The Copper Promise (51 page)

But Frith hadn’t done that, had he? He had wanted to fight, wanted to stand with his father and the men from the castle. When the door had shattered into a hundred splintered pieces he’d watched his father’s face become rigid with anger, turning his scholar’s eyes cold.

Now, Frith brought forth the words for Force and Control and punched through the thick wooden panels. The metal hinges twisted and buckled, and he was through into the inner keep, the towers where his family had lived and died rising above him like a monument. Here there were more guards.

‘Stay right where you are!’ shouted one. Frith felt his eyes settle on the man, taking in his ruddy face, the scuff marks on his leather armour. They were all brandishing swords and shields, although as yet they seemed reluctant to rush him.

‘I am one man. And I’ve not drawn a sword,’ he pointed out in a mild tone of voice. The guard who’d spoken gave a strangled laugh.

‘Such as you don’t need swords. You’ll put those hands of yours down or we’ll cut your bleedin’ throat.’

‘These hands?’ asked Frith, holding them up, and the Edenier rushed out of him like a tidal wave. Ribbons of green light slammed into the assembled men and sent them flying against the stonework behind. There were cries as bones shattered, and when the moaning continued Frith sent a shower of ice shards at them, each with a point as deadly as Wydrin’s daggers. The moaning stopped.

And finally, he was here. He pushed open the doors to the great hall and was greeted with a thick, metallic smell. It was so familiar that for a moment he couldn’t tell if it was a memory leaching into the here and now, but no, the stench was here too, the stink of …

… blood, flying in a bright shout from his brother’s temple as a huge man, bristling with plate armour, threw a gauntleted fist at his head. Leon stumbled backwards, still raising his sword, his eyes unfocussed. There were strangers in the hall now, so many that Frith had already lost sight of his father, and the castle guard with their pale blue surcoats were like flecks of snow on a black field. He could hear a woman’s voice, shouting orders from beyond the door, and in the back of his mind was the knowledge that the castle was surely taken, but still Frith snatched a sword from a fallen body and cut the throat of the man in front of him. It was the first time he’d killed a man, the first time he’d ever wielded his sword in anything but a lesson or a competition, and then more men surged forward, red faces painted on their shields like an army of demons. Frith gritted his teeth as a fierce rage filled his chest.
They will all die,
he thought,
they will all die under my sword!

He’d never seen the man who struck him.

Now, looking down at the flagstones where, no doubt, he’d fallen, Frith could only remember a sudden thunder-clap of pain and a burst of light behind his eyes. After that, nothing. Darkness and then the dungeon, and the cunning fingers of Yellow-Eyed Rin.

A rising tide of whispers brought him back to the present. Frith raised his head and looked at the ruin of the hall.

Always a wide, empty place, with windows too close to the ceiling to give much light and four great fireplaces lining the walls, the hall was now filled with suffering; an abattoir with marble pillars. Fane sat on the throne, just as Frith had seen him, although now he was rising from his seat. To all sides were frightened men and women and children, bound at the ankle and wrist with steel cuffs, while the guards stood at their sides, swords ready. In the centre of the room was a huge iron cauldron Frith recognised from the kitchens – it was the one the cook only ever used at festivals and celebrations, when huge numbers of people needed feeding. As he drew closer he saw it was filled almost to the top with blood. Other shapes floated in the crimson soup, shapes Frith didn’t care to dwell on. Instead he looked at the prisoners. Did he recognise some of their faces? He thought he did. He saw the open wounds on their arms and legs, the bloody stumps where limbs had been removed. He saw the blank, exhausted terror on their faces, written in bruises and scars.

‘The prodigal son has returned!’

Fane was stepping down from the dais, an eagerness to his steps as though he longed to greet a cherished friend. The half-helm was already wedged over his ears. Frith said nothing.

‘I’m sure your people are glad to see you.’ Fane gestured at the prisoners chained to either side of the hall. Frith doubted they even knew who he was; all sense looked to have been beaten out of them a long time ago. ‘How does it feel to be home?’

‘You have not taken very good care of my castle.’ As well as the cauldron of blood the floor was smeared with gore, and all four of the fires were alight, so that the smoke and heat were oppressive, even in such a large room. Fane approached the cauldron and tapped the edge of it with one fat knuckle.

‘Offerings to Bezcavar. Your good people here have been helping to feed the cauldron.’ The guards by the prisoners were restless now, watching the two men closely. Their leader had given them no orders to seize the man who’d walked into the hall, but no doubt they’d listened to the sounds of his approach and were nervous. Fane, however, looked unconcerned. ‘Your offering will be gratefully received, no doubt. The suffering of those with power is prized by Bezcavar, Prince of Wounds. Oh, that reminds me, we have a friend of yours here.’

Frith watched as Fane went to the line of prisoners and dragged a body out from behind them. It was a woman whose chestnut hair was now caked with blood and filth, and her eyes were wide and sightless. It took Frith a few moments to recognise her, and then it slotted into place. The last time he’d seen her he’d been tied to a rack, and she had been looking down at him with a mixture of contempt and exasperation. The Lady Bethan.

‘You killed her?’

‘A trusted ally is a fine sacrifice to Bezcavar,’ said Fane. He pushed the hair from her face almost fondly, and then dropped her to the floor. ‘Although I think I can tell you, Lord Frith, that she’d long since outlived her usefulness. Istria was always her cause, not mine, and when we couldn’t find that vault of yours –’ he shook his head and smiled, as though at a poor joke – ‘well, she started making demands of me.’

The strange veil of distance that had been hanging over Frith since he stepped off the griffin disappeared, and all at once he was furious. Frith felt the Edenier rise up inside him, and he had to clench his fists to keep it from pouring out in a tide of rage.
She was mine to kill!

‘You had no right to do that,’ he spat, before taking a deep, steadying breath. ‘I’ve come to put an end to this, Fane. You’ll die here, now, under my roof and by my hand.’

There was a stirring from the guards then, but Fane waved them down. Instead he drew a sword from the scabbard at his waist. The blade was still smeared with blood from some earlier kill.
He does not even keep his weapons clean
.

‘You forget.’ Fane tapped the helm lightly with his free hand. ‘You cannot harm me while I wear this. I only bleed for Bezcavar.’

‘And you forget what I am capable of!’

A guard made a run at him, short sword in his hand, and Frith supposed he must look an inviting victim; he carried no obvious weapons and wore traveller’s clothes, not armour. He tossed a hand towards the man, not quite looking at him, and pictured the word for Cold in his mind. The guard gave a strangled scream as his hands twisted in on themselves, blue with ice. More came at him, abandoning their posts at the sides of the prisoners, and Frith knocked them aside as though they were pine cones. Here it was, finally, the control he’d needed the last time he’d faced Fane, when his body had burned with a fire he could not direct.

‘You have learned a few tricks,’ said Fane. There was a false note in his voice now, an attempt at jollity that wasn’t quite succeeding. ‘I’ll give you that.’

The men he’d scattered were trying to rise. Frith held up his right hand, covered in bandages, and slowly closed his fingers into a fist. Force. Control. Crush.

Their bones shattered, making a noise not unlike a knot of wood popping on a fire. There were screams. Fane came forward now, his sword out in front of him. The skin around his scars was paler than it had been before.

‘There’s no point to any of this, Lord Frith, when you know you can’t kill me.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Frith. ‘The helmet.’

He sent a wave of force at Fane, but it passed over him like a summer breeze. A ball of flame crisped the leather of his jerkin, but did little else. And then Fane was on him, the sword flying through the air with terrible weight. Frith jumped away, the tip of the weapon missing him by inches.

‘I don’t know where the rest of you Friths are,’ Fane was saying through gritted teeth. ‘So I’ll chuck you out in the forest somewhere. Could be that the same bears who ate your family’s leavings will have you too.’

The sword came again and again, a silvery arc pushing Frith back and back. He would have to be fast now, and precise, more precise than he’d ever been with the Edenier. Because Fane was right. If now, after all this, he still couldn’t kill him, then what was the point of anything?

He pictured the word for Fire, the word for heat, and kept it still in his mind even as he danced nimbly out the way of Fane’s strikes. Next to it he pictured the word for Control, and narrowed that control down to a fine point. And then he aimed the spell at the top of Fane’s head.

The effect was immediate. The dusty iron of the helm went from black to a rosy red in the space of seconds, growing brighter and brighter until Fane gave a strangled shriek and yanked it off. The hair underneath was smouldering, and his cheeks and forehead were raw with burns. It was as Frith had hoped: Fane could only bleed for Bezcavar, and as the helm was an extension of the demon it could harm him.

It clattered to the floor, and Fane took a few hurried steps backwards. Smoke was rising from his head and there was a sweet scent of cooked flesh in the air.

‘It doesn’t matter!’ His eyes were very white against his scorched skin. ‘Bezcavar will protect me! I am his faithful servant!’

‘Only a fool puts his faith in demons.’

Frith reached out with the control, still focussed down to a fine point, and aimed towards the big man’s chest. There was an explosive tearing, and the leather jerkin was suddenly a ragged ruin pierced with shattered ribs. Fane fell backwards, stumbling into the cauldron and upsetting its contents all over the floor. He wriggled in the mess, making an odd mewling sound as he tried to scream through lungs that were no longer there. Frith looked down into his face, noting with pleasure the panic in his eyes as the life seeped out of his body.

‘Your blood will feed the trees of the Blackwood.’ He placed his boot against the dying man’s cheek and leaned on it, pushing his face towards the flagstones. ‘Now and for ever.’

‘Well, I suppose we can guess what happened to Fane, then.’

Wydrin and Sebastian stood at the gates to Blackwood Keep in the warm afternoon sunshine. They were both dishevelled from their somewhat frantic flight across Ede, and in the trees at the edge of the forest a pair of black birds were having a well-deserved rest. From where they stood the castle looked empty – no sign of any guards on the walls – but a single body was slung over the battlements, hanging from a rope like a bag of offal. The man’s chest was a red ruin, punctured here and there with fragments of what Sebastian assumed were bone. It was unnerving to see a body like that, turned almost inside out. His head looked like it had been boiled at some point, but they could see enough of his face, and its scars, to recognise him. It seemed Fane had met an eventful end.

‘Do you think Frith will still be here?’

Wydrin shrugged. ‘Where else would he be?’

At that moment the heavy gates jerked open and a waxen face fringed with soft grey hair peered out at them. The man wore ragged, homespun clothes with a slightly stained surcoat over the top. He kept trying to smooth it down as he talked.

‘Y-You are the sell-swords?’ One of his eyes was swollen down to a crack.

‘We are,’ said Wydrin, a note of surprise in her voice.

‘He said you would probably turn up.’ The grey-haired man beckoned them towards the gate. ‘You’d better come in.’

As they followed him into the castle, the man told them that his name was Eric and he was the new groundskeeper, appointed by Lord Frith himself.

‘You know he’s not dead, then?’

‘Oh yes, miss. We could hardly miss him, really, what with him turning up at the castle and being a mage now and everything.’

Once they were inside the keep Sebastian saw that the place wasn’t deserted after all. There were people here, moving slowly through the grounds, most carrying sacks and crates, others tools and weapons. Almost all of them appeared to have been injured in some way, and Sebastian saw plenty of blood-stained bandages.

‘We’re trying to put the place back to rights,’ said Eric. He didn’t look at them as he spoke, but nodded firmly to himself. ‘Been too long under that monster’s rule.’

‘What happened to Fane’s men?’ asked Sebastian.

Eric frowned at the use of the man’s name.

‘Our lord dealt with them, so he did. May the gods bless him.’

They followed Eric through a set of double doors into a great throne room. There were people in here too, mostly mopping the floors – Sebastian couldn’t help noticing that the water in their buckets was pink – and there was a huge cauldron turned on its side, empty. The scent of soap was overpowering.

‘Were these people at the castle before – before Frith came?’ asked Wydrin.

‘Aye,’ said Eric. ‘They was all here, in chains, before our lord freed them. Now we’re restoring the castle to how it should be.’

Frith was sitting on the throne at the far end of the room. Long blue banners embroidered with black trees hung from the walls, and his white hair looked bright against them. His hands were curled over the ends of the armrests, but his shoulders were still tense and he did not look up as they approached.

‘My lord,’ said Eric. He bowed once then decided he hadn’t done it properly the first time, so he bobbed up and down for a bit. ‘The guests you were expecting?’