The Iron Ghost (7 page)

‘I thought, somehow, that they’d put us up in that big tower. I mean, aren’t we visiting dignitaries or something?’ Wydrin poured a shot from the dark bottle on the table. The scent of alcohol rising from the glass was enough to make her blink rapidly. ‘Not that I mind too much. That place looked draughtier than a whore’s best knickers.’

Sebastian snorted with laughter. ‘Tell me again when we’ve actually spent a night in these rooms. I think there was ice in my fireplace.’

The inn was at the far north of the settlement and at the top of a winding, stair-pocked hill, all carved directly from the mountain. It was called, somewhat ominously, The Last Breath Inn, although Bors had assured them that this was in reference to how this unsheltered corner of Skaldshollow caught the winds on certain nights. Cold as death itself, he’d said, and as darkness fell it was living up to its name

‘The princeling won’t be pleased,’ said Wydrin archly. ‘He’s probably back at the tower now, demanding a better suite of rooms for his griffin.’

Sebastian clinked his cup against hers. ‘That’s hardly fair, Wyd. We’ve stayed in worse places in the last few months and Frith has not made a single complaint.’

As if the words had summoned him, Lord Frith came in through the back door, weaving around the tables, a powdering of snow across the shoulders of his black cloak. His limp was very slight now, but Wydrin could still see how carefully he moved.

Sebastian cleared his throat and stood up. ‘I’m going to go get the fire started in that room. It’s going to be a while before it warms up.’

‘If it’s not warm enough by the time I make it up there, I’m setting fire to the whole place.’

Frith seated himself next to her as Sebastian left. There were a few moments of icy silence which Wydrin used to down another shot of the fiery drink.

‘They call it grut,’ she said eventually, gesturing at the bottle. ‘I think that probably describes the flavour and its effect on your insides afterwards. It warms you up some, though.’

Frith nodded. He poured himself a glass and took a sip. When he’d finished coughing, Wydrin gestured to the barkeep for another bottle.

‘What do you reckon to this job, then?’ She pulled the cork from the new bottle and tried not to wince when the fumes hit her. ‘I’m not sure I trust this Tamlyn Nox. Too sour by half, and we’ve hardly had time to upset her yet.’

‘She is holding something back,’ said Frith. ‘This may turn out to be a complicated job, as you call it.’

‘And you are keen for it to be over.’

For a few moments the young lord didn’t say anything at all. Wydrin concentrated on pouring another pair of shots for them both.

‘The three of us have had some extraordinary adventures since Baneswatch,’ he said eventually. ‘We’ve achieved much.’

‘We’ve caused some trouble, even done some good,’ agreed Wydrin, not looking at him. ‘The Black Feather Three are the most infamous swords for hire across Crosshaven and the Horns.’ She waved a hand vaguely at him. ‘Or magic for hire, whatever. People are falling over themselves to give us work. You know, we have a letter from the Empress of Leonnosis, offering us as much gold as we can carry away just to go and talk to her. She wants to hear the stories first-hand, you see. We’re at the very height of our game, Frith.’ She swallowed, the grut burning in her throat like a hot coal.

‘This is a great opportunity for the Blackwood, one I have to consider. It was what my father wanted, and I have certain responsibilities.’

‘Responsibilities? What about your responsibility to us?’

‘You and Sebastian will be fine. And when the brood army are ready, there will be none to match you. The Black Feather Three will still be infamous.’

‘What is left of the brood army.’ Wydrin shook her head. ‘You know what happened as well as I do.’ She chucked back another shot, and struck the glass on the tabletop. ‘The whole thing is a bloody mess. Besides which, people won’t call us the Black Feather Three any more, will they? There’ll only be two of us, for a start, and you’ll be taking Gwiddion with you.’

She looked up at him then, and saw that those grey eyes – eyes that she had seen brighten over the months as they’d adventured their way around Ede – were cold again.

‘I have a place in this life,’ he said. ‘And I have left it empty too long. I cannot spend for ever gallivanting around with you and Sebastian. I have to be responsible. Of course, I shouldn’t have expected you to understand that.’

‘That wasn’t even your first mistake.’ Wydrin downed the last shot and stood up, gathering her furred cloak.

‘Where are you going?’ Frith glared up at her, his jaw clenched.

‘Bors promised to show me some of these werkens, the ones that haven’t been joined to anyone yet. I’ve a mind to ride one myself.’

‘What for?’

‘Because I’m curious. Because it looks like fun.’ Wydrin pulled her hood low over her face. ‘Neither of which is very responsible, obviously, but I suspect you’ve come to know that about me by now.’

By the time Wydrin had stomped her way over to the Tower of Waking the hot fury that had been keeping her warm had petered out, and instead she felt tired and, worse, completely sober. A bitter wind gusted against her all the way, pushing stinging handfuls of ice crystals into her face, so that when finally she stood beneath the flinty edifice, she almost didn’t see Bors, who loped towards her out of the dark.

‘There you are! Thought you’d decided to stay in the warmth of the inn.’

‘Ah, it wasn’t that cosy, really.’ Wydrin pulled her cloak closer over her shoulders. ‘Please tell me these werkens are inside somewhere?’

Bors grinned. ‘Follow me.’

They circled around the back of the Tower of Waking until they came to another pair of giant werkens, these two mounted with riders, standing in the middle of a wide, paved area. Bors hailed them and, as one, the enormous stone giants leaned down with huge granite fists and pulled on a pair of iron handles set directly into the ground. In the dark and the snow Wydrin hadn’t seen the door at all, and now there was a set of wide stone steps leading down, apparently directly underneath the Tower of Waking itself. Inside, the staircase was lit with tall thin oil lamps, throwing jagged shadows across the rough walls. Bors led her down, Wydrin casting an uneasy look back over her shoulder.

‘Those doors can only be opened by a werken,’ said Bors. ‘Too heavy for anything else to lift, you see. What we keep down here is very valuable indeed.’

The stairs eventually levelled out into a long, low room. The floor was strewn with tools – hammers, chisels, other instruments Wydrin couldn’t name – and the sides of the room were divided into deep alcoves, with each alcove housing an inert werken.

Wydrin paused by the first one. It stood on two legs, and was roughly human in shape although its arms were much too long. There was space on its shoulders for two riders to sit, and ripples of Edeian like green crystal covered it as though it wore its veins on the outside. It had no face as such, save for two faintly glowing pits that served as eyes, and it was covered all over with intricate spiral patterns. These carvings were at their thickest at the joints, the places where rock met rock.

‘And this thing is awake now?’

‘Well, they’re not awake, as such, but yes.’ Bors stood by her side. ‘You see how the eyes glow? This one has already had its piece of Heart-Stone inserted into the head cavity. Now the corresponding piece waits for a rider to take it, to become joined to this werken. We keep the pieces of Heart-Stone that await riders in a strongbox. Tamlyn has the only key.’

Wydrin frowned. She was sure she could feel the thing watching her. ‘And what does it do until then? It just stands here, waiting? Not doing anything?’

Bors chuckled. ‘Of course. As I said before, the werkens have a semblance of life, but it is not real. Without their riders, the werkens are still pieces of rock. Pieces of rock with potential.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘Strange, but beautiful.’

They walked on down the row. In the next partition was a werken shaped like an enormous bear, its bulky head low to the ground. On its back was a tree trunk, sharpened to a point.

‘It took Tamlyn a while to give up on her plan to assault the Narhl directly,’ he explained. ‘It was thought we could carry battering rams, or even cauldrons full of boiling oil, but the logistics of it were a nightmare.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I put forward a few designs myself, but Tamlyn rejected them all.’

‘Does she make all of them?’ Wydrin paused in front of another stone creature, looking into its glowing green eyes.

‘She has a small team that assist her with the construction, but the designs are all hers. It is a gift, to be able to craft the Edeian so. I fear I do not have it.’ He shrugged, looking slightly bashful. ‘When I was younger I thought that if I studied hard enough I would eventually be able to use the Edeian in the rock the way she does. My sister has more of an understanding.’

‘I had a friend who could do that,’ said Wydrin suddenly, thinking of Holley’s careworn face and her callused fingers. When Bors raised his eyebrows she continued. ‘She made magical glass, from the Edeian in the ground. The glass could show you secrets, and other things.’ Unbidden she remembered the Children of the Fog, dancing towards her with their identical grins, bathed in blue light.

‘She would have been a crafter, like Tamlyn, then. There are some people who can feel the Edeian better than others, and can shape it. Here, though, is one of Tamlyn’s very few mistakes.’

They had stopped in front of the last chamber on the left-hand side. Inside it was a much smaller werken, wolf-shaped and about the size of a pony. Its long, lupine head was bowed to the ground, its snout brushing the floor. Green eyes glared balefully in the shadows. Around each leg were thick iron cuffs, each chained to the stone wall. Carvings swirled along its long flanks in a series of waves.

‘What’s wrong with it?’ Wydrin knelt in front of it and slid a hand over its smooth snout. It was cold to the touch.

‘Even Tamlyn isn’t sure, but it moves without a rider. Not all the time, but every now and then it will shudder, jerk around. It does not stand and wait silently like the rest of the werkens.’ He shrugged. ‘A flaw in the Edeian, perhaps, something not quite right in the design. It is unlikely it will ever be joined to a rider now, though, even when these few we have left have been assigned. Eventually, we will break it down into its component pieces again so that it can be used for something else.’

‘Is it dangerous?’

‘Not as such, although you do not want one of these blundering about unsupervised.’ He grinned at her. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many broken feet we have to deal with, and that’s just from riders in training. No, not dangerous as such, just useless.’

Wydrin straightened up. ‘Give him to me, then.’

Bors looked at her. ‘What?’

‘If he’s useless, and he’ll never be part of your war-werken army, then give him to me.’

Bors shook his head, although more in confusion than denial. ‘No one outside of Skaldshollow has ever been joined. And even in pieces, it is valuable.’

‘Then consider it my payment for this job.’ She smiled at him and laid a hand on his arm. ‘I have some sympathy for broken outsiders, and I want to ride a werken. It seems a shame to leave him here, chained up in the dark.’

Bors sighed, but she kept her hand on his arm and she could see him considering it.

‘I’ll talk to my aunt in the morning,’ he said eventually. ‘But I doubt she will be happy about this.’

At first Sebastian brushed it off as exhaustion, or his body’s own adjustments to the thinner air, but the further out of Skaldshollow they travelled, the more uneasy he felt.

He and Frith followed the diminutive figure of Nuava, her wild curls hidden under a grey rabbit-fur hat. They were walking one of the many paths out of the city that led up the towering mountain behind it, and they had passed the enormous quarry some time back, gaping off to their right like a wound. Sebastian had caught sight of the stony forms of the werkens, reflecting the bright morning sun; they looked like the bones of the mountain come to life. It was a clear day, the sky so blue that it was almost too bright to look at. Normally Sebastian would have been comforted by the resemblance to his home in Ynnsmouth, but there was no longer any comfort to be found in that memory.

‘I’m not sure this couldn’t have waited until after we retrieve the Heart-Stone,’ he said, hating the slightly petulant tone in his own voice.

Frith shook his head. The young lord had thrown back his hood and in the strong sunshine his hair blazed as white as the snows.

‘To visit the tomb of a mage? I could hardly pass up such an opportunity. Besides which, Wydrin isn’t ready to leave.’ His mouth turned down at the corners. ‘She has been off with that Bors all morning.’

Ahead of them, Nuava glanced hesitantly over her shoulder. ‘My brother seems to think she is interested in becoming joined to a werken.’

‘Joined to one?’ Frith scowled. ‘By all the gods, why would she want to do that?’

Sebastian laughed shortly. ‘I don’t know, that sounds rather like Wydrin to me. You wouldn’t believe the number of tattoos I’ve talked her out of. How much further do we have to go, Nuava?’

‘Not much further.’

To one side the path branched off to a small plateau, sheltered by a clutch of thick pine trees, bristling with dark green needles. The tops were dusted with snow. Nuava led them between the trees.

‘This seems a strange place for a tomb,’ said Sebastian. As they moved through the trees a cold hand walked its way up his spine. ‘A strange, lonely place.’

‘The story of Joah Cirrus is a strange one,’ answered Nuava. ‘You do not know it?’

‘I recognise the name,’ broke in Frith quickly. ‘From the histories of the mage wars. An important name, I remember, but I must confess I know no more.’

‘An important name . . .’ mused Nuava. ‘He was born with the name Joah Cirrus, later to be known as Joah Lightbringer, and eventually, Joah Demonsworn. According to the books I have studied, he was widely considered to be the greatest mage of them all, able to command the mages’ powers with greater skill than anyone who came before him, and he was able to craft the Edeian too, a rare skill in a mage. A rare skill in a man, in fact.’