by Jen Williams
And really, the people of the Nowhere Isles could hardly be blamed for believing in spirits and ghouls. Frith looked out into the shifting whiteness and frowned. He’d arrived on the most populated of the islands a good fortnight back, and even that had been a bleak, unnerving place. The sand was black and the rocks were glassy, refracting the light oddly, while the grey and brown buildings the people had thrown up seemed to cluster together in desperation. Finding a boat and a guide to take him to Whittenfarne had proved extraordinarily difficult. He walked from tavern to tavern, tolerating the terrible smells and vapours of the tobaccos and powders being smoked in every den, and asked with extreme politeness for assistance, but every query got the same response; frowns, puzzled looks, or outright anger. Eventually though, as was always the case in these matters, the news that a man with a great deal of money was in town found its way to the correct ears, and Jeen had come sidling by. For the price of several fat bricks of tobacco the scruffy man had told Frith everything he knew about Whittenfarne.
And now he was his guide, too.
‘And this Jolnir is who I must speak to?’
Jeen nodded happily, clearly glad to be going over a subject he’d already exhausted.
‘If you want to know about the old mages that lived on the island, if you want to know about them, then Jolnir is the man. Mystic. He’s a mystical man, you see.’ Jeen took a pinch of the brown tobacco and held it under his nose for a moment. ‘There are other mystics on the island, of course – not many now, ’cause it’s such a nasty place to live, see – but everyone knows Jolnir is the real expert. Everyone knows that.’
I didn’t, thought Frith, and resisted the temptation to stamp on Jeen’s pipe.
‘I need to know more than just stories,’ said Frith severely. ‘I need to know details. Facts. I need to know about the language they used.’
Jeen stuck the stem of the pipe in his mouth. A few puffs later he nodded with satisfaction.
‘That’s what they study, isn’t it? Jolnir is the biggest studier of that stuff. Everyone knows that.’
It was a start, at least. Once he had learned the words of power from this Jolnir, he would be able to control the mages’ powers and finally take his revenge on Fane and the Lady Bethan. Frith glanced down at his hands, half fearing to see them bright with green fire again. On the long voyage from Litvania to the Nowhere Isles the powers had become even more erratic, bursting into colourful life when it was least appropriate, even dangerous. It was becoming difficult to hide.
‘And do you know where this Jolnir—?’
There was a shout from the front of the boat, and an answering murmur from the crew. Frith thought he heard some of them muttering prayers.
‘Looks like we’re here,’ said Jeen, pointing. All of the cheer had evaporated from his voice.
Frith looked where he was pointing, and staggered backwards a step. An enormous, monstrous figure loomed out of the mists. It was dark and jagged, its arms held out to either side with fingers reaching as if to grasp at them.
‘And what,’ he said, keeping his voice steady, ‘is that supposed to be?’
‘A mage, m’lord.’
It was a man, Frith saw, although it must have been a good two hundred feet tall, so perhaps giant would have been more accurate, and it was carved from the same glassy black rock Frith had seen everywhere in the islands. Its face was a collection of severe lines and deep shadows, and there were long, straight lines coming down from its outstretched hands. Frith couldn’t quite decide what they were supposed to be. Ropes? Stylised streams of water? Beyond the enormous statue Frith could make out a suggestion of small, black hills, peppered here and there with stunted trees and shrouds of grey vapour moving across the land like skittish ghosts. He could see no sign of civilisation, or indeed any sign that people lived there at all. Whittenfarne, cursed island of the mystics. To Frith it looked like a great place to maroon someone and steal all their coin.
‘Come on then, m’lord,’ said Jeen. His face had gone milk-white, making his beard look like smears of dirt on his chin. ‘The sooner we find you Jolnir the sooner we’ll all be happier, eh?’
The captain left them on the beach with rather more haste than Frith thought was strictly necessary. He watched the little boat move rapidly back out into the steely sea, soon becoming spirit-like in the fog.
‘Should he not wait for you?’ he asked.
‘Nah, he won’t hang around the coast here, m’lord,’ said Jeen. ‘The weather is too, uh, flighty. I’ll signal him when I need to, with a fire.’
Frith nodded, and pulled his bearskin cloak a little closer around his shoulders. The beach was a bleak prospect, a place of black sand, jagged rocks, and little else. The statue of the mage loomed away to their right. Frith found he disliked it intensely. When he looked up at the brutal face he remembered the whispered voices in the lake under the Citadel, how they had taunted and tortured him. The man the statue depicted could well have been one of them.
He turned his back on it and faced the rocky hills inland. The sky was still bright and featureless, but he knew the daylight would not last for ever.
‘Let us go then.’
They walked hurriedly, neither of them happy to have the shadow of the statue lurking behind them. There was the strangest sense, Frith thought, that it was watching their progress. A handful of black birds flew up from beyond the nearest hill, diving this way and that and then disappearing again. Frith noticed Jeen watching them carefully.
‘Do you know any more about the statue?’
Jeen jumped, dragging his eyes back from the hills. Just ahead Frith could see a number of shallow impressions in the rocks where water had gathered. There were lots of these pools, and some of them appeared to be gently steaming.
‘Not me, m’lord, no. Your Jolnir will know all about them, yes.’ He seemed to brighten momentarily. ‘I know there’s three more of them, though! At the other sides of the island. North, South, East and West.’
Frith looked around, but the island was too shrouded in the mists to see any hint of other statues.
‘This was the Western statue,’ he said, hoping to prompt more information, but Jeen remained silent.
They came to one of the pools. Jeen walked round it, while Frith paused to look down into the water. It was cloudy, and a shiver of steam rolled off the surface in delicate curls. There were small, pale shapes moving in there, he was sure of it. Could fish live in an environment like that? Were the pools deeper than they looked?
There was a harsh cry from ahead; the black birds were back again. A few of them had landed in one of the bent trees that pocked the landscape, and as Frith watched Jeen circled widely around it. The birds did not seem especially fearsome – some species of scruffy crow, with wrinkled purple talons and yellow-black eyes – only as insane as your average bird. Frith jogged to catch up with his guide, noticing how the birds turned their heads to follow his progress.
‘A strange land,’ he said.
Jeen nodded without looking at him. He was sweating slightly, sticking his greasy hair to his forehead.
‘There are lots of stories about this place, m’lord. Stories about people coming here to find wisdom and not returning. Stories about things watching you.’
‘It also smells abysmal,’ noted Frith. As well as giving off steam, the shallow pools seemed to produce an oddly chemical stink. It reminded Frith of his father’s rooms in Blackwood Keep. ‘Do you know what causes that?’
‘I don’t know, m’lord,’ said Jeen. ‘But some people say Whittenfarne has paths that lead down beneath the earth, to places where demons sleep. They say that the mages found the paths and made the place evil and—’ His voice ended in a squeak as one of the black birds flew overhead. For a second Jeen was frozen in place, and then he moved forward with a lurch. ‘That’s what they say, anyway.’
After an hour of walking over the rocky terrain, Frith called a halt by one of the larger pools. A long, white lizard lay on
a rock next to the water, its narrow tail dipping down into the pool. It was as bloodless as a toad’s underbelly, and its eyes were big black bubbles. It had teeth, too, long and needle-like, and there appeared to be slightly too many to fit in its head.
‘And what is that?’
Jeen sat down on the granular black soil and pulled the pack of tobacco from his back pocket.
‘Buggered if I know, m’lord,’ he said. ‘Place is full of them, ugly creatures. Don’t see them on—’
One of the scruffy black birds had alighted just next to Jeen, and as the guide turned to look, it hopped forward and pecked him on the hand. He shot up, screeching and clutching his fingers.
‘It’s marked me!’
‘Calm down.’ Frith scowled. ‘It’s only a bird.’
‘It marked me!’ There was a flurry of black wings and suddenly there were a dozen of the black birds, all perched around the pool and the two men. A few of them hopped towards Jeen, as though they would also like a chance to peck his hand, and with that the guide was up and running, back to the distant shore.
‘Hoy!’ called Frith, appalled. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘Home! Keep your money!’ Jeen was a rapidly dwindling shape now, swerving every now and then to avoid the pools and stunted trees. ‘Cursed bloody place!’
Frith watched him go, uncertain whether to go after him or not. Running on this island seemed a good way to invite a broken leg, and he had no wish to experience that again. Besides, did he really need a superstitious peasant to show him the way?
He looked back down to see the birds all watching him, and then as one they flew up into the mists. For a moment their calls sounded like rasping laughter.
44
Frith walked on into the black hills.
The pools of stinking water became more frequent, so that at times he had to be very careful with his footing just to keep his feet reasonably dry. Every now and then the black birds would pass on overhead, and he saw several more of the fat white lizards lazing on rocks, so still that they looked to be made of bone. A part of him began to wonder if striking out alone had been such a wise choice, but he forced that thought from his mind.
The light in the sky was just starting to dim when he slipped coming down a slope and stumbled straight into a pool. The water was deep enough to come up to his waist and was shockingly cold. Frith cursed it, himself, and the whole island of Whittenfarne as he struggled back towards the edge, and that was when something with long needle-like teeth bit his foot.
Frith bellowed with a mixture of pain, surprise and anger, and as he did so his body was briefly shrouded in bright green flames. Almost immediately the water around him began to bubble, so he climbed out hurriedly, dragging his sodden body out onto the rocky ground. The flames flared once more, then faded.
Frith looked back at the water to see a number of white fish float to the surface with their bellies to the sky. After a few moments they were joined by one of the lizard creatures, also dead.
‘Serves you right,’ he muttered.
There was an answering squawk. One of the black birds was perched on a rock opposite him. It gave him a sideways look, its eye round and yellow, and then it flew off into the darkening sky.
‘If this were Litvania, I’d have you in a pie.’
Frith examined his boot. The lizard had made a decent job of chomping through the leather and had managed to prick the skin beneath, but there wasn’t an awful lot of blood. Just as long as it wasn’t poisonous.
The Lord of the Blackwood rubbed the black sand from his fingers and struggled to his feet, wincing slightly as he put his weight on the injured foot. After taking a moment to curse the island once more, he set off again.
Jolnir found him before he’d even got out of sight of the offending pool.
At first, glaring through the fog of his weary bad mood, Frith thought that part of the landscape was shifting and coming towards him. Certainly the figure was dark and oddly jagged like many of the rocks, and it made no more sense the closer it got. It was short and very hunched, and broad at the shoulders, and it wore a scruffy black cloak which came down to its feet. He could see no head; there was, instead, a huge and intricate mask, covering it from shoulder to shoulder – it reminded him of the figurehead on the small boat that had brought him to Whittenfarne, although as it got closer he saw that the effect was rather more avian. An enormous curved beak made up most of the headdress, painted black and silver and yellow, and a pair of large, staring wooden eyes sat either side of it, varnished to shine wetly. The whole thing looked impossibly heavy, and yet the figure moved easily across the rocky ground, waving a pair of long sticks as it came. These rattled and trembled with dozens of small ornaments; tiny rat skulls, seashells, bird’s feet, bunches of bright auburn hair … all tied to the sticks with twine.
When the figure eventually reached him it nodded rapidly, causing the mask to fly up and down in an alarming manner. It waved the sticks.
‘A traveller comes!’ The voice was deep and booming.
Frith shook the last of the water off his boot.
‘I have to find a man called Jolnir. Do you know where he is?’
‘You have found him.’ The figure nodded again. Frith thought the beak looked vaguely predatory.
‘You are Jolnir?’
‘Who else?’ The figure gestured round at the unforgiving landscape, and Frith had to admit he had a point. There was no one else here. ‘Why are you here, young traveller? What is it you desire?’
Jolnir came over to Frith, waddling slightly. As he walked, he reached up and put one of his sticks through the back of his cloak, so that it stuck out like a pin in a pincushion. He must have a bundle under there, thought Frith. Likely he is not hunched at all. Jolnir reached out and took hold of Frith’s bearskin cloak, and Frith noted that the man had terribly thin arms and skeletal fingers, covered in tough grey skin so pitted and worn that it looked like leather. No wonder he wears a mask. How degraded must his face be?
‘I am Lord Aaron Frith of the Blackwood. I have come here to learn from you, Jolnir –’ He paused. Talking to the staring wooden eyes was disconcerting. ‘I have come here to learn from you the lost language of the mages. It is imperative I know the words of power.’
‘Of course it is, of course it is.’ Jolnir nodded. ‘When is it not?’ He smacked Frith on the arm with one of his sticks. ‘Mages, words, power. Yes, I will tell you what you need to know. It will be diverting.’
Frith frowned.
‘You will teach me? I had heard that seekers of this knowledge are turned away from the island. That many never return at all.’
‘But you,’ Jolnir snatched up Frith’s wrist with alarming speed, and squeezed it. He had a very strong grip. After a few seconds it was actually painful. ‘You are worthy, aren’t you, Lord Frith?’ He dropped the younger man’s arm. ‘Yes, we have not seen the likes of you for some time. Come.’ He turned away, head nodding again rapidly.
‘That is most kind.’
Frith followed on behind, rubbing the feeling back into his wrist. For a moment it had seemed like Jolnir already knew everything about him.
45
Wydrin lay in the bottom of the small boat, propped up on one elbow while she rubbed the pungent fish oil into her hair. She’d already tinted her hair dark brown, and with the thick black lines of make-up over her eyes and mouth she was fairly confident that no one would recognise her. The purple robes had been easy enough to replicate – the uniform of a Graceful Lady was largely unadorned. She just had to hope the guards would be convinced.
With her hair wet and stinking she sat up, eyeing the distant fist of lights that was Sandshield.
I will be far enough from Reilly’s boat by now, she thought. And if I’m not, it’s his own bloody lookout.
She started to row. When she was small, Sandshield had been an islet of some notoriety, part of the archipelago that was also home to Crosshaven, and already well known fo
r its dangerous population of pirates and thieves. Now there was one man in charge on the tiny island. That was Morgul, variously known as Morgul the Biter, Morgul the Cruel, and the Menace of Sandshield. He was a dangerous man, one of the worst, and if it was his flag you saw approaching, your best bet was to turn and run, or hope that you died quickly in the initial fight. He had turned Sandshield into a small fortress, the better to protect the enormous plunder he’d taken, and tonight Morgul the Cruel’s eldest son was about to become a man. There was to be a celebration, and that was where Wydrin came in.
She edged closer, until it was possible to see the great hall standing proud on its raised platform, and the small harbour that surrounded it. By torchlight she could see the solid shapes of wooden palisades, and men moving back and forth over the timbers. There were guards in mail hauberks with short swords at their waists, and a number of empty boats tied up at the edge. Many of the guests were already here.
Wydrin lit the oil lamp. After a few moments, one of the small ships circling the island hailed her, and it escorted her into the harbour.
She reached it just as another, larger boat was docking. A flood of men and women poured out, all loud and obnoxious with good humour – few things cheered a pirate, in Wydrin’s experience, than the knowledge that you would soon be drinking vast quantities of another man’s ale – although they did pause to argue with one of the guards. He was insisting that they leave their weapons in a small tethered boat – it was already heavy in the water with swords and daggers – while they were more of the opinion that he could go gut himself. Wydrin climbed onto the dock, accepting help from the man who had escorted her to the island. She listened to the argument carefully, the Bone Whisperer in one hand.
‘It is the rule of Sandshield,’ said the guard. He had the slightly weary posture of someone who had already spent much of the evening explaining this rule. ‘No weapons in Morgul’s hall.’
