No one responds.
The spires rise from the peak of the mountain: high and arching, glimmering like glass.
I’ve never seen buildings like these before. Compared to the grime of Rourton – with its dark streets and stink of rubbish – this city seems something from a song. As the sun shines off their skins, the spires look almost like lanterns planted upright in a bed of frost.
‘Wow,’ Teddy says. For once, he doesn’t add a punchline.
The path melts from scrub onto cobblestone streets. This city is reserved for the highest echelons of Víndurnic society: those with ethereal proclivities. It has to be perfect. No mud and bracken for those Lord Farran deems worthy.
From a distance, the spires looked like frosted glass. Up close, though, I realise they’re built from strangely glinting stone. To complete their grandeur, each tower rests upon a circlet of tall stone columns. I suppose even city-dwellers fear the earth at midnight.
‘The spires were built a thousand years ago,’ Bastian says. ‘From the stone of Skyfire Peak.’
‘That’s the second mountain, right?’ I say. ‘The one reserved for Lord Farran’s experiments?’
Bastian nods. ‘A geyser runs up through its core. It erupts every midnight – not with water and steam, but with alchemical juices. Folks say that mountain is imbued with magic.’
I think of the fire that erupts from the peak of the mountain and lights up the sky at night. The idea that it begins in the depths of the earth, in a whorl of alchemy …
‘And the stone of the mountain is flecked with silver too, see?’ Bastian says. ‘That’s what they used to build this city. It gives the spires their shine.’
We pass a group of locals and I drop my face respectfully to avoid their gaze. I don’t even notice I’m doing it until it’s too late: this symbol of inferiority, of obedience. Perhaps it’s their ethereal cloaks – grey, light blue and rippling black. The haughtiness in their upturned noses, or the jewels that dangle from the women’s earlobes.
Or perhaps it’s the way they look at us. Like we’re scum, or dirt, or fleas beneath their shoes. The same look richies would give me if I ever dared trespass in the wealthy parts of Rourton.
‘Don’t like us much, huh?’ says Teddy. He winks at a pretty girl in a pale blue cloak. She gives a little huff of disgust and hurries away, glancing back over her shoulder to ensure he isn’t following her. ‘Haven’t got a response that bad since the grocer’s niece chucked a cabbage at my head.’
‘She thinks you’re dirty, son,’ says Bastian.
‘Fair enough,’ Teddy says. ‘All that clambering up a mountainside – really gets some grime under your fingernails.’
‘I meant your proclivity,’ Bastian says. ‘To connect with beasts is filthy and low.’
Teddy shrugs. ‘Her loss.’
Bastian frowns. ‘If you hope to stay here, you’d better start observing our ways. You must show respect to those with ethereal proclivities.’
Teddy opens his mouth to retort, so I cut in before he can get himself into any more trouble. ‘You said something about silver in the spires?’
Bastian pauses, taken aback by the change in topic. Then his expression clears and he nods, looking as relieved as I am to steer the conversation away from Teddy’s grimy fingernails.
‘That’s right,’ he says. ‘Flecks of silver, all through the stone. Imbued with alchemy when the towers were built, see?’
‘But …’ Maisy hesitates, looking nervous, when we all turn to stare at her. Even now, after all we’ve been through, she doesn’t cope well with the limelight.
‘But what?’ Clementine prompts.
‘But that would have been during the Dark Ages!’ Maisy says. ‘People had lost all knowledge of alchemy – it only started developing again a few centuries ago, during the Alchemical Renaissance …’
Bastian shakes his head. ‘Perhaps that’s true in Taladia, lass, but here in Víndurn, we never lost our knowledge. Dying souls have been casting their powers into silver since our records began.’
I peer back up at the towers. They look so unlikely, like something from a children’s story. If someone imbued their stones with flecks of silver, like a thousand tiny alchemy charms …
‘The silver holds the power of the Wind, see?’ Bastian says. ‘And the Air, and the Dark. That alchemy lets the towers survive up here. It lets them bend with the wind and the earthquakes, instead of shattering under their force.’
Lukas nods slowly. ‘That’s why you worship people with ethereal proclivities. That’s why they live in the towers.’
We pass beneath the shadow of another spire. Shining above us, it resembles a blade of pale green grass. As we pass, I risk brushing my finger across a stone column at the tower’s base. I can’t feel anything special, but it’s not my proclivity that’s imbued into the stone. If these towers held Night, instead of Air or Shadow, perhaps I’d feel a spark of alchemy on my fingertips.
‘That’s right, son,’ Bastian says. ‘But here’s the thing. No spell can last forever – not without something to renew it. We’re just lucky Lord Farran taught us how to keep the city standing.’
‘How?’
‘Fill it only with folks with ethereal proclivities,’ Bastian says. ‘Their powers seep into the spires, see, to uphold the city’s majesty for another generation. Ethereal souls keep the spires strong.’
This last bit sounds like a prepared speech, or a soundbite from a propaganda poster. I’ve been fed enough similar screeds from King Morrigan’s council to recognise the sound of doctrine when I hear it.
‘But why can’t other people live here?’ I say. ‘I mean, just because you need ethereal people in the towers doesn’t mean you can’t have other people too, right?’
Bastian pulls me close with an urgent yank of my cloak. When he speaks, he sounds almost afraid. ‘Never speak such thoughts! Not here. That’s blasphemy. Got it?’
‘Sorry, sir.’
He nods, his breath still close to my ear. ‘Lord Farran says that other proclivities will … dilute … those of purity. Our powers would contaminate the spires, see? If we spent too much time in the city, we’d taint its magic with our filthy earthbound ways.’
Bastian pulls away and straightens his cloak, then takes the lead again with a more deliberate step. ‘The Eternal Lord knows what’s best for this land,’ he says, his voice a little calmer. ‘He came to us from the heathen Valley, three hundred years ago. He led us into the light.’
We stare at each other, stunned. Out of the Valley?
‘You mean Lord Farran isn’t a native Víndurnic?’ Lukas says. ‘He came here from the west? From … Taladia?’
‘Oh yes.’ Bastian’s voice changes again, as though reciting a poem. ‘He came to us from a land of misery and terror, and he brought wisdom and light to Víndurn.’
There is a long pause.
‘You may have heard of him,’ Bastian says. ‘I believe he still lingers in your own country’s history. He’s also known as the prisoner of the Pit.’
And with that, we all stop walking.
The prisoner of the Pit.
My memories jumble, fast and fragmented. A night on the lagoon, an island in the dark. A campfire burning, the hum of Quirin’s breath into his flute. And his lips moving, as he crooned the third verse to the smugglers’ song.
Oh Valley’s vein,
How we swim through your pain,
From the prisoner’s pit to the sky.
With mine hand on the left,
I shall not spill my breath
From a tomb to a desert I rise.
A smuggler legend, we were told. The prisoner sold the king’s battle plans to his enemies. He was imprisoned in the Pit of the catacombs, but broke free just before the water flooded through.
I’ve never thought about what happened after he escaped. It never seemed important. The point was that the prisoner defied the Morrigans. He inspired a song of hope for all the smugglers to come.
Could he really have escaped into the Valley? Travelled all the way into Víndurn, and seized control of this entire nation?
I remember King Morrigan’s obsession with Víndurn. Is this the reason for his fixation? Does he know that his family’s ancient enemy rules this land?
‘The prisoner,’ says Maisy quietly. ‘I can’t believe it.’
‘Well, start believing,’ Bastian says, although his voice is a little gentler than when he chastised me. I guess he’s picked up on Maisy’s meekness. ‘If you don’t,’ he adds, ‘the guards will soon have you bleeding through your windpipe.’
Not so gentle after all.
A group of locals struts past, chattering quietly as their cloaks sweep the cobblestones. I duck aside, allowing a particularly snobbish-looking woman to pass. She gives me a strange look, and I realise my black cloak marks me as one of them. An ethereal. She must wonder why I choose to walk the streets with commoners.
I think again of Rourton, and the attitude of richies to scruffers. My stomach churns. I always hated the idea that richies were better than us – that a mere accident of birth could render someone superior. Now here I am, on the flipside of that arrangement, and I feel almost like a traitor.
It’s ridiculous, I know. I didn’t choose to wear this cloak of Darkness. I couldn’t very well pretend the moon and stars on my neck were signs of Beast or Bird or Flame. But still, the deception gnaws at me.
Fraud, it whispers. Pretending to be better than you are.
I grind my teeth. ‘Are we almost there, sir?’
Bastian nods. ‘Follow me.’
‘What else are we gonna do, run off and start line-dancing in the square?’ Teddy mutters.
Two minutes later, we reach the end of the street. A warm scent wafts out to greet us: honey, sweet potato, roasting cobs of corn. The street opens into an enormous market, unlike anything I saw in Taladia. Back home, a market meant slapdash stalls and milling crowds, with the buzz of a tinny radio and drunken customers trying to barter for wine.
Here, it means another world.
Huge wooden poles mark the corners of the market, with an enormous cloth draped between them. The cloth must be at least fifty metres wide, propped up by thinner poles along the edges of the square. It shimmers strangely, billowing in the wind, and I wonder for a moment whether there aren’t silver flakes embedded into the fabric itself.
The city square is alive with music, but not the fuzzy growl of a radio. Real musicians stand on a podium, their fingers upon bowstrings or their lips pressed to flutes. An elegant waltz floats out into the crowd, drifting like dust.
Tiny lanterns hang from strings of ribbon. They counteract the shade from the cloth, casting speckles of shine across the crowd when the breeze teases them into a dance.
I spot a group of teenagers: girls and boys of fourteen or so, their necks as bare as their hands in the lantern light. Although the taboo doesn’t exist in Víndurn, it’s bizarre to see teenagers without any neck-scarves. They gather around a row of food stalls, which brim with the scent of roasted sweet potato skewers and honey-drizzled corn. There are spiced nuts and custard buns, topped with a slurp of chocolate sauce. It’s a far cry from the rice of Bastian’s village.
Teddy’s stomach grumbles. ‘Geez, I could really go for some chocolate right now. And those potatoes. I reckon they’d work miracles on an empty sto–’
Bastian shakes his head. ‘Can’t afford it, son.’
‘Haven’t we got a firestone to sell?’ Teddy says. ‘Gotta be worth sweet potatoes all around, I reckon.’
‘That money is to keep the whole clan fed,’ Bastian says. ‘Not to satisfy your own greed.’
Teddy has the good grace to look abashed, although I wouldn’t be surprised if he left the market with a pocketful of stolen chocolate. In the world of Teddy Nort, a lack of funds is no obstacle to getting your hands on loot.
‘Right,’ Bastian says. ‘This way.’
As soon as I pass beneath the flapping canvas, the market swims around me. A web of bronze pipes filters warmth through the air, pumping heat and delicious scents through shining glass funnels. Traders offer charms and trinkets, food and drink. A hunched old toymaker sells alchemical dolls and music boxes – and even a tiny clockwork sólfox with silver wings and painted eyes. When he pours a vial of smoke into its mouth, it flits into the air like a dragonfly.
‘Is it just me,’ Lukas says quietly, ‘or does alchemical porridge suddenly seem a lot less impressive?’
The people here are so elegant: a whirl of shining cloaks, silk hats and perfectly stained lips. The women wear their hair long and loose, apart from several tiny braids that snake through the shining mass to trail down their spines. I’ve never seen such a fashion back in Rourton.
And for some reason this, of all things, is what drives the truth home. I’m a stranger in a foreign land. And despite only being here a matter of days, I’ve already made enemies. If I want to build a new life for myself, I’d better learn to fit in. Fast.
‘So, this Lord Farran,’ I say, hoping to glean a little more information. ‘If he came from Taladia, how’d he manage to take over this place?’
‘Lord Farran was born to rule us,’ Bastian says. ‘The Eternal Lord doesn’t need mortal weapons, see? His great proclivity gives him innate power to govern all our lesser magics.’
‘Great proclivity?’
‘Silver,’ Bastian says. ‘His proclivity is Silver.’
I frown, startled. Silver is the only metal that can’t be controlled with a Metal proclivity. As far as I know, it’s always seemed beyond the reach of any human proclivities. It’s a substance to hold magic, not a substance to link into your magic itself.
But if Lord Farran’s proclivity is really Silver …
Well, it explains how he gained control over Víndurn. A city of spires and alchemy, held up with flecks of silver. He could control every charm, every alchemical device – even the spires themselves. He could threaten to topple this city with a click of his fingers.
Or perhaps, judging by his people’s reverence, he could promise to uphold it.
I’m so distracted by this idea that I almost collide with the stall of firestone traders. Teddy sniggers as I grab a nearby pole to catch myself.
Bastian glares at me before turning to face the stall. ‘I’ve brought a firestone to trade, good sirs.’
The firestone traders are a trio of men in identical ice-blue cloaks. I suppose their proclivities must be Air, because one is idly fingering a twist of breeze. It swirls in a spiral, teasing specks of dust into a tiny whirlwind. When Bastian speaks, the man snaps his fingers and the bluster vanishes.
The trader holds out his palm, looking bored. ‘Go on, then.’
Bastian unwraps the stone from a protective cushion of fabric, before passing it across with a slightly nervous expression.
The trader huffs. ‘Small.’
Bastian nods. ‘Yes, sir. It’s small, but it’s an acceptable grade of quality. See, if you look at the colour of –’
Another trader raises a finger. There is a moment of silence while the three traders convene, examining the stone and passing it between them with mild expressions of interest.
Finally, the third man speaks. ‘The Eternal Lord can’t make much use of such a meagre stone.’
Bastian blinks, but doesn’t argue.
I glance between them, my mind whirring. Why does Lord Farran really want these firestones? According to Maisy’s legends, they’re magical conduits – but we’ve seen no sign of such powers. And according to Bastian, Lord Farran uses them in his midnight experiments on Skyfire Peak – but again, we have no proof. Personally, the only use I can see for them is as sparkly paperweights. I suppose Lord Farran must have a lot of paperwork to deal with, but still …
Then I think of the field of lights on the mountain. A graveyard of firestones. Hundreds of stones, illuminating the field every few minutes through the dark.
Whatever
Lord Farran is up to … it isn’t just about paperweights. Once he’s finished using each stone, it’s reburied in a field outside the village – and retrieved only once a year, for the Víndurnic army drill.
Lord Farran knows something about these stones. He cloaks his people in ignorance and pretty colours, distracting them from his real game while they hunt for stones or waltz through shining towers …
Something else is going on here. Something we’re not seeing.
‘Well?’ Bastian says. ‘Is it acceptable, sir?’
The trader sighs, then fishes through a drawer beneath his stall. He produces a small sack of coins and tosses them to Bastian, before sliding the firestone out of sight. ‘It really is a pitiful specimen,’ he says. ‘You’re lucky that today is an … unusual … case.’
Bastian perks up. ‘Sir?’
The trader gives a haughty sniff. ‘Right now, the Eternal Lord is keen to accept all the stones that can be found. It is a matter of urgency.’ He gives Bastian a long look. ‘Any other stones stashed under that cloak?’
‘No, sir,’ Bastian says. ‘But why does –’
‘That isn’t public knowledge. Not yet.’ The trader waves his hand dismissively. ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’
Bastian gives a low bow. I hurriedly follow suit and so do my crewmates, although Clementine isn’t pleased. She takes a good three seconds before she condescends to join us in our grovelling.
‘Very good,’ says the trader. He fishes under his table and produces a small woven basket. I can’t help peeking inside, just long enough to spot a larger firestone. This one is slightly dull, with an oily sheen across its crystals.
‘You know the rules,’ the trader says. ‘This one has already been processed by the Eternal Lord. Bury it in your clan’s firestone field – until it’s needed, of course.’
Bastian accepts the basket. ‘Of course, sir.’
‘Good,’ says the trader. ‘Now, leave this place. Your filth is not welcome upon our streets.’
Clementine’s fists are screwed tight into balls at the insult. I want to put a hand on her shoulder – to tell her to take a deep breath – but Teddy jostles between us, and I find myself on the outskirts of the group.
Skyfire Page 10
