The Iron Ghost (11 page)

‘Ho, that’s hardly fair!’ crowed Wydrin, although she moved her werken to the edge of the ridge, and curled a hand around the leather strap attached to the saddle. ‘You’ve been doing this all your life, and I’ve only just started. I would need at least a week to get used to how this stone beast handles and even then – GO!’

She focussed all her thoughts into that single command and the werken leapt, surging forward with a burst of speed she had barely guessed at. Screaming with delight, she held on for dear life as the werken sped down the steep incline, sending snow flying in all directions. She could hear Bors shouting something – she couldn’t make out the words but his surprised amusement was clear – and then there was a startling thunder as his bear-shaped mount came after her, now struggling to keep up.

‘This bastard can move!’

All at once the dark treeline was looming very close, and Wydrin yanked back on the leather strap, in her panic resorting to the little experience she had with horses, but the werken was suddenly turning, skidding into a stop with its back legs stretched out. Snow flew up in a wave, pelting the tree trunks with a wet splatter. Such was the violence of their sudden stop that some of the snow hit the back of Wydrin’s cloak, and she cried out in mingled delight and disgust as some of it slipped down the back of her collar. A handful of seconds later Bors joined her, although much slower; the bear-shaped werken thumped over to the trees at an amiable pace, having clearly given up the race.

Wydrin grinned and leaned forward, patting the werken between the ears again.

‘You know, I think he likes going fast. He may not be as quick as yours over deep snow, but give him space to run and he’ll make the most of it.’ She laughed. ‘Mine’s a mead, by the way, none of this grut nonsense. And a bowl of stew while you’re at it, I’m starving.’

Bors smiled, although he seemed to have lost some of his earlier humour. ‘They don’t
like
anything, Wydrin, they can’t. Your werken is a sleeker model, and it moves fast over short distances. Saying it likes going fast is like saying . . . like saying a table enjoys having food on it.’

Wydrin wriggled in the saddle. The snow had melted and was now trickling down her back. ‘How can you know that for certain?’

Bors and his mount moved closer. The edge of the blue sky was tainted with heavy clouds, promising a storm later. His hair, smoothed back into its tight knot, looked very black against his grey furs.

‘My friend, I have been down in the quarry myself, I have chipped the rock from the mountain. It is solid, inert, as you would expect. And I have seen it carved into functional shapes by my aunt, crafted into forms that will move. It is the magic of the mountain that gives it a semblance of life – it is that, that causes the werkens to follow our actions. They are a mirror, that is all.’

‘This one moved without a rider. You said it was defective, but what if it was something else?’

Bors smiled again, his expression tight. ‘You’re an outsider here, so it’s not surprising you don’t understand. But listen, don’t go talking like that around my aunt, all right? The Narhl believe that the werkens are feeling creatures, and that belief fuels this war between us. Tamlyn – Tamlyn wouldn’t care to hear such views from guests, particularly guests she is giving large amounts of coin to.’

Wydrin shrugged. Just for a moment, she tried to reach out with her mind to the werken – instead of issuing a command, she left her mind open.
Are you there? Can you hear me?
There was nothing, only the cold presence beneath her, and a potential for movement. ‘If you say so.’ She leaned forward in the saddle and wrapped her hands around the leather strap again. The werken had almost been as swift as the griffin, and she wanted to see how fast it could go. ‘How about another race, then? Back down to Skaldshollow, last one back buys the bottle.’

Tamlyn and Bors Nox came to see them off. Frith thought that the older woman looked unsure of herself, her wide brow furrowed into lines. She kept touching the beads at her throat, and whenever her nephew spoke to her she snapped at him, until the younger man hung back, not making eye contact with any of them. Not for the first time Frith wondered whether or not hiring them had, in fact, been Tamlyn’s idea.

‘We have given you all the tactical information we have on the Narhl,’ she said, when they were loaded up and ready to go. They stood on one of the winding paths that led up out of Skaldshollow; they would follow it out of mountain and into Narhl territory. ‘You must remember that they are savages, and that they care more for the dead stone of the mountain than they do about human life.’

Sebastian, adjusting the way his broadsword hung over his back, frowned at this. ‘We shall see.’

It was a five-day journey to the outskirts of the Frozen Steps, across cold, inhospitable hills and around winding paths that, half the time, Frith couldn’t see until they were right on top of them. Wydrin’s werken came along after them. Frith had protested at first, complaining that the creature would slow them down or make the narrower paths impassable, but Wydrin had insisted, pointing out that it could carry all their supplies and gear, leaving them able to move freely. And so far, its slim, narrow shape had caused no significant problems, although Frith often found it unnerving to glance back the way they’d come to see two points of eerie green light staring back at him. His own steed, Gwiddion, flew above them in its bird form, sometimes perching on rocky outcrops and waiting for them to catch up.

Looking at the bird made him think of O’rin; his old teacher had never been far from a pack of squawking birds on Whittenfarne. Since Y’Ruen had been cast out of Ede, tumbling through a hole in the sky – a result of O’rin’s own long-planned spell – the god of lies had made himself scarce, preferring to stay at his Rookery, away from the world and its problems. He had paid Frith a few brief visits, usually when he was alone, walking in the Blackwood or in his own bare suite of rooms in the castle. The old god would appear in a flurry of feathers, full of questions and pointed comments about the welfare of his griffin, his great curved beak nodding rapidly. He would pretend that these visits were a result of his naturally curious nature, but Frith suspected that the old god was keeping an eye on him. That, or he was lonely. It seemed ludicrous that such a powerful being could want company, but he was the last of his kind now. And Frith had some idea what that felt like.

They came to the Crippler on the evening of the third day. The path was every bit as hair-raising as Tamlyn had hinted; it curved around the sheer western side of the mountain in erratic fashion, sometimes so narrow that they had to walk single file, leaning heavily against the solid rock to their right, and sometimes so full of rocks and snow that Frith was convinced that they had lost track of it completely. Dizzying drops loomed off to one side, so that more than once he considered calling Gwiddion to his griffin form so that he could fly off ahead, but his pride kept him from doing so. Here it looked likely that they might lose the werken – in several places the path did not look solid enough to support its weight – but it came steadily on, and Frith had to admit he was glad not to be carrying a heavy pack when he needed all his concentration just to stay on the path.

Eventually, the chilly afterthought that passed as daylight in these lands gave way to a dark, freezing night and they agreed to stop and rest. The Crippler had widened enough in this section for them to be able to make a small camp and Frith set about making a fire for the night; a pile of dry sticks from Wydrin’s pack, and the word for Fire inked onto a bandage in his fist. Within seconds he had a merry blaze going and Wydrin and Sebastian drew close to it, holding out their hands for warmth.

‘We are not far now,’ he said, trying to find a comfortable place to sit amongst the rocks and snow. The werken stood behind them as if it were a guard dog, or a statue of one. ‘When the sun comes up we should be able to see the Frozen Steps.’ Gwiddion fluttered down from the shadowy spaces above their heads and perched on top of the werken’s head. The werken did not move.

‘We’ll have a better idea of how we’re getting in there then,’ said Wydrin. She was busily unpacking a small bag; salted meat wrapped in greasy paper, hard black bread, a small cask of beer. She took a knife from her belt and began slicing the meat. ‘And how we’re getting the bloody thing back out. Still, at least we’ve got Mendrick here to carry it for us.’ She slapped the werken companionably on one big stone paw.

‘You’ve named it Mendrick?’ asked Sebastian. He took the cask from Wydrin and began filling their tin cups. ‘I thought the Skald were set against naming their beasts of burden.’

‘It’s after a man I met in the Horns. He was part of a travelling magic show.’ She waved a hand at Frith. ‘None of your blowing things up or freezing your companions to death or any of that. This was more card tricks and silk scarves. He used to juggle with radishes.’ She looked wistful for a moment. ‘That’s the thing with stage magicians, good with their hands.’

Frith coughed and took a sip of beer. Beyond the path and their small circle of fire the night loomed, star-lit and streaked with ragged clouds. He thought of their final journey with Y’Ruen, the dragon nipping at their heels as they danced just out of reach. How the sky had opened up and revealed a darkness beyond that made this pitch-black night look like an early morning sunrise. The thought was not a reassuring one.

Sebastian took first watch and Frith turned over to sleep, pulling his hood down over his face as far as it would go. When he woke again, it was for the final watch, and he sat and waited for the sun to come up. Cold yellow light seeped in from the east, turning the snows and ice briefly golden and too bright to look at. The sky crept from silvery-violet to pale, pitiless blue, while on the horizon darker clouds lurked, promising heavy snows later. Frith turned his hand to the embers that were left of their fire and it burst back into life.

Wydrin sat up, rubbing a gloved hand over her face.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I am pleased we haven’t fallen off the cliff while we slept.’

‘I have passed more comfortable nights.’

She stood up, stretching her arms over her head until the bones in her shoulders popped before reaching over to gently kick Sebastian in the rear end.

‘Up you get, Seb, we’ve got sacred stones to steal, and the fewer nights spent on my back in this mountain the better.’ She turned back to Frith, and then stopped, her eyes caught by something on the horizon. ‘Speaking of which –’

Frith looked where she pointed. From this vantage point, with the early morning light seeping across the land like honey, the Narhl territories were a wild and jagged confusion; white snow and deep purple shadows, grey rock tearing at the sky like serrated daggers, layered with the deep lethal blue of glacial ice. The mountain of Skaldshollow was small and timid in comparison to these ancient giants. Nothing moved on that landscape, save for the occasional swirl of mist, and Frith found himself thinking that Sebastian’s religion, where the mountains were feared and pandered to, was suddenly not so difficult to understand. Below the path they clung to was a snow-clogged valley, and at the far end of that was a great looming structure of what looked like broken glass.
No, it’s ice
, he corrected himself.
The Narhl have built the outer wall of their fortress from ice
. It was shaped roughly like a series of arrow heads, the tops glittering with points that looked sharp and deadly. As he watched, the sun caught it and sent a shimmering parade of golden lights across the valley floor.

‘Have you ever seen such a place?’ His voice was instinctively hushed. There were shapes moving on the top of the wall, men and women with spears. A long sinuous shape alighted briefly there, a blue-skinned creature with a long, narrow head. These would be the wyverns that Nuava’s books had warned them about. After a second or so the wyvern leapt off the wall and up into the sky, wriggling like an eel. It was most disconcerting. Gwiddion alighted next to him and
cawed
once, as if he, too, were alarmed by these dragon-like animals.

‘That doesn’t look like it’s going to be easy to get into,’ said Sebastian, his voice still groggy from sleep. Frith had to agree. Beyond the ice wall it was just about possible to make out the hazy shapes of what looked like buildings, and in the distance four white towers stood shining above everything else; somewhere in there, assuming they could get through the wall, they would have to locate the Heart-Stone.

‘If Tamlyn Nox and her army of werkens could not break it . . .’ Frith flexed his fingers. He had already prepared a number of silk strips with spells that he hoped would be appropriate. ‘And even if we manage, somehow, to breach the Frozen Steps, how are we to get to the Heart-Stone with a hostile population between us and it?’

‘You have forgotten, princeling, that we are the Black Feather Three,’ said Wydrin, stepping over the fire to join him at the edge of the path. She passed him a flask of sour-smelling wine. ‘We defeated a dragon. We can do anything.’

Frith smiled a little despite himself. Her hood had fallen back and in the sunlight her hair was an impossible colour.
Like the heart of a fire
, he thought, and then pushed the thought aside.

‘I take it you have a plan, then? Something that can get us over that wall and to Tamlyn’s stone and out again?’

‘Of course I do,’ she said, patting the dagger at her hip. ‘It involves sneaking about, the cover of night, and good old-fashioned beating people up. And we’re going
through
the wall, not over it.’

Siano stood outside the doors to the great dining room, listening. It was early evening, and normally the busiest time in the household, but all the servants were absent. She’d given them the night off, so to speak.

From inside the dining room came the soft familiar sounds of people eating dinner; murmured conversations between bites, the clink of cutlery – always the right cutlery for the right course, obviously – and the gentle glug of wines being poured. Gradually, the sounds changed, and now Siano leaned her head against the grain of the wood, drinking it in. Conversations became stilted, the words that were spoken shrill and confused. The clatter of cutlery became more violent as people threw down knives and forks, or dropped their spoons onto the stone floor. There was, gloriously, the unmistakable sound of someone vomiting violently, followed by the screech of chairs being pushed back from the table. Siano heard a muffled shout, someone calling for servants that were never coming, and there was even the brief stumble of someone attempting to make it to the door. After a moment there was a thump as whoever it was hit the floor like a sack of rocks.