Page 42 of Steeling Light (Shadowed Debts #3)

There is nothing stopping a sylph, or any other Immortal, from enchanting, but my House is most suited to it. Sidon says we must be the most flexible. I believe we have been forced to use every advantage we can get to compete with the other Great Houses. Necessity breeds innovation.

~Daegon Rahn, personal journals

Rhion

I step onto the training ground, and immediately a younger soldier approaches me. “Thank Sidon, you’re back. The generals have been furious that they were going to have to wait an entire week to talk to you again.”

I frown at the girl whose name slips from my mind. She couldn’t have been part of my command for very long. I know I’ve spoken to her before, but I don’t remember her very well.

“Slow down. What’s your name, soldier?” I ask.

“Maris, sir.” She looks nervous. I’m a little surprised she’s the one who found me. I walked past numerous other soldiers, and all they did was give me a quick nod.

“Maris, why are you the one telling me this? Why not one of the officers I’ve passed?”

She stands up a little straighter. “Because I was on Prince Rhion duty. My job for the past week has been to watch for you. General Trystan gave me the order himself. He told me they need you to go to them directly if I saw you. It’s something to do with a gauntlet, though I don’t know why a gauntlet would concern you, Prince Rhion.

I do my best not to question my orders, but it sounds a little… wasteful?”

A gauntlet? There’s only one gauntlet that my generals would care about.

The Steel Gauntlet . It’s the most powerful of all the relics we’ve been hunting for.

The Burning Brand nullifies the power of Shadows, but the Steel Gauntlet nullifies weapons and Flames.

It, along with the Burning Brand, will be impossible to defeat.

“Thank you, Maris. Go back to training. You’ve done your duty. War is brewing, and every minute you aren’t training is a minute that your enemies are becoming stronger than you.”

She bows to me and runs back to the training ground where soldiers are working on their formations. Dragons damn us all. If Trystan found the Gauntlet, we’ve already won the battle.

My father’s orders pound in my head. Find the relics. Do whatever you have to do to find them. I don’t care how many soldiers die or how many villages you have to burn. Find them and bring them to me.

I consider resisting the command. Pain shoots through me like hot metal, searing my mind with agony.

Even contemplating refusing him is more than I think I can stomach.

I have to choose my battles. If my generals have found the Steel Gauntlet, they’ll wait for me to test it, but if I refuse to bring it to my father, they’ll still bring it to him.

Refusing this order won’t help. Not unless I can somehow figure out how to fight and kill all of my generals while it feels like I’m dying.

No, this is not the time to refuse him.

I go to the command room where all the generals sit and talk about defense plans.

They know Cole is coming to the city soon.

I catch the words “The Shade” in the conversation before they notice me.

Then they all turn at once, smiles on their faces.

They know what the Steel Gauntlet means.

It means that while we may lose soldiers, we won’t lose the war.

“I’ve heard that you found the Steel Gauntlet.”

There’s silence among them for a moment, but then General Trystan stands up. “We haven’t found it, but we’re almost certain we know where it is. The only problem is that we can’t get it.”

I frown. “Speak plainly. I don’t have the energy for riddles.”

He sighs, but he’s still smiling. “You told us to hunt for the other relics. We have the Brand, and Cole Cyrus has the Cloak. That left the Choker and the Gauntlet. Everything tells us the House of Earth hid the Choker where only they could find it. So, I went searching through the old records of King Daegon, your grandfather. He was the last person to hold the Steel Gauntlet to our knowledge.”

He clears his throat, and I pick up some nervous energy from him.

He’s proud of himself, but he’s trying to be humble.

“Daegon Rahn was a meticulous record keeper. He states many times in his journals that he didn’t trust his mind.

Sidon, whom he spoke to almost daily, struggled with lost memories, and Daegon did not want to forget anything important.

So, he journaled every day. Most of these journals have been read by scholars many times over.

It’s how we know about the world before your father’s rule. ”

I’ve known about my grandfather’s journals for a long time, but did he really just write down the location of the Steel Gauntlet when all the Houses’ relics went missing?

“The scholars saw no mention of the Steel Gauntlet in those journals, but they also noticed that for a man as focused on record keeping, there were significant gaps.”

I sigh. “There are missing journals,” I finish, understanding at last. “Where were they hidden?”

Trystan chuckles. “In the one place that no one’s gone since Daegon died. His personal enchanting workshop. The doorway was enchanted to keep everyone out other than his bloodline. The more and more we’ve thought about it, we’re sure that the answer lies in those journals.”

I nod. “And only my father and I can get them.”

All my generals nod in unison. “Fine then, let’s be done with this hunt.”

I look into my grandfather’s workshop. I don’t know how many times I’ve considered entering this space, but something has always made me turn away.

My father wouldn’t have cared if I had gone into it.

Enchanting is one of the few aspects of Steel that he’s mostly ignored.

I heard it was because he was terrible at it, but a part of me wonders if his father had pushed him too hard toward it just as mine pushed me so hard to lead our soldiers.

A part of me hates the idea of stepping into this room. Enchanting has always been a passion for me. It was something that I could do without any input from my father. The idea that there could be an obviously efficient path could destroy all of the exploration and mystery I’ve enjoyed for so long.

It might end up turning my passion into something I hate.

Thoughts of Ainslee tug at me, though. She needs me to become stronger, strong enough to fight back against my father. Maybe there’s something inside my grandfather’s journals about how to fight against the blood bond that binds me to my father’s orders.

I step through the entryway, and a vibration courses through me. I pause momentarily as the power touches me, tasting me. Then it’s gone as if it’s satisfied, and I step into the room.

It’s not so different from my own workshop.

The same distilling equipment sits on a massive stone table against the wall.

There are bowls of silver and gold wires, and several bowls of tiny gemstone flecks on another, smaller, stone table.

Different sized and shaped burins hang on a rack above the third and final table next to wire cutters, hammers, pliers, and chisels.

All of them still shine without a touch of rust even after thousands of years.

They were meticulously cared for, and the oil has protected them all this time.

Along the back wall are bookshelves made of black wood that are filled to overflowing with all sizes and shapes of books.

I ignore the tables and go to the bookshelves, my eyes scanning the spines.

I recognize some of the more common ones.

Books on the use of herbs and stones within the enchanting discipline.

Then there are massive tomes that dominate an entire section of the shelves.

I pull one down and see that it’s just design after design, all of them handwritten.

Daegon’s prototypes. My eyes drink in the information.

I recognize many of them, things like enchanted torches and teleportation mirrors.

But some of them are interesting. They use unusual materials like bone and leather rather than the typical gemstones and gold.

When would leather be a better conductor of magic than gold?

“Do you see the journals?” Trystan calls out from the passageway.

I pull away from the book of diagrams and close it. “There are a lot of books, but most of them aren’t labeled. I have to look through each of them.”

Trystan doesn’t respond, but I put the book of diagrams back onto the shelf, something I’ll have to peruse later. I move on and find more and more handwritten books on enchanting, each of them with their own specific topics.

These books have never left this room, and there are no copies elsewhere. It’s a repository of the greatest mind in enchanting, all of it with meticulous notes. It’s not what I’m here for, but it sings to my soul.

Each book I pull from the shelf is as interesting as the books of diagrams, but I have to force myself to put it back, to search for the journals that could hold the location of the Steel Gauntlet.

Then I open a smaller notebook, not much larger than my hand. It’s one of a dozen just like it.

Today Gethin became a man. I can see myself in him sometimes, but at other times, he confounds me.

Those eyes hold an intelligence that scares me.

He picks up things I miss, even as young as he is.

There is a ruthlessness in his acquisition of power.

He is more determined than anyone I have met to become the strongest King that has ever lived.

I have fought many wars, and we have lost every one of them.

Not because an individual warrior is more powerful than I am.

Not because their weapons are stronger than Nightforged steel.

No, they won because the soldiers who fought under their leaders were protecting their families, their children, and their very way of life.

Power stems from the reason a person fights.

Not from the magic they wield, and not from the arms they bear.

A human mother will lift boulders to save her child.

Magic flows through the world in the very air we breathe.

The Thrones that we fight so hard to protect make sure of this.

In those moments, when a mortal or Immortal is so consumed with a purpose, that magic becomes a part of them.

Their blades will come down harder, their arrows will fly truer, and their feet will not stumble.

Purpose gives men strength, and one day, my son will learn that there is much to be gained in letting the heart rule and the mind listen. I just hope it’s before I must pass into the void because I doubt there will be any others that will be able to force him to learn it.

I sigh. I guess disappointment in sons is typical in the Rahn family tree. I don’t let myself get sucked into reading any more about how terrible my father is. That’s not something I need a lesson in.

“I think I found them,” I call out.

“Fantastic, bring them out, and the scholars can get started searching for the location of the Steel Gauntlet.”

I look at the dozen journals that my grandfather hid here, knowing my father would never come into this workshop. The last secrets from his reign. The only things that my father has not been informed of.

I was told to find the House relics. There’s no part of that order that requires me to enlist scholars to help me do it.

I toss the first journal onto the closest table and walk to the doorway. As soon as I’m out of the workshop, I smile at Trystan and the other generals who are waiting anxiously.

“I think the information in these journals is too important to let scholars read. I’ll spend the next few days reading them myself, and if I can’t discover the Gauntlet’s location, then I’ll let the scholars help.

All of you can go back to training our soldiers.

I suspect Prince Cole will move against us soon, and we need everyone ready to fight.

I will not have us lose this war because the men and women under my command are less competent than whoever Cole has found to fight for him. ”

Without waiting for a response, I turn around and go back to the journal I’d begun reading. I will find the Steel Gauntlet, but I may find many other things as well, none of which my father will know anything about.