The Iron Ghost (20 page)

Dallen looked at him, and there was that shrewd glitter to his gaze again.

‘You should have been born Narhl, I think – although we do not name the mountain spirits; they are too unknowable for that. Look,’ he nodded towards the mound of hollow ice, where Olborn was standing to attention, ‘it appears we are ready.’

Wydrin lay back on the blankets, suddenly feeling rather self-conscious. Prince Dallen knelt next to her, his face carefully composed, while Sebastian and Frith lurked at the entrance, neither looking particularly happy.

‘Is there anything I need to know?’ she asked. She had brought Mendrick into the ice cave and the werken was now crouched at the edge of the blankets.

‘You’ll be cold,’ said Prince Dallen evenly. ‘You may find it difficult to breathe. You may see things. I can’t tell you what you’ll see, or experience. It could be unnerving.’

Wydrin grinned at him. ‘Your bedside manner isn’t reassuring, your highness. What if I backed out now? Decided I didn’t want this deeper link after all?’

Prince Dallen’s face grew more serious. ‘You are still my prisoners. The future of my people depends on your taking this message to the Skalds.’

‘Right. Well. Hold on a moment.’ She slipped a flask from her belt and took several large gulps. ‘That should keep my insides warm at least.’

Dallen leaned over her and held out his hands, palms down. She glanced up at his pale eyes, his mottled face. After a few moments she felt the temperature around her drop, slowly at first and then sharply. She gasped and saw her breath cloud in front of her.

‘This is unwise.’ It was Frith’s voice from the entrance. From the corner of her eye she saw him try to elbow his way over to her, but Olborn held him back with the tip of her spear. ‘Your prince nearly killed me with this power of his.’

‘I did nothing of the sort,’ said Dallen shortly, never taking his eyes from Wydrin. ‘I merely incapacitated you briefly. Now please, be quiet.’

Wydrin began to shiver violently, her teeth chattering. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to sink further back into her thickly furred cloak, but it did little good.

‘Accept the cold, do not hide from it,’ said Dallen. ‘This will be easier for you if you don’t fight.’

Wydrin tried to nod, but she was shaking too violently. She gasped a breath inwards, trying to speak, but the air was so cold it bit at her throat, and the air that slipped into her lungs was as freezing and deadly as icicles. There was a pain in her chest now, and the world seemed to be going dark.

What a stupid way to die
, she thought.

Prince Dallen’s face filled her vision. His beard was fringed with frost, and his hair looked as white as Frith’s. She remembered standing in the Blackwood with Frith, how his healing magic had been so warm, the complete opposite of this cold death. It was difficult to remember what warmth felt like.

There is no deeper link here
, she thought, no longer able to move even her fingers.
There is only the cold and lifeless mountain
.

The pain in her chest grew so enormous there was nothing else, and even Prince Dallen’s face disappeared behind the tide of black. There was a sensation of sinking, like drowning in the deepest part of the ocean . . . and a star woke in the darkness. A single point of light, followed by another, and then a sprinkling of lights, and suddenly the darkness was thick with stars, pregnant with them; glowing swirls of blue, red and purple stars, some too bright to look at.

The stars are dying
, she thought, and somehow it was possible to feel the violence of their passing, even as the silence pressed in on all sides.

Wydrin looked down from the night sky to find that she was standing alone in a wide grey landscape, featureless save for some piles of rocks scattered across the ground. The land was entirely flat, and went on for ever, fading at the horizon to become a soft reddish blur. She also realised, with a start, that she was no longer cold.

‘Hello? Any mountain spirits about at all?’

She turned in a slow circle. Above her the sky was heavy and unknown; she’d had years of using the heavens to navigate all over Ede and she’d never seen stars like these.

‘This is either the very beginning of the world, or the very end.’ She didn’t know where this knowledge came from, but she knew it was true. What would Ede have looked like before the mountains came? What would it look like at the end of time?

Wydrin walked a short distance, kicking up small clouds of dust as she went. The landscape didn’t change, but a low rumble started beneath her feet. The small rocks and pebbles on the ground began to jump and tremble, and all at once there was a dark figure ahead of her; impossibly tall, an enormous shadow against the grey land. It was difficult to tell how big it truly was. One moment it looked as tall as one of her father’s three-masted ships, and the next, it was mountain-sized and looming. She could make out no features – just a shape with arms and legs, and even that she sensed was a rough pretence so that she might fit this – whatever it was – into her mind.

‘Hello,’ she said. Her voice was a constricted whisper, so she hurriedly cleared her throat. ‘I take it you’re who I’m looking for?’

The rumble beneath her feet increased in volume, and she stumbled awkwardly, trying to stay upright. Her hand instinctively went to her dagger, but when she looked there was only the ghost of Frostling, a glittering shape nestled inside its scabbard. She shook her head at that and turned back to the giant figure.

‘You’re supposed to give me a deeper link to the land. To this werken I have. One of your people, Prince Dallen, needs this to happen.’ She took a deep breath. At least her chest didn’t hurt any more. ‘An answer either way would be good, before my real body freezes to death.’

Now the rumble was a roaring, the sound of the land being torn asunder. It was the voice of the mountain, she realised. It did not love her. It did not love any of the warm creatures that had appeared on the skin of the world like a rash in these recent years. Wydrin fell, cracking her knees painfully on the stony ground, and the dark figure reached out for her. Its shadowy hand, bigger than a house, bigger than Y’Ruen, bigger than the world, closed over her head and she knew darkness again . . .

. . . And in the darkness, there was a bright thread of green light. Wydrin followed it instinctively, not worrying too much about where she was, not yet anyway, and it pulsed away in front of her, drawing her on through the pitch-black. She could sense a huge weight above her, as though they were far underground.

‘Where am I?’ she asked the light.

‘You are in your own mind. You are in my mind. You are in the space where they join.’ The voice of the light was mild and faintly male.

‘It’s a bit dark. I’d have thought my mind would have more lights. You know, maybe even a fireplace, somewhere to sit.’

‘We have only just started,’ said the voice, and another streak of light appeared, branching off from the first one like the delicate veins in a leaf. ‘In time, this space will be brighter.’ As it spoke, more veins of light branched off the first one, creating a softly glowing net. Wydrin reached out to touch them, filled with wonder. There was a truth to this, she knew it, a truth that was deep inside everyone, but which was so deeply hidden it remained unknown. Her hand passed straight through.

‘Who are you?’ she asked, belatedly realising this should have been her first question.

‘I am the being you call Mendrick.’ Now the veins of light were a brightly shining web, stretching off into the distance. Wydrin thought she’d never seen anything so beautiful.

‘Then you can speak?’

‘Only on this very deep level. Our minds are touching.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘Previously, you have thought of me as an extension of yourself, yes? A tool to be used?’

‘Yes,’ Wydrin frowned slightly. ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t know what you were. I don’t think any of them do. Bors is a good man, he wouldn’t allow this if he knew.’ She thought of Tamlyn Nox and realised she couldn’t say the same of her. ‘They think you’re less than animals, just stones and rocks that can walk if you’re pushed. But if you’re not that, what
are
you?’

‘I will show you,’ the voice said simply. The green light pulsed once, blinding her, and Wydrin suddenly knew what it was to not be alone in her head: She could feel the mountain, so enormous and old, looming above her like the sky –
so much bigger than we imagine
, she thought,
because we don’t think about the roots of it
. And she could feel a smaller part of it next to her, a part that had been shaped to move, and it was regarding her now, watching her from its place on the ground. She knew that mind, could feel it nestling next to her own. She could feel the weary patience that came from eons of life, and a certain amount of curiosity too – she knew that Mendrick was examining her own mind, no doubt as equally alien to it. Him.

‘Why do you do it, then?’ she asked. ‘Why obey them at all?’

There was silence from the mountain-spirit for some time. She could sense Mendrick trying to understand the question.

‘It is my purpose to be silent,’ he said eventually, a note of uncertainty in his voice. ‘It is unnatural to communicate like this. And it is all so distant. The magic in our flesh moves us, when touching a human mind. It is impossible to convey our wishes.’

‘That’s because they don’t speak mountain,’ said Wydrin. She could feel Mendrick’s discomfort like sandpaper against her own skin. Even talking to a human on this level was exhausting to him. ‘But you would rather this didn’t happen? That the Skalds would leave you alone?’

There was silence for a moment. ‘It is disruptive,’ he said finally. ‘A discordance in my rock, in my mind.’

‘I can tell them for you,’ she said. ‘Stay with me, and I will show the Skalds that they have to stop, and then you can go back to your silence.’

‘I will agree to this.’ There was a flicker in the green light. ‘I will stay with you for now.’

Wydrin opened her eyes to Sebastian and Frith staring anxiously down at her.

‘She’s awake.’ Sebastian turned away to talk to someone she couldn’t see. ‘Quickly now, we’ll need that fire, and I want something to warm some food in.’

‘Wydrin,’ Frith took hold of her shoulder, ‘are you all right?’

She opened her mouth to tell him that she was perfectly fine, and could he stop fussing like an old baggage, when the pain hit her. It was like being thrown against a brick wall, every part of her crying out at once.

‘Fuck!’ she gasped, curling up into a ball. ‘By the graces, that hurts.’

Prince Dallen appeared, shouldering Frith out of the way to throw another blanket over her. ‘Help me now,’ he said to Frith. ‘There is a fire outside, and we’d best get her to it quickly.’

They half dragged, half carried Wydrin from the cave, depositing her in front of a small fire some distance from the main camp. Prince Dallen retreated swiftly, not coming too close to the flames, while Sebastian was already stirring a black pot. Frith wrapped her in several more blankets, until she started to wonder if he was trying to suffocate her. Her arms and legs were tingling painfully as the feeling returned to her limbs, and Sebastian had to hold a cup to her lips. It was bark tea, bitter but hot.

‘Where’s Mendrick?’ she croaked, when she could speak again.

Frith raised his eyebrows. ‘The werken? It’s still in the arachnos’ nest.’

Wydrin reached out to that newly revealed presence, and a dark shape loped out of the darkness towards them, green eyes shining like moons. Wydrin looked into its cold, wolf-like face and remembered the tendrils of light that linked her mind to his. A pretty neat trick, that.

‘Good, that’s good. Once I’ve eaten the rest of that stew and my arse has melted, we’d better get a move on. Because I have one hell of a message for bloody Tamlyn Nox.’

‘I have the linen and the ink you asked for.’

The Prophet smiled to itself behind the curtains. Magic grew ever more sophisticated, but there were some basics you could never quite get away from. It parted the curtains and Tamlyn passed over a bundle of ink pots, brushes and clean white cloth.

‘Can I ask what this is for?’

The woman’s voice was tense all the time now, full of unspoken questions.

‘Just for my own amusement, Tamlyn dear. Leave me now, please.’

The Mistress Crafter of Skaldshollow stood there for a moment longer, apparently wrestling with her own need to know what was going on, and then she was gone. The Prophet began to tear the linen into long strips, and then, using the poor selection of horse-hair brushes Tamlyn had provided, began to paint the words. It had been years since it had written the words of the mages, yet it came easily. Once learned, they weren’t easily forgotten. Some of the ink spilled onto the bed sheets, but it hardly mattered. They wouldn’t need them for much longer.

‘He was made for so much more than the witterings of paltry gods,’ the Prophet mused as the girl’s delicate fingers danced the brush across the material. ‘But it is only right that I present him with some of his old tools. He will appreciate that.’

When that was done the Prophet slipped out of the huge four-poster bed, and swiftly dressed in woollen leggings and jerkin, thick fur coat and gloves. The white shift the girl habitually wore was bundled up and casually thrown into one of the braziers, where it vanished in a curl of orange flame.

The strips of linen were shoved into a pack which the Prophet slung over one shoulder, before pausing to tie the girl’s long brown hair back into a rough braid. Glancing in the mirror, it was briefly annoyed to see that face looking back at her – still so young, so small.

‘You’ve served me well, Ip, truly you have. But I do wish you would grow a little faster.’

The Prophet left at a pace, paying no heed to the guards assigned to the corridor outside the room. If it wished, the Prophet could of course pay a visit to the tomb without actually leaving the Tower of Waking, but there were some matters that really required your physical presence. And Bezcavar – prince of wounds, master of broken things – wasn’t missing this for the world.