The Iron Ghost (59 page)

‘One more step,’ he muttered to himself. As he watched, a shiny black beetle scuttled across the rug, heading towards the device. Halfway there it stopped, its tiny antennae waving furiously, before turning back and heading the other way. ‘One more step and it is done.’

It was a thing of evil. Black twisted metal shot through with sections of silver, and all covered with the demon’s icons; it seemed to crouch on the rug like some hibernating spider, simply waiting for the right season to uncurl its legs and start hunting. Except, of course, Frith knew what it was really waiting for.

He had taken Joah’s pieces and his memories, and he had finished the thing, twisting and welding the metal, soldering it with magic and seeding it with power. It was constructed with both Edenier and Edeian, but ultimately it was a demon’s toy, and that came with a certain price, just as the Rivener did.

‘I cannot,’ he said. He felt lightheaded. The beetle had crawled back under the gap between the rugs and vanished. ‘I have done many things I regret. But to do this would be the end of me.’

He could, he supposed, leave this place now. He could use the Edenier to take himself home to Blackwood Keep. There Eric and the rest of his servants would have been spending their time making the castle a home again, as he had instructed them to do. By now there would be furniture in all the rooms, fires in all the fireplaces, and perhaps they would even have managed to erase the smell of blood from the Great Hall. The graves they had made for his father and brothers – they had no bodies to bury, but they had had the gravestones engraved anyway – would be well tended and covered in flowers. The pear tree that grew in the small graveyard would be bearing fruit; his mother had been fond of pears, and in a rare fit of sentiment his father had planted a pear tree next to her grave when she died. Now all their souls rested underneath its spreading branches.

If he went back there now he could forget about Skaldshollow and the monster resting at its heart, and instead throw himself into the arranged marriage proposed by Lady Clareon and her estate. The Blackwood and the Stony Dale would combine their resources and prosper together. It was, after all, what his father would have wanted for him – a chance to see the Frith name continue, and for the castle to be filled with a family again. History and responsibility had ever been his father’s favourite subjects after all. He could build this new life for himself, and when he was old and grey – he grunted laughter at this, his hair already as white as it would ever be – he would tell his grandchildren stories about how, for a little while, he had been an adventurer, how he had defeated a dragon and travelled Ede in the company of sell-swords. Perhaps all his stories would end abruptly, and he would certainly never speak the names of Skaldshollow or Joah Demonsworn, but that would be an easier price to pay than the one that was facing him now.

Could he forget it, though? Could he forget any of it? Would he spend the rest of his life haunted by the violet light of the corrupted Heart-Stone, or the terrible rooms hidden away inside the Rivener? It was all too easy to imagine spending the rest of his life dreaming of the moment that Wydrin’s body spun away into the dark, lost to him for ever. Or even worse, would he wake in the night remembering exactly how her hair had smelt, or the sound of her laughter, or any number of a thousand things he would be incapable of forgetting?

He had already lost everything that was important. This rage was too big to hide from, and he had never been very good at that anyway.

After a few moments he stood up and covered the Edenier trap with the rug. It was a relief to have it out of sight. Once that was done he retrieved his money belt, pushed his hair out of his eyes, and left the room.

Moving through the crowded streets of Holcodine, Frith couldn’t help but be reminded of Krete. There was the same stifling desert sun and the same fetid scent of too many people in one place, but now he was walking without a stick, and his back was straight and true. He wound around the men and women on the street easily, keeping his eyes on his destination: the Storm Gates.

The huge circular monstrosity rose from amongst the shabby one- and two-storey buildings like a great flat tooth pushing through the flesh of the city. Bone-white stones blazed under the midday sun, the biggest and brightest thing in Holcodine. The upper wall was topped with huge bronze spikes, and if Frith forced himself to squint in that direction he could just about make out the severed heads that had been impaled there. Ravens perched nearby, looking bored now that they had stripped the skulls of all the juicy bits, and there was a wavering, ever-present roar, the cacophony that gave the Storm Gates their name: a thousand blood-thirsty citizens, baying for their day’s entertainment.

When he stood outside the walls, Frith paused. Part of him wanted to leave – to go back to the inn, buy several bottles of wine and get enormously drunk. Instead, he forced himself to look at the place; up close the huge bricks weren’t as pristine as they appeared. Closer to ground level the walls were thick with graffiti, mostly detailing who the author wished to see punished next, or which of the convicts had won their respect. Curiously, there were lots of handprints, all clustered together in a line that seemed to run the circumference of the building, daubed in dark, ruddy mud.

‘They make all the prisoners do it before they enter the Gates.’

Frith looked down to see a grubby child at his elbow with a tray of something sticky slung round his neck. The boy grinned up at him. He had a tattoo of an octopus on one cheek.

‘What?’

‘The handprints. I can tell you’re not from round here, see, and I could tell you were wondering what they were about.’ The boy sniffed. ‘Every man and woman that fights in the pit leaves their print out here. Once they’ve done that, they belong to the Gates. Can I interest you in a snack, milord? For the games?’

‘I don’t—’

‘We’re doing a special deal on these today, milord.’ The boy plucked a long thin stick off the tray and held it up for Frith to look at. There were small objects skewered on the stick, brown glistening things with lots of tiny legs. ‘It’s appropriate, see, for today’s games. My mum covers them in fat and boiling sugar. Very tasty. Just two coppers.’

Despite himself, Frith peered closer at the stick.

‘What are those, exactly?’

‘Grasshoppers and stinging ants,’ said the boy. ‘You don’t have to worry about the stings none, ’cause my mum chops them all off, see. The grasshoppers I catch myself.’

Frith drew up straight. ‘No – thank you. Do you sell any drinks? Without insects in them?’

The boy snorted at him. ‘Who’d put insects in a drink? That’d be stupid.’ He reached under the tray to retrieve a brown leather skin, which he held up to Frith. ‘Spring water with a touch of lemon. Perfect for a hot day like this, milord.’

‘And where exactly do you get spring water from around here?’

The boy decided to keep quiet this time and simply grinned up at Frith. Sighing, Frith fetched a coin from his belt and exchanged it with the boy for the skin.

‘Thank you kindly, milord. Enjoy the games!’

The boy sped off towards some other stragglers and Frith took a cautious sip from the skin. Surprisingly, it did appear to be lemon-water, and it calmed his throat a little. Pushing aside his doubts, he walked through the arch and into the Storm Gates, where he bought a ticket and made his way towards a relatively quiet area. Inside, the place was circular, with an enormous sand-covered arena in the centre, surrounded by rings and rings of stone benches, reaching up almost to the tops of the walls. Outside in the city the sound was softened by the thick stone walls, but inside the roaring of the crowd was deafening. Frith moved down the rows, passing men and women and children with their eyes fixed on the pit below, impatiently peering round him as he squeezed past. Most of them were shouting at the distant figures, and quite a few of them were chewing on snacks very similar to those sold by the boy with the octopus tattoo. Frith saw tankards of beer and ale everywhere, as well as countless skins of wine, and he wondered exactly how much vomit was cleared up at the end of every day’s entertainments.

He took his seat and peered down at the arena below. Distantly, he was aware that he was avoiding his true purpose, but it was easier to pass this off as research.
I need to know exactly what goes on her
e, he told himself
. If I am to do this, I must do it right.

In the arena below, three figures were moving about, circling the pit. One, a man with skin the colour of red clay and a series of pale, white scars across his back and chest, was walking around with confidence, shaking his fists at the crowd and bellowing something Frith couldn’t make out over the roar. This, evidently, was one of the champions of the Storm Gates; a convict who had survived so many trials he had now become a hero. He had been rewarded with a pair of small knives which he wore at his belt. They were polished to a high shine, and were of reasonable quality. The other two were much less confident. An older, wiry-looking woman with long grey hair falling loose down her back edged around the pit, trying to see all around her at once, while the other, a young man with a patchy beard and only a stained loincloth to his name, was visibly shaking. The two newcomers had been given wooden clubs. Frith watched closely. Were they both to fight the big man with the scars? He supposed that they might have a chance, if they could stay out of range of his knives and get a few lucky blows to his head.

There was a flat clacking sound, and part of the arena wall folded away, revealing a long dark tunnel. Instantly, the roar of the crowd grew until it was a tide of relentless noise.

Something scuttled out of the tunnel, and Frith felt all the hairs on his body trying to stand on end. It was a huge scorpion, easily as big as a small horse. It was brown, the colour of old tea, with long flat plates running across its back that shone wetly. Its tail, with its lethal stinging barb, flexed over its back experimentally, while its front pincers opened and closed.

The young man and the woman immediately retreated, flinging themselves back to the furthest part of the arena, the young man openly sobbing. Frith wondered what they had done to end up in such a place. The man with the knives and the scars advanced, actually running at the scorpion and shouting, and to Frith’s surprise the creature scuttled away from him, apparently taking fright at this sudden movement.

The crowd went crazy, cheering his bravado, but Frith soon saw that it was more than that. The scorpion’s confusion took it closer to the other two prisoners, and it circled towards them instead, the barbed tail flexing. The woman with the long hair decided to make a run for it, even dropping her club in her desperation to get away, and the scorpion was on her in moments. Frith heard her scream quite clearly over the cacophony as she was lost under the creature’s scrabbling legs. It trod her to the ground easily enough, and then the thing dragged her back up with its pincers. The serrated claws flexed once, twice, almost convulsively, and the woman fell back to the ground in ragged chunks.

‘Where would they even find such a thing?’ he muttered to himself. To his surprise, the woman sitting next to him leaned over, gesturing with a tankard of foamy ale.

‘Shipped over special from Onwai,’ she said. She had warm olive skin and her black hair had been braided into a looping crown on her head, which she’d then covered with some sort of bright red paste. It smelt strongly of ginger. ‘They have farms for them, where they breed them bigger and bigger, and feed them until they’re as big as that bastard down there. From what I heard, the Master of the Gates had ten of them shipped over in the last batch, and this one’s the runt.’

Frith frowned, imagining sharing a long sea voyage with such things locked up in the cargo hold.

‘It seems a very cruel way to execute someone,’ he said.

‘Well, yes,’ said the woman. ‘That’s the point.’

‘I suppose you are right.’

Below, the scorpion had turned its attention to the man in the loin cloth, and was stalking him steadily across the sand. The young man was moving backwards rapidly, shouting something to the man with the scars and the knives. Frith could well imagine what it was –
Let’s work together, let’s help each other
. But the big man was keeping back, staying out of the creature’s line of sight.

‘It’s got the taste now,’ said the woman. She slurped from her tankard. ‘This one won’t last much longer.’

She was right. The young man tried to circle away, and when the creature made a grab for him with its pincers he actually struck it, the wooden club bouncing off armoured plate like it was a drum. The left pincer caught him round the midriff, holding him in place – he gave a single, ululating scream – and then the tail shot down, the wickedly sharp stinger striking the man in the centre of his chest. From Frith’s vantage point it was possible to see the shining point emerge from the other side, slick with blood.

‘There you go,’ said the woman. ‘It’s a waste, putting this lot up against a scorpion. It’s over too quickly.’

The other man, the one with the knives and the scars, was approaching the scorpion rapidly from behind while the creature was occupied with the other prisoner. He ran low, both knives held up in front of him, and when he got round to the side of the creature he stabbed viciously at the thing’s head, trying to put out its eyes. The scorpion leapt backwards, dropping the young man, and now it was moving oddly. It seemed he had managed to injure it after all.

‘This is more like it,’ said the woman next to Frith approvingly. ‘Got someone here who knows what he’s doing.’

Overconfident from his success, the scarred man jumped forward again, knives moving in a flashy dance, tearing through the scorpion’s eyes and bursting them. The creature squealed, and Frith felt the entire audience recoil at the noise.

‘Son of a bitch,’ cried the woman. ‘He’s got more luck than sense.’

But it wasn’t quite over. Confused and blinded, the scorpion struck out at random with its pincers and quite casually sliced the scarred man’s arm off just above the elbow. A torrent of blood blasted forth in a gory arc, and the crowd groaned as one. It had been going so well.