The Iron Ghost

by Jen Williams

  The man with livid-blue veins turned his blank eyes on them, an expression of faint puzzlement creasing his face. The light that was inside him pulsed.

  ‘It can see your soul,’ said Xinian, in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘You are about the only thing here left with one. And that will make it hungry.’

  As if waiting for that very word, the husk that had once been a man leapt forward, mouth agape and fingers grasping. Wydrin stumbled backwards, bringing Glassheart up in an awkward defensive motion. The blade scraped across the Rivened man’s forearm, slicing through the flesh like butter and revealing a solid mess of rotten muscle and congealed blood. Appearing not to notice, it reached for Wydrin and she felt its cold fingers settle around her neck before she buried Frostling in the creature’s chest. This slowed it down slightly, but didn’t stop it from snapping its jaws at her face.

  ‘I would do what you can to separate its head from its body,’ said Xinian mildly, as though advising the best way to gut a chicken. ‘It is being powered by something other than a beating heart now.’

  Grunting with disgust, Wydrin brought her sword up and ran it across the husk’s neck, ripping a hole so large that its head flopped back at an awkward angle, throat gaping open, and then it fell away from her into the hallway. Once on the floor it struggled for a time, arms and legs working in the dust, and then it was still.

  Wydrin put her hand to her throat. More bruises tomorrow.

  ‘That was unpleasant.’ She turned back to Xinian the Battleborn, who was standing with her arms crossed over her chest. ‘This has happened to everyone who went through the Rivener?’

  The woman nodded. ‘There are few left in this city who did not suffer that fate. Joah has been quite busy.’

  Wydrin sheathed her sword, and keeping Frostling in her right hand she pushed the door open and went outside. The sky over Skaldshollow was that deep, unsettling red, like a storm in hell, and although she could see the sun it was a milky disc hidden behind a shifting skein of membranous black. The streets were cast in shadow, but she could see some people moving out there. Slowly. Shuffling as the Rivened man had shuffled, and with that faint blue glow.

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘They will all desire your soul, sell-sword,’ said Xinian from behind her. ‘Everything here is stopped, or dead, and you are the one bright piece of life.’

  ‘And you don’t count?’

  Xinian shrugged. ‘I am an echo of a soul, given solidity by this dark magic.’

  ‘Right. Obviously.’

  Wydrin stepped out onto the street, treading as quietly as she could. To her right was the looming form of the Tower of Waking, and curled around it like a jagged tumour was Joah’s Rivener. The strange red storm light danced across them both, the violet light of the Rivener’s eyes like windows onto a nightmare. She looked back to the south, and she could just make out the portion of the wall where Joah had smashed his way in; it was a line of broken rocks now, and it was possible to follow the path of destruction all the way there. Crushed roofs, flattened houses, even the faint wisps of black smoke from fires only recently extinguished.

  ‘All right,’ she said in a low voice, talking more to herself than the mage ghost. ‘I just have to be fast and quiet. Run towards the wall, keep my head down, and I’ll be out of here. No one knows where I am, and Joah will assume I am dead. I can do this. I –’

  She paused. Just for a second, she had felt Mendrick’s presence in her head again, but as soon as she reached out for him it was as if the connection were severed. Mendrick? Are you there? But there was nothing; only a deep sense of loss, an emptiness where his voice had been. What had just happened?

  ‘It may not be as easy as you expect, sell-sword,’ said Xinian from just behind her. ‘Do you think these creatures see through their eyes? You will smell of life to them.’

  ‘Look.’ Wydrin turned back to the mage, still endeavouring to keep her voice down. She would worry about Mendrick later. ‘If you like, you could help me, instead of dispensing reminders of how doomed I am. You killed Joah once, didn’t you? Well, that’s what I intend to do again, only I’ll do a better job than you. And it’s Wydrin Threefellows, by the way, also known as the Copper Cat, and leader of the Black Feather Three.’ This last wasn’t strictly true, but Wydrin kept going. ‘I’m not just any common sell-sword.’

  Xinian the Battleborn looked at her for a long moment, her dark brown eyes cool and unflustered. Eventually she shrugged. ‘You have the ego of a mage.’

  ‘Pft. You’ve met Frith, right?’ Wydrin turned away. ‘You can help me or you can go to hell. I’m not dying in this place.’

  Up the street, men and women who were now empty vessels, their skins filled with a roaring hunger, turned to look towards them. Wydrin got ready to run.

  64

  Joah sat alone in the heart of the Rivener. His body appeared to have finished its changes now, and although part of him was curious to see what he had been left with, he found he did not yet have the energy to find a mirror to examine himself. Instead he sat and listened to the new, surging voices that existed within his head. It was similar to the roar of the Edenier, that sensation of waiting power that had lived curled within his chest, but now it inhabited every fibre of his being. He felt tremendously aware of everything: the hot tide of blood moving within his veins, the rough wooden grain of the arms of the chair under his fingers, the taste of magic in his mouth, brackish and bitter. He could hear the screaming coming from the Edenier chamber, as the demon Bezcavar thrashed and raged inside it. That had been unexpected. It seemed that he still understood very little about human beings, even after all these years. He had thought that Aaron would join him, that his mage-brother would not even question his plans – were they not mages together? The last two in all of Ede? Surely they were destined to do great things together. And he had not expected the red-headed woman to make a deal with the demon in exchange for Aaron’s life.

  Joah raised a hand to the burnt side of his face, touching the hard scabs forming there.

  He had known that Aaron was dying. Had known that he was ill. But it had seemed like such a small thing, a problem that would eventually be swept aside. Why had he not asked Bezcavar to heal him? It was always within the demon’s power to heal wounds.

  Joah curled his hands around the ends of the armrests.

  Because the demon was ever a jealous creature. Hadn’t it encouraged him to turn away from the mages of a thousand years ago? Hadn’t Bezcavar’s hand also been on the hilt of the sword when he’d cut his first rivals down? The demon wanted Joah all to itself.

  Instead, the woman had saved Aaron, and in doing so removed Bezcavar from the equation entirely. Humans were so unpredictable.

  He looked up at the Edenier chamber, where all the collected magic swirled along with the incorporeal form of the demon. It was difficult to see, but you could just make it out: a darker shape amongst the shimmering white of the magic. And you could certainly hear it: an inhuman voice screaming in rage and frustration. Screaming to be let out, to be allowed the sanctuary of a human body again.

  Thinking of that, Joah looked towards one of the doors that led away from the Rivener’s central room. That was where the girl had fled, the one called Ip that Bezcavar had been hiding away inside for so long. Joah had considered stopping her, but the new forces that were changing his body had thrown him to the floor and she had slipped away. Presumably she was still inside the Rivener somewhere, unless she had found a way out.

  Joah stood up and approached the Edenier chamber. Immediately the swirling clouds of magic inside grew in violence, and the screaming so loud that he winced faintly.

  ‘It’s easier if you stay there for now,’ he said. The screaming changed in pitch, and he looked down at his hands. The fingers were unnaturally long and pale now, ending in strange needle-like points. ‘Think of it as a rest, my friend. I think you have done enough.’

  The Rivener had done its job well. Most of Skaldshollow’s people
had given up their souls, and now there was a storm of magic inside the chamber. All pointless now though, of course.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he murmured. ‘I am a god, Bezcavar. I am a being of Edenier.’ His long hands reached up to his face again, and fluttered there for a moment, like uncertain spiders. The skin that hadn’t been ruined in Aaron’s blast of fire was smooth and cold, and he didn’t recognise the shapes he could feel. It would be so easy to go and find a mirror.

  Instead he dropped his hands and walked back over to the windows, preparing to move the Rivener again. He sensed that he hadn’t seen the last of Aaron Frith, and he wanted to have a little surprise ready for him.

  Frith sat with several strips of silk laid out on the carpet in front of him. He was painting the mage words onto them with the ink that Sebastian had bought from the nearby market, and he was a little startled at how easily they came to him now. Once, he had struggled with this, concentrating so hard on every dot and swirl that he’d given himself headaches, and always O’rin was on hand to mock him, or to hit him with his stick.

  Thinking of his old tutor, Frith frowned slightly. He remembered the panicked birds flying up at an invisible ceiling, crashing into it with such violence that they fell down with their fragile bones broken. O’rin must have been afraid at the end, and although Frith had no reason to love the old liar, it was still more fuel for his vengeance.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Sebastian ducked inside their small, sand-coloured tent. They were on the outskirts of a heat-packed town on the edge of the Desert of Bones, the closest place to get supplies. Sebastian had been out all morning, seeing what he could find. Frith knew that the tall knight was anxious to return to Skaldshollow, and he was trying to distract himself.

  ‘Slowly,’ replied Frith. He finished the word for Control, and started the next for Fire. He would need a combination of spells in order to force the Edenier trap into the right shape, and then he would need to use the demon’s knowledge. That would not be pleasant. The knight stood there for a long moment, and Frith deliberately didn’t look up. He also knew that Sebastian would want to discuss what had happened to them – and to Wydrin – and he was not going to be drawn into that conversation.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ said Sebastian eventually. There was a kindness in his voice that made Frith pause with his brush not yet touching the silk. ‘I saw a few food stalls in the town square. I’ll get us something to eat.’

  With that he was gone.

  Frith completed the words and tied the strips around his wrists. When this was done he used the Edenier to float the half-complete ball into the air, and slowly turned it round, examining the symbols once again. The shapes etched into the twisted metal were not the familiar swirls and dots of the mages’ words, but the oddly unsettling angular pictograms that the demon had given Joah. New tools with which to shape the world; ones bought and paid for with the blood and suffering of others. Cautiously, he reached out with one finger and brushed the smooth surface of one of the icons. It was slick under his skin, a sensation that caused him to frown; once, when he had been eight or nine years old, his brother Leon had dared him to put his hand inside a sack of offal that had been left in the kitchens. Never able to resist a dare from Leon, Frith had thrust his hand inside, and the sense of that cold slippery wetness came back to him now. Along with the urgent desire to wash his hands.

  ‘It has to be done,’ he murmured to himself.

  First of all, he worked at taking the object apart, reducing it down to its component pieces. He examined them all, quickly seeing how they fitted together and how the spell worked. Each time he came into contact with one of the demonic symbols he would suppress a shiver, but that feeling lessened too. Eventually, they became an unpleasant tool to be endured, although more than once he thought of Joah’s memory of the demon in the field, smiling with a beautiful face whilst cutting the words into the mage’s skin.

  Eventually his eyes began to sting, and he forced himself to stand up and walk away from the device for a few moments. His eyes fell on the staff that they’d rescued from Temerayne along with the god-blade – the staff made by Xinian’s lover, Selsye. With everything that had happened, he had barely given it a thought.

  It was a beautiful piece of work, carved from a pale wood he could not identify, and riddled with interlocking mages’ words. As soon as his fingers touched it he knew it to be the opposite of Joah’s Edenier trap in every aspect – carved from an Edeian-enriched material and moulded with Edenier, but with peace and control at its heart. The staff seemed to thrum with concealed power, all of it benign; there was no darkness here. He ran his fingers over it, marvelling at the gossamer feel of the wood. Like the Edenier trap, he could almost see how it worked, how it was put together. There was, he realised, an idea forming at the back of his mind – a risky one, a chance so slim it made a mockery of hope – but perhaps this was the time for desperate chances.

  That, however, was for later. He put the staff down and returned to his work on the trap, shuddering slightly as he touched its cold surface once more. He carried on for hours, until he was startled to see Sebastian’s shadow in the tent entrance again. The sun was setting, and the shadows were casting long and dark. He was also sweating profusely, and he wiped a damp hand across his brow.

  ‘Have you not moved from that spot?’

  Frith cleared his throat. He felt strange, as though he’d been in a deep trance for a long time. Coming back to the here and now was painful. In the here and now, he could see his own grief reflected on Sebastian’s face.

  ‘This is very complex work.’ He shifted the pieces of the contraption out of the way and Sebastian ducked into the tent. In his arms he was carrying something bulky wrapped in brown linen that was already soaked through with grease, and a dark green bottle.

  ‘A couple of roasted pigeons, a bottle of some local wine,’ he said as he sat down, unwrapping the package. ‘Feels like ages since we had any decent hot food.’

  They ate in silence, passing the bottle between them. Frith found that his eyes kept returning to the pieces of blackened metal.

  ‘I need you to do the spell again,’ said Sebastian eventually. Outside the ruddy light of sunset had vanished into the inky desert night. ‘You know the one I mean.’

  Frith felt his jaw tighten. When they had first come here, after they had located the remains of the Edenier trap, Sebastian had insisted that Frith perform the ‘finding’ spell again, this time for Nuava and Prince Dallen. He had done so, and seen only the same strange shifting red light he had found when looking for Wydrin.

  ‘Sebastian—’

  ‘There is nothing to stop you trying it again.’

  Frith wiped his greasy fingers on the woven mat before lifting his hands and summoning the word for Seeing, muttering Nuava’s name first of all. Again, there was the flickering scarlet storm light. He looked at Sebastian, and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘It is likely they are all dead.’

  ‘There is no way to know what that light means. Try Prince Dallen now, please.’

  This time, the dusty cloud of light depicted a scene they hadn’t witnessed before. They saw Prince Dallen on his knees, his arms tied awkwardly behind his back. His face was covered in dried blood, a black bruise circling his left eye. As they watched, he spoke to someone they couldn’t see, his long brown hair plastered to his forehead and cheeks, and then a tall Narhl warrior stepped into view. Prince Dallen stopped talking, and the man struck him across the face, rocking him back on his knees. It was very difficult to make out where they were; Frith could see an overcast sky, a rocky backdrop. The image flickered and died.

  ‘He is alive,’ whispered Sebastian. Frith felt a moment of pure bitterness; why should Prince Dallen be alive, when Wydrin was not? ‘We have to go back there.’

  Sebastian stood up, nearly knocking the tent over in his urgency.

  ‘You don’t know where he is,’ said Frith, not moving. ‘If he has been capt
ured by his own people, then he could be anywhere.’

  ‘I will find him,’ said Sebastian shortly. ‘You must take us back there with the Edenier. Now.’

  Frith looked back at the twisted pieces of metal, shining blackly under the lamps. ‘I will not leave my work at this crucial stage.’

  ‘Frith!’ Sebastian took a step forward, frustration and disbelief evident on his face. ‘I’m talking about another human life here.’

  ‘Your lover, you mean?’

  There was a flicker of anger from the big knight then, and Frith wondered briefly how long such a fight would last, should they come to blows. Sebastian was a fearsome warrior, but he would not get far against the Edenier. He could feel it building in his chest again. So much easier to be alone, to just carry on with his work.

  ‘Wydrin would go back for him. You know that.’

  Frith looked down at the brown bones of their dinner. ‘What will you do?’ he asked eventually. ‘They will have him under guard.’

  ‘I will summon the brood army,’ said Sebastian immediately, before correcting himself. ‘Ephemeral and her sisters.’ He paused, looking down at his hands. ‘I wanted to keep them away from all this, for as long as I could. There has been enough killing, on all sides.’ He looked up again. ‘They have been waiting for word from me, and they will be in the riverlands by now. They have their own special abilities,’ he continued, fingering the carved tooth that hung around his neck. ‘With them, I will be able to find Dallen.’

  Frith nodded slowly. ‘I will take you, then, to the edge of the riverlands,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘But I will not dally there. And you will rescue your prince alone.’

  65

  The world screamed back into existence around them and Sebastian stumbled, finding his feet suddenly on hard black earth instead of soft golden sand. Frith had brought them back to the bleak foothills on the outskirts of the frozen northern lands, near the smallholding where they had rented their mountain ponies. It felt like that had happened a hundred years ago.