The Iron Ghost (26 page)

‘You made the armour,’ said Frith. He couldn’t believe it had only just occurred to him. ‘The armour that Sebastian wore at the battle of Baneswatch, the one that summoned the Cursed Company.’

‘That’s right!’ said Joah. ‘And a fine piece of work that was too, if I do say so myself. It’s one thing, of course, to create enchanted armour, but to make armour that still has magical properties – different magical properties – when the pieces are separated . . . I was rather proud of that one.’ He took a slow breath and nodded before turning back to one of the low tables. There was a thick squarish package there, wrapped in cloth and furs. He began unwrapping it. ‘That is nothing, of course, in comparison to what I can do now that you are with me, brother, and now that I have this.’

The fabric fell away to reveal the Heart-Stone, its green crystal light subdued under the red lamps.

‘And what do you intend to do with that?’ asked Frith. He wondered if he could ever get close enough to use a conventional weapon; there were plenty in the Forge, after all.

Joah raised an eyebrow at him, as though Frith were teasing him somehow. ‘That will all become clear, Aaron, I promise you, but I do not wish to overwhelm you at this stage. You’ve had quite a shock, after all.’ Joah held out a hand to the Heart-Stone and it gently lifted off the table to hover in mid-air. ‘I have never seen such a pure source of Edeian. This is a remarkable find. All the plans I had, all those years ago, will be possible now with this.’ He grinned, and gestured at the stone so that it moved smoothly through the air towards the smaller aperture in the iron wall, and it was into this dark crevice that he gently flew the Heart-Stone. It settled with a hollow clang, and the soft green light of the stone immediately turned a darker shade, painting the rag-tag walls in eldritch hues. Looking at that light, Frith felt ill again, and he clutched at his stomach. It was difficult to think, with that light.

‘Can you feel that?’ cried Joah jubilantly. ‘It’s already having an effect. Soon, my Rivener will be working again, and better than it ever did.’

‘Rivener?’ asked Frith. ‘What’s that?’ But the words were clogging his throat, and his head was swimming. He pressed his fingers to his forehead, trying to concentrate.

‘You are wearing yourself out.’ Joah went to him and put an arm around his shoulders, guiding him away from the work benches. ‘Aaron, I am sorry, I have put you through so much, and then thrown all this information at you. I am such an inconsiderate host. Here.’ He took Frith to a door and opened it to reveal a small cavity with bunks built directly into the walls. The blankets looked musty and ancient, but when Joah sat him down on the nearest one, Frith found that he could barely keep his eyes open. ‘That’s it, rest for now, my brother. We have plenty of work to do yet, and I need you at your best.’

Frith opened his mouth to protest, and even that small action was too much. Instead he lay down on the elderly blankets.
I must leave
, he thought over the tide of sleep now approaching.
This place is demon-tainted. Evil.

Just before unconsciousness took him, he thought he saw a face in the darkness watching him – not Joah, but a woman with dark skin and a shaved head. She watched him with eyes that were fierce and full of anger, and somehow he knew that Joah did not know she was there. He tried to speak to her, to ask who she was, but she turned back into shadows and left him. Frith slept.

‘Tell us everything you know.’

It was the next morning, and the sky was a pure, thankless blue. The sunlight had revealed the full extent of the previous night’s terrors – dark blood on the snow, the twisted forms of the arachnos young, their skeletal legs stained red – so they had moved away from the nesting site to a rocky bluff that sheltered them from the wind. Wydrin had spent some time looting the Narhl packs and was now doing what she could to prepare a breakfast for them all. Nuava sat with her, taking the food that was offered with her eyes downcast. When she looked up at Sebastian again, he saw that the defiance he had heard in her voice the previous night had turned into a fragile sort of reserve.

‘I am afraid I can’t tell you much beyond what was written in our history books, but it may still be of some use.’ She took a savage bite from the black bread Wydrin had handed her and chewed for some moments before continuing. ‘When Joah came to the northern lands, he built himself a great workshop in which to perform his terrible deeds.’ Her mouth twitched with some sour amusement then, and Sebastian guessed that this was a line she’d read often in a textbook, never expecting to experience Joah’s ‘terrible deeds’ herself. ‘He called it the Forge – a twisting labyrinth of rooms hidden somewhere in the snowy territories of the north. There were rooms, they said, where he would commune with his demon, and rooms where he would make terrible objects dedicated to its name. And there were rooms where he would keep the men and women he stole. Children too, sometimes.’ She swallowed hard. ‘His own sacrifices weren’t enough to feed the demon, you see. Sometimes he would sacrifice other people to its appetites.’

Wydrin scowled. Sebastian knew she was thinking of Frith now, and their own history with this particular demon.

‘He was making something within the Forge, something enormous, they say,’ continued Nuava, ‘but he was killed by the mage Xinian the Battleborn before he could complete it. The Forge was hidden within the Wailing Hills, a huge stretch of treacherous land, some miles from the edge of Skald territory, and no one ever knew where it was exactly. It was said that he moved it around, that it was never in the same place twice. I don’t know if that’s true, but there’s nothing in any of our ancient texts that indicates where it was.’ Nuava chewed on another piece of the black bread. ‘But if he’s gone anywhere, and if he’s not with the Prophet – I mean, the demon – then I bet he has gone back to the Wailing Hills.’

‘Of course he has,’ commented Wydrin dryly. ‘All his demon-encrusted crap is there.’

‘Then we need to find it,’ said Sebastian. ‘A giant forge can’t be that difficult to spot—’

But Nuava was shaking her head. ‘You don’t understand. It was hidden deep inside the hills themselves, and that stretch of land . . . it’s huge. It would take us a month to walk it end to end, and it was not marked. Joah may have been mad, but he was by no means stupid.’

‘This Xinian the Battleborn, the mage who killed him the first time round.’ Sebastian glanced again at Prince Dallen, but the young prince was sitting some feet away from them, taking no notice of their conversation. ‘How did they find Joah, then?’

‘I don’t know, not exactly,’ said Nuava, shaking her head. ‘The mages would have had methods to find him, and in any case, he did not die at the Forge. She killed him in the lost city of Temerayne.’

Wydrin shook her head abruptly, and touched a hand to her temple. She looked as though she’d come down with a sudden headache.

‘Wait. Mendrick may have something here. He says there is a way, if we could—’

There was a sound, like a number of giant flags flapping in a gale, and it was coming from above them. Sebastian glanced up in time to see seven enormous wyverns swimming through the sky towards them at a tremendous speed, the bright sunlight glinting off their gold-chased bridles. He stumbled to his feet, instinctively reaching for his sword.

For the first time in hours, Prince Dallen spoke, his voice low and hopeless. ‘It seems that my father has caught up with us.’

The wyverns came straight at them and turned sharply in the air. Sebastian caught sight of King Aristees himself, his muscled arms bared to the cold. They landed with a crash, throwing up sheets of snow to either side. Next to him, Wydrin was on her feet, Glassheart held loosely in one hand. She had clearly not forgotten that their last meeting with King Aristees had ended with him ordering their execution.

When the king dismounted, however, he ignored both of them and strode straight over to his son, who was still sitting cross-legged on the ground. Aristees had already pulled his great battle axe from the strap on his back and had it gripped in both hands. He stopped in front of his son, and kicked a shower of snow and dirt into his face.

‘You!’ he bellowed. ‘Betrayer! Worm! What have you got to say for yourself?’

Prince Dallen shook his head slightly, letting the small clods of dirt fall back to the ground.

‘Father—’

‘Father? Father! I have been cursed. For letting the Skalds poison the land I have been poisoned myself. With you, my weakling, scheming son. My prisoners freed, the Heart-Stone taken, and all by my own cursed flesh and blood.’

Dallen opened his mouth to speak again, but his father’s voice became quieter, and somehow more deadly. ‘And have I not just passed the graves of your squad? Led to their deaths out in this godsforsaken place.’

Behind him, the king’s wyvern, a huge beast with long furred eyebrows sprouting from its horned head, hissed and spat at them in apparent reaction to the king’s anger. Sebastian’s hands tightened around his sword. Looking at the wyvern gave him a tight feeling in his chest, and it was hard to drag his gaze from it. The rest of the king’s guard had stayed mounted, each of them with an ice-spear in his or her hand. Their faces were as cold as the landscape.

‘Father, please.’ Sebastian watched as Prince Dallen struggled to his feet, roused to action by mention of his lost soldiers. In the bright sunshine he was a sorry sight, bedraggled and blood-stained. ‘I was only doing what I thought was right, for all our people.’

King Aristees sneered. ‘What you thought was right? You disobeyed your king! And where is the Heart-Stone now? Tell me you at least have that, Dallen, or gods help me, I shall part your sorry head from your sorrier body right now, in the middle of this cursed place.’

Sebastian stepped towards him, ignoring Wydrin’s murmured words of warning.

‘Your majesty, the Heart-Stone was taken from us by a man long thought dead.’ King Aristees turned to him, his lichen-crusted eyebrows raised in surprise. ‘Your son and his followers fought valiantly to keep it from enemy hands, but there was very little they could do. Very little any of us could do, in truth.’

‘Fought valiantly?’ Aristees boomed. Sebastian felt a fine spray of spittle settle on his face, and fought the urge to wipe it away. ‘What would a vile little warmling like you know about fighting valiantly? Your head has been on your shoulders for much longer than I wish it to be, warmling, and it’s time I corrected that.’

Aristees took a step towards Sebastian, brandishing the axe, and Dallen stepped in front of him, pushing Sebastian back with a light touch to his arm.

‘The prisoners are still mine, Father. You will not harm them.’

Aristees’ face grew rigid, darkening with rage. Sebastian saw him staring at his arm where Dallen’s hand now rested, and he realised at once that they only knew the barest part of this conflict.
This is an old wound between them
, he thought,
and I have only made it worse.

‘It’s like that, is it?’ Aristees bared his teeth at them both, and his eyes were bright with hate now. And something else, Sebastian thought – relief.
He’s been waiting years for an excuse like this
. ‘And who took the Heart-Stone from you so easily?’

‘It was a mage,’ said Dallen. ‘A mage so powerful—’

‘A mage,’ spat King Aristees. ‘Are we suffering a plague of them now? Warmling nonsense.’

‘Father—’

King Aristees hefted his axe, but he just used the flat head of it to push his son in the chest, hard. Dallen stumbled backwards, one wary hand going to the pommel of his sword.

‘I cast you out!’ spat Aristees through gritted teeth. ‘I cast you out from the Frozen Steps, from all Narhl territories!’

‘No!’

‘You will no longer be my son, and your name will not be spoken again in the Hall of the Ancestors. I cast you out of the Frozen Lands, and you can die with your warmling friends, in their hot, stinking
civilisation
.’

King Aristees turned and headed back to his mount, which lowered its shaggy head at his approach. The soldiers still mounted looked unmoved by the king’s rage, and Sebastian wondered how often they witnessed such outbursts, and exactly how long this day had been in coming. He glanced back to Wydrin, who was standing next to Nuava. She gave the tiniest of shrugs.

Dallen seemed to come back to himself then, and he ran a few steps after his father. All at once he looked much younger.

‘Wait,’ he said, and all the shrewd diplomacy was gone from his voice. ‘Wait, Father. You can’t do that. I’m the heir to the throne, the only one you have! What will you do?’

King Aristees had settled himself back into the saddle, his great battle axe once more slung comfortably across his shoulders. His face could have been carved from stone.

‘What will I do? I am young yet, whatever you may think, boy. I will take another queen, and hope that her flesh does not produce another warmling snake like you.’

He flicked the reins once, and the wyvern turned on them all, long tail sweeping out towards them. Sebastian staggered back, convinced for a moment that it would knock them all to the ground, and then it was off, pouncing up into the air and away. After a moment, the rest of the king’s soldiers followed, and in seconds they were a clutch of blue snakes, wriggling away from them.

There was silence in their small, sorry camp. Wydrin cleared her throat and sat back down, continuing to sort through the Narhl baggage, while Nuava looked up at them all, her own woes temporarily forgotten.

‘Your highness,’ started Sebastian, and then immediately regretted it. ‘Dallen, I . . .’

Prince Dallen turned to look at him, and his smile was very bleak indeed. ‘This day has been coming for a long time, Sir Sebastian. I had hoped that I could turn it from its path somehow, stall it, but in the end I only hurried it along. I just – I wish it hadn’t cost the lives of my soldiers. They were good men and women. The best, in fact.’ His voice broke a little on the last word.

‘What will you do now?’

Prince Dallen touched his hand to the furred pendant that hung around his neck. ‘The only thing I can do. My father will never have me back, that much is certain, but I can at least restore some small portion of my honour.’ He met Sebastian’s eyes, and his gaze was cold and clear. ‘I shall help you find your friend, and I shall restore the Heart-Stone. I can help the mountain-spirit, if nothing else.’