The Copper Promise (47 page)

Wydrin held up her hands for silence. A stiff breeze blew in off the lake, and quite suddenly she was very aware that most of her clothes were still in the tent.

‘Yes, that was Roki, and no, I do not believe that he is nearby. He has traded with the demon that made his gauntlet to increase its powers, somehow, to enhance its range.’ She waved her hands impatiently as this only provoked more questions. ‘What I want to know is, why was he so scared of this little shrimp?’ She pointed at Ip, who twirled on the spot and yawned hugely. ‘Well?’

‘I don’t know, do I?’ she replied. ‘Can I go back to bed now?’

‘It’s time you left our company, I think.’

Sebastian knelt so that he was face to face with Ip. The owner of the tents hadn’t been best pleased with the hole they’d left in his silks so they’d been encouraged to leave. At knife point. Now the others were trawling the markets for provisions, and he and Ip stood at the back of a small audience watching a mummers’ show. Periodically children would come round with hats, begging for coins.

‘You can’t leave me here,’ said Ip. Her voice was utterly flat. ‘I’m just a child.’

‘Really? Is that why Roki, a hardened assassin, near wet his britches at the sight of you? We both know what you are.’

The girl blinked, and her eyes were blood-red once more.

‘Can you really do that, good sir knight? Ip is my priestess, true, but when I am not here she is still a child. One that has had a hard life. And you, the only person to show her a modicum of kindness, is to abandon her?’

Sebastian stood up.

‘I’ve spoken to the mummers’ company already. They’re always looking for new blood to train up. They’ll feed you, and get you some proper shoes. It’ll be safer than travelling with a bunch of adventurers.’

Ip reached out and took hold of his hand. For a moment Sebastian felt his resolve waver. She was so young, under it all – but then the tiny hand gripped his fingers hard, digging in sharp nails. Ip bared her teeth at him.

‘You can’t escape me, Sir Sebastian, as much as you’d like to. You wear my armour, and your sword is sworn to me.’ She tightened her grip until Sebastian was sure she’d broken the skin. ‘You think that by leaving me here your friends won’t find out what you’ve done,
but your soul is mine
.’ She hissed the last, her face so contorted that she barely looked human, let alone a child. Suddenly it was quite easy to leave her behind.

Sebastian shook her off.

‘I’m sorry, Ip, if you’re still in there. Truly, I am.’

He called to a short fat man with ginger whiskers, who was watching the show from the sidelines. The man waddled over at a pace.

‘This is the girl, no?’

‘This is her, Zevranna,’ said Sebastian. ‘She has no family. If you could find a place for her I’d be eternally grateful.’

‘Oh, but she has spirit, this one, I can see it!’ Zevranna beamed at the child, while Sebastian cleared his throat.

‘You could say that.’

‘I see a great future for you, girl. You will be a star! Ip, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Ip. Her eyes were back to their icy blue. ‘It was.’

‘Worry not, my friend.’ Zevranna patted Sebastian’s arm with a clammy hand. ‘I can see you are concerned for the child, because you have a good heart, but she will have a life few children can even dream of! Fame, fortune, the open road. It will be an adventure, no?’ He addressed this last to Ip, who was unmoved. ‘Come.’ He held out his plump hand, and after a moment she took it. ‘I will introduce you to our other children. It will be grand!’

Sebastian watched them walk away. He expected Ip, or Bezcavar, to give him one last baleful look over the shoulder, but she never looked back. They disappeared into the crowd, who were roaring with laughter at the antics of the two men on stage. She would be better off, he told himself again. If they were to face Y’Ruen at the end of all this, then they didn’t need a child to look after too.

Even so, he wasn’t sure who he felt most sorry for – Ip, or her new carers.

They walked some distance from the settlement in the morning light, looking to put a reasonable amount of space between them and the tents before the griffins made their transformation. Wydrin stalked off in front, her shoulders hunched against the chill and her eyes on the ground. The cut on her right hand was sore but shallow, and she couldn’t bring herself to ask Frith for assistance with it. Instead she concentrated on the mild throb in her fingers and tried not to think about Roki’s face hanging over her in the dark, the cold bite of his blade … to be caught unawares, helpless … She kicked at a lump of dirt, sending it skittering across the grass.

‘How could you not tell me?’

She glanced up to see that Sebastian had caught up with her.

‘We’d only just found you again.’ The plaintive tone of her own voice only served to make her angrier. ‘And how am I supposed to tell you anything when you piss off in the middle of the night and leave me stranded in a town with one stinking tavern?’

‘You told no one,’ Sebastian said. He was keeping his voice level, a tactic he always used in arguments and one that never failed to annoy the living piss out of her. ‘Roki could have attacked at any moment and you didn’t think that was worth mentioning?’

Wydrin rounded on him, clenching her fists at her sides. The sharp pain of the cut was glorious, somehow. She welcomed it.

‘Roki is my problem. And what are you keeping from us, exactly?’ She nodded at Frith and Gallo following on behind. ‘Who was the kid? Or should I say,
what
is the kid? And where did you get that armour from? For years you only had bitterness for the Order but then you go running back to them, and they give you this armour.’ She took a step towards him and raised her chin. ‘I’m not buying it. And I’m no fan of brats but even I would question leaving a kid with a bunch of strangers.’

‘She’s better off with them. Our path is too dangerous …’

She shook her head angrily, cutting him off.

‘What happened in Relios, Sebastian? Why were you the only one to survive?’

Sebastian’s eyes were very wide; he looked lost, and it frightened her. A moment ago she’d been ready to land one on his jaw but now she reached out and touched his arm.

‘You can tell me, Seb,’ she said. ‘You’re my sworn brother, aren’t you? You can tell me anything.’

For the briefest second she could see the shadow of the old Sebastian on his weathered face – kindness, weary patience, strength – and then it was gone. He shook her arm off brusquely.

‘Y’Ruen killed them all, and I was lucky. I found the girl wandering, half-starved.’ He pulled at his beard and looked away from her. ‘Just as I told you. Frith, get these griffins ready, we’ve come far enough.’

Frith caught up with them, the trio of birds circling overhead. He seemed about to say something, then apparently thought the better of it. He gestured at the birds and the wind roared into life about their feet. They twisted and grew until the griffins once more stood on the grass, their regal heads like carved statues in the sunlight. Wydrin turned away from Sebastian and went to one of the animals. She patted the great creature’s powerful neck, taking in the exotic scent of the beast, seashells and orange blossom and sweat.

‘Let’s go,’ she said, not looking at any of them. ‘Let’s go to this blasted Rookery.’

When Frith had been a boy, his older brother Leon had passed on to him a set of wooden toys. Pieces of the Blackwood skilfully carved to look like castles, horses, knights and people to rescue – everything he could need to create his own kingdom to rule over. When he was older Leon showed him how to carve the wood himself, so that he could add to the collection, just as Leon had done. Aaron Frith had carved all the great heroes – Alynn the Wise, Roland of Phen, The Steadfast Seven – and added them to his kingdom, making it, in his opinion, the greatest in all of Ede. On quiet days he would take all the pieces and build his city on the rug beside the Great Stairs, and when it was done he would go to the top of the landing and look down, pretending he was a god watching his loyal subjects from the sky.

Flying over the City of Verneh reminded him of this so strongly that for a moment he was dizzy; did he fly far above the world, or was he a child again, lost in that giant castle? He dragged his eyes back up to the mountains that loomed before them. He had been planning to pass the toys on to Tristan soon, he remembered. Well, he’d been thinking about it, at least. Tristan already had so many toys … Unbidden, a memory of his little brother came back to him; Tristan just learning to walk, patiently climbing his way up the stairs.

I should have given them to him a long time ago,
he thought.
Should have done so many things.

In truth, aside from that trick of perspective, Verneh looked little like his wooden city. It was a sprawling place of white and yellow brick, lying between a wide river dotted with boats and a confusion of jagged mountains. Domes of green tile sprouted everywhere like elegant mushrooms. They called it, Frith remembered, the Silken City, because the surrounding forests contained giant silkworms, and it was said that even the poorest beggar in Verneh wore the finest clothes. Indeed, silk flags and banners of all colours flew from every roof, window and corner, bright and alive under the hot sun.

‘Nice place,’ said Wydrin. ‘You’d think O’rin would live here rather than the mountains.’

‘Just like him to be difficult.’

Frith pressed his heels to the griffin’s sides and they took on a new burst of speed. He turned around to check that the other griffins were following. He saw Gallo leaning out to one side to watch where they were going, his skin grey under the sunlight, and Sebastian, his wild hair once more tamed in a braid. The griffins bowed their powerful heads and up they all went, leaving the city behind and climbing into thinner, colder air. Below them the lower reaches of the mountains were still covered in the thick foliage of the forest, but as they climbed higher the trees were fewer and fewer, until rocky fingers pushed through the ground, and they saw deep chasms and hidden caves. The air grew frigid, and soon Frith could see his breath in front of him in puffs of white vapour.

‘Look,’ said Wydrin, pointing. There was snow here too, stubborn white highlights left over from some winter storm, preserved by the chilly air. ‘This is a strange place, hot on one side and freezing on the other. What do you suppose the Rookery looks like?’

‘I suspect we’ll know it when we see it.’

In the end, that was partially correct. They flew back and forth over the mountains, looking for a gabled palace or a golden longhall, but saw nothing save for rocks, ice and forbidding caverns. The griffins flitted back and forth, until eventually Wydrin nodded to the highest, most perilous peak. The central mountain rose from the others like the end of a broad sword, sheer sides tapering to a lethal point.

‘I bet that’s where it bloody is,’ she said. ‘If you can fly, and you don’t want anyone popping over making a nuisance of themselves, that’s where you’d stick your palace.’

Even with the griffins Frith did not relish the idea of climbing to the top of that. It would be like touching the sky. Still, the map was somewhat vague on the precise location, with the letters R-O-O-K-E-R-Y delicately scrawled across half the mountain range, and he had a terrible suspicion that Wydrin was right. Trust a sell-sword to sniff out the hidden temple.

They turned to approach the central mountain, and the griffins began to gain speed, as though they were starting to recognise where they were. Frith heard Sebastian shout with surprise as they all held on for dear life, and in moments they passed the peak and were above it, spinning in the thin cloud cover. Cold water droplets covered their skin and hair, tingling like a kiss in the dark.

‘Can you see anything?’ said Wydrin. She was leaning over, peering past the griffin’s wings. ‘We must be directly over the top, I reckon.’

Fog swirled beneath them, but there was a suggestion of solid ground somewhere down there.

‘I can’t see beyond this blasted mist.’ Holding the words for Fire and Control in his mind, he held out his bandaged fist and a small, almost delicate fireball the size of a duck’s egg swam forth into the fog. The heat of it dissipated the mist into a fine rain, and the view became clearer. Gallo and Sebastian joined them, their griffins hovering like hawks pinpointing a kill.

‘Well, gents, there it is,’ said Wydrin. Her voice was full of wonder. ‘We’ve found the Rookery.’

It nestled atop the mountain like an improbable castle. And nestled was, Wydrin realised, exactly the right word for it. The Rookery was a complex confection of wood; not straight pieces cut from the flesh of the tree as a carpenter might build, with planks and arches and pillars, but an almost organic collection of vegetation, twisted together to form a tower, woven into shape like a bird’s nest. It was difficult to be sure from their vantage point, but she was certain she could see branches, twigs, even whole trees, sculpted into one giant formation.

‘By all the gods,’ Frith muttered from behind her. ‘Who could have made such a thing?’

‘I think you’ve answered your own question there,’ replied Wydrin.

They circled the structure in a downward spiral. The outer wall was shaped like a crown, dipping down into troughs and then rising to peaks, where Wydrin imagined lamps had once been posted. In the middle of this was the tower, although it was unlike any she’d seen before. It rose out of the twisted wood to form a shape more like a tree than a structure built by a man. At the top there was a deep indent, like a bowl, and from there a series of ledges that could have been steps leading down to a hole in the middle of the tower. Wisps of cloud moved restlessly around the whole thing, as though the very sky sought to conceal it.

‘We should land on the top,’ she said. ‘It looks to be the only way to get into the tower.’

The griffins spread their wings and landed in the centre of the bowl with a flurry of squawking and black feathers.

There were nests here, hidden from the outside by the raised lip of the wall, like oversized pigeon lofts. As the adventurers dismounted, one by one the griffins retreated to the alcoves, making soft cooing noises at each other.