The Iron Ghost (31 page)

‘It is a fine idea, Joah,’ she said in the demon’s voice, ‘but it is a waste. Destroying the Edenier of your enemies is one thing, but imagine if you could take it and keep it for yourself.’ She set the globe down on the woven mat between them. She was wearing a loose silk wrap instead of the jagged armour, and her bare skin was brushed here and there with sand. ‘I have a much better idea . . .’

Then the woman and the tent twisted away to be replaced with a flickering myriad of images: a forest in high summer, a vaulted marble hall with great glass windows in the ceiling, the view from a ship’s mast, the clouds blackened and storm-laden. Soon the images were moving so fast that he felt like he was falling, catching glimpses of things that meant nothing to him – a pair of hands cupped around bright blue beads, a man with a golden crown sobbing into a bloody rag, a waterfall parting to show a hidden cave beyond, the red eyes of the demon, crinkled at the edges with pleasure. And along with the memories came the knowledge, bright and unending and
right
; new mages’ words, the demon’s knowledge, the latent power of the Edeian, and how they could be combined. Towards the end of it he caught sight of something else: the woman he’d seen in the Forge with the brown skin and the shaved head. She was crouching, one arm thrown out behind her for balance and the other striking forward, holding a sword that shone oddly. Frith could see sorrow in her face, and triumph, and then it was gone and Joah was shaking him gently by the shoulders.

‘Aaron, are you well? Are you back with me?’

Frith blinked at him owlishly. The ball of thorns was still sticking out of his hand. Gingerly he took hold of it with two fingers and pulled it free with a gasp.

‘I am here,’ he said. ‘At least, I believe I am.’

Joah sat back on his haunches. He was sweating slightly. ‘Forgive me, Aaron. That went much deeper than I intended, but I was so fascinated by what I saw.’

Frith flexed his hand, wincing. He ran Joah’s words back through his head. ‘What . . . you saw?’

Joah nodded. ‘It is an exchange, remember. While you experienced visions of my past, I saw some of your own.’ He stood up, and helped Frith to his feet. It had grown dark while they had been sitting there, although to Frith it felt as though only minutes had passed. ‘We should get indoors. It is not wise to be out here after dark.’

They went back inside the Forge, Frith stumbling slightly as they made their way down the narrow passage. He was trying to process what he’d seen. There was too much of it, far too much, and yet most of the information had stayed with him. He could feel the knowledge crowding in his head, making clear much that had been confusing. Was this what it was like, to be a trained mage?

Once inside Frith began to feel unwell again, and he staggered into a chair, sitting down with his fingers pressed to his lips. Joah didn’t seem to notice, and was bustling back and forth in front of the Rivener, bathed in the violet light.

‘I think I need something to eat,’ said Frith eventually. ‘Perhaps it’s the effects of this crossing, as you called it, but I am feeling quite ill.’

Joah looked up, distraction evident in every line on his face. He stared at Frith as though he’d forgotten he was there. ‘Oh, but of course. I shall fetch us dinner.’

He vanished back through one of the doors for a few moments while Frith sat and looked at the Rivener. He remembered how the man had shrieked and thrashed as the Heart-Stone’s light grew in intensity, and how the pain in Frith’s head had tripled along with it.

Joah returned with two deep bowls full of steaming stew, setting one before Frith carelessly so that some of the brownish soup slopped over the sides.

‘I think it worked, you know,’ said Frith when it became clear that Joah wasn’t going to talk. ‘The crossing. I saw images of your past – a lot of which I won’t pretend to understand – and the knowledge seems to have stayed with me. Some of it, anyway.’

Joah looked up, an expression of genuine pleasure briefly lighting his handsome face. ‘Good, that is good, Aaron. I’m glad it has helped to bring you some small part of your mage inheritance.’ He paused, twirling the spoon through his stew. Lumps of what Frith hoped were meat rose and sank again. ‘I saw some strange things in your mind, Aaron. I should like to ask you about them.’

Frith took a sip of his stew. It was salty, but not altogether bad. ‘Of course,’ he said.

Joah nodded, looking down at his bowl. When he looked up again his eyes were filled with a feverish interest that immediately put Frith on his guard.

‘I saw a man with a bird’s head,’ said Joah. ‘I saw him flying in a great cloud of birds.’

Frith felt a shiver move down his spine. It was so quiet in the Forge, with only the gentle creaks of the corridor settling, or the shifting sounds of the earth around them. He knew, somehow, that it would be a very bad idea to reveal anything of O’rin to Joah, although he couldn’t have said how he knew that. He pushed his face into a frown.

‘Well, I’m sure I don’t know what that could be. A man in a festival costume, perhaps? We had many such festivals, back in my home in the Blackwood.’

Joah shook his head. ‘No, no, I know what a man in a mask looks like, and this was very different. I wonder . . .’ he sat forward slightly, actually reaching one hand out to Frith’s face. ‘I wonder if I might take another look, just to satisfy my curiosity.’

Frith flinched away from him, leaning back in his chair. ‘I am sorry, Joah, but I’m feeling somewhat fatigued. I fear that this demonstration of yours has quite exhausted me.’

Joah put his hand down slowly, looking abashed.

‘Of course, of course,’ he murmured. ‘We have all the time, after all. All the time we could wish for.’

After Frith had retired to his bunk room and fed Gwiddion what scraps he had managed to save from dinner (he had no idea where Joah slept, and did not wish to know), he lay on his back in the dark, wondering if his new-found knowledge would aid him in any way. Certainly he felt as though his mastery of the Edenier had increased enormously, but he had no ink, no strips of silk, and, for all Joah’s apparent distractions, he was still scrupulously careful about keeping such things away from his guest, even refusing to bandage Frith’s wounded hand. The Edenier remained an unreachable force inside him. Eventually, he grew drowsy, and only when he turned on his side did he see the strange collection of shadows in the corner that formed the shape of the shaven-headed woman. She was watching him in the dark, her eyes like small wet stones.

‘You do see me, then,’ she said. She did not move. ‘If you can see me, boy, then things aren’t looking too good for you.’

Frith sat up slowly, hardly daring to breathe. ‘Who are you? What are you doing in this place?’

At first the woman didn’t answer. She continued staring at him in the dark. ‘I am trapped here, like you are trapped here,’ she said eventually. ‘Although I am not Joah Demonsworn’s toy.’

Frith shook his head at that. ‘I saw you,’ he said. ‘When Joah showed me his memories, I saw your face, towards the end. But everything he showed me happened over a thousand years ago, which means . . .’

‘Which means I am long dead,’ answered the woman. Her voice was husky and low, and jagged with bitter humour. ‘What are you, little man? I see the Edenier burning within you, but this land has been without the mages for the longest time.’

She shifted, moving further into what little light there was, and Frith could see that she was dressed in a ragged collection of furs and leathers, and her left arm ended in a smooth stump. Now that he could see more of her, he could also see that her shaven head was tattooed with the mage-word for Forbearance. It was one of the words he had learned since leaving Whittenfarne, one that had not been forbidden by the Regnisse of Relios.

‘How can you be here? You look too solid to be a—’ He bit down on the word.

The woman smiled. ‘A ghost? This is a place of Edeian, and it is not so easy to escape, even when we are dead. Unfortunately for you, little man, you are moving closer and closer to that state every day, which is exactly why you can see me so clearly.’

‘Don’t call me that,’ snapped Frith, raising his voice slightly. Immediately there was a scuffling from outside the bunk door.

‘Are you well, Aaron? I can hear you calling out in your sleep.’

Frith swore under his breath, glancing towards the door, but when he looked back to the woman she was gone; the collection of shadows was just that again, empty and dark.

‘I’m fine,’ he answered, flexing his injured hand. ‘Better than ever, obviously.’

‘Well, this is ominous.’

They stood at the entrance to the cave, which, to Wydrin, looked more like a jagged hole in the ground. She could see the rock-strewn path within sloping steeply down into the darkness. At the very lip of the cave were five small, furry bodies – two lean rabbits, and three mangy foxes with pale, yellowed fur. Their blood had long since dried to a brown stain on the rocks.

‘Are they offerings?’ said Sebastian. ‘Is this a holy place?’

‘Perhaps they’re offerings to whatever lives in this cave,’ said Wydrin, pulling a face. ‘Maybe if you leave it dinner it doesn’t come out looking for you.’

‘I don’t like it,’ said Sebastian. ‘Are you sure about this, Wydrin?’

Wydrin sighed. Mendrick was already speaking in her head, that cold, dispassionate voice like a handful of pebbles down her back.

This is the place
, he said.
This is where I can reach the nexus.

‘I don’t like the look of it much either, Seb, but old stony face here is insisting. Nuava, you will stay up here with Prince Dallen while Sebastian and I—’

‘I want to go with you,’ cut in the girl. She crossed her arms over her chest, not looking directly at the Narhl prince. ‘I want to see it. This nexus. It could be the key to – it could teach me so much about the Edeian, and how to craft it.’

Dallen looked up sharply at that, but said nothing.

‘We can’t leave the prince on his own,’ said Sebastian. ‘He is wounded and we don’t know how long this could take.’

‘I will be fine on my own,’ said Dallen, in a slightly affronted tone. ‘I am more at home in this place than any of you.’

‘I want to go,’ said Nuava again. For the first time in days her face was creased with something other than grief, and she was standing a little straighter. ‘I have lost many things, but I am still a crafter in training. I wish to see this nexus, if it exists.’

Wydrin could see from the flinty look in the girl’s eye that she was not convinced that Wydrin could hear Mendrick’s voice at all; perhaps she thought it was an elaborate joke at her expense. Taking a deep breath, Wydrin lifted and dropped her arms dramatically.

‘Fine. If Nuava fancies falling about in the dark with me and a giant pile of moving rocks, then let’s do it. Sebastian, you can stay up here and make sure the prince doesn’t get too bored.’ Catching the look on his face, she waved a hand at him. ‘I’d really rather there were someone up here watching our backs. I don’t want anything hungrier than me following us down here. We’ll be in and out before you know it, I swear on my claws.’

Sebastian watched them disappear into the tunnel with a feeling of dread thick in his throat. Wydrin had given Nuava the small light-globe originally gifted to them by Crowleo, back at the Secret Keeper’s house, and she had drawn her dagger ready. When she’d seen his worried look, she’d tipped him a wink.

‘I’m just exploring some mysterious tunnels. What’s the worst that could happen?’

Mendrick followed in after them, the strange wolf shape that was so much a part of the landscape moving smoothly and with barely any noise. After a few moments they were lost to sight.

‘Hurry up,’ Sebastian murmured. ‘Do what you need to do and get out of there.’

He and Dallen settled in to wait at the cave entrance. The tunnel Mendrick had led them to sat at the bottom of a shallow bowl in the rock, and they were surrounded by snow and ice, all weathered into strange shifting shapes by the wind. They had left the frozen lakes with the armoured fish and the monoliths behind, although Sebastian still felt that they were travelling through a cursed land, deemed as wicked by an ancient people. And underneath that was another feeling: a cold joy in the lack of humanity here, and a connection to this place that he couldn’t begin to understand. He wondered what Ephemeral would make of that.

The prince removed a long, glass bottle with square sides from his pack and took a sip. The liquid inside looked thick and brownish-yellow.

‘I would offer you some,’ he said apologetically, catching Sebastian’s look, ‘but this is a drink we call Old Father. It’s made from whale fat and goat’s milk, and left in vats for months. When we have traded with warmlings in the past, none of you would touch it.’

Sebastian smiled. ‘I’m not surprised. Thank you anyway, but Wydrin has left me with half her rum supply, which is a surprisingly large amount of rum.’ He pulled a flask from his own belt. ‘Although if I drink too much, I’ll be for it.’

‘Here, look at that.’ Dallen pointed up to the low clouds just in time for Sebastian to catch a tremor of movement up there. ‘Keep watching, they will come down again in a moment.’

Frowning slightly, Sebastian narrowed his eyes, wondering what he was looking out for, when three long eel-like shapes slipped down out of the clouds, wriggling frantically. Their shining blue skins looked like banners the colour of a summer’s sky, and Sebastian could just make out the twisted white forms of their horns. The three wyverns slipped along together, like porpoises in the sea, before vanishing back up into the cloud. Sebastian smiled; their shapes pleased him in a way he could not name.

‘Wild wyverns,’ said Dallen. There was both pride and sadness in his voice. ‘There are nests not far from here. Every few generations we come to the nesting grounds and collect a few eggs for ourselves, and then we hatch them in the war-towers.’ A look of pain moved across his face. ‘It does the wyverns good to have new blood in the squadrons every now and then. Rillion’s mother was from a new egg. She loved to fly higher than the others, and my father always said it was because she was closer to her wild cousins.’