The Iron Ghost (8 page)

Sebastian caught Frith’s eyes and he shrugged ever so slightly. They’d passed through the trees now. In front of them was a small clearing fringed with pine trees, and at its heart was a pool of water, as deep a blue as the sky. Dried pine needles danced on its surface.

‘Should that not be frozen?’

‘It must be a natural hot spring,’ said Frith dismissively. ‘Unusual but not unknown.’

‘The final resting place of Joah Demonsworn shall never know cold,’ answered Nuava, as though she were quoting from something.

Now that Sebastian looked, there were no snows around the pool; in fact, he could see grass around its edge, thick and green as if they stood in a summer’s valley.

‘The Joah I am thinking of,’ said Frith as they neared the pool, ‘was not thought of fondly.’

‘No,’ agreed Nuava, pulling her hat down to hang around her neck by its ties. It did feel a little warmer by the pool. ‘Not thought of fondly at all. Great is not always the same as good, I suppose.’ She coughed into her hand. Sebastian suspected she did not often spend so long talking to other people. ‘Joah was the greatest mage Ede had ever known, but he quickly grew tired of the language and knowledge of the gods. Instead he turned to other, less savoury sources.’

Sebastian’s throat grew tight. They were almost at the edge of the pool now, and for some reason he was afraid to look on its surface. He fought the urge to hang back.

‘Other sources?’

‘A demon,’ said Nuava shortly.

And there it was below them, the final resting place of Joah Cirrus, Joah Lightbringer, Joah Demonsworn, greatest of all mages. The pool was as clear as glass, and Sebastian could see right down to the shadowy bottom. Rock had been torn from the mountain by some unknowable force, leaving huge grooves in the bedrock, and in the centre was an elaborate sarcophagus carved from what looked like black marble. There were words scored in silver on the lid, words in the language of the mages now known only by the Regnisse Concordance of Relios, and Lord Frith himself. In the very centre was carved a great snarling face with fangs and mad rolling eyes, like a monstrous rabid dog.

‘It is extraordinary,’ said Frith. The young lord crouched down and peered closely at the clear water, no doubt trying to read the words written on the coffin. ‘This must be a thousand years old at least. How is it still here? Surely it would have been looted a long time ago.’

Nuava gestured to the pool. ‘You can try putting your hand in the water if you wish, Lord Frith.’

He glanced up at her, wary, before dipping the very ends of his fingers into the pool.

Instantly, the water erupted into a boiling fury, churning white and steaming. Frith snatched his hand away and stood up.

‘We believe there are other spells on the tomb,’ said Nuava quietly. The waters were already settling down. ‘But that one has always sufficed.’

‘What do you know about it? This demon?’ asked Sebastian. He couldn’t drag his eyes from the snarling dog face on the black lid. ‘What happened to Joah?’

Nuava glanced up at him. She was enjoying this chance to talk about her studies, he realised.

‘Anyone in Skaldshollow could tell you, it is a famous story here. Joah and the demon conspired together for many years and created many terrible works. Terrible, and extraordinary. Joah crafted new words and new spells, singlehandedly increasing the knowledge of the mages tenfold. They say that he and the demon . . . consorted with each other.’ Nuava cleared her throat, blushing slightly. ‘He grew too powerful, the costs too high.’ She stood up abruptly. ‘He was killed by the mage Xinian the Battleborn, and buried here.’

Sebastian took a few steps back. He wanted to leave this place. Frith, however, seemed eager to explore. He prowled the edge of the pool, careful not to disturb the water again.

‘But why? They have gone to a great deal of effort here – the tomb, the spells – when by all accounts he was a villain, an ally of demons. Surely his body would have been discarded or burnt. And yet they have given him a lavish resting place.’

Nuava looked concerned, as though that part didn’t make sense to her either. ‘He may have been terrible, but he was still one of their own. From some of the accounts I have read, it seems that many of the mages blamed the demon more than Joah. He was a genius, but he was fragile. The demon overwhelmed him, flowed in through the cracks.’ She brightened. ‘I have several texts about it in the Waking library, if you would like to see them?’

Frith nodded. ‘That would be most kind. It is extraordinary to see such evidence of the mages. Even in Whittenfarne, there was . . .’ He paused. ‘There was nothing of interest in Whittenfarne. Perhaps I could—’

‘Is there anything else to see here?’ asked Sebastian. He saw Frith glance at him in surprise, but he kept his eyes on Nuava. Her words were echoing around his head:
The demon overwhelmed him, flowed in through the cracks.
‘I think we have wasted enough of the morning.’

Nuava pulled her hat back onto her head. ‘Of course. If we don’t get the Heart-Stone back soon my aunt will do something extreme.’

‘And speaking of which,’ Frith straightened up, looking away from the pool, ‘we should probably check on our mutual colleague.’

Wydrin looked uneasily at the contraption as Bors fiddled with the inner workings; tightening a bolt here, loosening a cog there. He seemed anxious that this should go well – Wydrin wasn’t sure if that was reassuring or unnerving.

If I’m making a list of rash things I’ve done in my life,
she thought, flexing the fingers of her left hand,
whereabouts does this come? It’s got to be in the top five, at least. Somewhere between jumping off the top of the Queen’s Tower with Frith, and claiming I could dive for pearls off the Bararian coast.

They were in the courtyard of the Tower of Waking. Tamlyn Nox herself stood off to one side, her arms crossed over her chest and her expression unimpressed. Wydrin and Bors were standing on a wide stone dais, next to a steel confusion of clockwork and globs of black oil. There was what looked like a giant steel glove on the top, and this was what Bors was motioning her to put her hand into.

‘So I stick my hand in there,’ Wydrin asked, still not quite doing it; her palms were itching, ‘and that big spiky thing comes down?’

There was a prong stationed above the glove, taut like a scorpion’s tail, and on its point was a shard of bright green crystal. It had been sharpened until it glittered under the sunlight. The steel glove, lying palm-up, had a hole in the centre about the size of a large coin.

‘That’s right,’ said Bors. The werken, the wolf-shaped one that had been chained beneath the Tower of Waking, had been brought out to sit on the cobbles next to him. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not actually as painful as it looks. The Edeian has special qualities, you see. There will be a moment of, uh, discomfort, but the rock wants to be a part of something else. It will want to bond with you.’

Wydrin cleared her throat. ‘And you clean this thing regularly, do you?’

‘Honestly, Wydrin, it will be fine. I’ve done it twice.’ He grinned at her, and she smiled back. ‘Just put your hand into the gauntlet and I’ll do the final measurements.’

‘Are you sure you wish to go through with this, Wydrin Threefellows?’ said Tamlyn, her voice coldly amused. ‘Not everyone can handle the joining. And you are no Skald.’

Wydrin forced herself to look away from the contraption and meet Tamlyn’s gaze. ‘Oh, it looks fairly straightforward. Are you sure you want an outsider playing with your toys?’

Tamlyn Nox shrugged one shoulder. ‘No Skald will lower themselves to be joined to a defective werken, so you are welcome to it, particularly if it saves me the coin you were promised. Once you are joined, though, you will go outside the city walls to practise.’ The corner of her mouth twitched a bitter smile. ‘We do not want you blundering around with our experienced riders.’

‘Fair enough. Can’t be worse than riding a horse, can it?’ Wydrin turned back to Bors, and whispered, ‘I’m actually terrible at riding horses.’

He grinned at her. ‘You’ll be fine. Are you ready?’

She nodded once and, taking a deep breath, pushed her left hand inside the metal gauntlet, splaying out her fingers to fit into the steel tubes. Her palm was turned up, and she could see the small circle of her own pale skin through the aperture. What if this damaged her hand permanently? She needed both hands in her line of work. She opened her mouth to ask Bors about this, when a familiar voice shouted from the edge of the courtyard.

‘This is worse than that piercing you wanted to get in Traguard. That at least didn’t have such large accessories!’

She turned awkwardly to see Sebastian and Frith walking towards her. She waved at them with her free hand. ‘Seb, you were just jealous because the guy said you didn’t have the ears for it. Where have you two been?’

Frith said nothing, and Sebastian looked uncomfortable.

‘Just exploring the local history. Are you really going to go through with this?’

‘Sure, why not?’ Wydrin turned back to Bors, hoping that they couldn’t see the thin sheen of sweat on her forehead. ‘It’ll be fun. Frith will have his griffin, I’ll have my . . . stone beast. Seb, we can get you some sort of big horse, one with wild eyes and an untameable spirit, like a knight should have, that kind of thing.’

‘I’m going to check on our supplies,’ said Frith, already turning away. ‘Come and find me when you’re finished with this foolishness.’

Wydrin watched him go, narrowing her eyes at his back. Sebastian came over to the dais, an expression of worry on his face she’d seen many times before. Again she thought of the pearl-diving incident.

‘Really, Wydrin,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Are you certain this is a good idea? No one will think any less of you if you back out.’

‘No,’ she said, more firmly now. ‘I want to know what it’s like. Besides which, I’m hardly the first to be joined to a werken. Are you ready yet, Bors?’

The young man nodded, wiping oily fingers on his coat. ‘The mechanism is loaded.’

‘Let’s do it,’ she replied, bracing herself.

Bors checked the shard of Edeian once more, and wrapped his hands around a big metal lever. ‘You may feel some dizziness at first,’ he said, and he yanked the lever down.

The prong pounced, the whole contraption wobbling with the violence of it, and the shard of Edeian stabbed into Wydrin’s unprotected palm. She yelped – the pain was brilliant, ice-white like a snapping bone – and instinctively yanked her hand out of the steel glove, grazing her fingers on the metal edges. She curled her hand into her chest, feeling the pain throb down through her wrist to her arm. Was there blood? There must be blood.

‘Hurts like a pissing bastard!’ she gasped.

And then the pain softened. The jagged shape of the crystal shard in her palm seemed to melt somehow, and instead her hand felt very cold, like she was resting it in a mound of snow. She felt a hand on her shoulder and knew it was Sebastian, so she leaned against it and closed her eyes, following the feeling of the cold down into the dark. There was a sense of her awareness leaking away, a sense of part of herself being briefly severed. She opened her eyes and looked into the glowing green eyes of the werken. ‘Ye gods and little fishes,’ she whispered.

‘Wydrin, are you all right?’

Sebastian was standing over her; at some point in the last few minutes she had dropped to her knees, and he had hold of her shoulders, shaking her slightly.

‘She will recover in a moment or two,’ said Bors. ‘It’s bound to be disorientating the first time.’

‘I’m fine, I’m fine.’
Help me get up
,
you big idiot
, she thought, and suddenly a cold snout nosed under her arm, pushing her up. It was the werken. She glanced down at the shard of crystal in her hand; there was no blood, not a drop, and it glowed a faint green – the exact same shade as the eyes of the creature now pushing her to her feet. ‘Whoa, good boy, good boy.’

‘The connection appears to be solid,’ said Bors hurriedly. ‘People react to the joining in different ways.’

Wydrin patted the werken on its solid stone flank. There were shallow handholds cut into its side, so you could easily climb onto its back, and there were white scratches around its legs where the iron cuffs had been chipped off. She looked closely at the joins, trying to see how the thing was put together, but everything was smooth and unknowable. It was like looking at a house hanging in the sky; both utterly impossible and yet obviously heavy with reality. The carvings that swirled all over it, the spirals and the loops, made her think of the sea.

Can you hear me?
The werken stood next to her, unmoving.
If you can hear me, lower your head.
The long lupine head moved downwards smoothly. Wydrin laughed.

‘Are you making it do that?’ asked Sebastian. He was looking at the werken like it might bite him. Which was ridiculous; the thing didn’t even have a mouth.

Tamlyn Nox came over then, her dark eyes coldly amused. ‘The first outsider to ride a werken. I hope you realise how greatly we are honouring you, Wydrin of Crosshaven.’

‘You should sell these things, you know. You’d make a fortune at the Marrow Market.’ In her head Wydrin told the werken to take a step backwards and it did, startling Sebastian. ‘He needs a name. What do you reckon?’

Bors glanced uneasily at his aunt.

‘It is not done for the werkens to be named,’ said Tamlyn. Her lips were drawn into a thin line now, and she no longer looked amused.

‘If he doesn’t have a name, how will he know when I call him?’

‘It is an
it
,’ answered Tamlyn, biting down sharply on each word. ‘Not a he. And it will come to you because you are joined to it.’

Wydrin slapped the creature’s flank again. ‘Rocky? Pebbles? Old Stone Face? Or,’ she grinned, ‘Cliff?’

Sebastian took her arm then, steering her away from Tamlyn and her nephew. ‘This thing has a stable it can wait in, I imagine?’ When Bors nodded, he spoke in a lower tone directly into Wydrin’s ear. ‘I think we’re done winding up the locals now. Let’s go and get a drink.’