The King Who Broke Heaven’s Tithe

Chapter 4 The Mill Beneath the Hill

The bronze hound could fit its head through the passage, but not its shoulders.

That saved the mill boy’s life.

He fell backward as its jaws snapped shut where his throat had been. Daren caught him by the collar and dragged him clear. The creature scraped at the stone, pulling itself farther through with every stroke.

“Wedges,” Daren told Brida.

She was already moving.

Selka thrust her sword into the hound’s open mouth. Blue light cracked along the blade. The beast recoiled, then bit down.

Steel broke.

She stumbled away holding half a sword.

Daren drove Brida’s first wedge between two stones above the opening. His old siege hammer had been lost at Corren, but the quarry mallet felt familiar in his hands.

He struck once.

The hound surged forward.

He struck again.

The lintel fell on its neck.

Bronze screamed against limestone. The creature thrashed until Brida’s second wedge brought down the wall behind it. Dust swallowed its head. For a moment, a golden eye glared through the rubble.

Then the light went out.

Daren kept the mallet raised until his arms failed.

Behind him, Orin started crying.

He turned too quickly and nearly fell. His son was standing beside the trough, furious tears running down his face.

“You left me again.”

Daren opened his mouth. He had been saving them. He had been ten paces away. None of that mattered to a boy who had woken on a sacrificial scale.

He knelt carefully.

“I should have told you where I was going.”

“Tell me next time.”

“I will.”

He let Orin hold his hand until the shaking stopped.

Only then did he look at Selka’s broken sword.

“How long before the riders?”

“By dawn. They’ll wait for light to cross the ravine.”

“And the brand?”

“Still quiet.”

The ember stag stood inside the hall, watching from behind its invisible boundary.

Daren looked at Brida. “There’s a lower mill.”

Her expression changed.

“Under the spring chamber. Flooded when the garrison left.”

“We need something inside it.”

Brida wiped dust from her eyes. “My brother maintained that wheel. He said the fort could winter a hundred people on a cart of wood when it worked.”

“What happened to him?”

“They paid him to leave. He wanted me to come.”

She looked around the courtyard, measuring its broken roofs with an expression Daren recognized. A craftsperson seeing work that should never have been allowed to fail.

“I thought there would always be another contract,” she said. “Apparently this is it.”

“Then we need rope.”

They made it from bed cords and harness leather. Daren explained to Orin that he was going below the fort and that Brida would stay beside him. The boy asked whether the hound was truly dead.

Daren answered the question he could answer.

“It cannot get through that wall.”

The spring chamber opened beneath the kitchens. A stair descended into water so clear that Daren could see drowned stools on the floor below. A great wheel lay motionless beneath the surface.

At its center, a red stone glimmered.

The hearth’s heart.

Selka tied the rope around her waist.

“You can barely breathe,” she said before he objected. “I can.”

“You burned your strength fighting the hound.”

“I have enough for a dive.”

Daren inspected the wheel from the stair. Its axle had been chained to a support pillar. Someone had stopped it deliberately.

“Don’t touch the stone. Cut that chain.”

“Why?”

“It belongs in the wheel.”

She studied his face, then entered the water.

Daren held the rope. Selka’s pale coat moved beneath the surface, then darkened as she reached the chain. Her broken sword flashed.

The first blow did nothing.

The second sent a shiver through the pillar.

Something opened its eyes behind the wheel.

Daren yanked the rope.

Selka looked up just as a pale eel uncoiled from the axle. Its mouth opened sideways, full of glassy teeth.

She kicked away. The eel caught her coat.

Daren pulled with both hands.

The rope slipped across wet stone. His scar flared, and he heard another fragment of the fort’s memory: a miller cursing a stubborn sluice.

The lever was behind him.

He caught it with his foot and pushed.

Nothing.

Selka’s hand reached toward the stair, fingers opening.

Daren let the rope bite into his palm and threw his weight against the lever.

Rotten wood snapped.

The sluice opened.

Water rushed through the chamber, dragging the eel into the wheel. Selka tore free of her coat and caught the stair rail. Daren hauled her up as the blades began to turn.

The chain stretched, groaned, and broke.

Red light spilled from the axle.

Across the floor, old channels brightened beneath the water. Warmth moved up Daren’s legs, searching the empty space below his breastbone.

He almost welcomed it.

Then he felt the sharp edges of his ruined channels.

He let the power pass.

Above them, the hearth roared.

Selka lay coughing on the stair. Daren wrapped his coat around her shoulders.

“You could have warned me about the eel,” she said.

“I’ll add it to the list.”

For the first time, her mouth curved.

The red stone continued turning inside the wheel. Beside it, a second chain hung from the ceiling, severed long before they arrived.

At its broken end, someone had engraved the same seven rays as the mountain sect’s emblem.

Selka touched it and lost her smile.

“This wasn’t abandoned,” she said.

From above came Brida’s shout.

The spring had turned gold.