The Copper Promise (49 page)

Frith threw up his arms and a wave of pure force flew across the chamber. Wydrin felt the edge of it push past her and she stumbled, but it seemed to be little more than a summer’s breeze to the doves, who stood where they were, unmoved. The one who’d been speaking to her tensed his arms and a shower of the silvery barbs flew towards them. Wydrin jumped back, but, as large as the chamber was, there was no cover, and she yelped as one of the barbs caught in the tough leather of her leggings.

‘There is no need for this.’ Sebastian was advancing on them, his hands held in front of him, empty. ‘We are not here to harm you or O’rin.’

‘The Rookery must be cleansed,’ said the dove, and Wydrin realised with a start that the creatures were still changing. It was like watching a cake cooked for too long suddenly expanding beyond the pan – they swelled up, white arms becoming thick with muscle, shoulders widening, the definition of their faces melting like candle wax. Their heads became elongated and their mouths fell open like wet wounds, revealing rows of long, peg-like teeth, and the dark blue feathers sprouted all over, with silver barbs hidden in their depths. When the dove spoke again, its voice was a wet croak. ‘It is our purpose.’

Sebastian shouted for calm again, but Frith had his arms outstretched and a stream of icy shards flew across the chamber, pelting harmlessly against the doves’ feathery hides. The two at the front opened their huge, frog-like mouths and spat, long yellowish cords leaping from the backs of their throats. Wydrin cried out in disgust as one of the sticky ropes slapped against her leg and clung there. Instinctively, she grabbed at it to pull it away from her leathers but it was fearsomely sticky, and the slimy substance it was coated in burned the unprotected skin of her fingers.

‘Bastard stuff burns!’

And then all was chaos. Sebastian drew his broadsword and charged the doves, and the air was suddenly full of stinging rope and flying barbs. Wydrin hurriedly used Frostling to peel the cord away from her leg, only for another to wrap, whip-tight, around her wrist, pinning her arm to the wall. The same dove who had spat at her released a flurry of silver barbs, and only the vanbraces on her forearm saved her from a sudden blinding.

Frith appeared in front of her, covering her with the Edenier so she had time to cut the cord away, but Sebastian was not faring so well. He caught one of the doves across the chest with what should have been a killing blow from his sword, yet the strange, bruised flesh of the doves only peeled away, revealing more of the same below. Identifying Sebastian as the more immediate threat, they directed the full brunt of their attack towards him, and soon there was so much of the acidic cord attached to his legs and feet he could move no further, and his armour bristled with silver barbs.

Wydrin scrambled up and dived at the doves, dancing around their attacks, but her dagger found no more purchase on them than Sebastian’s blade did. She came too close to one and it struck her, sending her flying back onto the curved chamber wall and winding her badly.

‘Sebastian!’

Gallo was there, one broken arm held awkwardly to his chest, a sharp knife clutched in his other hand. He stood in front of Sebastian and began cutting away at the restricting cords, as fast as he could. The doves refocussed their attack on his unprotected back, sending a suffocating barrage of the burning ropes, but he ignored them, concentrating on his task.

Wydrin climbed to her feet again, pulling a needle-sharp barb from where it had lodged in her shoulder. She saw Sebastian say something to Gallo, but she couldn’t make out the words. The blond man was now almost lost under a covering of the slimy threads; Wydrin could smell his dead flesh reacting to the acidic coating.

‘The Edenier is useless against them,’ spat Frith, next to her. He looked furious. ‘There is one spell left to try …’

‘Wait!’ As Wydrin watched, Sebastian finally broke free of his bonds and charged towards the doves, his enormous broadsword held above his shoulders. The doves spat more of the cord but his momentum was too great, and this blow took the head from the nearest guardian, flinging it halfway across the chamber. There was no blood. ‘We might have a chance—’

But Frith already had his hands up and a curtain of fire swept across the chamber, so bright that Wydrin could barely look at it. The flames crashed over the doves and they went up like tapers, their dark feathers burning strange, oily colours. They screamed as one and Wydrin, her head already ringing from her collision with the wall, staggered back from the force of it.

Sebastian jumped back from the blaze, but the strings of cord they had spat in a sticky web across the chamber flared up, clearly as flammable as the unfortunate doves. In seconds the space was filled with bright lines of fire, and at the centre of it, the form of Gallo, wreathed in flame. Through the confusion of smoke and fire Wydrin saw Sebastian’s eyes widen in horror at the sight of his friend.

‘Gallo, get down!’ Wydrin ran to him, meaning to push him to the floor, roll him in Sebastian’s cloak,
something
, but he was already too hot to draw close to, everything that was recognisably Gallo lost in the churning light. The chamber itself was merrily ablaze too, and although the doves were no longer a threat, the hole in the wall above their heads that was their only exit was now ringed with fire.

‘Frith,’ screamed Wydrin, ‘what have you done?’

She saw his face, half shrouded in smoke, and he looked stricken.

‘Wait,’ he said, ‘I can fix this, I can …’ Some of the strips of linen dangling from his hands and arms were starting to smoulder.

Wydrin stumbled against the wall, gasping for breath. The stench of burning hair and flesh and wood was coating the back of her throat.

‘Hurry!’

Frith threw up his arms again, and an orb of blue light appeared at his chest. It grew, encompassing him, and then expanded to cover the entire chamber. When it hit Wydrin she cried out in shock – it was freezing, a cold so deep and complete it was like being hit with a wall of ice. She saw Sebastian’s hair suddenly fringed with white where the sweat had frozen. There was a pause as the cold grew so sharp she could hardly breathe, and then the room was filled with a whirling cloud of thick ice particles.

Frith had conjured a blizzard.

He stood at the centre of it all, his arms outspread and an expression of fierce concentration on his face, and then he was lost in the white. Wydrin stumbled, trying to see what had happened to Gallo, but there was nothing but the snow. A strong hand caught hold of her arm and Sebastian was there next to her, his face white and his eyes closed against the cold. His lips were starting to turn blue.

‘The fires!’ she shouted in his ear. ‘Have they gone?’

‘I don’t – I can’t see!’

There was a roar, although whether it was from Frith or the blizzard Wydrin couldn’t tell, and for a few moments the cold grew to such an intensity that she was sure they would all die here, hearts stopped, frozen in their chests …

And then it was gone. The snow vanished abruptly, leaving drifts of ice on the floor and crusting the wooden walls. The doves were strange, twisted shapes, their enormous limbs curled in on themselves like the legs of dead spiders. They were dotted here and there with silvery smears, the only remnants of the metal barbs.

‘By all the gods,’ said Wydrin. She pulled a lump of ice out of her hair and glared at Frith. ‘That’s how magic works, is it? It’s a bloody blunt instrument, that’s what it is! Try to do anything with it and you’re likely to get yourself killed!’

Frith was looking around the chamber. Parts of it were still smouldering, while other parts were covered in a layer of frost. He shook himself, as though trying to wake up from a dream.

‘It saved us, didn’t it?’ he said. His voice trembled slightly. ‘We’re still alive.’

‘Not all of us,’ said Sebastian. He was looking at a pile of blackened bones and ash. A skull, Gallo’s skull, peeked out of the mess.

‘I’m so sorry, Sebastian,’ said Wydrin. She went to his side. Whatever had been moving Gallo, whatever strange energy had been keeping him alive, it was gone now. ‘He went up so quickly, I couldn’t get to him.’

Sebastian looked away from her. ‘As far as we knew he was already dead, wasn’t he? Dead since he walked into the Citadel.’

Wydrin swallowed hard. Somehow Sebastian’s cold manner was harder to take than Gallo’s grisly death.

‘What did he say to you?’ she said, not truly sure she wanted to know. ‘Just before the end?’

He looked at her, his blue eyes icy in a face smudged with soot.

‘It doesn’t matter. Let’s get out of this death-trap.’

The Rookery gave up its final secret as they tried to leave the chamber.

Frith walked towards the wall, eager to get out of the stinking place, only to see the floor of twisted branches shrink away from his foot, revealing a smooth wooden door. There was a serene face carved into its surface, its mouth and eyes closed, and a slim handle that looked to be made of bone.

‘Just like the door in Whittenfarne,’ he remarked uneasily.

‘Is this it, then?’ said Wydrin, peering over his shoulder. ‘We just had to burn down half his home to find the hidden entrance?’

‘Who can guess at the minds of gods?’ said Sebastian. He bent down and grasped the bone handle, wrenching the door open with rather more force than was necessary. Beneath there was a second chamber, much smaller than the one they stood in, with softer lights … and nestled at its bottom were four enormous eggs. Immediately Wydrin sat and dangled her legs through the opening, bracing her arms on either side.

‘What are you doing?’ snapped Frith. ‘There could be anything down there.’

‘Those have to be the spells, don’t they?’ she said, grunting as she lowered herself down. ‘There’s nothing else here.’

She made quick work of it, climbing down as easily as an alley cat, and then, with rather more difficulty, passing the four eggs back up, each big enough to fit a healthy lamb inside, let alone a baby bird. They were pale blue and speckled with brown spots, and there were symbols in a darker blue on top of each: a woman, arms held out as if to embrace the world, a pair of wolves, identical, and on the final egg, the sinuous shape of the dragon.

‘One for each of his siblings, with the spells hidden inside,’ said Sebastian, his hand resting on the dragon-marked egg.

Wydrin pulled a face.

‘Do you think O’rin
produced
these himself? Is it wise to go around breaking a god’s eggs?’

‘If O’rin cannot bring himself to warn us that his guards are less than friendly, then I don’t think we should worry too much about his property. Let’s smash it and get out of here.’ Sebastian ignored the surprised look Wydrin threw him and drew his sword.

Frith nodded.

‘Do it, then.’

Sebastian gave the egg with the dragon symbol a firm tap with the edge of his sword. There was a satisfying crack, and the egg fell to pieces. Inside there were a number of rolled-up maps, yellow with age. Wydrin was just pulling them out of the shards of eggshell when Frith took hold of her hand to still it.

‘Look at the inside of the egg,’ he said, his voice low.

‘The tricksy bastard!’ cried Wydrin.

The words of the mages were written on the inside of the eggshell, curling jagged shapes that were all too familiar to Frith, all carefully printed on the delicate inner surface. Except that now, of course, they were a confusion of shards and pieces. A puzzle.

‘How much do you bet that’s the spell?’ said Wydrin.

‘Curse him,’ snapped Frith. ‘Here, we’ll put the pieces into a sack and figure it out later.’

They gathered everything together, trying not to break any more of the pieces, and Wydrin tied the sack securely to her belt.

‘We are done here, I think.’ Frith cleared his throat, and glanced at the remains of Gallo. ‘Do you wish to …?’

Sebastian shook his head curtly and said nothing.

‘Very well.’

Frith marched over to the far wall and kicked at a large section of blackened wood until it started to break up. Chinks of blue and white began to show through the gaps, and a large section fell away into nothing, revealing the sky beyond. It looked impossibly clean and clear.

Frith cupped his hands around his mouth and began to whistle for the griffins.

Wydrin watched as Frith placed a piece of shattered eggshell next to another piece. Both were covered in the curling black shapes of the mages’ words, although they meant nothing to her. Feeling that she should be doing something with her hands too, she pulled the game board towards her and began to arrange the tokens. Frith glanced up, a flicker of annoyance passing over his face.

‘What is that?’

‘It’s a Chik-Choks set. You’ve never played?’

The lurid pink curtains of their booth twitched and a slim bejewelled man slid between them. He carried two tall glasses filled with liquid the colour of a violent sunset, and he was, in Wydrin’s opinion, as beautiful as any woman she’d ever seen. He had eyes like pools of black ink and skin dusted with gold, while tiny red gems dotted his eyebrows. His cheekbones were sharp enough to put an edge on your sword. He smiled at them demurely and set the drinks down on the table, careful to avoid the wreckage of the eggshell.

‘Are you certain I cannot fetch you anything else?’ He eyed the contents of their table with more disappointment than curiosity. Somewhere, in another booth, Wydrin could hear soft laughter. ‘We have concoctions here that can ease all worries, and soothe all – rages.’ He looked pointedly at Frith as he said this. ‘Alternatively, this table can be upturned to provide a comfortable and sturdy bed.’ Now he was winking at Wydrin, who snorted into her drink. ‘All the booths at The Music of the Gods can be swiftly converted—’

‘Thank you, we’re fine,’ said Frith without looking up. The server raised one perfect eyebrow and retreated beyond the curtains once more.

‘You know what sort of place this is, right?’ said Wydrin.

‘We needed somewhere quiet to do this.’ Frith was turning a shard of shell over and over in his hands. Some of it had been turned to powder in their flight from the Rookery, but he was confident there was enough left to make sense of O’rin’s spell. ‘Somewhere private.’