The Copper Promise (24 page)

In answer Wydrin retrieved a sack from the floor and untied the rope at its neck. The chemical smell increased until Dreyda’s eyes began to water.

‘This is the accelerant. If we light this it will carry the flame where we wish,’ said Wydrin. There was a dark powder inside the sack. She closed the neck and opened the second bag, a little more carefully. ‘And this is the stuff that’s going to help us give Fane a very bad day indeed.’ Inside the sack were a number of pallid, greasy bricks of some semi-solid substance. They smelled powerfully of bad eggs and rotten meat.

‘Regnisse, would you care to accompany me on a spot of mayhem?’

Despite herself, Dreyda smiled.

Sebastian and Crowleo walked beneath the streets of Pinehold. It was cool and silent, and smelled strongly of damp and green things. Sebastian found his memories turning back to his own boyhood spent training under the mighty god-peaks of Ynnsmouth.

He was reminded of a particular test they all dreaded. The sacred mountains were riddled with caves, and when a boy was considered old enough the Masters would take him to the entrance of the one known as the Demon’s Throat. There he would be stripped of all weapons and supplies, and made to change into a thin white shift and linen trousers. Then the boy would be given a full goblet of red wine to hold, and made to walk the length of the Demon’s Throat, alone in the dark, without spilling a drop.

It was meant to test the attributes one needed to be a knight of Ynnsmouth, and perhaps it did. You needed bravery and courage to face that pit of blackness alone, and the test encouraged you to use all your senses to find your way, instead of relying purely on sight. There was also a great deal of talk about ‘listening to the voice of the mountain’, which Sebastian had taken very seriously at the time, although during his walk through the Demon’s Throat he’d heard only the sound of his own frightened breathing rushing in his ears, and the distant sounds of ice melting. Most of the boys hurt themselves on their first attempt, emerging at the far end with bleeding knees and their white shirts stained with wine, and they would have to walk it all again the following spring. Sebastian’s best friend Connor had drunk the entire goblet of wine and emerged at the other end unharmed and cheerfully inebriated. That had earned him a beating from the Masters. Sebastian’s first walk had been his last; he’d emerged from the tunnel with a full goblet and not a drop on his clean white shirt. He wondered if they still performed the ritual, but that was a stupid question
. The Order doesn’t change
, he thought.
I was the one that changed
.

It had been cold in the Demon’s Throat, and frightening, although now he found the stones above his head reassuring. It was good to be out from under the sky, where anything could be watching. He frowned at the memory, and called to Crowleo.

‘How much further?’

‘We should rejoin the tunnel under the market soon, my friend. Be patient.’

Sebastian held up the glass ball of light and watched as Crowleo poured a thin line of black powder onto the floor from the sack in his arms. They had left Frith beneath the Queen’s Tower where he’d been arranging the greasy bricks of explosives in a careful pile. The screams from the prisoners above had been loud enough to make them all cringe. Now they were working their way back to the central tunnel where they would meet Wydrin, assuming she found her way down there in time.

‘So how did you know about the passage under the temple? It appears no one else in Pinehold knows about the tunnels, or they’d be used as storage rooms and cellars.’

‘It was a secret, was it not?’ Crowleo did not look up from the powder trail. ‘Holley knew I would have to get in and out of Pinehold without going through the gates, so she shared that one with me. If she knew about the others … I suppose now I shall never be sure.’

‘I wonder who built them?’ Sebastian held the ball of light closer to one of the walls. They were constructed of smooth, flat stones, square and even. In some places moss had obscured great patches and Sebastian could just make out a small pattern in the centre of some of the bricks. He rubbed a portion of the muck away with his free hand and saw a small human face carved into the stone. It was simple and oddly beautiful, depicting a woman with long hair and oval eyes. Her mouth was slightly parted, as if she were about to speak. There was another one a few stones down, a man with a similar serene expression. They appeared to stretch along the entire wall.

‘Have you seen these?’ said Sebastian. ‘There are faces carved here.’

‘Sebastian, the light, please?’ Crowleo was standing still with the sack in his arms, a slight smile on his face. Smiles were rare from the young man now, and this one looked uncertain.

‘Sorry.’

They continued on their way until the passageway turned sharply to the right, and they emerged into a larger space. Wydrin was already waiting for them, with the fire-priestess and an oil lamp.

‘You took your time,’ she said, cheerfully enough.

‘It’s not a race, Wydrin. And I hope you’re being careful with that lamp. An early fire would be most unfortunate, particularly while we’re still down here.’

‘That is why
I
am holding the lamp,’ said the fire-priestess. She was a tall, bony woman, and the lamplight made her face look sharp and unnatural, but Wydrin had said she was trustworthy, and that was enough for Sebastian.

‘Everything is set up,’ said Wydrin. ‘Where is our princeling?’

‘At the Queen’s Tower. There is an exit there, and he’ll meet us in the marketplace.’

Wydrin raised an eyebrow.

‘So he’s not here when the fuse is lit? Typical.’

‘He is removing the prisoners from the tower, if he can,’ said Sebastian, although that part of the plan made him uneasy. He’d seen Frith fight and his new blade was wickedly sharp, but he hadn’t been happy about leaving him alone. Frith had insisted.

‘I shall light the fuse at sundown, when the sun has fully disappeared beneath the treeline,’ said Crowleo. Sebastian started to protest and the young man shook his head abruptly. ‘We have discussed this. You must be ready to pick off those guards who survive, and I am no use with a sword. Besides, I want to do this much. For Holley.’

Sebastian sighed.

‘Fine. You
must
leave as soon as you see it lit. We don’t truly know what will happen when the explosives combust. Assuming this works at all.’

‘Great,’ said Wydrin. She pulled off the robe she had been wearing to disguise her appearance, and untied the Secret Keeper’s goggles from her belt. She held them up to her eyes and buckled the leather strap around the back of her head. The warm glow of the oil lamp sank into the glass eye-pieces and made them glow like pools of sapphires. ‘I have one last thing to do, then.’

‘What?’

There was a tone in Wydrin’s voice that normally meant a drunken fight outside a tavern, or a merchant pushed off the end of a dock. She unsheathed her daggers and kissed their blades reverentially.

‘I’m going to expose the truth. The people of Pinehold could do with a touch of that, I reckon.’

The Queen’s Tower had once been an elegant place.

Frith remembered the visit with his father, sitting in the jarl’s study drinking honeyed thistle tea. He’d been bored, kicking his legs against the chair until his father had pointed out the tapestries on the wall, depicting an ancient war between the mages, just the sort of thing to distract him at that age. He vaguely recalled a set of glass doors leading to a balcony and small ceramic lamps dotting the shelves – but the tapestries had stayed with him. Would any of them have survived? And what of the jarl? He’d been an elderly man even then, knuckles thick with arthritis, white hair thinning. No doubt he would have been the first to be put to questioning, if he was even still alive.

Now the tower was cold and draughty, and the stench of blood in the air was overpowering. He’d entered through what had once been the storage room, via a door so ancient the wood had warped within the iron frame and it had taken all his strength to shoulder it open. When he’d managed to squeeze through he’d found himself in a small, dank room, rich with the scent of rotting vegetation and mould. Beyond that were storage rooms, and following the spiral staircase up he’d come to the servants’ quarters, now being used as a makeshift dungeon.

He edged around a corner, his sword drawn.

The guard sat with his back to Frith, intent on the bowl of lumpy stew and the chunk of bread he was dipping in it. They were complacent here, Frith noted, certain of their dominion over the townspeople. This one wasn’t even wearing his helmet, which was propped next to his chair. The rest of the loaf of bread was balanced on top of it.

Walking swiftly and softly in his worn leather boots, Frith came up behind the guard and brought the pommel of his sword down on the back of the man’s head. There was a meaty crunch and the guard pitched forward out of the chair. The bowl of stew clattered onto the floor, spilling its brownish contents onto the flagstones.

Frith pushed the guard onto his back with his foot; out cold, possibly dead. He bent, rifled through the man’s black tunic and came up with a thick ring of keys. There were muffled sounds coming from the room to his right, the weak, desperate sounds of someone who thought it likely they would never see the light of day again. There had been a time when Frith had made similar noises, when the pain had been too much for him to bear. The memory brought back a hot flush of guilt and shame, so he pushed it firmly from his mind.

The guard now lying on the floor in front of him was the first he’d seen, but no doubt there would be more. For now there was silence, so he fumbled the right key from the ring and opened the door.

He walked into a small room with rushes on the floor. Once, no doubt, it had been a servant’s refuge, but all signs of human comfort had been removed. Instead there was a pile of straw in one corner, a bucket in the other, and an emaciated man dressed only in ragged underclothes crouching below the window pane. He had a big frame and large bony hands, but he cowered against the wall and whimpered as Frith approached. The ends of his fingers were raw and bleeding, and there were numerous bruises on his face and neck. His feet were chained together.

‘You. What is your name?’ Frith glanced behind him into the hallway. It was still clear.

‘I’ve said everything, lord. I’ve said everything there is to say.’ The man’s voice was little more than a rusted croak.

‘I need you to focus, and quickly.’ Frith frowned; the room smelled of urine. ‘What is your name? Do you work in the tower?’

The man looked up at him, his eyes almost shut against a half-expected blow.

‘Berwick, lord, I was the jarl’s footman. Who are you?’

Frith nodded impatiently. His hands were starting to tingle, as they had before the green flames had consumed him in the market square.

‘Berwick, you must make your way down to the lower floors.’ He came forward and, using the smallest key on the ring, unlocked the manacles that chained Berwick’s feet. The nails were missing from his toes, he noticed, and there were livid burn marks on the soft flesh of the man’s calf muscles. Frith scowled, and the churning in his chest grew stronger. Berwick just looked at him, his lips loose with spittle.

‘Are you listening to me, Berwick? There, you are free. Get up.’ He helped the man to his feet, and was surprised to find that Berwick was a good head taller than him. Frith took off his cloak and flung it over the man’s bare shoulders. ‘Go down to the storeroom. You know where that is, yes?’ The man nodded dumbly. ‘There is a disused chamber at the very back—’

‘Maisie said it was haunted, that’s what she said.’

Frith bit down his impatience.

‘That would be the one. You’ll find a door there that leads to a tunnel. Turn left and keep going, it will eventually lead you out into the Blackwood. If you find anyone else, take them with you. If you reveal yourself to a guard or sound the alarm, I will come back and kill you myself.’

The man paused in the doorway, and there was a look of growing recognition in his eyes that made Frith uneasy. Was it possible Berwick had been here all those years ago? Would he remember him?

‘Just who are you, lord?’

There was a soft
wumph
and Frith’s right arm was suddenly bright with emerald fire. Berwick stumbled back into the corridor.

‘
What
are you?’

‘I am vengeance,’ said Frith, and immediately felt vaguely foolish. ‘Now go!’

Berwick went, moving swiftly down the stone steps. Frith looked at his arm in annoyance.

‘I have no control,’ he said to himself bitterly. ‘The power of the mages has a will of its own.’ After a few seconds the green light flickered and died, as if to spite him. Frith muttered darkly under his breath and continued his ascent of the staircase.

It took five more rooms, five more released prisoners and three unconscious guards before Frith found him.

He knew, somehow, before he opened the door, what he would find within. Was it the smell of the man, seeping out from under the slats to greet him? Was it his imagination or did his once shattered leg twinge with remembered agony just before he stepped into the room?

Yellow-Eyed Rin turned at once, an expression of impatience on his greasy, fat face.

‘I told you to leave me be with this one, didn’ I? I’m to be left alone when I want to be, those are Fane’s orders—’ His protests died in his throat as he realised the visitor to his makeshift dungeon wasn’t a guard. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’

Frith didn’t answer straight away. He was looking at the woman on the bench behind Rin. She had been strapped down over it, her arms pinned behind her head and her rough-spun tunic torn to expose the skin of her belly. Her hair, a wild black bush, framed a face that looked as though it had once smiled often, and now was not likely to smile again. Dark eyes huge with fear stared up at Frith.

Rin was now advancing on Frith, a long scalpel held in one pudgy fist. Frith dragged his eyes back to him and held up his sword.