The Iron Ghost (22 page)

It was late afternoon, and Skaldshollow was thick with people going about their daily chores. From where she stood she could see four werkens hauling goods, and one war-werken stationed at the corner of the Tower of Waking. Her own werken, sleek and terrible, was squatting next to it, ready for her planned journey back up to the quarry. Just a normal day, she told herself. Whatever it was, she’d imagined it.

As if to mock her, a terrible scream rent the air. The crowd ahead of her parted, the people falling back in confusion, and a tall man walked towards her, a young girl at his side. He was talking quite calmly to the girl, his hands clasped loosely behind his back, but the bottom of his green robe was stained dark, and where he walked he left a smeared trail of blood.

‘The Prophet,’ muttered Tamlyn through numb lips. ‘And him. It’s him. She really did bring him back.’

‘There you are!’ The Prophet’s voice was clear as a bell across the milling crowds. ‘Tamlyn dear, I would like to introduce you.’

‘I know who that is.’ There was a crunch and the thunder of stone steps as her werken trotted towards her back. Just as instinctively, her hand hovered above the short sword at her waist. ‘What have you done?’

The Prophet shrugged. ‘Nothing you didn’t know about, Nox. Just think of everything you can learn now.’

A slim figure forced its way through the crowd. Nuava’s face was streaked with tears and blood, the skin beneath her eyes purple with shock.

‘They killed Bors!’ She stumbled forward. ‘Just killed him, for no reason, in the street.’

‘I have brought him to you,’ said the Prophet, talking easily over Nuava. ‘Joah Cirrus, Joah Lightbringer, Joah Demonsworn. Just as I said I would.’

The crowd began to mutter more loudly now. The man – and it
was
Joah, every line of him having stepped living and breathing from a history book – looked vaguely disgruntled.

‘What have you done?’ Tamlyn asked again. She had thought this would be simple, that they could contain it somehow, but there was the blood . . .

‘He killed Bors.’ Nuava ran forward and grabbed Tamlyn by her sleeves, her eyes wide. ‘He just tore the heart out of him. My brother.’

‘Bors?’

‘He’s dead!’ Nuava was screaming again, her fists curled into the fabric of Tamlyn’s clothes. ‘I h-had to leave him, to find you, to warn y-you.’

Tamlyn looked back to the Prophet. The child who wasn’t a child.

‘Why?’

‘These werken creatures are quite extraordinary.’ Joah was peering closely at Tamlyn’s own mount, which now stood to her left. He showed no fear of it, even though its head was some distance above his own. ‘You have put them together yourself, and then activated them with the Edeian?’

Tamlyn shook Nuava off with some difficulty and took a few stiff steps towards the Prophet.

‘Why? Why murder a member of my family? You said nothing of this to me.’

The Prophet shrugged. ‘I’m sure I mentioned that he could be unpredictable. Think not of what you have lost, Tamlyn, and really that is so little – another soldier, his only advantage that he shared your blood. Think of what you will gain. You can learn so much from Joah, and your werken army will be unstoppable.’

Tamlyn glanced at the mage. He was running his fingers over the stone of the werken now, muttering under his breath.

‘He cannot go around slaughtering where he will. I have my people to protect.’

‘You knew about this?’ It was Nuava again, her face slack. The girl’s skin had gone so pale she looked grey, and Tamlyn guessed she was a few moments away from passing out. ‘This was the Prophet’s plan all along, and you knew about it?’

Tamlyn shook her head irritably. ‘No. I wanted to retrieve the Heart-Stone first, to try and fix this by ourselves. That’s what the mercenaries were about. This was a last resort. Listen to me, Nuava. With Joah’s knowledge we can build an army that Ede has never seen. He will teach us, you and I, all the secrets of the Edeian.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Joah stepped back from the werken, his handsome face creased into a mildly apologetic expression, ‘but I shan’t be doing that. Look at you, you’re not even a mage. Playing with the Edeian, bashing rocks together like primitives.’ He waved a hand at the werken and it floated up into the air, as if it weighed nothing at all. The crowd around them gasped, and a few, the wiser ones, began backing away. The werken spun softly, and although Tamlyn summoned it fiercely inside her own head, it would not move.

‘It’s all the same as it ever was,’ continued Joah. The Prophet was grinning now, revealing neat white teeth that looked too sharp for a human face. ‘Humans grubbing around in the dirt, grasping to create even the most basic toys. Why would I stoop to teach you anything?’ He smiled again, almost kindly. ‘I’m sure you’ll understand. You are not my people.’

He pitched his arm around, as though casting something away, and the werken flew over Tamlyn’s head and crashed into the crowd. People, cobblestones, even half a building; pieces flew in all directions. Within seconds the street was filled with screaming, with people trying desperately to get away, but Joah Demonsworn would not let them leave. Those that made it to the end of the street found themselves crashing against an invisible barrier, before being dragged back by the same unknowable force.

‘It has been ever such a long time,’ he murmured.

‘Kill them for me, my Joah,’ said the Prophet. Tamlyn heard each word like a strike against her heart. ‘Kill them in my name, as you used to.’

The man called Joah grinned and spread his fingers, and a wave of bright fire appeared from nowhere, rolling up the street to smother the men and women trapped there. The screaming became inhuman howls, and Tamlyn pressed her hands to her ears.

‘Stop it!’ she cried. She could smell scorched flesh, and the fires were already blazing out of control. ‘You cannot do this!’

The mage was already summoning more spells; war-werkens that arrived, thundering up the street to try and stop him or at least put out the fires, were tossed into the air, smashing into buildings and sending avalanches of rock and mortar down onto the cobbles. Tamlyn saw people crushed under the collapsed buildings, saw their blood smeared on the rocks. And in the centre of it all Joah Demonsworn stood content and untouchable with the Prophet at his side. He was sending fireballs after the people still left alive, their hair, their furs, roaring into life like beacons, and the scent of burning meat was everywhere. She could hear Nuava screaming still, and the thunder of more war-werkens approaching, but none of it seemed very important. Joah turned to the sound of more troops arriving, an eager smile still on his face
and his hands held up to meet them.

Amongst the devastation the Prophet appeared, to lay one cold hand on Tamlyn’s.

‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it? All of that suffering, and in my name.’ When Tamlyn didn’t answer, she squeezed, hard enough to be painful. ‘He always was so wilful, though.’

Nuava moved quickly past the rubble, trying to keep out of sight. She passed several dead bodies – one a man with his face boiled away, another lost within a partially formed chunk of ice – before she rounded the edge of the building. Here there were three or four broken werkens, in so many pieces that it was difficult to tell where one began and another ended, and beyond them she could see the mage and the Prophet, talking animatedly. As quietly as possible, she crept up to the wreckage of the werkens and waited, straining to hear what they were saying.

It hadn’t taken long for Joah Demonsworn to throw Skaldshollow into a confused state of terror. When Tamlyn had recovered herself enough to speak again, she’d summoned a further force of war-werkens, which Joah had seemed to treat like some sort of challenge – he’d picked each one up and thrown them into the crowds, or simply through buildings, with tremendous force. When the soldiers had come at him with short swords and crossbows, he’d actually laughed.

Nuava squeezed her eyes shut, remembering.

There had been the wave of freezing ice, picking up men and women and solidifying around them. Nuava had seen their eyes as they’d suffocated one by one. There had been the fire, a wall of it that moved down the street leaving twisted, blackened corpses behind. And there had been the look on the man’s face: simple, honest joy as he’d torn men and women apart.

‘I am asking you just to wait for a moment, Joah, my dear one.’

The wind had changed, bringing their conversation to Nuava’s hiding place. She tensed, trembling all over. In her fist she clutched the knife Tamlyn had given her to cut the fingers from the Narhl soldier. It wasn’t much, but it might be enough.

‘I’m busy.’ The man’s voice was slightly dismissive – the tone of a man who had far too much to do and too little time in which to do it. ‘So many spells still to test, and then I should travel to the Citadel. I must have so much to catch up on, and I’m sure all that business will have blown over by now.’

‘They’re all gone, Joah.’

Behind the pile of rock that had been a werken, Nuava frowned. The Prophet’s voice sounded almost
tender
.

‘What?’

‘The mages. They are all gone. You are the last true mage, now that you have returned to us.’

Joah shook his head, bewildered. ‘How can they be gone?’

‘Time, Joah, took them all. They did away with the gods, and then the Edenier faded from this world. They scrambled around as best they could, of course, clung on to their tiny magics in their desperate need for survival, but in the end they all died, ancient and decrepit. Which was all that they deserved, after how they treated you.’

‘How long? How long have I been gone?’

‘A thousand years, give or take a few centuries.’

‘That cannot be. Such a loss is unthinkable.’

As Nuava watched, Joah Demonsworn looked down at the ground, his long hair swinging forward like a curtain. Whatever expression was on his face now, it displeased the Prophet. The girl tipped her head to one side, an oddly childish gesture, and now there was petulance in her voice.

‘The age of the mages has long since passed. Don’t you remember what they did to you? You do not need them, you never did.’

The mage turned away, shaking his head irritably. ‘They might have hated me. Feared me, even. But they were the only family I had. And now I am alone?’

‘You have me,’ said the Prophet. ‘We can be together again.’

‘I have unfinished work.’ His voice was so quiet now that Nuava could barely hear him. ‘I shall go to the hills.’

‘Wait.’ There was a tone of command from the Prophet that made the hairs on the back of Nuava’s neck stand on end. ‘I need you to do something for me first, Joah. Now that you’ve had your fun here.’

‘Yes?’

Nuava shifted around, moving closer to the edge of the rubble, the knife still held tightly in one hand. The mage was distracted, and perhaps if she got close enough she could end this. All she needed was one chance, a moment to slip the knife between his ribs, and maybe that would be enough. He’d killed her brother, so she had to at least try.

‘There are some enemies of mine near here,’ continued the Prophet. ‘A knight called Sebastian, a woman sell-sword, and a lord. They are travelling through a strip of land on the edge of Skald territory. Go there, kill them for me. I have grown weary of them, so kill them quickly. And then you are free to continue your work.’

Joah nodded, once. ‘Fine. It will be a pleasure.’ The mage bowed low, and Nuava forced herself into a run, knife flashing. The Prophet turned towards her, slowly, uncaring, and then Nuava was barrelling into Joah himself, stabbing wildly with the knife and striking nothing. She could smell rot, deep in the folds of his cloak, and the sound of her own screams echoing in her head.

He laughed once, and his arms tightened around her.

‘Coming along with me, little one?’

And the world around her twisted away into nothing.

‘How are you feeling?’

Sebastian passed Wydrin a fresh cup of tea. The three of them were huddled closely around the small fire the Narhl had allowed them, although it was starting to snow again, and Sebastian thought it wouldn’t last much longer. The last light of the day was now a distant dirty smudge on the low-hanging clouds to the west.

‘Fine, I’m fine.’ Wydrin took a slurp of the tea and waved his concerns away. ‘I just ache a little, that’s all.’

‘I honestly doubt that,’ said Frith. The young lord was poking their fire with a stick, with more violence than was strictly necessary.
He hates to be disarmed,
thought Sebastian,
and I can hardly blame him
. ‘The cold this Prince Dallen cast down on me was an agony. I wouldn’t be surprised if we both suffer for this later on.’

‘I guess I’m just tougher than you, princeling.’

Frith shook his head at that and turned to Sebastian. ‘What is our next move?’

‘We do as Dallen says and go back to Skaldshollow,’ said Wydrin. ‘I tell them that the werkens are sentient beings and what they were doing is essentially slavery. Then we leave, and they can argue about the Heart-Stone all they want. We go somewhere very warm where I can lie on a beach and drink rum all day.’

‘Are you mad?’ hissed Frith. ‘We are still prisoners here, and you want us to obey this prince? We shall be caught in the middle of a war.’

‘Prince Dallen wants peace,’ said Sebastian. He glanced over to the Narhl camp, where he could see the shape of Dallen standing with his second in command. They were near the supplies, and the bulky shape of the Heart-Stone. All their weapons were there too. ‘I think we can trust him.’

Frith snorted in disgust. ‘Trust? How much do you suppose they trust us? Have they returned your weapons, Sebastian? They asked Wydrin to risk death today, and yet they don’t even return her dagger. And they still watch me, constantly, waiting . . .’

There was a flash of blinding blue light, illuminating the space around them as if it were midday, and for a moment Sebastian thought Frith had decided to punctuate his argument with a demonstration of the unbridled mage powers, but when his eyes recovered he saw a stranger standing between them and the Narhl camp. He wore long green robes, and his loose brown hair swirled about his shoulders.