The Iron Ghost (36 page)

‘It gets easier,’ said Joah dismissively. ‘The more often I do it, the wider the path. And you were very deeply asleep. I saw a woman in your memories, Aaron. A woman with red hair and a dagger at her hip. She seems to have been in your thoughts a great deal.’

‘A sell-sword,’ said Frith. ‘A woman I have travelled with recently. I paid her to help me retrieve the information I needed from the Citadel in Krete.’

‘Aaron, it is clear that she is more than that to you,’ Joah said softly, ‘and it does us no good to become attached to people such as her. She will be nothing to what we will eventually achieve. What we will eventually
be
. Such attachments are a distraction and I will not tolerate them.’

‘Tolerate?’ Frith clenched his fists. ‘How dare you . . .’

Joah held up a hand, and Frith felt his entire body freeze solid, as though he were suddenly stuck in amber.

‘And there is another woman. This woman . . . she has long dark hair, and wears silks and satin, and elaborate fancies of gold and diamonds. I see her in a great castle surrounded by tall trees. Another distraction?’

Frith hissed through his teeth. The hold spell was so strong that it was difficult to breathe.

‘There was a marriage proposal. A contract to bring our lands together. Her name is Lady Clareon. Her lands are as ancient as the Friths’, and she thought it would be mutually beneficial for us to marry. Since my family were wiped out . . . It would mean security for the bloodlines, and for our lands.’ He gasped more air into his lungs. ‘I was considering it.’

Joah nodded thoughtfully, and all at once the pressure holding Frith in place was gone.

‘You are concerned that if you do not enter into an agreement with this woman you will lose everything that your family once meant. That this is what your father would have wanted you to do. But there is a great conflict in your heart, and you cannot commit to either path.’

Frith stared at him.

‘I can feel your mind, Aaron. I’m beginning to know how you think.’ He looked at him, his brown eyes completely sincere. ‘I know that you miss your family. I am sorry.’

Frith looked away. ‘That is none of your concern.’

‘That is where you are wrong.’ Joah stood up. ‘You are my brother now, Aaron, and your concerns are my concerns. Your pains are mine, and I shall suffer them with you.’

Frith slid his legs out of bed, ignoring the way it made his head spin.

‘That is gratifying, Joah, but really not necessary.’

‘Yes. You must put these human concerns from your mind, Aaron, because we have a lot of work to do. The Rivener must be in full working order as soon as possible.’

Frith squeezed his eyes open and shut, trying to keep up. ‘Why, exactly?’

‘In order to capture O’rin, of course!’ Joah spread his arms wide. ‘Once we have him where we want him, we shall eat his flesh like the mages of old, and we shall become all powerful.’

Frith laughed despite himself. ‘You think this god an idiot? He will come nowhere near you. O’rin, remember, hid on an island for centuries, pretending to be a mad old priest. I have never met a being so full of cunning and caution. What are you going to do? Ask him nicely to dinner?’

Joah grinned and wagged a finger at him, as though Frith had made a particularly groan-worthy joke.

‘Oh yes, I am very aware of his tricks. We thought that we had captured him in the Citadel with his siblings, after all. But I have searched through your memories, Aaron. You must remember how it was that O’rin first came to you?’

Frith frowned. ‘He didn’t come to me, I came to him. I travelled through the Nowhere Isles to Whittenfarne in search of the mages’ words.’

‘Think again. When you arrived on the island, after you had been abandoned by your ridiculous guide, what happened then?’

Frith glared at Joah. He seemed to be enjoying the conversation, as though they were in a tavern sharing tankards of ale.

‘I walked across Whittenfarne. It was an awful place, covered in pools and mists.’ He paused, remembering. ‘I fell into one of the pools, actually. And something bit me.’

‘And?’

‘And the Edenier flared up, covering me briefly in fire and boiling the pool. O’rin found me after that.’ Frith blinked, the truth finally hitting home. ‘He felt it, or sensed it somehow. The magic. That was why he suddenly appeared, and that was why he agreed to teach me. Because he knew all along what I was.’

Joah nodded happily. ‘And so it will be again, Aaron. We will create a blast of Edenier so powerful that your old teacher will not be able to resist it, wherever on Ede he happens to be now.’

‘He won’t be that stupid,’ said Frith. ‘And even if that were the case, he’ll just assume it is me. Before you made your unexpected appearance, as far as anyone knew I was the only mage on Ede.’

‘Not with the magical explosion I’m planning, Aaron. No one man would be able to generate such levels of Edenier, and I don’t think O’rin – lying, curious, interfering god – will be able to resist.’

Frith stood up, shaking himself brusquely.
The stone has made me sick
, he thought,
but it has only made him more insane.

‘How then? Are even you capable of such a feat?’

Joah laughed. ‘You are forgetting, Aaron. We have the Rivener! With that we have a potentially unlimited amount of Edenier at our disposal, providing we can find a large enough supply of viable subjects.’

Frith paused. ‘Viable subjects?’

‘Yes. There is a small town nearby to begin with. We will need a larger population to get the sort of effect I’m looking for, so we’ll start there, and move east across—’

‘No!’ Frith found himself close to shouting, and Joah took a startled step backwards in response. ‘You would tear the souls from hundreds of people? It’s monstrous! You are mad, completely insane, and I will not—’

Joah lunged for him physically this time, throwing him hard against the bunk. Frith fell awkwardly to the floor, wincing at the sound of Gwiddion’s outraged squawks.

‘Don’t call me that!’ howled Joah. The colour had dropped from his face, leaving him paper-white, and his brown eyes looked black. ‘Don’t you dare speak to me that way!’

‘You are mad,’ said Frith again, in a softer tone now. He put a hand to his mouth; there was blood on his lips where Joah had struck him. ‘Somewhere underneath it all, you must see that. It’s the demon, and the Heart-Stone. They’ve twisted you into something less than human.’ He took a deep breath. ‘These terrible things, they have changed you. But it’s possible to come back from that. You have a choice.’

Joah stalked past him and began casting the blankets off the bed until Gwiddion was exposed. Frith scrambled to his feet, sick with the realisation that Joah had known about the bird all along.

He saw Gwiddion’s tiny black eyes regarding him, intelligent and confused, before Joah picked the griffin up in his bird form and snapped his neck in one quick movement. The sound it made was pitifully small.

‘Stop distracting me, Aaron,’ said Joah. He threw the small feathered body at Frith, who caught it awkwardly in his arms. ‘We’ll never get anywhere if you keep distracting me.’

Wydrin, Nuava and Mendrick made it back to the surface just as the sun was creeping up over the horizon, lining the snow and the black rocks with a golden glow. They came out to the south of the original cave entrance and had to circle round to find their camp. Nuava had given Frostling and the light-globe back to Wydrin with a relieved expression and now sat atop Mendrick with her hood pulled up over her head. She was exhausted, but she no longer looked quite as lost, which Wydrin took to be an improvement.

When the small camp came in sight they saw Sebastian first of all, on his feet and tending a battered cooking pot he’d managed to suspend over a small fire. Dallen was some distance away, lying on his back. As they approached, Sebastian waved at them.

‘How do you fancy some crab stew?’ he said, gesturing with a spoon at the contents of the pot. Unidentifiable lumps floated in a thick, pinkish soup. ‘Arichok stew, technically, but Dallen, that is, Prince Dallen, says it’s perfectly fine to eat the flesh, although, of course, they usually eat it cold in the Frozen Steps and the variety they hunt there is significantly smaller than the beasts that you get this far north.’ He pointed to a bloody carcass lying off to one side; segmented, furred legs pointed up to the sky. ‘I’ve tasted a bit and it’s not bad, better than endless cold meat anyway.’ He paused for breath, during which Wydrin gave him her most withering raised eyebrow. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

‘I’ll have some stew,’ said Nuava. Sebastian passed her a cup, but Wydrin wasn’t so easily deflected.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ she said, nodding over to where Prince Dallen was lying, pointedly ignoring them all.

‘Him? Just heat exhaustion. He’ll be all right in a little while.’ Sebastian pressed a cup of hot crab stew into Wydrin’s hands, an expression of calculated innocence on his face that rang about as true as a fish with legs. ‘We had a swarm of these Arichok attack all at once. Got quite frantic for a while there.’

‘I bet it did,’ said Wydrin, fighting not to smirk. ‘I’d like to say we had an equally diverting time but I’m afraid we just spent the night fighting giant centipedes.’

‘Giant . . .?’

‘Giant centipedes.’

‘Really, really ugly ones,’ added Nuava.

‘The good news is we found the nexus and Mendrick was able to locate Joah’s base,’ continued Wydrin. ‘Even better news than that, it’s not that far from here – no more than a day’s hike.’ She took a slurp of her crab stew, pausing to chew on a fatty lump. ‘This
is
pretty good, actually.’

‘I’m getting the impression’, said Sebastian, ‘that you’re about to follow up these observations with bad news. Significantly bad news.’

Wydrin sighed. ‘The bad news is that this Joah is madder than a box of cats in a storm, and although Frith is alive, he doesn’t look like he’ll be alive for much longer.’

‘We should go, then,’ said Dallen. He stood up and came over to them, pushing his hair back behind his ears. There were specks of what looked like sweat on his grey and brown forehead, and he looked unsteady on his feet. ‘If we wish to save your friend and retrieve the Heart-Stone, we must move quickly.’

‘How?’ said Nuava. She had finished her stew and was in the middle of spooning more into her cup, but she stopped to look up at them. ‘You saw how powerful he is, and what he’s capable of. How can we hope to break into his stronghold?’

‘Oh, we’ll think of something on the way,’ said Wydrin. ‘That’s what the Black Feather Three specialise in, you see – impossible tasks, snatching forbidden items from cursed temples, generally defying death for a modest fee. Well, Black Feather Two, I suppose.’ She waved a hand at their small group. ‘Black Feather Four, then. Or five. Whatever. We’ll think of something. Sebastian, did you drink all my rum?’

‘Wake up, little man, you must wake up!’

Frith groaned, trying to sink back down into featureless sleep, but the voice was insistent and loud. He opened his eyes and had a moment of extreme dislocation; he wasn’t in the bunk room at all, but lying awkwardly on a steel-plated floor in one of the Forge’s many red-lit corridors. He was still cradling Gwiddion’s small body in one arm.

‘What?’

Memories started to come back. The Edenier had burst into flickering life, covering his hands and arms in bright green flames, but Joah had laughed, had actually
laughed
at him, before a simple gesture had thrown Frith to the ground once more. After that he’d run, and Joah had made no attempt to come after him, apparently happy in the knowledge that Frith would never be able to force his way out of the Forge. Frith had sprinted down corridor after corridor, trying to summon the pink healing light for Gwiddion and failing, still failing. Eventually, his vision had grown dark at the edges and his legs had given way underneath him. And now he was here.

‘It’s you,’ he said, although he could not see her. ‘I know who you are.’

The darkness immediately to his left shifted and grew solid, and Xinian the Battleborn glared down at him. She was vivid but colourless, a person built of cold greys and blacks. Her ragged leathers and furs hung on her like spoiled flags.

‘And you know what I did?’

‘You killed him,’ said Frith weakly. It was difficult to care about anything at the moment and the stern look on the woman’s face exhausted him. ‘Although, apparently, you didn’t do a very thorough job.’

‘Now it is your turn, shadow-mage. You have to stop him.’

Frith laughed softly, trying and failing to get to his feet. ‘He killed Gwiddion, you know. I can’t bring him back. He was my griffin.’

‘Even now Joah Demonsworn is readying his spells and bringing them to life again. He is waking the Rivener and soon it will move.’ Xinian’s mouth turned down at the corners. ‘He will kill thousands, as he has killed thousands before, and, poor excuse for a mage that you are, you are all that stands between him and the power he seeks.’

Frith braced his legs against the floor and pushed, sliding himself up the wall. Gwiddion’s body began to fall out of his cloak so he carefully tucked it back into his wide inner pocket.

‘It is impossible. Joah, although far from sane, is significantly more powerful than me.’

‘So you will just give up?’ said the woman. ‘Fall down and let him do as he wishes?’

‘No, I will not give up,’ said Frith, feeling some of the old anger rekindle in his chest. ‘And I’ll thank you not to speak to me that way. And what do you mean, the Rivener will soon move?’

Xinian Battleborn crossed her arms over her chest and stepped back into the darkness, becoming nothing once more.

‘If you do not hurry, I suspect you will find out exactly what I mean, shadow-mage.’

Frith stumbled down the corridor. There was a blinding pain behind his eyes now, and his stomach churned constantly. He wasn’t sure exactly where he was, but he could hear a distant thrumming noise that also seemed to be vibrating up through his feet. Every now and then it went up in pitch, as though growing more urgent, so he headed towards it, figuring that he’d find Joah wherever the noise was coming from.