The Iron Ghost (55 page)

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he murmured. ‘I am a god, Bezcavar. I am a being of Edenier.’ His long hands reached up to his face again, and fluttered there for a moment, like uncertain spiders. The skin that hadn’t been ruined in Aaron’s blast of fire was smooth and cold, and he didn’t recognise the shapes he could feel. It would be so easy to go and find a mirror.

Instead he dropped his hands and walked back over to the windows, preparing to move the Rivener again. He sensed that he hadn’t seen the last of Aaron Frith, and he wanted to have a little surprise ready for him.

Frith sat with several strips of silk laid out on the carpet in front of him. He was painting the mage words onto them with the ink that Sebastian had bought from the nearby market, and he was a little startled at how easily they came to him now. Once, he had struggled with this, concentrating so hard on every dot and swirl that he’d given himself headaches, and always O’rin was on hand to mock him, or to hit him with his stick.

Thinking of his old tutor, Frith frowned slightly. He remembered the panicked birds flying up at an invisible ceiling, crashing into it with such violence that they fell down with their fragile bones broken. O’rin must have been afraid at the end, and although Frith had no reason to love the old liar, it was still more fuel for his vengeance.

‘How’s it going?’ Sebastian ducked inside their small, sand-coloured tent. They were on the outskirts of a heat-packed town on the edge of the Desert of Bones, the closest place to get supplies. Sebastian had been out all morning, seeing what he could find. Frith knew that the tall knight was anxious to return to Skaldshollow, and he was trying to distract himself.

‘Slowly,’ replied Frith. He finished the word for Control, and started the next for Fire. He would need a combination of spells in order to force the Edenier trap into the right shape, and then he would need to use the demon’s knowledge. That would not be pleasant. The knight stood there for a long moment, and Frith deliberately didn’t look up. He also knew that Sebastian would want to discuss what had happened to them – and to Wydrin – and he was not going to be drawn into that conversation.

‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ said Sebastian eventually. There was a kindness in his voice that made Frith pause with his brush not yet touching the silk. ‘I saw a few food stalls in the town square. I’ll get us something to eat.’

With that he was gone.

Frith completed the words and tied the strips around his wrists. When this was done he used the Edenier to float the half-complete ball into the air, and slowly turned it round, examining the symbols once again. The shapes etched into the twisted metal were not the familiar swirls and dots of the mages’ words, but the oddly unsettling angular pictograms that the demon had given Joah. New tools with which to shape the world; ones bought and paid for with the blood and suffering of others. Cautiously, he reached out with one finger and brushed the smooth surface of one of the icons. It was slick under his skin, a sensation that caused him to frown; once, when he had been eight or nine years old, his brother Leon had dared him to put his hand inside a sack of offal that had been left in the kitchens. Never able to resist a dare from Leon, Frith had thrust his hand inside, and the sense of that cold slippery wetness came back to him now. Along with the urgent desire to wash his hands.

‘It has to be done,’ he murmured to himself.

First of all, he worked at taking the object apart, reducing it down to its component pieces. He examined them all, quickly seeing how they fitted together and how the spell worked. Each time he came into contact with one of the demonic symbols he would suppress a shiver, but that feeling lessened too. Eventually, they became an unpleasant tool to be endured, although more than once he thought of Joah’s memory of the demon in the field, smiling with a beautiful face whilst cutting the words into the mage’s skin.

Eventually his eyes began to sting, and he forced himself to stand up and walk away from the device for a few moments. His eyes fell on the staff that they’d rescued from Temerayne along with the god-blade – the staff made by Xinian’s lover, Selsye. With everything that had happened, he had barely given it a thought.

It was a beautiful piece of work, carved from a pale wood he could not identify, and riddled with interlocking mages’ words. As soon as his fingers touched it he knew it to be the opposite of Joah’s Edenier trap in every aspect – carved from an Edeian-enriched material and moulded with Edenier, but with peace and control at its heart. The staff seemed to thrum with concealed power, all of it benign; there was no darkness here. He ran his fingers over it, marvelling at the gossamer feel of the wood. Like the Edenier trap, he could almost see how it worked, how it was put together. There was, he realised, an idea forming at the back of his mind – a risky one, a chance so slim it made a mockery of hope – but perhaps this was the time for desperate chances.

That, however, was for later. He put the staff down and returned to his work on the trap, shuddering slightly as he touched its cold surface once more. He carried on for hours, until he was startled to see Sebastian’s shadow in the tent entrance again. The sun was setting, and the shadows were casting long and dark. He was also sweating profusely, and he wiped a damp hand across his brow.

‘Have you not moved from that spot?’

Frith cleared his throat. He felt strange, as though he’d been in a deep trance for a long time. Coming back to the here and now was painful. In the here and now, he could see his own grief reflected on Sebastian’s face.

‘This is very complex work.’ He shifted the pieces of the contraption out of the way and Sebastian ducked into the tent. In his arms he was carrying something bulky wrapped in brown linen that was already soaked through with grease, and a dark green bottle.

‘A couple of roasted pigeons, a bottle of some local wine,’ he said as he sat down, unwrapping the package. ‘Feels like ages since we had any decent hot food.’

They ate in silence, passing the bottle between them. Frith found that his eyes kept returning to the pieces of blackened metal.

‘I need you to do the spell again,’ said Sebastian eventually. Outside the ruddy light of sunset had vanished into the inky desert night. ‘You know the one I mean.’

Frith felt his jaw tighten. When they had first come here, after they had located the remains of the Edenier trap, Sebastian had insisted that Frith perform the ‘finding’ spell again, this time for Nuava and Prince Dallen. He had done so, and seen only the same strange shifting red light he had found when looking for Wydrin.

‘Sebastian—’

‘There is nothing to stop you trying it again.’

Frith wiped his greasy fingers on the woven mat before lifting his hands and summoning the word for Seeing, muttering Nuava’s name first of all. Again, there was the flickering scarlet storm light. He looked at Sebastian, and raised his eyebrows.

‘It is likely they are all dead.’

‘There is no way to know what that light means. Try Prince Dallen now, please.’

This time, the dusty cloud of light depicted a scene they hadn’t witnessed before. They saw Prince Dallen on his knees, his arms tied awkwardly behind his back. His face was covered in dried blood, a black bruise circling his left eye. As they watched, he spoke to someone they couldn’t see, his long brown hair plastered to his forehead and cheeks, and then a tall Narhl warrior stepped into view. Prince Dallen stopped talking, and the man struck him across the face, rocking him back on his knees. It was very difficult to make out where they were; Frith could see an overcast sky, a rocky backdrop. The image flickered and died.

‘He is alive,’ whispered Sebastian. Frith felt a moment of pure bitterness; why should Prince Dallen be alive, when Wydrin was not? ‘We have to go back there.’

Sebastian stood up, nearly knocking the tent over in his urgency.

‘You don’t know where he is,’ said Frith, not moving. ‘If he has been captured by his own people, then he could be anywhere.’

‘I will find him,’ said Sebastian shortly. ‘You must take us back there with the Edenier. Now.’

Frith looked back at the twisted pieces of metal, shining blackly under the lamps. ‘I will not leave my work at this crucial stage.’

‘Frith!’ Sebastian took a step forward, frustration and disbelief evident on his face. ‘I’m talking about another human life here.’

‘Your lover, you mean?’

There was a flicker of anger from the big knight then, and Frith wondered briefly how long such a fight would last, should they come to blows. Sebastian was a fearsome warrior, but he would not get far against the Edenier. He could feel it building in his chest again. So much easier to be alone, to just carry on with his work.

‘Wydrin would go back for him. You know that.’

Frith looked down at the brown bones of their dinner. ‘What will you do?’ he asked eventually. ‘They will have him under guard.’

‘I will summon the brood army,’ said Sebastian immediately, before correcting himself. ‘Ephemeral and her sisters.’ He paused, looking down at his hands. ‘I wanted to keep them away from all this, for as long as I could. There has been enough killing, on all sides.’ He looked up again. ‘They have been waiting for word from me, and they will be in the riverlands by now. They have their own special abilities,’ he continued, fingering the carved tooth that hung around his neck. ‘With them, I will be able to find Dallen.’

Frith nodded slowly. ‘I will take you, then, to the edge of the riverlands,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘But I will not dally there. And you will rescue your prince alone.’

The world screamed back into existence around them and Sebastian stumbled, finding his feet suddenly on hard black earth instead of soft golden sand. Frith had brought them back to the bleak foothills on the outskirts of the frozen northern lands, near the smallholding where they had rented their mountain ponies. It felt like that had happened a hundred years ago.

Here, there was still some light left in the sky, and when he turned back to Frith he saw the younger man’s face clearly. He was well again – Wydrin’s ill-advised bargaining had done that much at least – but there was a desolation in his eyes that looked as cold as the mountains. He cut a slim shape against the brittle, greying grass, and Sebastian had a moment to wonder how much the Edenier had changed him. What did it take to turn a man into a monster like Joah, after all?

‘I will leave you here, then,’ said Frith. There was a cold wind blowing, and his words were clipped, shouting against it. ‘When the weapon is finished I will return to Skaldshollow, and kill Joah Demonsworn.’

‘You will need me then,’ said Sebastian. All at once he felt strongly that this was wrong, that to split up was to doom them both. ‘Remember that, at the end. I will want to be there.’

Frith nodded once. ‘I will keep an eye on you,’ he said, and in a rush of air and a shimmer of light, he was gone.

Sebastian let out a long sigh. The wind was growing stronger, and in the smallholding across the way he could see a few lamps starting to glow against the evening’s darkness. Somewhere beyond these hills, Dallen was being tortured and punished by his own people, but for now he turned his face to the riverlands beyond, and began to climb the nearest slope. The wind filled his cloak and tried to pull it from his shoulders, and he had to lean into his strides to make progress, but eventually he stood on the low summit, facing the flatter lands to the south. The last light of the day danced silvery across the traceries of rivers, and, far beyond that, a thin band of green that was the forest. That was where they would be.

Closing his eyes, he tried to empty his mind of everything; his worries about Dallen, his sorrow over Wydrin – even his unease about Frith and the metal contraption he was now obsessed with. He cleared his mind, and then slowly filled it with the image of Ephemeral.

This was something they had practised between them for hours, hidden up in the craggy reaches of the mountains of Ynnsmouth. The other sisters had all felt his mind too – his blood bonded them all together – but it was strongest with Ephemeral, who had been the first to put down her sword at the battle of Baneswatch. He brought her to mind as clearly as he could: her pale green skin, like an unripe apple, the silvery swatch of her hair, so often tied into a braid with a length of red fabric she had picked up somewhere. He saw her yellow eyes, so alien at first and then, gradually, familiar, and her habit of lifting her chin slightly when she had an urgent question to ask. He thought about the shape of her mind, and how his blood ran with her own – the red and the green.

‘Ephemeral,’ he murmured, ‘can you hear me?’

They had tried this trick over numerous distances; at first, standing facing each other, and then in separate rooms, and then on either side of the training slopes. They had moved further and further, always able to find that slim, red and green thread again, but this was the longest distance they had tried by a significant degree. Perhaps this would all be pointless after all.

‘Ephemeral,’ he said again, knowing that the wind whipped away his words as soon as they passed his lips. ‘Are you there?’

At first, nothing. And then, the faintest of whispers inside his head.

Father! I am here.

He could sense the excitement in her voice, and the warm sense of achievement. Alone on the hill, Sebastian smiled. ‘Can you find me, Ephemeral?’

There was a moment’s silence then, and he could imagine her standing very still, her brow furrowed in concentration.

Yes
, she answered eventually.
You are on a hill. It is windy there
.

‘Come to me,’ he said. ‘All of you. And come as fast as you can.’

There was no reply. He sat down on the grass, pulling his cloak around him and watching the distant forest. The light faded until he could no longer distinguish the riverlands from the trees, and despite the cold and the howling wind he began to doze lightly. He could feel their minds, as quick and slippery as the snakes’ had been, gradually drawing closer. Deep inside he was frightened by this, and the Second’s words echoed in his heart, but he pushed it away.