The Copper Promise (48 page)

‘Someone’s glad to be home.’ Wydrin nodded to Frith. ‘What are you doing?’

Frith was removing strips of linen from his belt and tying them around the palms of his hands. Every time they’d paused on their long journey he’d painted new words on fresh pieces, hunched over the fabric with his ink pot and brush.

‘Preparing for whatever might be down there. Can you give me a hand with this?’

Wydrin went to him and pulled his sleeves up. She took a strip and tied it around his forearm.

‘What do you expect to find?’ asked Sebastian. His face was wet from the clouds, and the cut on his cheek looked livid.

‘I do not know,’ said Frith. ‘But if I’ve learned anything in the last month or so, it’s that it is foolish to trust a god. Here, tie this last one to my left arm.’

Wydrin frowned at him and gave the knot a swift jerk.

‘I concur with you on that one, old man,’ said Gallo. He was looking away from them, up into the sky, almost as if he expected a giant flying lizard to swoop down from the clouds.

‘What do they all do?’ Seeing Frith with his arms and hands covered in the inky bandages made her think of the Culoss, the strange little men with blades in their hands that had guarded the Citadel. To make that connection here, now, made her uneasy.

‘A great deal,’ he replied, shortly. ‘I have the words for Fire, Force, Ice, Control, Hold, Constrict—’

‘What about the healing spell?’

He glanced up at her, his lips pressed into a thin line.

‘No.’

Wydrin nodded. Ever since Jarath’s cabin she’d suspected that the pink light had some sort of debilitating effect on the young lord. He’d limped for days afterwards, and there was the reappearance of the scar. If it had been anyone else she would have thanked him again, offered drinks, favours, anything, in recompense for what he’d done. But he was who he was, so she said nothing.

‘The steps start from over here,’ called Gallo. He’d walked the circumference of the platform and come to a slim gap in the wall. Wydrin joined him, peering over the edge. The lower part of the Rookery spread out below them, leading to the crown-like outer keep. It was a very long drop.

‘Are they supposed to be steps?’ said Wydrin, entirely failing to hide the horror in her voice. ‘They’re like ledges. Afterthoughts!’

‘Who needs steps when you can fly?’ said Frith from behind her. ‘I doubt O’rin had much use for them.’

‘Well, that’s great,’ said Wydrin. ‘If I make it down those without throwing up, I’ll buy everyone a pint.’

She did make it, in the end, although by the time they got to the dark entrance way she felt as though her bones had been replaced with fish guts. The hole in the side of the tower was a lot larger than it had appeared from the backs of the griffins; the ceiling disappeared into darkness overhead. Egg-shaped globes sunk into the floor glowed with a ghostly white light, leading the way deep into the Rookery, and now that they were out of the wind, Wydrin paused to examine the walls more closely. They were, as she had suspected, made of a vast collection of scavenged bits of wood. She saw branches as thick as her arm in there, alongside pieces of driftwood worn smooth by the sea, and old barrels broken up and sunk into the walls like structural supports. There were other objects too; old nets, rotten feathers, seashells, even old bones sitting flush with bark and wood. They walked on down the tunnel until they came to a staircase spiralling down.

‘Looks like this is the way,’ said Gallo, unnecessarily. Wydrin looked up at their faces, ghoulish in the light from the globes. She knew they were all thinking the same thing.

‘I’m sure it won’t be as bad as the last time we explored a weird old building,’ she said. ‘I mean, there’s almost certainly no dragons in this one.’

Sebastian ran a hand through his wild hair. His eyes looked haunted. ‘It certainly couldn’t be any worse,’ he said.

‘There is no point in discussing it,’ said Frith. He flexed his fingers, almost entirely hidden under bandages and ink. ‘We’ve flown halfway across Ede to get here.’

‘In that case, princeling, given you’re the one with fireballs at your disposal, you can go first.’ Wydrin bowed low and swept a hand towards the stairs.

‘Very well.’ Frith frowned at her and moved to the staircase.

‘For what it’s worth,’ said Gallo, following on behind, ‘I’m not entirely certain that using fire in here would be such a top plan. These walls are practically made of kindling, after all.’

‘I have many spells,’ said Frith shortly.

Wydrin touched the hilt of her sword. ‘Let’s hope they’re enough.’

They descended into the Rookery.

The air was close, and somehow old, as though it had been trapped inside this ancient place for hundreds of years, even though logic suggested that a tower made of bits of wood should be draughty as hell. The wind was a distant memory, with only the occasional creak to remind them that they stood at the top of a mountain.

They walked winding tunnels lit by the strange, egg-shaped lights, following a gradual spiral down into the heart of O’rin’s strange home. Frith and Wydrin moved slightly ahead, while Sebastian found himself walking next to Gallo. He stole a glance at his old comrade and was once again taken aback by how much he looked like a corpse. In the stark light of the lamps his face was a mask made of old paper, and he was starting to walk with a shuffling limp, as though the muscles in his legs had grown leathery and stiff.

‘Does it hurt?’

Gallo looked up at Sebastian, and then away again. ‘Not as such, no,’ he said eventually. ‘It feels strange, unfamiliar. I can feel myself drifting apart, and that is unnerving. It is a terrible thing to know that your body no longer works as it should.’

Sebastian didn’t know what to say to that. He found himself looking at the walls instead.

‘When Y’Ruen was finished with me, I felt like a ghost haunting my own body,’ continued Gallo in a low voice. ‘It is true that her presence probably saturates my soul by now. Being possessed or beholden to a being such as her … it leaves a mark.’

Sebastian kept his silence.

‘So,’ said Gallo, ‘do you want to tell me what happened to you?’

He shook his head irritably.

‘You know full well what happened to me. It was your hand on the other end of the dagger!’

Gallo winced. A portion of the skin below his left eye tore with the pressure, revealing blackened flesh beneath. ‘That is not what I’m talking about, as well you know.’

‘Why are you here, Gallo?’ Sebastian’s head was aching again. The sword on his back felt heavier than it should, to say nothing of the demon’s armour. ‘So you’re still walking and talking somehow. Why seek me out?’

‘What else should I do?’ There was anger in Gallo’s voice now, or the beginnings of it. ‘Wander the world as a leper? I would rather go out fighting.’ He sighed, the anger seeping out of his words as quickly as it had appeared. ‘I thought I could help you in some way, Sebastian. That it might make up for some of what happened.’

‘For trying to kill me?’

‘That
wasn’t
me. I wanted to make up for leaving you in Creos, Seb. For not waiting like you said we should.’ The dead man took a deep breath, the air whistling through his rotting lungs. ‘I am truly sorry. You were right. We should have gone in there prepared. We should have gone in there together.’

Sebastian scratched his cheek. The wound there, the one he’d cut in Bezcavar’s name, seemed reluctant to heal properly. He didn’t have room in his head for all this. There was no time, no space for apologies. ‘It hardly matters now,’ he said.

Up ahead Wydrin and Frith had stopped in front of a dark opening in the wall of the tunnel.

‘This is it,’ said Wydrin. ‘There’s nowhere else to go.’

Sebastian leaned through the parting in the wood and looked down into a spherical chamber. There were more lights, revealing more of the twisted branches and warped tree trunks, and very little else. He could see no sign of any way out save for the one they stood in front of.

‘There’s nothing down there,’ said Frith. ‘Perhaps the god of lies was lying after all.’

‘We shall have to go down and look,’ said Sebastian, already shifting to climb down through the opening. It was only just big enough to take his frame. ‘I haven’t come all this way for nothing.’

‘How would we get back out?’ said Gallo. ‘It’s a reasonable drop to the floor.’

‘We’ll climb!’ said Wydrin cheerfully, slapping him on the back. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve never climbed a tree, Gallo?’

One by one they stepped through the hole and scrambled down the curved walls onto the floor of the chamber. Once they were inside Wydrin realised it was unnervingly like being closed inside a nest. One made for a truly monstrous bird.

‘Look around,’ said Sebastian. ‘I want to be absolutely sure we’re not missing anything.’

They searched for some time, but aside from the soft, egg-shaped lights the chamber was largely featureless, and they found nothing.

‘Perhaps what O’rin was keeping here was stolen,’ said Wydrin. She put her hands flat on the wall and leaned close, trying to see if anything lay beyond the branches. ‘Some enterprising sell-sword with a head for heights …’

Something in the darkness beyond the wall caught her eye. Something white. She hooked her fingers around the twisted section of wall, and suddenly the branches and roots shrank away from her, constricting and shifting like a living thing. The wall creaked alarmingly, and the others turned back, just as a white face loomed out at her.

In seconds Glassheart was unsheathed and in her hands.

‘We’ve got company down here, Sebastian.’

The man in the wall was almost impossibly tall, a full head and a half taller than Sebastian. He was bone-white, as though he’d been carved from chalk, and, although he was entirely naked, he was oddly featureless – or at least, he was missing the usual features Wydrin looked for first in a naked man. He did have tattoos, or what Wydrin assumed were tattoos. Black swirls and shapes colonised his arms and his broad chest, and there were similar patterns on the smooth flanks of his thighs. His hair was as white as his skin, and pushed back from his forehead in strange, downy clumps. He stepped out of the chamber wall and regarded them with polite curiosity.

‘You are not O’rin,’ he said.

His eyes were round, yellow and slightly too far apart to be comfortable.

‘We’re not, no,’ said Wydrin. ‘But we’re, uh, friends of his. Who are you?’ She was still gripping the sword tightly.

‘We are his doves,’ said the chalk-white man. As he spoke, more sections of the chamber wall split open to reveal four men identical to him. Sebastian gave a low cry and drew his sword, while Gallo slipped the bow from his back and nocked an arrow. The men didn’t appear to be carrying any weapons.

‘We’ve been sent here by O’rin,’ said Wydrin. She glanced at the others. ‘He gave us a map.’

‘You will take us to where O’rin keeps his secrets,’ said Frith. He held up his hands in what he probably thought was a threatening gesture. The chalk-white man tipped his head slightly to one side in an uncannily bird-like motion.

‘The Edenier,’ he said, and there was a low murmur from the other ‘doves’.

‘That’s right,’ Wydrin nodded. ‘Our friend here is a mage. Sebastian and I have very sharp swords, and Gallo here will, I don’t know, breathe on you. It’s not pleasant, believe me.’

The doves gathered round, peering curiously at Frith, who looked alarmed by the attention.

‘You are not O’rin,’ repeated the first chalk-white man, ‘but you carry the Edenier with you.’

‘That’s correct,’ said Sebastian. He moved out of the way slightly to let one of the tall men past him. Three of them now stood looking at Frith with an eerie kind of flat curiosity, like a bird watching something pink and worm-like in the grass. ‘We’re here on O’rin’s behalf. How long has it been since he was here?’

‘The Rookery has been empty for longer than we know how to say,’ answered the first man. The others were touching Frith’s cloak, examining the rough bear hide, while the young lord grimaced.

‘Not completely empty though, right?’ said Wydrin. She lowered her sword. The doves were unnerving, and they looked powerful, muscles taut across their shoulders and chests, but they were also softly spoken, with slow, precise movements. ‘I mean, you’re all here.’

‘We sleep,’ said the first dove. ‘And we wait, and we guard.’

‘We haven’t felt the touch of the Edenier for the longest time,’ said one of the others. ‘It is almost like having O’rin home.’

‘Well, old man,’ laughed Gallo, ‘it looks like you’ve finally found some friends.’

The atmosphere changed instantly. The five doves turned to look at Gallo as one, and there was nothing slow or soft about the movement. The chalk-white man who had been talking to Wydrin was suddenly rigid with tension.

‘You speak with her voice,’ he said.

‘What? I …’ Gallo backed away, looking hurriedly from one to the other.

‘It is an echo, but it is there.’

Wydrin raised her sword again. ‘Now, hold on a minute—’

The dove nearest to Gallo reached out one arm and grabbed him, quick as a snake. He picked the adventurer up like he was a doll, and shook him. Gallo’s fine bow clattered to the floor.

‘Her smell is all over him,’ the dove said, as if confirming something. ‘Y’Ruen has her claw on this one’s heart.’

‘No,’ protested Gallo, ‘it’s gone now, she’s gone! For the love of the gods, man, set me down!’

But the doves were already changing. A dark purple bruising broke out over their foreheads and cheeks, and as Wydrin watched, stiff, jagged feathers burst through the skin, sprouting like crocuses in spring. The dove who’d spoken to her first turned to glare at her, and she saw that his yellow eyes had turned black.

‘You brought an agent of our master’s sister into his home?’

‘We’re here to find something that will
kill
Y’Ruen!’

The one holding Gallo threw him heavily into the wall. Wydrin clearly heard a number of bones snap.

‘For thousands of years we have kept the Rookery safe, untainted. It was written onto our skins. It is our purpose, to keep the Rookery safe, for ever.’ The first dove, his face now twisted and distorted with the feathers, held his arms out to either side as if to embrace her but, instead, long, silvery barbs worked their way out of the skin on his forearms. They looked wickedly sharp. ‘We will kill you all for this.’