The Iron Ghost

by Jen Williams

  Nuava felt her throat go dry. Her aunt was delirious with pain and rage, and in no fit state to take control of any werken, let alone one the size of the Destroyer. And underneath that she found herself thinking of Mendrick, how it – he – had stepped in front of the ice-spear for her, and been shattered into pieces for his efforts.

  ‘Tamlyn,’ she took a slow, deep breath, readying herself. ‘Mistress Crafter. I think the Narhl were right.’

  For a second Tamlyn just stood there looking at her as if she hadn’t understood a single word.

  ‘What?’

  ‘About the werkens. Aunt, you must listen to me, please. I know that to us they have always been instruments and tools, but I saw – I’ve seen enough to know that there is something in the flesh of the mountain that is alive, and we are using it against its will.’

  Tamlyn shook her head. ‘Nuava, I don’t have time for your childish nonsense. I should have known better than to trust you with this.’

  ‘Tamlyn, I have seen a werken move without a command from its rider.’ She could hear the desperation in her own voice. ‘All I’m saying is, I’m not sure what we’re doing, what we’ve been doing, is right.’

  ‘You are a coward,’ spat Tamlyn. ‘Worry not, frightened child. You do not have to steer the Destroyer. As if I would trust that job to you anyway. Save your whining and your excuses for when we’ve taken the city back, and then I will have time to consider the depth of my disappointment in you.’

  ‘You’re not listening to me!’ Nuava held up her hands, feeling a wave of despair wash over her. Maybe she was wrong, and perhaps they would both be dead shortly anyway, but she needed to say it. ‘All I’m saying is that we have to consider that they were right all along, and what that means for us—’

  There was a sudden flash of light next to their open fire, briefly blinding Nuava. She cried out, her hand groping for the chisel wedged into her belt, and then a stern voice was speaking.

  ‘Is your werken ready?’

  It was the other mage, Lord Frith, wearing a loose shirt and a light cloak. Impossibly he looked as though he had caught the sun on the tops of his cheekbones, his warm brown skin a darker shade than when she’d last seen him, contrasting starkly with his bone-white hair. He was glaring at them both with an expression of extreme impatience.

  ‘You!’ Tamlyn staggered backwards. ‘What are you doing here? Where did you come from?’

  The young lord shook his head brusquely. ‘I don’t have time for these questions. Is your werken ready? When can it be ready?’

  ‘You are a mage,’ said Tamlyn slowly. The feverish light was back in her eyes and she was swaying on her feet. ‘Like him. I should have killed you rather than let you in our gates.’

  Frith scowled. ‘It was you who made a deal with the demon, Crafter Nox. Your mistake has cost us a great deal.’ He paused, the muscles in his jaw clenching briefly as he held something back. ‘Indeed, if I did not need the werken you have been constructing, you would already be dead.’ He turned to Nuava. ‘Is it ready?’

  ‘What’s happened?’ She didn’t like the bleak look on his face. In the short time she’d known him he had never been a friendly man, but now there was a chilly blankness behind his eyes that frightened her badly. ‘I mean, besides the obvious.’

  Frith looked at her without speaking for a moment, his features carefully composed.

  ‘What’s happened is I have constructed a weapon that could destroy Joah Demonsworn permanently, and I need you and Crafter Nox to take this monstrosity’, he gestured to the body of the prone werken that towered off to the right of them, ‘down to the city walls, and I need you to use it to crush the Rivener. Can you do this?’

  ‘My aunt was badly injured, I don’t know if she’s strong enough.’

  ‘Can you do this? For your brother? For Wydrin?’

  Nuava caught her breath. ‘Yes. Yes, we can do it.’

  74

  Wydrin ran, trying to move as quickly and as silently as possible, whilst keeping Ip’s slim form ahead of her. The girl was leading them through a labyrinth of back alleys, taking sudden turns and skittering down darkened paths that looked like dead ends until they skirted past piles of barrels and boxes. Her gut instinct was telling her that they were foolish to trust the child, but if nothing else they knew for certain that the demon no longer inhabited her; the demon was in a dozen bodies now, and searching for them even as they ran.

  ‘The girl smells like the demon,’ said Xinian in a low voice. The warrior mage was keeping pace with Wydrin easily enough. ‘It is the same smell you carry, only stronger.’

  ‘Yes, well, thanks for that,’ muttered Wydrin. They turned another corner and suddenly they were out in a wide street. Ip immediately pressed herself to the wall, and the two older women followed suit. The cobbles were deserted, and half covered in a fine covering of snow. With no Skalds left to sweep it away or turn it to slush with their boots, it would gradually cover the entire city. Lost, like Temerayne was lost.

  ‘We are nearly there,’ said Ip, her voice quiet. ‘The trench lies to the north of the city, and it points towards the Bone Pit gate. In the trench, we will be out of sight. They kept werkens down there, where the Narhl couldn’t see them.’

  ‘The gate will be shut, I expect,’ said Wydrin. ‘That’s how my luck has gone lately. We’ll deal with that when we get there. How do you know so much about this place, anyway? I thought when you were the Prophet you were mainly hidden up in the Tower of Waking.’

  Ip glared up at her. Her expression was not that of a centuries-old demon, but she did look like a child who had done a lot of growing up recently.

  ‘When Joah vanished on us – when he vanished on Bezcavar, I mean, I had a lot of time to get to know this place. I know all its nooks and crannies now.’

  After a moment, they carried on, shuffling swiftly across the street and back into the alleyways that Ip apparently knew so well. Their ability to move quickly and with accuracy was all that had saved them so far – Bezcavar’s presence had given the husks a burst of lethal energy.

  Eventually the regular buildings died out, and they moved into an open area that was clearly some sort of staging platform for the werkens. Wydrin could see several great warehouses with wide open doors, and she knew that inside them would be workbenches covered in tools that would by now be gathering dust.

  ‘Here, down here, quickly,’ said Ip, already moving towards a raised platform in the middle of the work area. At first it looked like little more than a long stone wall, slightly taller than a tall man, but when Wydrin got closer, she saw that it was the edge of an enormous trench cut directly into the rocky ground. The raised platform was the first of a set of wide steps that led down into it. ‘Quickly,’ said Ip again, ‘before Bezcavar catches up.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me twice.’

  They hurried down the steps, dark stone walls rising to either side of them, the sky becoming a long strip of baleful red above their heads. There were a few alchemical lights burning in alcoves set along the walls, and in what little light they provided Wydrin could see the hulking shapes of werkens, standing utterly still in the dark. The green lights that had burnt so fiercely in Mendrick’s wolf-shaped head were absent from these stony giants.

  ‘Why are they not glowing?’ asked Wydrin. Within the trench her voice echoed strangely, so she lowered it to a whisper. ‘The light of the Edeian . . .?’

  ‘Their riders are all dead,’ said Ip shortly.

  The three of them walked slowly, cautious of what might be waiting for them in the dark. Wydrin glanced up at the turbulent sky and realised she had no idea what time of day it was – the eerie red light distorted everything, although her stomach was insisting it was well past any meal time imaginable.

  ‘I have a question,’ said Xinian. She was bringing up the rear of their party, her stolen sword hanging loosely in her hand. They passed another inert werken, and Wydrin glanced up at it, trying to make out the featu
res on its roughly chiselled face. It was too dark.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Up until quite recently this child was inhabited by the demon.’

  ‘Up until it decided to dump her for someone with a better sense of style,’ said Wydrin. Ip shot a poisonous look at the pair of them over her shoulder.

  ‘And presumably this demon inhabited the child at the time when she was learning her way around these streets.’

  Wydrin winced. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then forgive me, for I am just a centuries-old mage and clearly not as wise as a tavern brawler and a child.’ In the dark Xinian’s bald head shone with reflected pinkish light. ‘But would that not mean that whatever the child knows, the demon would also know?’

  At that moment, there was a flat patter of awkward footsteps. Wydrin looked over her shoulder to see around twenty figures shuffling and stumbling down the steps towards them, their emaciated forms bleeding into the shadows.

  ‘You!’ Wydrin unsheathed Frostling in an instant and brandished it at Ip’s throat. ‘I told you if you betrayed us I would cut out your lungs. Didn’t I tell you that?’

  ‘I didn’t know!’ Underneath the dirt Ip’s face was very pale. ‘I didn’t think—’

  ‘Shit.’ Wydrin turned back the way they had been heading, only to see similar stumbling shapes moving hurriedly towards them out of the dark. Already they were close enough for her to see the bloody stare of their eyes. To either side of them the walls of the trench rose, smooth and unclimbable.

  ‘Shit.’ She pulled Glassheart from its scabbard. ‘So now we’re going to have to carve our way through, ladies. Head for the northern side and don’t stop for nothing.’

  ‘I can see you down there.’ The voice came from several ragged throats at once, the note of glee quite clear. ‘And is that Ip I see with you? I did wonder where you’d gone, child.’

  Ip pitched to one side, grasping her head and grimacing.

  ‘What is it?’ Wydrin grabbed her by one stick-thin arm. ‘What’s it doing?’

  ‘It’s trying to get back inside my head. Not forcing, exactly, but I invited it in once and it knows all my secrets.’

  ‘Come on,’ Wydrin yanked her forward, already starting to run. ‘Keep that bastard out of your head and I’ll buy you a pony.’

  They charged into the thick of the Rivened, Wydrin going first, her dagger and sword a silvery blur. The husks fell back, wounds opening like flowers on their rotten flesh, but the more she pushed forward the more bodies surged in to fill the gap. They grasped for her, purple fingers yanking at her leathers and scratching at her flesh. She felt one grab hold of a fistful of her hair, twisting it so that her head was suddenly a beacon of pain. She screamed and thrust her sword into the creature’s throat with so much force that the blow severed the neck, and the husk’s head fell to one side, hanging by a ropey piece of flesh. There was very little blood – most of that had long since turned thick and black – but the smell was atrocious, a thick scent that crawled at the back of Wydrin’s throat. Quickly, too quickly, they were surrounded. She felt Xinian at her back, could hear the heavy chop of blade against flesh as she took down every husk foolish enough to get close to her. Ip was crouched down by Wydrin’s legs, stabbing wildly with a small knife she’d produced from some hidden pocket.

  ‘Stay next to me,’ spat Wydrin, ‘and we’ll keep moving forward if we can.’

  One of the Rivened reached for Ip and grabbed hold of her arms, its mouth twisted into an approximation of a grin. Wydrin brought her sword down, Glassheart’s blue glass stone catching the red light and turning it purple, but although she cut clean through the husk’s arm, another came out of the press and grabbed Ip by her frantically kicking leg. Suddenly the girl was being dragged rapidly into the press of rotten bodies.

  ‘No!’ Wydrin made to go after her only to be pushed roughly back by three or four of the Rivened. She saw Ip turn back to her briefly, the dirty moon of her face slack with terror before disappearing into the swarm of demon-possessed corpses. ‘No, wait!’

  But she was gone. Wydrin cast about desperately and saw Xinian nearly on her knees, the warrior mage’s face creased into an expression of disgust as the grasping limbs carried her down. Above her loomed one of the inert werkens, a huge dark figure roughly in the shape of a giant bear standing on its back legs. Seeing it reminded her of the Blackwood bears they had faced in Frith’s forest, and all at once she was furious.

  You! She called out inside her own head, as she had once commanded Mendrick. She felt desperately for that connection, for any connection. Listen to me! I need your help! One of the husks flung its arms around her waist, leaning all its weight on her, and another was grabbing her hair again, pulling her head back to expose her neck. Wydrin kept her eyes on the werken.

  I know you can hear me! One of you, any of you, listen to me!

  There was nothing. The dark figure remained dark, and behind her Wydrin could hear Xinian making strangled choking noises.

  I know you can hear me! Wake up!

  There was a flicker inside her mind, a brief crackle of green light, and suddenly the huge werken opposite them lit up with a lightning strike of emerald energy. Its eyes bled into life, green moons in a savage face.

  Wydrin Threefellows. It was Mendrick’s voice, cold and serene inside her own head. You will not let me sleep, it seems.

  ‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’ Wydrin was staggering under the weight of three of the Rivened now. She threw an elbow into the face of the nearest one and felt a small blossom of satisfaction as the delicate bones in its nose shattered. ‘I thought you were gone!’

  I am everything. I am the mountain. I cannot just leave.

  One by one, every werken in the trench began to flicker into life, eldritch-green light painting the slick walls. Inside her head, Wydrin felt the dizzying sense of being in several places at once wash over her.

  ‘Right, then,’ she said, ‘I think it’s time to demonstrate some brute force.’

  It was easier than it had ever been, and when the werkens started to move she was no longer sure if it was her controlling them, or Mendrick himself. The giant bear-shaped werken came first, falling down onto its front legs and immediately crushing the bodies beneath it. Some of them fell back, and Wydrin could hear a mutter of surprise move through the crowd.

  ‘Oh yes, here we go, Bezcavar, you bastard.’ Wydrin shook off the nearest husks and ran for the side of the werken. There were deep steps carved into its side, and she scrambled halfway up before turning and shouting down to Xinian. ‘Get up here, Lady Battleborn!’

  Xinian’s arm thrust out of the press of corpses, and Wydrin reached down and dragged her up. The warrior mage looked bemused, but she climbed into the seat next to Wydrin, pausing only to kick a husk in the face as it tried to crawl up after them.

  ‘What is this thing?’ she said, looking down the trench as five other werkens began to move of their own accord. Werkens shaped like great bulls, cats and wolves, their eyes an unshifting green glow, stomped through the press of the Rivened, crushing them to a bloody pulp.

  ‘This is my friend, the mountain.’ Wydrin gestured round at the werkens and the walls, and then shrugged. ‘It will take some explaining.’

  ‘You will not escape.’ The voices floated up towards them from the crowd, a hundred pairs of blood-filled eyes, a hundred identical smiles. ‘I have so many bodies now and you have just that one, all delicate and filled with things that can be broken.’

  ‘Bezcavar, have you ever dropped something heavy on your foot? A brick perhaps?’ Wydrin settled in the seat, reaching out for the connection in her head, following that bright web of green light. She could feel the weight of the stone at her disposal, solid and riddled with Edeian. ‘Let me show you what that feels like.’ The werken leapt forward at her urging, crushing five or six of the flailing Rivened under its wide stone paws. ‘Multiplied several hundred times or so.’

  A flicker of unease moved acro
ss the rotten faces.

  ‘No, wait—’

  The mage corrupted the flesh of the mountain. My flesh. It was Mendrick’s voice in her head. I will not let that stand.

  As one, all six werkens turned and charged, thundering up the centre of the trench. All around them the possessed husks were trampled or thrown back until the werkens were lined up behind them, waiting further instruction. Wydrin grinned, and saw Xinian give her an uncertain look.

  ‘I think we just found our way out of the gate.’

  75

  ‘And you have made the adjustments I requested?’

  Nuava nodded. To Frith’s eyes, she looked a good decade older than when they’d first met; the skin around her eyes was bruised and her dark curly hair was tied back half-heartedly with a piece of twine.

  ‘Tamlyn and I have the saddle, in the alcove in the front of its head. If Joah sees anyone when the Destroyer comes, it will be us.’

  She paused, and for a moment they both stood and simply looked at it. The Destroyer drew the eye, that much was for certain.

  It crouched now, kneeling in the quarry with its head bowed, like a penitent man at prayer. It was humanoid in shape, certainly the most human werken Frith had seen, with broad craggy shoulders and a head that still had moss on it – if they’d had more time, Nuava had explained, they would have carved all the excess away, but, as it was, the werken would have to remain unfinished, its surfaces pitted and jagged with raw rock. It looked to Frith as though a part of the mountain had torn itself free and was now sitting patiently in the forest. While it was kneeling, the top of its head came above the treeline. Beyond it, the sky was a pale, blameless blue that was almost white.

  ‘I don’t understand, though,’ said Nuava. She was absently wiping her blistered hands on a cloth, still staring at the Destroyer. ‘Why don’t you use your magic to get to Joah, like you did before?’

  Frith shook his head.

  ‘I cannot use the Edenier too close to him now. He will simply sense it, as O’rin did, and any chance of using my weapon in time will be lost. I must catch a ride on this beast, and get as close as I can first.’