The Iron Ghost

by Jen Williams

  ‘Father. I would like to speak to you.’

  He patted the grass next to him, and she sat down, crossing her legs gracefully. Her braid hung over her shoulder like a length of spun silver, and she carried a book in her hands.

  ‘You know, Ephemeral, that I am not really your father, don’t you?’

  She nodded, her yellow eyes fixed on the sight of Frith and his griffin, further down the training slope. The young lord was busily brushing the great animal down, his solemn face oddly relaxed in its concentration. ‘I know you are not my father,’ she continued. ‘Not in the sense that humans mean that word. But it is my choice to believe that you are.’

  Sebastian sighed. ‘Some father I have been. I fear I have led you from one disaster to another.’

  ‘You have given us choices we would not have had,’ she said, her voice soft. ‘On the battlefield at Baneswatch we had no choice at all. Now we have choice, and the uncertainty that brings.’ She turned the book around in her hands, running her fingers over the leather. ‘The knight in the cellar still lives. The Second says you will not kill him.’

  ‘He has done nothing wrong, Ephemeral,’ said Sebastian, and then he winced, shaking his head. ‘I mean, of course he has done wrong, but he came here thinking he would be safe.’

  ‘He was safe,’ Ephemeral pointed out. ‘We had taken an oath not to take another human life.’

  ‘There was no way he could have known that. He saw only the enemy, an enemy that nearly killed him in Creos.’

  Ephemeral nodded, still watching Frith on the grass below.

  ‘And that is how they will always see us, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘They will never take an oath not to kill us, and we must spend our lives feared and hunted.’

  ‘Ephemeral,’ Sebastian took a slow breath. There was too much sadness in all of this. ‘In time, perhaps . . .’

  ‘I will never be able to simply walk into the libraries I dream of, will I?’ She paused, blinking carefully. ‘I burnt a library once. Or I helped it to burn. And perhaps those debts can never be paid.’

  Sebastian opened his mouth, and closed it again. He had nothing of use to say.

  ‘This is coming to an end now I think, Father,’ said Ephemeral, gesturing around at the training slopes, the temple. And then, ‘Do you know what we will do with the knight?’

  ‘I have an idea,’ said Sebastian. ‘Although it’s not a very good one.’

  Frith frowned. ‘This will not be a particularly pleasant journey.’

  Sir Michael had been bound and wrapped in an old sheet, and now he was slung across the back of Gwiddion, who had squawked indignantly at the intrusion.

  ‘We have washed him down as best we can,’ said Sebastian. He was still tightening the bonds that held Sir Michael to the makeshift saddle. It would not do for the knight to fall off in mid-flight, although he found he did not care about that overmuch.

  ‘Where will you take him?’ said Ephemeral. The brood sisters were gathered around the griffin. Their faces were tense, concerned.

  ‘He’ll take him somewhere remote,’ said Sebastian. ‘Somewhere no one has heard of Y’Ruen or her daughters.’ He looked to Frith, who shrugged.

  ‘I will fly far to the east, and find a large stretch of nothing to leave him in.’ Catching Sebastian’s look, he continued. ‘Do not worry, it will be somewhere he can survive, at least.’

  ‘Then this place will always be at risk,’ said Tidal quietly. ‘One day, he could make it back here, or far enough to be able to warn someone.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Sebastian. Briefly he met the Second’s eyes, and ignored the look of triumph there. ‘And equally another knight could stumble across us, now, next week, a year from now. With choice comes risk, I’m afraid.’

  When Frith was ready to go, saddled up on the griffin, Sebastian grasped his arm firmly.

  ‘Thank you, my lord. I owe you for this.’

  Frith nodded, smiling faintly. ‘Sir Sebastian, I have long since lost track of our mutual debts.’

  With that he was gone, flying up into an evening sky bleeding scarlet at the edges. Sebastian watched them go, until the young lord and his griffin were a shard of darkness against the sunset.

  ‘I think we must talk now.’

  He turned back to see the Second standing with a group of around fifteen brood sisters at her back. He saw Tidal and Becoming in that gathering, and they all wore guarded expressions. To his left, Ephemeral stood with a slightly larger group.No one looked happy.

  ‘It is that time already?’ Sebastian rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the tense muscles there. Would they kill him now? Is that how it would end?

  ‘You acknowledge that we are no longer safe here,’ continued the Second as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘That we may never have been safe here. I wish to leave, to take my chances out in the wider world. My sisters wish to come with me.’

  ‘There will be death on that path,’ said Sebastian. Behind him he could hear murmuring from Ephemeral’s group.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed the Second. ‘Death for us, death for the humans that cross us, perhaps. But I will not wait here for them to come and kill us.’

  Sebastian nodded, and turned to Ephemeral. ‘And what about you?’

  ‘We wish to stay,’ said Ephemeral immediately. ‘We are still sworn to follow you, Father.’

  ‘You are a traitor to your blood,’ hissed the Second. ‘You have forgotten who you are.’

  ‘No,’ said Ephemeral, firmly. ‘I am just finding out who I am.’

  In the end, seventeen brood sisters left following the Second. They took a portion of their joint supplies, sharpened their swords, and trooped quietly into the dark trees at the bottom of the slopes. They left at night, under a sky full of stars.

  Sebastian watched them go with Ephemeral at his side, a cold worm of fear in his heart.

  50

  Prince Dallen had led them to the outer edge of the Narhl settlement he’d named as Turningspear when Frith collapsed for the second time. It was a bright, windy afternoon, snow flurries playing around their feet like ghostly children. The strange black shapes that were the Narhl dwellings crouched on the horizon, while empty arachnos nests dotted the snows around them. One moment Frith was walking steadily with his head down, his shoulders hunched against the wind, and the next he was falling to the ground as though his knees had been cut from under him.

  Sebastian carried him to one of the empty nests while Wydrin tried to ignore the sense of superstitious dread at the sight of those icy structures. She glanced at Dallen, and saw grief on the prince’s face – he, too, was thinking of the last time they had sheltered in such nests.

  ‘Let him rest,’ said Sebastian. He backed out of the round hole in the ice wall and stood next to Wydrin. ‘He’s passed out. Exhaustion, I think, although I doubt sleep will heal him.’

  Nuava sat on top of Mendrick, her hood pulled low over her face, while Dallen wandered away some distance, gazing at Turningspear.

  ‘Whatever it was that Joah did to him in that place, it looks like it was permanent.’ Wydrin sighed. ‘Or at least, if it is healable, we don’t have a healer to do it.’

  Sebastian peered at her closely. ‘You’re not looking too bright yourself.’

  She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘I’m absolutely fine, although I am suffering from a severe case of the curiosities.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Sebastian adjusted the hood on his cloak, fiddling with the badge that held it in place. ‘Because I’ve just come down with a sudden dose of none of your business.’

  Wydrin snorted. ‘I’m not blind, Seb,’ she said, keeping her voice low. ‘Our young Prince Dallen gets the sweats whenever he looks at you.’

  Sebastian sighed heavily. ‘I don’t know, Wydrin. The number of times I’ve dragged you out of a card game because you’ve failed to notice the men chewing their knuckles and sharpening their knives.’

  ‘Card games I was winning.’

  ‘But someone gives me
a funny look and you’re all over it.’ The big knight looked away from her. ‘Dallen is a good man, and I think I – we – were lucky to have met him. And that’s all I’m saying on the subject. More to the point, what are we going to do about Frith? He’s looking worse by the day.’

  ‘I’ve spoken to him about the healing magic, that pink light he used on Jarath, but it seems he can’t do the spell on himself.’ Wydrin touched the ends of her gloved fingers to the hilt of Frostling. Frith had been poisoned, that much was clear, and not by any simple potion or blade. ‘We’ll just have to hope he lasts until we reach Temerayne, and perhaps there will be something there.’

  Dallen came over to them, his sharply angled face tense. ‘How is he?’

  ‘He is very ill,’ said Wydrin simply.

  ‘We may need him up and about sooner than he’d like,’ he said, gesturing over his shoulder. ‘Because we are about to have company.’

  The leader of the settlement of Turningspear was an enormous Narhl woman with broad shoulders and golden hair. She was as tall as Sebastian, and Wydrin thought that if they ever came to blows, the betting would be evenly matched. There was a great, single spear slung over her back, glittering with white ice, and she wore dark grey leathers fringed with spotted fur. She did not look pleased to see them, and there were two men with her, lichen covered and armed to the teeth.

  ‘You approach Turningspear. What do you want here?’

  In the end they had roused Frith and met the contingent from Turningspear halfway – Sebastian had reasoned that willingly meeting them face to face would create a better impression. Now that the settlement was within sight, Wydrin found her gaze drawn to it again and again; to her eyes it was even more alien than the great ice structures of the Frozen Steps. Here the buildings were formed of barnacle-covered black rock and deep blue ice, and they looked warped and twisted by the wind. Like seashells, thought Wydrin, giant seashells with a lot of grumpy people inside them. Beyond the settlement was the edge of the northernmost sea: a steely grey band every bit as welcoming and warm as this Narhl woman’s face.

  ‘May I ask who I am speaking to?’ asked Dallen, stepping forward. The woman scowled.

  ‘I am Ceriel, First of the Turningspear Riders. Do not trouble to introduce yourself, disgraced son of King Aristees.’

  Wydrin raised her eyebrows. ‘How could you know about that already?’

  ‘My father has sent messages, no doubt. A bird to every settlement, with news of my failure. Is that right?’

  Ceriel nodded once.

  ‘You have no place here,’ spat one of her men. Wydrin noticed he took care to stand just behind his leader. ‘You are a prince no longer.’

  Sebastian took a step forward, one hand on the dirk at his belt, and the man was abruptly quiet. Dallen shook his head in exasperation.

  ‘Whether I’m a prince or not doesn’t matter, you must help us.’

  ‘Help you?’ Ceriel cocked her head slightly, as if listening to a strange noise she couldn’t place. ‘You, who are cast out by your own father? You, who travels with warmlings?’ Her pale eyes narrowed. ‘Is that a Skald skulking behind you, with its werken slave?’

  Wydrin glanced over to Nuava, who pulled her hood up to cover her face. Mendrick did not move at all.

  ‘All right, you’re obviously not interested in courtly niceties, so how about you talk to me?’ Wydrin stepped in front of Dallen, pushing her furred cloak back so that Ceriel could see the dagger and the short sword at her waist. ‘A few words with me might teach you some manners.’

  ‘Wydrin . . .’ murmured Sebastian.

  ‘The short warmling has some tiny blades.’ Ceriel smiled, and it was like a glacier slicing through a valley: slow and cold. ‘How sweet. We shall see how much good her blades do her when she is blue and frozen.’ The tall woman reached behind her for her enormous ice-spear. Frith, who had been standing quietly to preserve his strength, held up his hands, now strung with strips of painted silk. He looked dead on his feet.

  ‘Do so much as draw that, Ice Queen, and I will cook you in your clothes.’

  ‘Enough!’ There was a tone of command in Dallen’s voice that made even Wydrin pause. ‘We don’t have time for this nonsense. Ceriel, First Rider of Turningspear, it is vitally important we get to Temerayne. Can you help us?’

  ‘Temerayne?’ The man who had yet to speak shook his head in wonder. ‘It is cursed. Lost. Why would you want to go to such a place?’

  ‘We need something that is hidden there,’ said Dallen. ‘You know where it is, don’t you? Then you will show us.’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ said Ceriel, her lip curling. ‘We have no interest in serving disgraced princes and warmlings and Skalds. I should put you to the sword instead.’

  ‘This whole land is in terrible danger!’ Nuava pushed her hood back again. Her skin was flushed. ‘There is a mage on the loose, and it won’t be just Skaldshollow that suffers for it. He is mad, and he will hurt your people. You have to help us.’

  Ceriel and her men exchanged a look, and Wydrin saw something pass between them.

  ‘You’ve seen him, haven’t you?’ she said, adjusting her stance. Perhaps there wouldn’t need to be any fighting here today. ‘Did he come this way?’

  Ceriel cocked her head again, considering. The men behind her now looked unnerved rather than defiant.

  ‘No,’ she said eventually, then, ‘I don’t know. We saw something, two nights ago.’ The tall woman looked down at her boots. ‘I was patrolling with the hunters at sundown, and we saw a shape caught between the edge of a distant hill and the sky. It looked –’ she faltered.

  ‘It looked like one of the old gods,’ put in one of her men, his voice trembling. ‘A huge, monstrous thing, a monster fallen from the sky. It crawled over the hill, and then it was gone.’

  ‘Thank the mountain it did not come our way,’ said the other man. ‘You could go mad, looking at such a thing.’

  ‘The Rivener,’ said Frith. ‘It is the Rivener you saw.’

  ‘There have been stories whispered in the hunting places,’ said Ceriel, her face grim. ‘Stories about a great monster that has wiped out entire settlements.’

  ‘They said anyone who was touched by it went mad,’ put in one of her men. ‘It is one of the old monsters returned. Our world is ending.’

  ‘Believe me, there is a man controlling it,’ said Dallen. ‘A man we can defeat, if we get to Temerayne.’

  ‘He has killed many of my people,’ added Nuava, swallowing against some internal grief. ‘I know that will mean nothing to you – you may even be pleased, I don’t know – but he cares nothing for the Narhl either, and if he finds you, he will kill you.’

  ‘Please,’ said Sebastian. ‘We are fighting to protect your lands.’

  Ceriel fell quiet, looking at them each in turn. Behind her the dwellings of Turningspear sprouted like the shining black carapaces of some strange sea creature.

  ‘We will take you as far as The Judgement of Res’ni, and what you do from there is your own affair. I will take you myself, with our fastest sea-wyverns.’

  ‘Great. You are too kind. The Judgement of Res’ni sounds interesting,’ said Wydrin. ‘Wait, did you say sea-wyverns?’

  The sea-wyverns were tethered to the sides of an impressive long boat, carved of dark wood and painted with fanged, snarling faces. There were three wyverns on either side, each a good ten feet long. They strongly resembled their flying cousins, but they had no wings, and their skins were silver rather than blue, glittering wetly with diamond-shaped scales. Their long faces were fringed with stiff white whiskers, and their eyes were pale moons. Sebastian stood and looked over the side of the ship, remembering Prince Dallen looming out of the dark on the back of his flying wyvern. That had been quite a shock. The sea-wyverns moved in a similar way, but instead of cutting through the air they slid through the sea like silver knives, churning the waves into a white frenzy. There were Narhl men and women riding on their backs, apparent
ly guiding them to their destination. He could feel the wyverns down there – a cold silver thread in his heart, as the snakes had been.

  Nuava had retreated to the small hold below, her lips drawn into a thin, unhappy line, but Wydrin was as at home as she’d ever been, examining every inch of the ship and asking endless questions of Ceriel. Frith was standing apart from them, resting against the still form of Mendrick. The Narhl crew were less than pleased by the presence of the werken, which they seemed to regard with both sadness and anger.

  ‘This Temerayne place,’ Wydrin was asking now, ‘you said it was cursed?’

  ‘You have not heard the story?’ Ceriel raised one lichen-covered eyebrow. ‘These hot southern places, they forget everything so quickly. You know of the gods Res’ni and Res’na? The twin wolf gods of chaos and order?’

  Sebastian remembered the eggs in the Rookery, and how two of them had been etched with the shape of identical wolves. That had been just after Gallo had died.

  ‘We know of them,’ he said shortly.

  ‘Well, once Temerayne was the wonder of the North. A great and shining city, a place of great civilisation and learning. It was said that you could see the lights from the towers halfway across Ede, and that every child born there was blessed. They remembered the old gods there – although then, of course, they were not so old – and every street had a shrine: to Y’Gria, Y’Ruen, O’rin, Res’ni and Res’na. The years passed and a new king took the throne of Temerayne, a man who prized civilisation and order above everything else. To him, the gods looked unruly. Distasteful. All save for Res’na, god of order and balance. He commanded that all the shrines be destroyed, and a new, central shrine be built for Res’na alone. Temerayne would be a beacon for order and peace.’

  ‘Ah yes, destroying shrines,’ said Wydrin. ‘That’s always a clever move. Can’t go wrong with that.’

  The tiniest hint of a smile blossomed at the corner of Ceriel’s mouth.

  ‘For a time, the city prospered. But the gods are always watching, or at least they were then, and soon Res’ni came to hear of this place, this place that venerated her brother but disregarded the other gods. She became wrathful.’