The Iron Ghost (68 page)

‘Right, hold on tight.’

With a convulsive shudder, the wyvern shot off the platform and up into the sky, curving round in a tight spiral shape to bring them up out of the reach of the Rivener. Frith found himself almost unseated immediately, clinging to the leather saddle for his life. In front of him Wydrin gave a yelp of combined horror and amusement.

‘I’m probably going to be sick,’ she yelled to no one in particular. ‘So you’d best keep your mouths shut.’

They climbed up and up, the violence of their movement calming down somewhat, until Frith risked a look over the side. Below them the Destroyer still stood, amazingly, and the Rivener was now prowling round it. There was a circle of debris and destruction around them – buildings crushed flat, the pieces of the Destroyer the Rivener had knocked away – and then further out, something else.

Frith felt his stomach turn over. ‘Sebastian,’ he called ahead, raising his voice over the freezing wind. ‘Can you take us higher?’

He heard Wydrin mutter several curse words at that, but Sebastian obliged, pulling the wyvern upwards in its slow spiral. The whole of Skaldshollow lay below them, bathed in the unnerving red light. Frith nodded to himself.
Of course.
He put a hand on Wydrin’s shoulder.

‘Look down and tell me what you see.’

‘Didn’t I just tell you I was going to throw up?’

She did as he asked though, and he felt her stiffen in the saddle in front of him.

‘Oh that clever bastard.’

‘What is it?’ said Sebastian from the front. Wydrin nodded downwards.

The mage word for Summon had been gouged into the very streets of Skaldshollow. Written there by a man who had very recently gained the power and, apparently, the knowledge of a god. A god who knew even more about the Edenier and Edeian than Joah did, and who had once built a weapon into the very flesh of Ede itself, many years ago.

‘Which word is it?’ asked Wydrin. ‘Do you know what it will do?’

Frith tightened his grip on the sack. He could feel the weight of the device there, waiting for its time.

‘It is the word for Summon,’ he said, raising his voice into the wind. ‘What it could summon . . . I do not know.’

‘Oh, that’s just pissing marvellous.’

‘It is imperative we use the weapon against Joah before he activates it,’ said Frith, leaning forward in his seat. ‘We must do it
now
.’

‘Look!’

Now Sebastian was pointing downwards. Frith leaned over to see the Destroyer suddenly lurching back into life. It was riddled with green light now, tracing the complex carvings that covered its hide, and as he watched it drew back its arm and smashed its fist into the Rivener’s unprotected side. Joah’s machine crumpled where it was struck and staggered backwards into the Tower of Waking. There was a splintering sound that Frith felt in his bones, and the Tower itself fell, shattered into thousands of deadly black shards.

‘Seb, get down there,’ said Wydrin, a new urgency in her voice. ‘We need to see what’s happening.’

They dove, swerving down in a graceful curve so that they passed close by the Destroyer’s upper half. There they all saw the slim form of Nuava standing with arms outstretched in the remains of the werken’s head. She was also covered in the green light of the Edeian, her eyes two beacons of green fire. She was smiling.

‘Nuava!’ cried Wydrin, half rising out of the saddle. Frith pulled her back down.

‘There is nothing we can do for her,’ he said, speaking directly into her ear. ‘The mountain has her now.’

As they swerved out of the way, the Destroyer reached forward with both its arms and struck the Rivener on either side of its black insectile head. There was a screaming of metal, and its twisted claws flailed at nothing. From their vantage point they could see the ragged opening at the top of the head, still filled with violet light.

‘There,’ shouted Frith, ‘if we’re going to do it, it has to be now! Take us down.’

The wyvern dropped, and they crashed rather than landed inside the Rivener’s central room. For a few moments, everything was confusion – Frith jumped from the wyvern’s back, his arms still cradling the trap, while Wydrin rolled with somewhat less grace into a table. Sebastian leapt away and the wyvern was gone, flicking back up into the sky with an air of relief.

Joah turned towards them. Frith heard Wydrin cry out in horror, and distantly he wondered if any of them would come out of this with their sanity intact.

One side of Joah Demonsworn’s face was a throbbing swollen mass of infected flesh, red and shining. Frith fancied he could feel the heat coming off it. The other side was worse, though. Much worse.

‘Frith,’ Wydrin was at his side, shaking his arm, ‘we have no time.’

Frith quickly shook the trap out of its sack; it was difficult to think, back in the violet light of the corrupted Heart-Stone. Joah nodded once, as though not remotely surprised to see the Edenier trap.

‘I thought you might do that,’ said Joah. His voice was still soft and warm, the voice of a kind man, although now it was slurred and distorted through the mask of his face. The strange, stretched angles caught the light as he spoke, the membranous tissues quivering. In the burnt side of his face his single remaining human eye watered. ‘You would have gathered the knowledge of how to do it from my memories, and you may even have had the wit to solve the problems I could not.’

‘I will use it. One word from me and it’s all gone.’ Frith held his hand over the top of the Edenier trap, balancing it on the palm of his other hand. ‘I will end it all here, Joah.’

‘Will you, though? I wonder.’ Joah glanced away, looking out through the broken windows before turning back to them. ‘To use it would be to destroy your own magic. And I know very well how much you suffered to take that power. Can you just throw it away?’

Out of the corner of his eye Frith saw Wydrin glance at him.

‘I can,’ said Frith. ‘And I will.’

‘A suicide mission I can understand,’ said Joah, still speaking in that conversational tone of voice. ‘When you thought that you’d lost everything, it would be very fine to leave the world like this, wouldn’t it? Your life sacrificed in vengeance.’ Joah dipped his head towards Wydrin. ‘But it turns out you did not lose everything, after all. Does she know what you’ve done, Aaron?’

‘Shut up.’ Frith swallowed hard. He could feel, distantly, something pressing on the borders of his own mind. Joah trying to force his way in, as he had done before.

‘Just do it, Frith,’ said Wydrin. ‘End him.’

‘But do you not see, Wydrin of Crosshaven?’ Joah’s tone changed, became more businesslike. ‘You will have seen by now the spell I have carved into this place. If I speak a word, that spell will bring forth something very interesting indeed. If I speak a word in the instant before Aaron uses the Edenier trap, you will all be powerless to stop whatever it is. No magic, no defence against whatever I choose to pluck from that lost dimension. And I am a god now. Do you not think that my reflexes will be faster than Aaron’s?’

‘Anything you summon, you will be powerless against it too,’ said Wydrin. ‘It would destroy you too.’

‘Having just got over releasing one monster on the world, are you quite willing to risk doing it again?’

‘Stop,’ said Sebastian. ‘It’s not too late to step away from this madness.’

Joah grinned, splitting the swollen part of his face wide open. Blood and pus oozed down his neck and soaked into the tattered remnants of his green robes.

‘Look at my face and tell me that again.’

For a few seconds, there was silence. Frith felt the tension on the back of his neck like a vice. Was it all a desperate bluff? He watched Joah’s ruined face for any sign of his next move, but there was nothing human left there. It was like looking up at a moon on an alien world: strange and completely unknowable.

If he was too slow, by even half a second, Joah would unleash a monster. And when the Edenier trap went off, they would be powerless to prevent it.

He would have to be faster. In his mind he formed the first of the words, trusting to luck . . .

A shape dropped down behind Joah, a long dagger in her hand.

‘For Selsye!’

Xinian grabbed hold of the mage from behind, wrapping one muscled arm around his neck. Joah gasped, his lips half forming a word. Next to Frith, Wydrin was already leaping forward, shouting and drawing her sword. Xinian vanished in a wreath of red flames, as though just to touch Joah was instant death and then . . .

. . . Frith spoke the last word, in his mind and in his heart, and the trap unfolded like a flower in spring.

Wydrin was aware of light and sound, and the smell of burning flesh. She was also aware that she was falling, bumping into and being thrown off various objects as they crashed around the central room of the Rivener. She forced her eyes open and saw, dizzyingly, the view of the rapidly swerving sky through the hole in the roof, and then there was a crash that threw her straight out of the opening and onto a hard cobbled street.

She sat up, and spat out a mouthful of blood. ‘I have had more than enough of falling off of things.’

Her right arm was a bright agony, and she could feel from the warmth spreading there that she’d been cut by something, and deeply. Ignoring it she struggled to her feet, trying to make some sense of the scene around her. Directly across from her was the twisted metal remains of the Rivener, its violet light extinguished. Standing over it was the Destroyer, lit up like a stone beacon. The sky above them was blessedly blue.

Sebastian was kneeling on the ground some distance away, blood pouring from a head wound. She ran over to him, stumbling on wobbly legs.

‘Seb, are you with me? Are you all right?’

Groggily he shook his head at her. ‘Never better. Where’s Frith? Did the trap work?’

She looked back. Frith was standing on his feet, swaying back and forth slightly. His slim figure was easy enough to pick out against the churning hole that had once been the Tower of Waking. A churning hole that was growing faster by the moment.

‘What the hell is that?’

He turned to her. In comparison to Wydrin and Sebastian, he was remarkably untouched by their violent journey to the ground, although his eyes looked distant and glazed.

‘I wasn’t quick enough, Wydrin,’ he said softly.

‘So that is—’

‘The summoning,’ said Frith. ‘Joah managed to say it, just before I could stop him.’

The hole in the world was centred exactly where the Tower of Waking had been, and it was difficult to look at. It was as big as a house now, filled with black, shifting light, and already she could see the shape of something trying to come through.

‘Is there nothing you can do?’

Frith looked at her and smiled sadly. He held out his hands to her, empty and scarred.

‘It’s all gone, Wydrin. The Edenier has left me.’

Wydrin looked back at the swirling black hole. Now it was as big as four houses, and she could see light glinting off something scaled and enormous. She took a step backwards, and nearly walked into Sebastian who had come up behind her.

‘Do you think perhaps we should leave, then?’ she said, unable to take her eyes from the shimmering black light. There was a roar, a roar that was all too familiar, and she took another involuntary step backwards. The hole was growing bigger all the time.

‘How far do you think we’d get?’ said Sebastian, drawing his sword. ‘I for one have no more running left to do.’

There was a strangled noise from behind them. Joah Demonsworn, or what had once been a mage known by that name, lay on the ground. Something in the fall had torn open his guts and strewn them across the cobbles, but he was still moving weakly. His mouth opened and closed, pushing forth small noises that Wydrin realised were barking attempts at laughter.

‘I saw its face,’ he was saying. ‘The demon’s face. Have I told you?’

Frith stumbled over to the prone form. Wydrin couldn’t read the expression on his face.

‘That’s all over now, Joah,’ he said, not taking his eyes from the mage’s ravaged form. ‘You can forget it. Leave it behind.’

‘Can I?’ Joah reached out to him, fingers like knives. There was a terrible sliver of hope in his voice, like a broken bottle in the snow. ‘Can I really forget it?’

‘Yes,’ said Frith. ‘Be at peace now, Joah Lightbringer.’

Joah shook all over. Behind them, the creature that was clawing its way up through the portal roared again, and Wydrin felt her hair stand on end.

‘Could we have been brothers, Aaron?’

Joah’s last question hung in the air. Frith looked at him a moment longer, and then turned away. Wydrin unsheathed Glassheart and thrust the point through Joah’s neck, not stopping until she heard the brittle screech of metal on stone, and then she leaned back and forth on the sword until his head was severed. His blood was black and oily.

‘If we’re going out, then you’re going first, you mad bastard,’ she spat.

Thank you for that.

Wydrin turned round, startled, and saw that Frith and Sebastian had both heard the voice in their heads too.

‘Nuava?’

It was good to see him go.

It was her voice, too, but with an echo of something else underneath it. A coldness that Wydrin recognised.

‘Where are you?’

I am here, with the Edeian.

Behind them, there was an inhuman screech and a great reptilian head forced its way through the portal into the daylight. It was Y’Ruen, but it was a Y’Ruen changed. Her scales, once the beautiful shining blue of the finest sapphires, were now dull and flaking away, revealing great patches of raw grey flesh. Her eyes, once the yellow of dragon fire, were blind, one covered in a white film, the other pitted and eaten away by parasites that Wydrin could barely imagine. The dragon roared again, opening her great jaws to reveal rotten teeth and the stench of a slaughterhouse, and she pulled herself forward, thrashing her head back and forth.

‘She has returned!’

Wydrin turned to see Sebastian reeling on his feet, his arms held out to either side. There was a look of beatific terror on his face.