The Iron Ghost

by Jen Williams

  Cautiously, Frith stepped through the door and back into the Forge room, being sure to pull the door closed behind him. Joah was there, carrying a pile of stained rags towards a crate that already looked half filled with rubbish. The Heart-Stone, still caught within the aperture in the wall, was glowing and flickering oddly, spilling out its sickening, greenish light. The stone itself looked darker than it had, as though it were cast into permanent shadow.

  ‘Aaron, you’re awake!’ Joah dropped the rags into the crate, grinning broadly. ‘I’ve just been tidying up. I did what I could, of course, to keep this place held in the same moment of time, but even my spells have struggled with over a thousand years passing. I should be glad that any of it has survived at all, I suppose.’ He paused to slap a thick stack of leather books, which sent a cloud of dust up into his face. He coughed, waving a hand in front of his face. ‘I do apologise, dear Aaron. It’s really quite filthy.’

  Frith looked around the room, desperately searching for something he’d missed on his initial visit, but the place was as confusing as ever; a great, round room, with myriad iron doors leading off to who knew what, the red lights in the ceiling glowing like dying stars.

  ‘I was wondering if –’ He took a deep breath. His stomach was roiling unpleasantly, and the light from the Heart-Stone was giving him a headache. ‘I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind showing me around this Forge of yours.’ He found himself slipping into the formal courtesies he’d once been so familiar with, back in his life at Blackwood Keep, before Fane and his followers had destroyed his life. You are visiting another lord’s home, he told himself, and you must be polite. Feign interest. See what you can find out. ‘It all looks very interesting.’ He forced a smile, and watched as Joah lit up. This was exactly what he’d wanted to hear.

  ‘But of course!’ Joah immediately abandoned the box of junk and came over to take hold of Frith’s shoulder, steering him towards one of the iron doors. ‘It’s much bigger than people realise. Here, let me show you.’

  It was a labyrinth of horrors.

  The door opened onto a corridor, made from the same riveted iron plates Frith had seen before. It immediately turned sharply left, seeming to curve around the central Forge room, and on the opposite wall were more doors with narrow horizontal windows. They reminded Frith uneasily of jail cells, until he realised that’s exactly what they were, more or less.

  Joah paused by the nearest one, his expression suddenly uneasy. ‘What you must understand, Aaron, is that Bezcavar is a creature with certain appetites. In order to grow powerful, and therefore grant power, it requires the suffering of living beings. It appears to feed off it.’

  ‘I am aware of that,’ said Frith, remembering the cauldron of blood in the great hall, and the men and women in chains. The Edenier was a dull heat inside his chest, and he curled his hands into fists. ‘Very aware, in fact.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Joah, not quite looking at him. ‘At first I was quite happy to provide such sacrifices myself. After all, what is some pain in the pursuit of knowledge? The things I was learning, Aaron, were extraordinary, far beyond anything the mages could have taught me. But in the end that became inconvenient, and the demon, as it grew stronger, was demanding more and more suffering in its name. I could only provide so much, alone.’ He paused, and pulled open the door. Inside, the cell was narrow and dark, the floor stained and pitted. Joah gestured once, and two enormous iron plates facing on opposite walls began to move slowly towards each other, reducing the space in the room until it would have been impossible to move around. Eventually, they were so close that anyone caught in there would have been crushed between the plates.

  ‘You put people in here? You . . . killed them with this contraption?’

  ‘A simple idea,’ said Joah, ‘but I think you see its application.’

  Frith found he couldn’t say anything at all, so they moved on to the next room. In here the floor was covered with long iron strips, which Joah heated with the Edenier. Within seconds they were glowing a baleful red, and Frith could feel the heat against his face. There was also a distinct aroma of cooking meat, as the heat caused some old stains to grow warm again.

  Joah cleared his throat. ‘Of course, when you have the Edenier at your disposal,’ he said, ‘you have a great many more tools. You can wreak a great amount of destruction with the mages’ magic, as I’m sure you know.’

  Frith remembered storming his way through Blackwood Keep, crushing a man’s bones with a mere thought.

  ‘The people you brought here. Were they your enemies?’

  Joah looked at him strangely. ‘Enemies? Why, no. They were simply whoever happened to be closest. Whoever was most convenient.’ He paused, and his voice took on a more serious tone. ‘I would not consider myself to have enemies, Aaron, save for those mages who could not understand what it was I was doing here. Bringing them to this place and interring them in these rooms would not have been so straightforward, of course.’

  ‘No, because they could have fought back,’ said Frith, but Joah did not seem to notice his bitter tone. Instead, he led Frith around the curving corridor, showing him room after room of horrors. In one the floor was funnel-shaped with a hole in the centre covered with a grille, and Joah explained how he had slowly flooded the room with an acidic liquid that did not kill immediately, but instead gradually caused skin to separate from flesh. A few doors down from that was a room filled with a complex web of what looked like wire, although when Frith reached out to touch it, he realised it was razor sharp; a thin line of blood appeared across his finger before he was even aware he’d made contact.

  ‘Made with the knowledge Bezcavar gave me,’ said Joah, a hint of pride in his voice. ‘No blacksmith could forge anything so thin or so sharp.’

  The final room was a simple box, with nothing in it at all. When Frith looked at him questioningly, Joah shrugged.

  ‘In here I would starve people. Perhaps it is not as impressive as the other rooms, but hunger can lead to extraordinary levels of suffering.’

  All at once, Frith felt the slim barrier of politeness he’d erected shatter. The Edenier swarmed in his chest like something alive. He rounded on Joah.

  ‘You are a monster,’ he said simply. ‘No better than a demon, and worse even than the man who took my castle from me. He did it for personal greed at least, but this? Pretending this is in the pursuit of knowledge?’

  He gestured at the room and a flicker of violet flames appeared at the ends of his fingers. Joah’s reaction was immediate. Frith felt the full force of the blow in the centre of his chest moments before he collided with the solid iron wall behind him. It was enough to knock all the air from his lungs and cast him to his knees, while Joah stood over him.

  ‘No,’ he said, his voice tight. ‘You’re not listening, Aaron. I need you to understand.’ He ran a hand through his hair, his hand trembling slightly. ‘You are the only one left, so you cannot be against me.’

  Frith looked up at him, trying to ignore the pain in his back. He did not trust himself to speak.

  ‘The rest of them have gone,’ said Joah. He seemed to be trying to convince himself of something. ‘They are gone, and now there is only you and I.’

  After prissily brushing himself down, Joah helped Frith to his feet again. Frith staggered, leaning heavily on the rogue mage before pushing himself away abruptly, repulsed by his touch. It would be so easy to die here, without seeing daylight again. And knowing that he was afraid only made him angrier, of course.

  ‘Didn’t you feel anything?’ he said quietly. ‘Do you have no sympathy for your fellow human beings?’

  Joah chuckled indulgently. His outburst of anger appeared to have vanished as quickly as it manifested.

  ‘But Aaron, you and I are no mere humans. We are god-touched, and demon-taught, if we so wish it, and we have great things to accomplish. Such worries and moral questions are for other people. Here, I have one last thing to show you.’

  At the e
nd of the curving corridor was a set of metal steps. Joah led them down into another wide circular room, supposedly the twin of the Forge just above. Rather than work tables and instruments, this room was full of smooth black iron discs – some as big as cartwheels, a few as small as plates. They hung together in a strange network, some supported by other discs, others just hanging in mid-air. It looked hellishly complicated, and every single one was engraved with a complex covering of symbols – Frith recognised a few mages’ words here and there, but mostly he saw the black shiny writing he’d seen elsewhere in the Forge. It was like looking at the heart of some great, unknowable animal.

  ‘Isn’t it magnificent?’ said Joah. He walked over to one of the discs and touched it with his finger. Immediately it spun into life, the mage word carved into its surface glowing with a faint pearly light. ‘This took me years to build, and now, with the Heart-Stone, it may finally work.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Frith. He was looking for meaning in the discs, but could see nothing. Now that one plate was moving, another next to it had started spinning too, the black writing on it appearing to run together.

  ‘It is the heart of my greatest project,’ said Joah fondly. ‘Each disc contains a web of spells, and when they are connected and moving, a mesh is created.’ He interlocked his fingers, and then laughed at Frith’s perplexed expression. ‘Well, you will see soon enough, Aaron. Oh, would you look at that?’

  One of the plates was spinning in a wobbly fashion, falling off its axis. With a gesture from Joah it stopped moving, and he slipped it from its place easily enough. It was the size of a large platter, and the outer edge of it was dented, part of the demonic writing scraped away.

  ‘It all requires so much maintenance.’ Joah rolled up his sleeves. For the first time, Frith noticed that both his arms were laced with tattoos, all of them mages’ words.

  ‘Does that work, then?’ he asked despite himself. ‘Having the words written directly on your skin? The Edenier still channels through them?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Joah. He slapped his right forearm and smiled up at Frith ruefully. ‘I don’t have all of them, of course, there are just too many and I only have the two arms. It works just as well as having the words written on cloth, but it is extremely painful. You know, of course that the words eventually destroy themselves and the cloth is burnt away? They still try to burn themselves off your skin. I have to have them inked back on, every couple of years or so, but it has always been worth it.’ Joah leaned forward and, holding his hands over the bent plate, produced a soft red ball of light, which he then sank directly into the metal. After a few moments, the iron itself grew to a rosy red colour, and with his other hand, he pushed with the Force spell and began to bend it back into place.

  He is using both at once again, thought Frith, and with great precision.

  When the plate was straight once more, Joah extinguished the heat and began to murmur under his breath. As Frith watched, words began to appear on the plate in the same sticky-looking black substance he’d seen all over this strange place, seeming to sweat their way out of the metal. When the plate was covered in words, Joah stopped, and simply slotted it back into place.

  Frith thought of the enchanted armour Sebastian had worn at the battle of Baneswatch. There was clearly much more to using the Edenier than simple brute force, and he would need every possible advantage if he were to have any chance of escape. Trying to put what he’d seen in Joah’s rooms from his mind, he forced an expression of polite interest onto his face.

  ‘Can you teach me?’ he said. ‘Can you teach me how to do that?’

  Joah grinned, wiping his hands on the front of his robes. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

  32

  Away from the spawning grounds of the arachnos, the Northern lands grew flatter and stranger. Mendrick led them now, not quite moving of his own accord but remaining present in Wydrin’s mind, pushing her to go first directly north, and then gradually east. Eventually, they came to a low cliff looking out over a great stretch of clear ice covered here and there with snow. Enormous black monoliths poked through the ice, their tops curving and narrowing to lethal points like the sharp beaks of ravens. Initially she thought they were some sort of strange natural formation, but when she nudged Mendrick with this question the reply that came back was abrupt and disinterested.

  Not our doing, was all he said.

  ‘Are we to travel across that?’ asked Sebastian. ‘Will the ice take our weight?’

  Wydrin nodded, but Dallen spoke before she could. ‘That ice was thick before you were born, Sir Sebastian. It could hold an army.’

  Carefully, they made their way down a narrow path, faces turned away from the biting wind. Nuava sat atop Mendrick, bundled in her thick coat and a blanket donated by Wydrin from the Narhls’ ransacked packs. Her ruddy face was still and expressionless, and she had said very little since Wydrin had revealed Mendrick’s idea to the rest of the group. She seemed shaken by it in a way that Wydrin couldn’t quite understand.

  Sebastian appeared next to her. The young prince was walking off in front, and she noticed how her friend’s eyes lingered on his narrow back.

  ‘Wydrin, if this turns out to be some sort of long-winded joke of yours, I will throw you to the wyverns myself. The werken is really telling you where to go?’

  Wydrin half smiled. ‘It’s the strangest sensation, Seb, having another presence in your head. I wish I could describe it to you.’ She sighed, flexing her fingers inside her gloves. ‘Mendrick is fairly certain it will work. And as far as I can tell we don’t have many other ideas at the moment. Aren’t you the one who’s always talking about listening to the mountain? This should be right up your alley.’

  Sebastian frowned. The big knight had thrown back his own hood and the tops of his cheeks had grown pink with the cold.

  ‘I do not know these mountains,’ was all he said.

  Eventually, they reached the bottom of the low cliff and walked out onto the thick ice. To Wydrin’s surprise it was as clear as glass, and below her furred boots she could see deep blue shadows, and the soft curves of ancient ice formations. There were shapes moving in the depths, too, shoals of what looked like bulky, armoured fish. She wondered what could survive down there, and what might be feeding on those rapidly moving shadows.

  ‘This is a dangerous place,’ said Dallen, coming over to where they stood. He travelled light now, with a pouch of ice-spears strapped to his back and a short sword at his belt. Wydrin felt cold just looking at his light armour, but the prince seemed entirely comfortable – save for the haunted look of grief that shadowed his eyes. ‘We should not stand too long in one place, in case we attract the attention of something below.’

  Wydrin grimaced as an unwelcome wave of vertigo moved through her. ‘You said this ice was too thick for us to fall through,’ she said, trying to sound casual.

  ‘Yes,’ said the prince, ‘but there are things much bigger than us in the frozen lakes.’

  They moved on quickly. Presently they came to one of the huge black monoliths they’d spotted from the cliff edge. Up close, they could see that it was carved with thousands of tiny scratches and jagged shapes, pale grey against the black stone. The wind moaned around the winnowed shape, giving the cold a voice.

  ‘Did the Narhl put these here?’ asked Sebastian. They had paused in front of it, and Wydrin found it difficult to look away. It drew the eye, like a warning beacon in darkness, or the blackened remains of a tree struck by lightning. She shook her head abruptly.

  ‘It wasn’t us,’ said Dallen. ‘These structures belong to a much more ancient people, ones who recognised this land as cursed and sought to warn others away.’

  They walked on, boots crunching on the topmost layer of ice. Wydrin watched Mendrick moving in front; she could still feel him as a cold place in her head, a strange intelligence nestled next to her own. If she wanted to, she could reach out to that presence, but her mind shied away from it; it was too la
rge, and too alien.

  I can find the place you seek, he’d said, in that endlessly patient tone, if we can get down deep enough.

  The daylight began to seep from the sky and the clouds above them shaded from white to bruised-grey. A flurry of heavier snow came, gusting across the flat ice and showering them in a fanfare of icy flakes. Wydrin felt them against her face like a thousand cold needles and, once again, she wished for a warm hearth in Crosshaven and a place to take her boots off.

  ‘This is a sorry state to be in,’ she said to Sebastian, casting her voice low as they stumbled along together. ‘One of our number lost, and babysitting these two.’

  Sebastian smiled wanly. ‘They’ve been through a lot, the pair of them.’ He nodded to Prince Dallen walking in front with his head down. ‘I wouldn’t expect them to be the cheeriest of travelling companions.’

  ‘Huh,’ sniffed Wydrin, ‘can I just remind you, before you spend too long crying over Good Prince Dallen and his current poor fortunes, that he knocked you off our griffin and nearly froze you to death?’

  ‘A prince protecting his people,’ said Sebastian, pulling a flask from his belt and taking a quick sip before passing it to Wydrin. Below them the clear ice yawned away into a blue darkness. Wydrin couldn’t help thinking of the invisible bridge they had walked from the Secret Keeper’s house. ‘You can hardly blame him for that. And he let us go afterwards, when his father would have opened our throats to the sky.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Wydrin. She took a long swig from the flask, savouring the heat of the rum . . . ‘Because that ended so well.’

  ‘I think he’s a good man,’ said Sebastian, and the desperately concealed note of caution in his voice made Wydrin grin. She punched him lightly on the arm.