The Written (50 page)

Something moved in his
peripheral vision and Farden turned to meet Vice’s fist colliding
with his face. Sparks exploded behind the mage’s eyes. He pushed
the tall man backwards with a flailing arm and swung another punch
of his own. It landed hard on his chest and Vice took a step back,
briefly winded. Farden wiped crimson blood from his lip and shook
his head. His vision was still blurred, so he blinked and tried to
move slowly to the left, around to where he had noticed the manual
sitting on a pedestal.

Vice began to laugh again with
that sadistic cackle and those narrow eyes, mocking his every move.
‘You still have no idea. It’s dangling right in front of you and
you can’t even see it. Typical Farden’

‘You don’t know me as well as
you think you do Vice.’

‘Hah! Who taught you? Who
arranged for you to go the schools, to the Ritual? I did. All of
it.
I
was the one who sent you to live the
life of a Written. It’s just a pity you didn’t turn out as I’d
hoped,’ he scowled, his eyes boring a hole into Farden’s.

The mage scoffed, and sidled
ever so slightly towards the back of the room. ‘As one of your
loyal servants, like Ridda?’

‘Still defending your precious
Arka, I see.’

‘They’re your people as much as
they are mine Vice, you traitor!’

Vice shook his head and didn’t
break his gaze for a second. ‘I watched the Arka crawl from their
filthy beginnings! I was there when the first stone of Krauslung
was carved from the mountains and I will be there when it falls. I
have watched you people grow for a thousand years and I’ve seen
what you’ve become, bureaucratic fools pissing their gold away with
the whores and the drunks in the street, meddling in magick they’ll
never understand. Fools, Farden, fools that need removing from
these lands. And I shall be the one to do it.

Farden shook his head. ‘And the
Sirens?’ he muttered.

‘Two dragons with one
stone.’

Farden glared, trying to convey
as much hate as possible in one look. He thought of all the
evenings he had spent sat with the Undermage and his dark wine,
swapping stories with him, discussing the world and its matters. He
thought of every lesson Vice had ever taught him, how many things
they had both confided in the other. All this time, he said to
himself. The anger and sorrow felt like lead in his chest. ‘It must
have been painful to play dumb all these years, faking all those
smiles and kind words,’ said the mage. ‘I think you’ve enjoyed
every moment of this. Relished every bit of your despicable
plan.’

Vice flashed white teeth and
rubbed his hands together, making a little yellow spark float
upwards towards the broken ceiling. ‘Immensely.’

Farden kept inching sideways
and made sure he held Vice’s gaze for as long as possible. He
didn’t trust his eyes to look at the manual and betray him. Orange
fire started to curl up between the Undermage’s fingers. Farden
raised his hands, slowly, to be ready to fend off the spell, and
took a long inward breath and held it. He could feel magick
pulsating along his arms but he pushed it to his legs and feet and
tried to remember everything he had seen in Hjaussfen, everything
he had learnt that night, sitting beside the fireplace in the Old
Dragon’s room, listening long into the morning to the quiet
one-eyed Siren called Eyrum.

Go!

Vice flicked his hands outwards
and the blistering fireball flew straight at the mage in an orange
blur. Farden breathed out. With one tiny step he slipped to the
side and made the room slow and smudge like a ruined oil painting,
pastel shades of grey and white like nebulous fog wiping the world
to one side. He watched the crackling orb of flame roll through the
air and lazily make its way towards him. The crystalline flames
blossomed and whirled and strangely in that moment he felt like
reaching out to touch them, to see if they would snap in his hands.
But he was still moving and Farden slid to the left as though the
earth had suddenly tripped beneath his boots.

The fireball burst against the
wall with an angry flash and Farden was already several yards away.
Without wasting a second he sprinted to the pedestal and the
manual.

‘No!’ Vice yelled, and leapt to
catch him. Farden skidded to a halt and grabbed the little book,
letting the magick flow back into his hands and erupt in white hot
flame from his fingers. There was a dull thud deep from somewhere
in the well and the room started to shake around them. The yellow
pages curled and crumbled as the fire ate into the book and the
room shook even more. Farden lifted the manual up in his fist and
let the flames consume his entire forearm until the book was a
smouldering mess, just the time it took for Vice to reach him and
land a blow to his ribs right where the arrow had hit him. Blinding
pain knocked him to the floor. Something or someone was standing
behind him, but as he turned a heavy object collided with his
skull, and the world went black.

Farfallen took another deep
breath and blinked the smoke from his amber-flecked eyes. A pitiful
amount of dragons were left and the sound of their roars and
screams below made his heart feel heavy in his chest. He felt
Svarta putting her cold hand on his scales and felt her voice in
his head.

‘We have to fall back, the mage
has failed,’ she said aloud.

But the Old Dragon shook his
head stubbornly. ‘I can still feel him, somewhere in there.’

‘Farfallen...’ she said, and he
couldn’t ignore that she was right. He looked down at the hydra
below them, still snarling and biting at his dragons. They fought
on bravely. Riders still swung their swords as their mounts ducked
and wheeled under and over the squirming heads to breathe fire on
the monster’s back and legs. Farfallen could feel their exhaustion.
He watched with sad eyes as yet another of his dragons was ripped
to pieces by two ravenous heads. One held the screaming beast by
its tail while the other tore at its back and head. Sulphurous
breath steamed in clouds through its spear-like teeth. Emerald
blood ran in rivers down the hydra’s shoulder. Farfallen let a wave
of pain pass over him, and nodded slowly.

‘Then let us get away from this
thing. We have done our best. Emaneska will have to fend for
itself.’ said Farfallen, and let out a mighty, if not slightly
tired and disappointed, roar. With screeches the dragons quickly
flapped away from the snapping jaws. Every single eye, of rider and
beast, was wide with terror, or relief, or both. The hydra kept
coming at them, hissing and whining, drenched in blood and gore and
obviously still not satiated.

‘Keep clear of it!’ Towerdawn
yelled to the others, and the diminished ranks flapped higher into
the clear blue sky. One unlucky dragon lost the tip of its tail as
one head snapped its grey fangs but it managed to escape with the
rest and joined the others. They could barely summon the strength
to flap their wings. They watched Farfallen and waited. As the Old
Dragon opened his mouth to speak a low moaning groan from below
interrupted him. They all looked down. Dust was starting to rise up
into the air around the hydra’s claws and its eyes were starting to
blink and flicker, pulsating like its skin which was now writhing
and sweating.

‘Something’s happening!’
shouted a nearby rider. Farfallen quietly prayed that it was not
another one of its tricks and that it wasn’t about to sprout wings.
The dragons backed away even further as smoke began to pour from
one of its mouths. The dust turned to ash and cinders and began to
billow in great clouds around its legs. A huge boom resonated from
somewhere inside Carn Breagh. Farfallen squinted at the monster.
Its skin was starting to darken and great black blotches erupted
under his skin like bruises. The marks seethed and smoked until all
of the hydra’s flesh smouldered like burning paper. The smell was
horrible. The remaining dragons soared on the rising air to get
clear of the beast and save their strength, and from high above
they watched the hydra burn and smoke and wondered what would
happen next.

With a lurch and a stumble
there came another deep boom from the castle. One of its legs
dissolved into ash and then the tail started to deliquesce in thick
bursts of smoke. Just before its heads started to fall and topple
like fire-gutted towers to crash and burn against each other it
cried out with its minor chord wail for one last time. Then there
was a loud sucking noise as the air rushed inwards and the hydra
seemed to fold in on itself with a low rumble. It was like watching
a mountain burn up and die. As the noise reached its crescendo the
hydra gurgled and exploded in a huge cloud of ash. The shockwave
turned the snow black and filled the air with dust. Trees were
flattened. The dragons rode the blast, and in a moment it was over.
They flew in its wake and glided towards the ruined castle,
swapping exhausted smiles and toothy grins.

Farfallen had only one thing on
his mind: Farden, the little spark that had disappeared in his mind
shortly before the hydra had collapsed.

“
A long time
ago, when elves and daemons still haunted the lands, the oldest of
the gods held a secret meeting deep in the deepest woods, and
fearful of being heard they whispered no louder than the softest
leaf. ‘The daemons are growing bolder by the day,’ said one, a tall
glowing goddess.‘They have called on Orion, the oldest of the
daemons.’ replied a second, one of the earth-gods. ‘He roams the
shores as we speak, hunting for us.’

“
In return the
ageless one nodded, and listened to the cawing of the ravens in the
firs. He sighed with a rustling of ropes. ‘He will spell our
downfall if the elves have their way. We grow weaker,’ he said.
‘Above and below us the lands of fire cool and the lands of ice
melt with every year. We must take action now or be lost forever.’
The others hummed and murmured in agreement, but the god of the
earth, a great beast of stone and moss wagged his mistletoe finger.
‘We have forgotten the others.’ And with that he pointed, through
copse and bramble, to a scrawny group of figures huddling around a
campfire in the distance. Another god, a scaled man with wings that
fell like hammers, shook his head. ‘They are the slaves of the
elves, they will never amount to anything.’

“
The tall pale
goddess held up a hand. ‘They have my gifts, and none will stand in
their way when we are finished,’ she said. The ageless one knocked
his stick against an oak tree. ‘It is decided. We will go
forth.’

“
And so the
gods decided. They burst forth from their hiding place and fell
upon the elves. Orion himself was almost overwhelmed as he lay with
his slave mistress, but they fought and they fought for a thousand
years, until finally the gods pulled the elves and the daemons into
the sky to remain there for ever more. Only three escaped that
fate, the dark spawn of the daemon Orion, and taking their shapes
they hid amongst the campfires with the slaves, pale kings in drab
clothes.

“
And as the
stars began to sparkle and the wolves howled at the ghostly moon
they decided to split the barren land in three, to go their
separate ways as each saw fit. The red sun rose above the cold and
empty land and they left, to the three corners of the world, to
carve their own destinies and rule over the new people.”

Old fairytale

Something smelled like burning.
Like the smell of scorched flesh that clung to the rags that were
the mage’s clothes.

Something tugged at his wrists
and rasped at the skin underneath and turned it rough and
bloody.

Something in his head ached
like a firework had gone off inside his skull, as if his brain was
trying to smash its way out.

Something made his skin tingle
and burn, itchy like ants biting, or cats scratching. It made him
think of a cat from a ship he had been on once, perhaps.

Something was deeply wrong.

Fragments of a fight, or maybe
a great battle, floated in his memories. Flashes of a great beast
towering above a snowy land, orange blood splashing on rocks.
Screams. It was like waking from a dream he could have sworn was
real, a strange familiarity with the scattered images. Farden
attempted to open his eyes, but the pain was too much. He consented
himself to just resting. After all he had hours to sit there.

Suddenly it was all too real
and Farden could picture himself there being punched and kicked,
watching the world blur all over again and wanting to reach out and
grab the tendrils of a crystalline flame that floated mere inches
in front of his face. His skin burned under the yellow light. A
smile sneered from the shadows, something collided with his
skull.

He had been there, in that
place, with a daemon towering over him and reptile shapes in the
pale blue sky high above. He had fought a man, a tall man with
piercing eyes. He had done something, or was in the process of
doing something. Farden remembered fire and a book.

Then it came to him, and the
realisation of being tied to a chair in a cold and empty room
struck him like a wet rag around the face. Farden jumped and forced
his eyelids to open and his eyes to focus. Blurry shapes and dark
objects slowly started to take shape around him. There was blood on
the floor as if something had been dragged along it. He rubbed his
fingers and felt something sticky between them. Farden’s head
ached.

The mage started to look
around, slowly, and began to recognise the walls and pillars that
lined the walls of the hall. Light was coming from somewhere behind
him but it was too painful to turn his head. It seemed that his
arms were tied fast it with rough ropes, and so were his legs, and
they felt dead and heavy as if no blood could get to them. Farden
strained and listened to the creaking of the rope and chair but the
agony of pulling against the bonds was too much, and he slumped
into his seat feeling very exhausted and quite alone. A subtle but
annoying noise whined in his ear. At least it let him know he was
alive. Farden waited, for exactly what he didn’t know, but it was
all he could do, so he closed his eyes and let the rhythm of his
breathing take over.