The Written

by Ben Galley

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

  Chapter 19

  “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.

  Outside the room, behind the locked door, down the long hallway and up several flights of curling stairs, in the highest part of the fortress, Vice strode back and forth between the pillars and tall windows. His boot scuffed softly across the smooth marble. Anticipation bubbled up inside him as he felt the final pieces of his plan sliding and clicking into place. His victory felt very close at hand now. There was only one final problem to deal with, and he was tied to a chair downstairs in one of the empty dining halls. He would take care of him in a moment.

  There was a clattering or armour and the sound of boots on marble, and the Undermage turned around. A soldier ran up to him and saluted quickly. The man seemed very agitated. Vice gestured for him to speak. ‘Your Mage, they’re here, in the city,’ he blurted.

  Vice allowed himself a brief shiver of excitement. ‘King Bane?’

  The soldier nodded eagerly. ‘Yes my lord. His soldiers are rounding up our men and going about the streets telling everyone to stay inside.’

  ‘Good. Tell them not to resist and to follow their orders. Bane comes in peace, do you understand me? None of the Skölgard are to be harmed in any way. You can escort the King to the great hall at his leisure, and tell him I will await him there,’ ordered the Undermage. The soldier clicked his heels together with a metallic twang and hurried back down the hallway.

  Vice smiled with pride. He could almost hear the pieces clicking into place now. It was time to pay someone a brief visit.

  Farden was concentrating on staying conscious. He hadn’t felt like so close to slipping away since the shipwreck, when he lay on the cold table with the healer standing over him humming to himself as he worked. He focused all his energy on simply breathing and tried to get some of the magick to creep back into his body. The warm glow started to warm his cold aching bones. There must have been something wrong with his eyes because the floor and the walls in front of him were painted with harlequin patterns of different coloured light. Everything had been turned shades of red, green, yellow, and blue. Farden blinked, hard, but the colours didn’t go away. There looked to be a wide door at the end of the room, and a small flight of steps. A long hardwood table lay against the wall on the left, surrounded by wooden chairs, some lying awkwardly on the floor, others stacked in twos and threes between the pillars. He squinted at the crest hanging on the wall to his right, a golden pair of scales, equally balanced, emblazoned on a white shield topped with tiny mountain flowers shaped from polished steel.

  Farden was in the Arkathedral. He was somehow back in Krauslung, not Albion. He pondered how long he could have been there, tied to the chair in that empty room. His tongue was dry enough and his stomach ached enough for it to have been days. Farden had no way of knowing.

  There was an abrupt bang and the metallic sound of dangling keys twisting in locks. There was another bang, and a slow creak. Two blurry figures walked in to the hall, a tall one and another, Farden couldn’t make them out. The tall one walked straight towards him while rubbing his hands. He appeared to be smiling. The other
disappeared into the shadows. Farden blinked slowly like an owl, and lifted his head to look at the stranger walking slowly across the floor. The muticoloured light swirled over him and turned his robe into its canvas. It painted his face strange hues of red and yellow. Vice leaned close to Farden and chuckled. He was in a good mood. ‘I’ll take these,’ he said, and reached into Farden’s pockets to retrieve the Weight and the daemonstone. It glowed in his hand and Vice narrowed his eyes at it. ‘Aptly named,’ he muttered, and slipped it and the Weight into a pocket of his own.

  Farden tried to spit at him, but there was nothing in his mouth, so he just panted instead, feeling his furry tongue rasp against his dry teeth.

  ‘Manners Farden, we have company,’ said the Undermage.

  ‘Wh...’ the mage croaked.

  ‘Why? When? What? You still have no idea what’s going on do you? Poor Farden, so blind.’ Vice stepped back to admire his prey, helpless and weak, bound tightly to a chair. He looked up at the huge stained glass window that took up the whole of the back wall. It depicted a huge arching portrait of the sun shining over the port of Rós with a man standing in the centre of it, a proud looking old mage accepting a ball of light from the white goddess above him. Vice scowled, and began to pace back and forth.

  Farden coughed and spluttered. He managed some hoarse words. ‘I killed your hydra, it’s over.’

  ‘Hah, I find that very unlikely. I might as well tell you that at this very moment the good King Bane is perusing the newest addition to his realms. After all of this trouble with his lovely daughter, he is most anxious to see order restored to the Arka, especially after all the mess they have made.’ Vice sneered and his teeth glowed red in the odd light. ‘And Farden, the so-called saviour of the proud Arka, will be charged with treason and sent to the gallows to hang for all to see. It seems that you have gone mad, my good mage, just like your uncle did. It was you who committed the murders at Arfell, it was you who stole the tearbook from the Sirens, and it was you who tried to summon the hydra for yourself. Thank the gods that I was there to stop you in time. You see Farden, Bane is here to announce the new and only Arkmage, his very loyal subject, the Lord Vice. I wouldn’t be too surprised if Åddren did not survive the night.’ Vice grinned, his masterpiece divulged. There was a moment of silence as the pieces finally slid into position, and Farden was left to stare into space. It was all just for power. Utter, ruthless, and absolute power.

  ‘You’re nothing but a common thief,’ mumbled Farden.

  ‘Oh I am much more than that dear boy, I am a merchant of chaos. There will be all out war again, if the King of Skölgard and I have anything to do with it. The fall of the Siren kingdoms will take a year or two at most, but we will break them in the end.’

  ‘With another of your plots?’ Farden narrowed his eyes, thinking of all the things Vice had taken from him. ‘You disgust me Vice. It should be you in the gallows, not me,’ he said.

  ‘Then tell me why it’s you that’s tied to a chair, bound and beaten, and confused as usual? It has taken us years to get this far. And if you hadn’t been such a disappointment then you wouldn’t be in this current situation,’ replied Vice. He jabbed a finger at the mage.

  Farden grinned a weary but insolent smile. ‘Then why is it so hard to kill me?’

  The Undermage shot him a dark look. ‘Because you’re a stubborn bastard, and I needed your stupidity. Of course it’s not that things went without any complications. The sorcerer I placed on the Sarunn with you was one of my oldest but he was a complete moronic fool. He was supposed to wait until you got back from Nelska, once you had delivered the precious tearbook to that Siren Queen, Svarta. He obviously got a little too greedy. And after all this time to think that Farfallen, that ugly beast, had survived his wounds? That I did not expect. But despite these things it all fell into my lap, and my plan went ahead accordingly.’

  ‘What about Helyard?’

  ‘That dreary old fool was doomed from the start. His hatred for the Sirens made him an easy target, and with the power he had it made sense that he was behind it all. You saw for yourself how quick the dragon-riders were to condemn him, and the amount of dignity he displayed on leaving the hall. The old bastard deserved everything he got.’

  ‘You love hearing the sound of your own voice don’t you Vice?’ interrupted Farden. The Undermage backhanded him hard and he spat blood on the floor. The slap made his head throb even more. He rolled his eyes and tried to focus again. Vice was still talking.

  ‘What did I say about manners in front of guests? You’re about to miss the best part Farden, patience please. Do you want to know what you are, why you were so perfect to manipulate?

  The mage shook his head, suddenly very wary that a pair of eyes were watching him from the shadows. Vice laughed with a dark tone and crossed his arms triumphantly.

  ‘You were an experiment Farden,’ he lectured, ‘a test to see if a Written could withstand the deeper magicks and attain a new state of perfection. I was the one who originally brought the Scribe to the Arka all those years ago, and with you I had him write a few special things into your Book, a few extra things an ordinary Written couldn’t survive, things that in the end, turned your own uncle mad.’ Vice paused to sneer once again as Farden glared. ‘That’s right, you heard me, you were to be a weapon just like your uncle Tyrfing.

  ‘But you weren’t perfect either, oh no, by all definitions you were yet another disaster: a reclusive self-involved individual with a perverse sense of right and wrong, hanging on every word that dreary vampyre of yours had to say and too stupid to see past your own anger. So you became a tool Farden, a pawn for me to manoeuvre and exploit as I wished while I waited for another exceptional individual such as yourself to come along. Someone of better upbringing, with ideals and power, somebody who would follow and serve the true power in Emaneska.’

  ‘I guess that true power would be you then?’ Farden spat, straining uncomfortably against the ropes.

  Vice’s eyes momentarily flashed with a deep murderous fire that Farden had never seen before. ‘You Arka are like lambs for slaughter to me, meat to be sold and bartered with. I have watched you since the first sun rose above the mountains, when you were over-confident and weak, and I have watched you grow into a spineless nation of magicians and prostitutes. I’ve spent too long simply watching, and now what is there left to do with the Arka except destroy them? I just happened to save two of the better ones for myself,’ he snarled. Vice slowly lowered his head until his eyes were level with the mage’s, only a few inches from his face. Farden stared straight back at him. ‘What are you?’ he asked, and the Undermage tapped him on the cheek.

  ‘That’s a story for another day, my dear mage, one that you won’t be hearing.’ He tapped him again, harder. ‘You’re not curious Farden? Not at all? Who else could I have under my wing besides Ridda and that idiot, Karga? Could it be Åddren? No of course not, he’s catatonic after the loss of his precious Helyard, too busy soiling his robe with fear and weak indecision.’ Slap. Farden’s cheek stung. He didn’t care any more. Vice had taken everything away from him that there was to take. The Undermage continued.

  ‘Not any of the Sirens, no, who could get closer to you than anyone. Let me see, maybe the man you buy nevermar from, that good friend of mine? No closer still, even more than your precious Durnus...’ Vice chuckled, and stepped back to swing an arm wide. He pointed to the shadows. ‘Say hello to Farden,’ he said.

  Footsteps echoed on the stone, and then a very familiar figure walked from the darkness, a figure he had let his hands explore every inch of, a smile he had kissed countless times, eyes he had stared into for hours on end, that he had emptied himself into, that he had told his darkest secrets to except one, that he loved this person more than anything or anyone he had ever encountered, that she was the only thing that made him feel normal.

  Cheska performed a little wave and smiled at him coyly. Farden was breathless. There was one more thing to take. His hear
t felt like it was slowly grinding to a halt. The love of his life stood in front of him with her hands on her hips, smiling with those mountain-lake eyes, reflecting purple and green in the strange light.

  ‘You died... in that fire...’ managed Farden.

  Cheska wandered closer. ‘The fire was Vice’s idea, but it was necessary to make you believe I was gone.’ She shook her head. ‘You always were a strange one, Farden, so emotionally complex for a Written. You’re so concerned with not becoming your uncle you didn’t give any thought to who you were.’ She leaned in to whisper in his ear. ‘You’re like fire, you only come alive in the dark.’

  Farden could smell her, that scent that she had left on his pillow. He choked back something, and didn’t dare himself to speak. She smiled. ‘It was fun, for a while,’ she said. ‘And we got what we needed.’

  ‘If you’re curious Farden, the only thing I needed from you was you,’ said Vice, in a low tone.

  The mage looked up suddenly, feeling the same darkness he had felt in the bowels of Carn Breagh. Something felt deeply wrong. He stared straight into Cheska’s complacent eyes and saw only sick truth hidden there. She stepped slowly back, now with a very serious expression. There was no fondness there. Vice walked up behind her and let a pale hand rest on one of her shoulders. He watched Farden with glowing eyes, victorious and supercilious. His other hand curled around her waist and pressed her against her stomach.

  ‘A little spark of life grows inside Cheska’s womb, a child of pure power born from two Written. There is a reason the offspring of such a union is outlawed, Farden, and that reason is very simple. Your child will be the finest mage Emaneska has ever seen, and my finest weapon.’