The Iron Ghost (30 page)

Frith nodded, taking this in. He turned the glass around on the table, still not drinking it. ‘I see. Forgive me, but this sounds like the sort of story that my nursemaid would tell me when I was small.’

Joah chucked the rest of the wine down his throat, and then pointed a finger at Frith. ‘You are quite right. I do not know how much of this is true. But the idea that Edenier is soul-magic is absolutely correct. Did you know, Aaron, that every living thing contains a sliver of the divine?’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘All of us, even non-mages, have a certain degree of Edenier in our souls. Impossible to access and use for almost everyone, of course – mages carry it inside us like a passenger, whereas, for most people, it’s like a shadow. Intangible. Except that I have found a process that allows us to remove it.’ He waved up at the Heart-Stone. ‘The Rivener takes living things and removes the useful Edenier, storing it for me to use later. It discards the useless husk.’

Frith took his hand from the glass. ‘Husk?’

But Joah was already up and moving again, pointing to the glass section in the iron wall.

‘The Rivener is much bigger than this room, Aaron, much bigger than the Forge. I will show you that, one day soon, but the point is we have an endless source of Edenier. You and I, Aaron, will be the most powerful mages ever to have lived.’

Frith swallowed hard. The idea of Joah gaining any more power than he had already was alarming.

‘I’m afraid I still don’t understand.’

‘Here, I shall demonstrate for you.’

Joah left through one of the doors and when he returned a few moments later, he had company: a short, scrawny man dressed in rags and furs. From his mottled face he was Narhl, and he had both hands tied behind his back. Joah dragged him into the room with relative ease, the smaller man’s eyes round with shock.

Frith stood up, knocking over his wine glass in his haste. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Here, watch.’ Joah marched the smaller man over to the steps that led to the platform above the glass tank. Belatedly his prisoner began to struggle, trying to wriggle away from Joah’s iron grip.

‘Forgive me, masters!’ gasped the man. ‘I was only curious, please! I have never seen fire like it, and I had to know its secret, but I see that I was wrong now.’

‘Joah, what do you intend to do to this man?’ Frith came forward, holding out his hands. ‘Please, let him go.’

‘Don’t be a fool, Aaron. How will you understand the Rivener if I do not show you?’

Without another word he half dragged, half carried the protesting man up the metal steps, and when they reached the top, threw him into a hole Frith couldn’t see. A moment later the scrawny man landed behind the glass of the tank. He turned his face towards Frith, his mouth wide open.

‘Now,’ said Joah, coming back down the steps, wiping his hands absently on his robe. ‘You will get to see the Rivener in action.’

The man in the tank was panicking now, beating his fists against the glass. Frith could hear him yelling, but his voice was muffled.

‘Please, Joah, there is no need.’ Frith looked from the tank to the rogue mage. ‘I believe you. Let the man go.’

Joah smiled at him, shaking his head slightly. Instead he crossed to the Heart-Stone and, muttering under his breath, began to trace a shape on the surface of the crystal. After a few seconds, the stone seemed to bleed, and a shining black shape appeared; jagged and somehow unsettling, it was a twin to the writing Frith had seen elsewhere.
Demon writing
.

There was a soft
wumph
and the bruise-coloured light, now a murky violet, seemed to both brighten and darken at the same time. At that moment Frith felt a violent twisting in his gut, and he staggered backwards. For a few seconds the light turned a vivid, virulent purple, and the man inside the tank began to scream, twisting around on himself as though he were trying to crawl out of his own skin.

‘Stop it!’ cried Frith. He went over to the glass and placed his hand on it, but the man inside was shuddering, not looking at him.

‘Wait, Aaron, just a moment.’

The man stopped moving, his body suddenly rigid, and a slim flicker of something curled up from the body. It looked like some cousin of both light and smoke, a swirling shape that was somehow alive, and then it dissipated. Joah came over and stood with Frith at the front of the tank. The man lay on his back staring at nothing, his eyes dull, as though they had gained a covering of dust in a few brief seconds. He moved weakly, his mouth opening and closing but forming no words.

‘The shape that you saw was the Edenier,’ said Joah. ‘Extracted directly from his soul. Not very much, but the process certainly works. And now he is empty.’

The floor inside the tank fell away, dropping the body of the man into the dark recesses beneath the Forge. Frith stood very still.

‘Is he still alive?’

Joah shrugged. ‘Not for much longer. Without the spark moving it, the
spirit
, the body will eventually give up on the idea of breathing.’

Frith swallowed hard. ‘Why do this?’ He couldn’t quite keep the horror from his voice, but Joah didn’t appear to notice. ‘What is the point of it all?’

‘It’s all about gathering resources, Aaron.’ Joah rubbed absently at his beard. ‘It has always seemed to me to be the most efficient approach. Yes, we can achieve much with the mage powers we have, but how much more can we do if we use
everything
? The Edeian naturally present in the world, the knowledge of demons, and the Edenier harvested from living things – all of this together, Aaron, and we shall be the greatest mages that ever lived.’

There was nothing but bright enthusiasm in his brown eyes.

‘You will be, at least,’ Frith replied, forcing some jollity into his words. ‘I am afraid that I will never be able to handle the Edenier with the skill that you do. All of this is new to me, and I suspect I will likely never catch up.’

Joah took hold of his arm, squeezing tightly. ‘You mustn’t believe that, Aaron my friend. By all the gods, you can hardly be blamed for being slightly behind. You have been alone, all this time, with no other mages to guide you, to pass on their knowledge!’

‘From what I’ve heard, Joah,’ inwardly Frith winced at the familiar use of the name, ‘you were much more than an average mage. I spoke to the girl Nuava about you when we visited your tomb. You were a genius, they said. A prodigy.’

For several long moments Joah just stared at him. His eyes were wide and slightly unfocussed, as if he were looking at something only he could see. Eventually, he shook himself and turned away.

‘Yes, genius. Prodigy. That wasn’t all they called me. Listen, Aaron, there is a very quick way I can pass on some of my knowledge to you, but it will require a degree of trust between us. Do you think you can trust me?’

Frith stared at him. He could taste bile at the back of his throat.
Everything is wrong here,
he thought,
and I have no advantages. Perhaps if I know what he knows, I will find something to improve my position
. He thought of Wydrin and Sebastian. If they were looking for him now, he would need to be ready to act if they arrived. He needed to be stronger.

‘I trust you,’ he said. ‘Please show me.’

Joah took him out of the Forge and down a metal corridor he hadn’t seen before. At the end of it was a heavy iron door, covered in rivets painted with the black sticky writing. Joah muttered something, tracing a complicated shape on the surface of the door. There was a sound of metal scraping against metal, and the door swung open, revealing high walls of ragged earth to either side. Frith was startled to discover that it was late in the afternoon, with the sun glaring down through the narrow strip of sky overhead. Inside the Forge it felt as though he were trapped in a perpetual night.

Joah led them out of the Forge and up a nearby slope, where a circle of grey stones stood. Frith looked around wildly, trying to take in their location, and whether that held any advantages for him, but there was nothing; only the hills and the snow, and the painfully bright sky.

‘It’s best if we do this outside,’ said Joah. ‘With the daylight on our faces. The crossing can be an uncomfortable experience.’

‘The crossing?’

Joah nodded, kicking some of the snow away and sitting down next to one of the standing stones. After a moment, Frith joined him.
If I ran, he would strike me down in moments
, he reminded himself.

‘It is a method, given to me by Bezcavar, of joining two minds together for a brief time. The crossing of memories, sensations, and therefore knowledge, becomes possible.’

‘You did this with the demon?’

Joah glanced up at him, his brown eyes momentarily sad. ‘I did, indeed. Here, give me your hand.’

After only a moment’s hesitation, Frith held out his hand, palm up. Joah reached inside his cloak and retrieved a small metal ball about the size of a walnut. It was covered in tiny thorns, with wickedly sharp points.

‘In a moment I shall grasp your hand,’ he said, holding up the ball so that Frith could see it. ‘There will be a moment of intense pain, and I want you to concentrate on it. That moment will open your mind to me, and I shall use that as my way in. Are you ready?’

Frith looked at the ball, trying not to think about the torture rooms inside the Forge. ‘Go on then,’ he said. ‘I must learn what I can.’

Still holding the ball in the cup of his hand, Joah leaned over and took Frith’s hand as if to shake it. He squeezed, pressing the thorn-covered ball into the soft skin of his palm. Despite himself, Frith yelped with pain and made to pull away, but to his horror the needle-like thorns had buried themselves deep, and it was not so easy to escape.

‘Relax now, Aaron,’ said Joah. ‘I need you to relax.’

He reached up with his other hand and took hold of Frith’s head, pressing the length of his thumb against the side of his nose, digging his fingers behind his ear. Frith gasped, feeling the hot trickle of blood running between his fingers, and then something else; it was like a long, thin blade, as hot as glowing coals, slipping through his forehead.

‘You can feel it now I think,’ said Joah. ‘That is my mind meshing with your own. Hold still, just a moment, and let me show you.’

Frith blinked and then Joah and the snowy hills seemed to twist away from him, falling down a deep hole. In their place was a small, lavishly furnished room with no windows; the carpets on the floor were golden, and the walls were covered in mosaics, all created from tiny glittering gems. In front of him stood a tall elderly woman with deep brown skin and carefully plaited white hair. She wore a sleeveless robe of pale aquamarine and her arms were bound with silk strips, all painted with the mage’s words. She was staring at Frith with an expression of weary patience.

‘I’ve seen you do this exercise a thousand times,’ she said. Her accent was from Relios, all clipped tones and smoky vowels. ‘Do you jest with me, boy?’

‘I-I don’t,’ Frith stuttered, looking around the room. He could see enormous clay jars, very similar to the ones they’d seen in the depths of the Citadel, and a long table covered in pots of ink. Just in front of him, between him and the tall woman, was a low marble table with a piece of warped metal on it. He glanced down at his hands, and was alarmed to see that they were not his own – the skin was pale, and the fingers longer.

I am in his memories
, he thought.
I am seeing his past
.

And then his hands were moving of their own accord, and as he watched the piece of metal in front of him rose several inches from the table, spinning slightly, and he could see the word for Hold in his own mind. A few moments later and the word for Heat joined it, and the piece of metal began to glow a rosy red.

‘That’s more like it,’ said the tall woman, raising a single perfect eyebrow. ‘Let’s see the rest.’

More words joined Hold and Heat in his mind – Force, focussed down into a blunt weapon, and Push, and then all of them at once. Frith marvelled at the control of it all, but he could also see how it was possible; Joah was stacking the words on top of one another, a careful mental balancing act. Another word, this one for Change, and as he watched it began to appear in the metal itself, forced there with the strength of Joah’s mind.

‘Very good, Joah,’ said the woman. ‘You have achieved so much in your time here with us.’

‘I am not Joah,’ Frith started to say, but the room shivered and vanished, to be replaced with a lush green field, the grass coming up to his waist. Another woman stood next to him, and this one was short with waves of dark blond hair caught in a silvery net. She wore some sort of elaborate armour – all black leather and silver spikes – and her eyes were red from lid to lid. She was grinning at him and brandishing a knife.

‘I will teach you some letters the gods have never dreamed of,’ she said, and her voice was old and strange. ‘And with those you will do terrible things in my name. Won’t that be marvellous?’

‘Bezcavar,’ said Frith, trying to back away. This was the creature who had driven Fane and the Children of the Fog, its eyes filled with blood just as Sebastian had described. The demon carried on as if he hadn’t spoken.

‘Come here, then,’ she said, waving at him impatiently. ‘I know you remember how I teach you things.’ She held up the knife. ‘Come and lie down with me.’

A flicker, and the vision was gone, but the knowledge was not – he felt the burning of a hundred alien letters on his skin, and deep inside he knew, he
knew
how he could use them. Next there was a young boy sitting on a great boulder in a forest, naked save for a series of leather belts around his waist and upper arms. He was counting out a number of small grey stones in front of him, and after a moment they began to jump by themselves. Then he was gone too, and Frith had a glimpse of a fierce old man with a thick beard and a bare chest, his shoulders covered in what looked like a bearskin. His hands were thick with blood and gore, and he was telling Frith something, and although he did not understand the words, the knowledge slid into his mind, chilly and alien – how to make the mages’ words clearer in your head, how to make the passage of the Edenier more efficient. With growing excitement, Frith felt his mastery of the Edenier expanding rapidly. So much that had been a mystery to him was becoming clear. The man with the bearskin faded away, to be replaced with the blond-haired woman with Bezcavar’s eyes again. This time they were in a tent, and through the gap in the silks Frith could see endless sands the colour of autumn leaves. The demon woman was cradling something in her lap, a globe constructed from shining black metal – just looking at it, Frith knew it was incomplete, and she was shaking her head slowly.