The Written

by Ben Galley

  Breathe.

  Rain-soaked air fought with bile for room in his throat. He felt something under his swollen fingers and grabbed it with the last vestiges of strength in his weary body.

  Hold fast.

  Ropes dragged at raw cuts and lashed him to the crate that kept him afloat. His forehead found a resting place against the salty wood.

  Darkness.

  Farden shivered in his desert, and rubbed at his cold arms and legs. He looked down at his pale naked body, at his skin that looked wrinkly as if from too much water, at the damp patch in the cracked earth. His vambraces lay rusty and covered in drying seaweed at his dusty feet.

  Breathe said something, and Farden turned his head to see a skinny black cat, soaked to the bone, sitting near to him amongst the stones. Its ragged fur steamed in the hot sun. A dead rotting bird full of maggots sat at its feet. Beady empty eyes stared at the sky. Farden looked up, and his pale blue emptiness bubbled and wavered, as if he were looking at the surface of a placid sea. He lifted a finger and ripples spread out across the vast cloudless sky. His fingers felt wet. There was a rumbling, and the sun flashed.

  ‘I am breathing,’ he said.

  Not for long said the voice, and the cat licked its bedraggled paw.

  A man was walking alone on a rocky beach. Pockmarked volcanic stones mingled amongst grey shale and pale sand crunched under his slender boots. The spear in his hand held him steady against the slippery stones and green seaweed. From under a white hood purple eyes scanned the grey waves rolling up the beach and a scaly nose sniffed the salt air. The man watched the first few shafts of new sunlight pierce the rain clouds and felt the fresh wind coming from the west on his skin. Should be a calm day, he thought to himself, and he breathed deep to let the smell of the salt air fill his head. The man pulled his white cloak about him and swapped his grip on the spear so he could warm his cold hand in his pocket. He coughed a rattling hiss, and walked on, still scanning the beach. Then abruptly he stopped and crouched by a rocky outcrop. Something had caught his keen eye. A shape lay in the surf.

  The man hopped nimbly over the stones and sand flew from his boots as he ran over the beach towards the shape. Within moments he reached it, and circled it warily, feet splashing in the shallow water. It looked like a crate, or a door, a mass of ropes and rigging lying useless and tangled in the sand. Using the sharp spearpoint, he peeled away the matted weed and knotted ropes to reveal the long dead eyes of a goat, bloated and swollen from seawater. It grinned at him in death, and its cloudy gaze stared off into space. He grimaced at the sight of the dead animal and poked at the rest of the sodden lump. The Siren spied something that looked like a shoe poking out from under a slimy section of wood, and crouched to investigate further. It was a boot, with a foot and leg attached to it.

  The man tore apart the wooden crate in a spray of green weed and water to find a bedraggled corpse lying curled up and half-buried in the sand. Kneeling at its side, he poked and prodded at the face of a beaten man. He looked to be in his thirties, probably from the southeast, with matted dark hair and red-gold vambraces on his arms. He put his spearblade to his mouth, and a thin mist of breath appeared on the shiny steel. The Siren slapped the man’s face, feeling his chest where his heart was with his long fingers. Something stirred there, maybe a faint hint of life. The Siren brought a fist down on the man’s chest, at the point where the ribs joined, and the washed-up man suddenly spluttered and coughed, retching bile and seawater. He opened his red-rimmed eyes to find a shiny spear blade waving in his face, and closed them again to find nothing but darkness.

  ‘Where’d you find him?’

  ‘On the beach near the southwest corner. Should have been dead, the poor bastard, but somehow there’s life in him,’ the soldier shrugged and tried to rub warmth back into his hands. His white cloak was dripping wet and covered in sand, and there was brown seaweed tangled in clumps around his wrists.

  ‘Arka, by the look of him,’ The healer had the look of an ageing crow, and the voice of one too. He was hunched over the wooden table and murmuring thoughtfully somewhere deep in his throat. His long hair hung in wet strands over his squinting green eyes. His scales were the colour of tree moss. He rubbed his chin and examined the man spread out on the table below him.

  Farden looked like death, or something very close to it. He shivered convulsively and clawed at the wooden table as if it could give off heat. Like the soldier he was also covered in sand and seaweed, and his skin was pale like parchment and as cold as ice. His cloak and tunic were ripped and torn and snagged with splinters of driftwood. The figure looked altogether wretched. A little black bundle of something lay by his side.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked the healer, pointing at the thing.

  The soldier carefully turned it over to reveal a dishevelled mess of black fur and whiskers. ‘I think it’s a cat, it was near to where I found him,’

  ‘Well what’s it doing here?

  ‘The thing’s still breathing, don’t ask me how, but it is. It must belong to him,’ the soldier pointed to Farden. ‘After all the little thing’s been through...’ He shrugged.

  The healer shook his head despairingly. ‘Fine, leave it with me. I’ll have him taken to my rooms and I’ll see who he is, if he lives that is.’ The healer spied something colourful under Farden’s torn sleeve. He shifted his long grey hair from his eyes and peered down his beak-like nose. He looked up, a confused look plastered in his face. ‘Scalussen vambraces?’

  The soldier nodded. ‘I know. This isn’t just some washed up sailor,’ he paused, ‘the others might need to hear about this.’

  The healer took a moment to think, and then waved his hands with a shake of his head. ‘Yes yes, after I get him back to health. He can’t go far like this. Here, I’ll send for my guard to take him to my house, and yes I’ll take care of that mangy animal,’ The old man gestured to someone behind him, and a nervous young boy, previously silent in a corner, ran off to fetch help.

  ‘I’ll send a messenger to the Old Dragon,’ the scaly soldier turned to go, but the healer held up a hand to stop him.

  ‘I will do that, when he is ready to be interrogated. At the moment he is too weak to be questioned. This man is at death’s door.’

  The soldier looked as if he were going to say something but thought better of arguing, and nodded to the grey man. ‘Fine with me. Good day, sir.’

  ‘And to you.’ The healer watched the soldier go, and turned back to Farden. He poked under the red and gold vambraces and peered down his beak-like nose at the hidden symbols tattooed onto the mage’s wrists. The man’s emerald eyes widened. His bony hands scraped at the rotting wet tunic on his back and pulled the fabric aside to reveal something that made the breath catch in his throat. But at that moment the guards knocked on the door, and Farden was taken further into the city on a cart covered by a blanket. The grey healer had the mage put in a locked room in his house and had water and food put out for him.

  That night the healer quietly padded down the corridor leading to Farden’s room, holding nothing but a tallow candle tightly in his hand, a hand that quivered with anticipation and a hint of excitement. His bony fingers fiddled with the key in the lock and the man took a few breaths to calm his eager heart. The lock clicked, and he shut the door behind him. The healer lifted the candle high to light the square room. Farden lay prone and unconscious on a wooden table in the middle of the floor. Slowly the grey Siren crept forward and ran his fingers across the mage’s feverish brow. He put his ear to Farden’s mouth and listened to the shallow ragged breaths sneaking in and out between his cracked lips. The healer sniffed. He put the candle down on the edge of the table and pulled a slim knife from under his nightgown. It took all his strength to turn Farden over and get him onto his front, but finally he did it, and began to slice through the mage’s ragged tunic. Cloth parted and betrayed the black lettering hiding underneath. The old healer grinned to himself and squinted. He balanced his little glasses on
the very edge of his nose and tugged at the remaining strands of tunic. Shaking hands moved the candle closer.

  After what seemed like hours, the old man paused to stretch and yawn and rub his eyes. His eyelids felt like they were burning and the yellow light of the dying candle was beginning to fade. Without taking his eyes from the writing on Farden’s back the old healer moved to snuff the flickering flame. With the back of his hand he knocked it to the floor where it spat and dribbled wax on the flagstones. The Siren cursed and bent to pick it up.

  He froze.

  There was something in the room behind him. A huge shadow fell over him like a blanket and the old man shivered with sudden cold. He made a brief squeaking noise as his throat closed up with fear and scrabbled for the candle. Whispering voices called his name and he rubbed his eyes again to try and rid of himself of the shadows dancing around him. He wiped his face and blood from his nose smeared his fingers. He choked on acrid smoke and tasted ice, shivered as hands groped at his legs. A terrified wail broke from the Siren’s throat and he bolted for the door leaving the candle to die on the floor. Breath clogged at the very back of his throat and his heart jumped in his chest with every thundering beat. He groped for the key in the darkness. Terror gripped him and all he could do was run. He fled down the dark corridor, listening to the whispers and shrieks biting at his heels. He skidded and fell into his room, slammed the door, and groped about in the darkness for his bed, his only refuge. Ghosts threw the fingers of dead men at his door. They scraped at the walls and called his name as he quivered beneath a blanket and several pillows. Dark letters swam around his eyes and sleep flew from him like crows. They danced and fluttered their terrible black wings, swarming his room with cawing and scratching, reminding him of every mistake he had ever made, every bad thing he had ever done. The old man cried and sobbed, huddled in a ball under the blanket.

  In a dark room down the corridor, a tallow candle finally burned out on the cold flagstones. A man breathed heavily in the dark. Farden was dreaming his way through a deep, healing sleep, and the life slowly started to return to his weary body.

  ‘Why am I here?’ asked Farden.

  You tell me said the voice. The cat looked at him with the same deadpan look.

  ‘I don’t even know this place,’ said Farden, annoyed. He looked up and tried to melt into his cerulean sky, tried to leave the aching pain in his body behind.

  It’s a little of you, and a little of me.

  ‘Well who are you then?’

  I’m trying to help.

  ‘If you wanted to help, you’d get me out of here, you’d help me up and make the pain go away, you’d get me back to Krauslung and you’d find the book and save Emaneska.’ Farden sighed, feeling the weight of his sky pushing down on him. The heat was unbearable this time. ‘I never asked for this.’

  The cat yawned and stretched. Its skinny black tail swished back and forth through the dust. We never do said the deep voice in his head. We never ask for this, nor do we ever complain, we just do what we’re told. Its what people like you and me do; we fight, and we never ask for anything in return.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Farden. A wind whined through the desert, a cold cackling wind that whipped the sand into spirals and eddies.

  I’m just like you.

  ‘You’re nothing like me,’ scoffed Farden.

  The voice sounded disappointed but earnest. Keep an eye on the weather, Farden, there’s more to this than first appears. You’ve found the dragons, now listen to them.

  ‘Leave me alone, I don’t need your help. I don’t need anybody,’ said Farden, and he crossed his arms stubbornly. The whirling sand whipped his face, and in the spinning dust he discerned faces, faces of Cheska, of Durnus, of Vice, and an old face that he hadn’t seen in a very long time. Grit burned his eyes, and hot tears were stolen by the wind.

  As you wish. Keep an eye on the weather.

  Something rustled near him. Hay scattered and an animal snuffled. Farden kept his eyes tightly closed. His body ached in a thousand places and wrists were screaming against the iron shackles. Straw pricked his back and the wall behind his head was ice-cold. Farden could feel the heat of a fever burning his forehead, and he slowly raised a hand to his skin to see for himself. Chains encircled his wrists, and his vambraces were gone. He was surprised to feel that he still wore his cloak, ripped and torn as it was, but the sackcloth tunic he wore under it felt strange and rough. He blithely wondered where his old one was, and who had dressed him, but a ripple of sickening dizziness brought him back to the matter at hand. He clenched his jaw and slowly, ever so slowly, opened his eyes to peer around the unfamiliar chamber. There was a disgusting stench in the air.

  The room was forged from grey granite walls, square and low with a matching floor, and hay was strewn about him. The only entrance was apparently a stout pine door. The source of the smell was an upturned bucket in the corner. Its foul contents lay in a puddle on the floor. A whispering came from his right, and a nervous rattling of shackles. Farden turned his head gradually, trepidation growing in his throbbing heart. A cackle echoed in the cell.

  Chained to the wall about six feet from him sat a dishevelled character, a mere shell of a Siren man inside which lunacy had taken up residence. Wide green platters of rapt madness were now peering out from the place where eyes used to be, and a wide curve of yellow teeth squatted behind dangling tendrils of matted grey hair thick with filth and dung. The Siren cackled and spat, a thin tongue darted from behind his psychotic smile.

  ‘The… mage! Awake from sleep, dark dark sleep,’ he laughed, cross-eyed.

  Farden backed further away from the raving mad man. It was like stepping back in time to a painful memory. He had seen this before, in his own uncle the last time he had seen him, and the sharp similarity of it made him feel sick. The man foamed at the mouth, grinning and pawing at the mage. The Book carved into a Written’s back was strictly not for reading, and the raw magick in the script could warp the mind of a weaker person. There was a reason the tattoo was placed on the shoulders and back, and the Written were sworn to keep it concealed at all times, hence why Farden was so keen to keep inquisitive people such as Elessi out of harm’s way.

  The mad siren kept reaching out to him, rolling his eyes madly. The resemblance to his uncle was unsettling, a dark memory dug up and dumped at his feet. His broken fingernails found cracks in the granite floor and left bloody scrapes on the stone.

  ‘Where’d you go mage? Where’d you go? Dark dreams you had…dark daemon dreams!’ He hooted, and then muttered to himself. ‘Dreamdreamdream, stuck in a desert.’

  ‘Be quiet!’ Farden shouted and the man twitched and snuffled.

  ‘Hah! I’ve read your mind! Felt the lines on your back, felt the writing on my fingers calling to me.’ The man grinned a scaly smile so wide Farden thought he might break his face.

  ‘Silence!’

  All of a sudden there was a bang on the door, and the heavy bolts slid from their holes. Half a dozen guards burst through the wide doorway and rushed in to grab the two prisoners. A soldier hit the mad Siren around the head with a club and he fell to the floor with a cry.

  ‘Do not move!’ Another shouted inches from Farden’s face, and the mage froze. Heavy keys jiggled in the locks around his wrists and he fell to the floor with a flurry of hay. Farden was roughly hauled upright and dragged from the room, with the shouts of his crazy cellmate ringing down the corridor.

  ‘Beware the dragons mage! They’ll steal your soul!’ He was silenced by a kick.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ Farden coughed weakly. His body screamed out to him in pain.

  ‘Shut it, Arka, He wants to speak with you,’ the man said from a mouth ringed with blue scales.

  ‘Who… ?’ managed Farden.

  The Siren narrowed his eyes at the beaten mage. ‘No more questions!’ he elbowed him hard in an already burning rib.

  Farden was silent for the rest of the journey, or dragging, and
drifted in and out of a feverish consciousness. He was manhandled up steps and through corridors, along bridges and across bustling thoroughfares filled with gawking Siren citizens. Pain from a hundred cuts and bruises blurred with his fever as he was hauled onto a wide bridge that arched over a massive cave carpeted by rolling fields. The dark walls rose upwards and culminated in a huge ring of rocks like a crater. Daylight surged through the opening high above Farden’s head and he could see the snow drifting gently through the cold air. As the party crossed the long road he managed to glimpse looks at the farms and buildings below him. Countless people milled around below them like ants, wandering through the furrowed fields and farmhouses, down lanes and curving roads.

  A good half an hour later Farden was dumped unceremoniously at the top of a flight of stairs. Cold wind messed with his hair and he tried to push his head up to see, but a guard yanked him backwards, and the refreshing mountain air was taken away. Farden was dragged again, this time somewhere that swung and wallowed as if he floated. There was a creaking and he felt as though he were moving upwards. The mage tried to reserve his strength for whatever was coming, so he kept his eyes shut and concentrated on staying conscious.

  After a while he was hauled across what felt like a cold shiny floor and left in a foetal position. All was silent. Behind him a large door was slammed and the sound of boots ceased. Light shimmered behind Farden’s eyelids, and he waited.

  ‘Can you stand?’ asked a massive booming voice.

  Farden lay still and kept his eyes closed. Feeling his fingers stretch out beneath him he pushed himself up shakily. Every limb wailed in protest. He cursed under his breath and looked for the first time at his surroundings.

  There had not been many times in his life that Farden had felt such awe and shock, and been speechless because of his surroundings. This was one of those times. The humbled mage felt beyond tiny as he gazed upwards at a massive domed roof that seemed to tower effortlessly hundreds of feet above him. Thin shafts of bright light poked through the tough granite rock like holes pierced in a grey blanket and a huge skylight punctured the far side of the ceiling, a massive doorway to the snowy skies outside. At least a thousand ledges were carved into the rock, all over the hall, huge sconces carved from the stone that ran up and along the walls like countless honeycombed nests. The candlelight of hundreds of lamps flickered all around him, and dragons, scores of dragons, filled the lower ledges of the gigantic hall. They squatted and perched on piles of soft hay, surrounded by little candles and pitchers of water and accompanied by their riders. Farden noticed, with a somewhat unexpected dismay, that only half the nests in the cave seemed to be occupied, dark without their candles and visitors. He wondered what this hall would have looked like before the war. The huge lizards shuffled and shifted all around him, and the sound of their breathing and their dragon-riders whispering to each other was deafening. The smell of reptile and woodsmoke was a strange mix, but welcome after the stench of his cell. A ring of guards surrounded him and watched him carefully, but the mage’s eyes were now fixed on what he saw before him.