly from marble. It has towers and bastions that seem to impose its will on the surrounding landscape, a threatening shadow standing next to the brightness of the rest.
We walk to a set of great gates, and they swing open as we approach. Our caravan stops, and the soldiers take our chains, leading us towards those gates as if they are the maw of a great beast waiting to swallow us.
One of the soldiers gives me a cruel smile as we get closer.
“Welcome to Ironhold. I’m sure they’re going to love you here.”