by Ben Galley
As Modren descended some steps, he came across a long corridor peeling off to his right. The single torch still stubbornly burnt near its mouth, sooting the pale ceiling with its funeral flames. Modren took a step forward and angled his ear. Silence. Only the torch dared its noise. The Undermage eyed the lone door at the corridor’s end. It was still stuck fast and solid. The way he had cast it, the spell would hold for several days. The wedding would be over by then. Farden would be livid, but so be it. Modren shrugged. There were many things more important than Farden’s feelings. They could do without him.
Modren walked on, a small spark of anticipation growing in his stomach. Was it excitement? Was he nervous? Was it worry, mutating into fear? He knew little of any of those, but it was something. He quickened his pace, steel-clad boots making music on the stone.
Wretched. The early sunlight showed it well in the mirror’s face. Farden couldn’t help but stare at himself. Part of him hoped it would get up and walk away, leaving him there sprawled on the floor, like a sad corpse. Then it wouldn’t be him, and he could be content in simply feeling like death rather than looking like it as well.
At the end of a meandering trail of sweat, broken glass, and vomit, lay the mage. His arms and legs were dead weights. His throat was raw like a hunter’s fresh kill. His skin was clammy and cold, sweat-rimed.
The only mercy was that his headache had died with the morning light.
The old mirror had warped with its years in storage. It made his face bulge in odd proportions, as though his dark-rimmed eyes were trying very hard to escape their sockets. Farden reached a hand up and pushed it away. ‘What a state we are,’ Farden whispered to it. He had to get up, he knew it.
With a wrench and grunt, he pulled himself up from his stupor. It took him almost five minutes to get to his feet, and when he did, he tottered around the room, feeling the world spin. When it finally settled to its normal kilter, Farden began to take in the room that he had only seen in darkness. It was a storage room, as he had guessed, packed with objects covered in dust sheets. Another mirror lay on the floor, smeared with vomit. It was smashed and broken and its old wooden frame was snapped in two. Farden didn’t remember doing that.
The morning light was pouring through a high and narrow window in the far wall. Far too high to reach and far too thin to offer any escape. Farden looked back at the door, the door that snake Modren had sealed shut. Farden picked up a sliver of glass and hurled it at the door. It smashed without so much as a wooden thud, just a hard-edged clink that only stone or steel could offer. So the spell held fast…
Farden gingerly began to poke around under the dust sheets and behind corners. It was all just furniture; old, battered furniture that nobody had a need for. Farden had hoped for some sort of metal curtain rod or stout table leg, but neither was to be found. Farden put his hands to his filthy face and began to realise he would be stuck in here for a good while. He would miss the wedding. Exactly as Modren had wanted. He would miss the fight, if there was one. The stupid fools.
Farden sighed. Well that simply would not do.
As the dawn rose, Krauslung slowly came to life. To to the north, a line of servants and well-dressed guests began to flow and trickle up the long hill to the juvenile Spire, the former laden with crates and boxes and plates and packages of food. Carts pulled by bears and cows followed them with barrels of wine and ale, ready for the merrymaking. Soldiers stood along the path, staring intently at the passers-by. Conversation buzzed like flies in the warming air. Everybody had something on their lips.
Word had it the Arkmages were to abdicate.
The riots had called for it, after all!
Malvus had finally brought them to task, confronted them!
But why was the army here?
Would the wedding still go ahead?
The Arkmages have already been thrown down by the righteous Malvus, tossed into prison!
That’s preposterous! They had been sighted at the Spire already.
Quiet down near the soldiers!
The rumours raged on, a blaze of opinion.
As the trickle of guests grew into a river, two figures emerged from a skinny door in the shadow of a ramshackle inn. Both wore hoods and stolen finery. One was old. One was young. The older one put a hand behind the younger one’s back and was rewarded with an insolent shrug.
‘Calm yourself!’ came a hiss.
‘Then leave me be. I need to concentrate!’ came the reply.
‘You need to move quicker. We’ll look suspicious if we dawdle.’
‘Shut it, Lilith.’
Lilith went to backhand the girl, but the glance of sheer power and venom in Samara’s eyes almost caused her to choke. She slowly lowered her hand, and nodded.
‘Hobble or something. Make it look like I’m escorting my old aunt.’
Lilith gently cradled her frail hand in the bend of Samara’s arm and put on a limp. Together they joined the line of guests that were walking to the wedding. A rainbow-coloured line of the city’s finest, bedecked in jewels and trinkets and their wedding best. Political turmoil or not, the Arka’s upper echelons wouldn’t be seen dead missing a social occasion.
Samara and Lilith tucked themselves behind a pair of plump old men and listened to them waffle on about Hâlorn trade taxes. Behind them, a woman was shepherding a gang of uncomfortable yet incredibly well-dressed children onwards. Samara glanced around, and met the eyes of a guard scanning the crowd. He caught her gaze, looked her up and down, and didn’t bat an eyelash. Samara allowed herself a little smile. Nobody had any idea that a monster walked in their midst.
Snap!
The dagger-blade fractured, sending Farden crashing into the wall. Marble met cheek, and he slid to the floor. He lifted a hand to nurse a tooth and a bitten lip. A shard of dagger had narrowly missed his neck. It lay in a pile of slivers on the floor, broken, embarrassed. Farden kicked it away and quickly began to claw at where the hinge had been fastened to the marble. He had already chipped away a little of the stone. He managed to prise one of its edges up with his fingers, but that was as far as he got. The door was stuck fast in the frame.
Farden grit his teeth as the spell bit his fingers again. It was like being clouted with a bat. The pain leapt up his arm and reverberated down his side. Farden pummelled the door some more, exacting some futile revenge. The echoes of his fists hitting the solid door were nothing short of mocking.
‘Gods damn you, Modren!’ Farden shouted to the room. He kicked out at a nearby crate and marched in a furious circle. He had to get out of that room before it was too late. Their plan was utterly ridiculous. Trying to coax his daughter out of hiding was like waving a red flag in front of a minotaur. If she was what they thought she was, then could they stop her? Ridiculous. And how dare they use Elessi’s own wedding? Farden demanded. Surely, if the decades had taught them all anything, it was the value of rash decisions.
Such was life.
Farden clenched his fists until they shook. He stared at the door with every inch of his being. A dusty fragment of a memory came floating through his head then, an old echo from his days at the School, of his classes with Jasfell Sund. The Locksmith they had called him. He knew the inside and out of every lock spell that had ever been dreamt up. He could hear his monotone voice drifting through the stark classroom.
What is the easiest way to open a door? A key! they had chorused. Of course, young ones. Every door has a lock, every lock its key, and every key its teeth. It is the same with our spells, young ladies and gentlemen, you just have to get the teeth in the right place.
The mage held his breath until his chest burnt. He kicked out at the nearby crate one more time. No. He couldn’t just let it burst back into his life again, as dangerous and accursed as his magick was. It had ruined his life, and others’ in the process.
Farden winced, abruptly torn. How much was Elessi’s life worth? How desperate was he to get out of that godsforsaken room? Was he truly that stubborn?
Farden swallowed the tough lump that was lodged in his throat. He gently tugged his sleeve up to his elbow, unfastened his vambrace, and looked down at the black key symbol tattooed into his wrist. It was like staring at the stark outline of a frozen body in the dirty snow. Dead to the world. Long gone. Farden sighed.
If anyone knew about resurrection, it was him.
The ash tree had taught him that.
‘Fuck it!’ he cursed, and then marched to the door. He knelt to the stone and spread his fingers over the door. It was cold, rough, immovable. Farden scrunched up his eyes and pushed until the tired muscles in his arms stood like knotted ropes under his skin. Nothing happened. The door refused to budge. Farden strained and strained, like a grave-robber caught by the dawn, he frantically tried to dig up whatever he could remember of his magick. Would it kill him? Possibly. He filed that thought away and pushed harder. He didn’t have a choice.
For an age, nothing happened. Farden began to sweat. He got cramp in his arm. The nausea began to rise…
Something flickered at the base of his spine. He winced as the pain of it darted into his skull, firing up his headache once again. Had he cracked open his eyes he would have seen a faint glow flash across his tattoo. Then it happened again. Another flicker. Another pulse. Farden held on tight as the magick came, inch by painful inch.
The door began to rattle viciously. Modren’s spell began to fight back. Gods, this spell was strong. He couldn’t remember feeling a spell like this before. He pushed and pushed with everything he could grasp at.
Farden held on for dear life as his magick burst forth in one debilitating strike. It burst from him like a tidal wave, cracking the doorhandle in two and turning half the wood into powder. Farden flew backwards under the pressure, crying out as he was tossed into the stiff embrace of a gilded wardrobe. The impact drove the breath from his lungs. He lay in a mass of splinters, wheezing like a fish that had suddenly found itself on a mountainside.
It took more than a minute for Farden to move. His fingers twitched, then his arms, then his legs, and then finally his eyes fluttered open. He rolled out of the wreckage and slid onto the glass-strewn floor. He looked at the door and then, ludicrously, he began to laugh. Had anyone stumbled across the corridor at that precise moment, it would have been a sight beyond odd. A filthy mage lying on his face, bleeding from several angles, surrounded by broken things, covered in stale vomit, giggling to himself. Farden put his forehead to the cold floor. His body was on fire. His head pounded, but he had done it. He had done it.
With his muscles shaking and glass digging into his ribs, he pushed himself up, stepped through what was left of the door, and began to run as fast as his body would bloody well let him.
‘She’s here,’ said the breathless runner, skidding to a halt.
‘Who?’ asked Modren, hand flying to his sword hilt.
The boy pointed in the general direction of the city. ‘Your wife, sir. I mean, your… er,’ he stammered.
‘I understand,’ Modren said, waving the boy back out of the tent. He waited until he was gone before he exhaled. The Undermage adjusted his armour for the hundredth time. Modren was a man who had once beaten a minotaur to death with a rock, a man who’d drank a Huskar chieftain and his bear under a table, a man who had climbed the slopes of Lokki just for a training exercise. He was the Undermage of the Arka. A Written. Magick elite. A scarred veteran, and yet here he was, terrified of meeting his wife-to-be at the scales of marriage.
Modren peered through the crack in the tent flap and looked at the veritable sea of guests that had arrived. It wasn’t them that scared him; it was the little pulpit and the set of golden scales standing at the end of the long carpet that split the crowd in two. Modren scanned the crowd. The blind woman, Jeasin, was near the front, looking bewildered in borrowed clothes. Durnus was sitting in front of her, surrounded by guards. Verix and Loki sat apart, silent and watchful of the skies. A few council members could be spotted too, probably there at the behest of Malvus. He hadn’t dared to show his face. He had been polite enough to stall his coup for a day. If Modren looked closely, he could also see some of his Written hidden in the crowd, ready and waiting.
A hand snaked around the flap and a wizened old man with an unfortunately massive mole on his nose ducked into the tent. Modren stepped aside, momentarily stunned by this stranger’s boldness. He was about to demand who in Emaneska he was when the man ran his hands through his sparse white hair and turned it dark and bushy. ‘Can’t stand all that gossiping and staring. It’s incessant,’ the man muttered, in Tyrfing’s voice. The Arkmage wiped his armoured hands across his cheeks and chin, producing a beard and a familiar face. He stood straight and his bones straightened and clicked back into place one by one. Shapeshifting at its best. Tyrfing cleared his throat with a wince. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked, hoarsely.
‘Odd.’
‘Marriage,’ snorted Tyrfing. ‘Some men choose war instead.’
Modren chuckled and ran a hand through his white-blonde hair. Despite the cool air, there was a hint of sweat on his brow. ‘Have the guards seen anything?’
‘You need to focus on your wedding, Modren, and nothing else,’ Tyrfing replied, pouring himself a glass of turquoise wine from a table nearby. He sniffed it, sipped it, and then gulped half of it down. ‘Not a sign. Not a hint. We’re seeing more trouble from the rioters than we are from her.’
‘Maybe she won’t come. Maybe we were wrong…’
‘I won’t consider that for a second. We stick to the plan,’ said the Arkmage. Tyrfing finished his glass. ‘I’m sorry, Modren, that this is your wedding day…’ he would have carried on, but he winced as another cough fought its way out.
Modren held up a hand. ‘I’m not. As much as I don’t like it, it’s better we have it now, than on a tomorrow that may not exist.’
Tyrfing nodded. There was sense in that, be it bitter. He held out a hand and Modren clasped it. They felt their keys pulse, and then Tyrfing stepped out into the sunshine. ‘She’s here, you know.’
‘I do,’ Modren said. In that moment, the skalds began to play their ljots and pipes, and an elegant tune filled the morning air. There was a murmuring sigh as the huge crowd got to their feet. Modren adjusted his armour one last time, and, as Tyrfing held the tent-flap aside for him, the Undermage stepped out onto the dew-touched grass and strode confidently towards the golden scales, all eyes upon him.
‘For the tenth time, Bringlin, take them aside and let the others pass,’ ordered Lieutenant Rossar, his forehead resting between finger and thumb, a sign of exasperation.
‘Sorry, Lieutenant. Please, miss, stand aside,’ Bringlin ordered the woman and her child.
‘What is the meaning of this, soldier? We shall be late to the wedding!’
‘It will only take a moment ma’am. It’s for your own safety.’
The mages were spread out like a safety net across the road, just shy of halfway to Manesmark. The sun beat down on their silver and bronze armour, brand new and branded by the forge-mark of the Arkmage himself. It was the kind of armour that straightened the back, lifted the chin, and puffed the chest. It didn’t need any spell for that.
Further up the hill, another hundred or so stood in two wings, either side of the road, ready to pounce. The Winter Regiment’s orders were simple: Keep the preachers and rioters in the city, Stop and question any and all girls between the ages of eight and eighteen. And if you see Farden, stop him.
Bringlin began to run through the questions, trying not to smile and instead keep an air of toughness about him. The poor girl standing before him looked no less than terrified. She was a sliver above eight maybe, all golden curls and gawping blue eyes. The mother, on the other hand, was a fearsome-looking woman, perhaps half bear. The size of a small shed, she was huffing and puffing so much that her head looked set to blow. She had her hands set firmly on her ample hips and was in the process of boring a hole in Bringlin’s forehead with her narrowed ey
es. Bringlin tried his level best to ignore her and stared at the girl. She shivered in her finest pink dress. Bringlin stared into her little blue eyes, letting his magick do its interrogating while he went through the routine questions. ‘What is your name, miss?’
‘Kinl, sir.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘Krauslung?’ chirped the girl.
‘Where exactly?’
‘The big white house on Haverff Alley?’ Every answer was another question.
‘Who’s wedding are you going to?’
‘A maid’s?’
The woman huffed some more. A few of the other guests pointed and tittered as they passed by on the road, and she turned a shade of red. ‘Really, mage, these questions are pointless. We’re already very late. Whoever it is you’re looking for, it’s obvious my little Kinl isn’t her.’
Wary of the lieutenant’s eyes on his back, Bringlin withdrew his magick. He was satisfied; the little girl was about as magickal as a pebble. ‘Fine,’ he said, waving them back to the road. ‘Enjoy the wedding.’
‘Hmph,’ was all the large woman could say as she dragged her little girl up the hill. Bringlin crossed his arms and turned back to the crowds. He heard a faint whisper of music on the breeze. So the ceremony had begun then, thought the young mage, as he stared up at the powder-blue sky and the black smudge of the Spire against it. Bringlin sniffed the air and caught the scent of hot food, wine, farska, cakes, and ale. He sighed, stretching, and wondered if they would have a chance to sample any of it. It’s not every day there’s a wedding…
