by Jen Williams
‘Why?’ asked Devinia, her voice hollow.
In reply, Kellan pulled at a strap on the vanbrace on his left arm, yanking it loose and then peeling them back. It occurred to Devinia – too late, her mind whispered, it comes to you too late – that she had never seen him without them, even when they had bunked together. Under the vanbrace the skin on his arm was a deep angry red and the flesh was twisted and melted. It had been a considerable burn.
‘I was there,’ he said, his voice low and deadly. ‘On Sandshield, with my brother, when your daughter and her friends fired the hall of Morgul the Biter. I got this’, he brandished the arm at her again, ‘trying to pull my brother out of that nightmare. Very painful, but not fatal. I got my brother to a boat and took him away from that place. He was a blackened ruin. He moaned at me to kill him, to put him out of his misery, but I wouldn’t, because I believed I could get him to a healer in time. He died just as we were pulling into port at Crosshaven.’ He sat back on his haunches; all expression had left his face. ‘The smell still haunts me. Sickly and sweet, like a roasting pig.’
Devinia shifted, pressing her hand to the wound in her gut. ‘Why not just seek her out and kill her?’ she asked. ‘Why work your way aboard my ship?’
‘Oh, she’s been away, and well protected, since. I wanted to hurt her and all who love her, in as many ways as possible.’ He smiled warmly, and it was so like his old face that Devinia felt disorientated. ‘I thought that ruining her mother’s life would be a good start, before cutting her to pieces.’
‘She’s gone.’ Devinia forced herself to grin back at him. ‘Only the Graces know where to. You won’t find her.’
Kellan stood up. His face was blank again, as though they were discussing the weather. ‘Don’t you worry, Devinia. I will have my prize.’
21
Wydrin’s captors were relentless. They marched her on through the jungle for that entire day, pausing only to let her take small sips from a water skin they carried with them. When the sun began to set, filling the spaces between the trees with a bloody, ruby light, they came to a low building half lost in the trees. Here, Estenn gave orders to make camp. A few of her soldiers – as Wydrin was coming to think of them – moved off into the trees to keep watch, while the others built a small fire in the centre of the ruins. The building itself was made up of interlocking circular rooms, although there was little left now save for low walls of crumbling yellow brick. The floors looked like they had once been covered with fine mosaics; now they were broken and lost in creeping weeds. Wydrin was made to sit by the fire and, after a time, Estenn came and sat opposite her.
‘You could have picked a place with a roof,’ said Wydrin. She stretched her legs out, groaning slightly. Walking all day with no rest over rough terrain had not been kind to her feet. ‘It’ll piss down later, and then we’ll be in for an uncomfortable night.’
Estenn gazed back at her across the fire. The woman’s eyes were black, her lips a startling red against the pallid tone of her skin.
‘No, it won’t rain tonight,’ she said eventually. Wydrin had the strangest feeling she’d been listening to some internal voice. ‘The early morning, perhaps.’
‘Who are you?’ asked Wydrin. ‘I mean, really, who are you? Who would live on a cursed island? And what sort of people follow you? Aside from the fact that you’ve kidnapped me from my mother’s ship and hit me with that bloody staff, I am actually curious to know.’ She smiled slightly. ‘Curiosity was always my greatest weakness.’
Estenn touched her hand to her throat, stroking the inked skin gently. Wydrin could see dark dirt under her fingernails.
‘I am a woman with many names, and many pasts,’ she said eventually. ‘Maybe you, the Copper Cat of Crosshaven, can understand that more than most.’
Wydrin raised her eyebrows slightly. ‘So you know who I am?’
‘We keep one ear to Two-Birds at all times,’ said Estenn, ‘and you have been the source of considerable gossip over the years.’ She sat back slightly, her legs crossed underneath her. ‘You were meant to come here, I think, with the staff. Perhaps it would be good for you to know why I do what I must do. It is a story all the world must know, eventually. Ede must learn from its mistakes.’
‘How long is this going to take?’ asked Wydrin. ‘I like to have a drink when I’m listening to longwinded stories, if you’ve got anything to hand.’
Estenn ignored her. ‘I was born in Onwai, some … time ago. I was the youngest of seven sisters, so I was given over to the Golden House of Worshipfulness to eventually become an acolyte there. I went at the age of seven, and started my studies of Benoit, the Walker of the Path. I was a good student, I studied hard, and truly I loved Benoit. I learned his Eighteen Laws of Peace by heart, and I excelled at the Three Golden Paths of painting, poetry and music. When I turned seventeen I was blessed by the Mother to become a novice, and I was sent to Pathania to spread the word of Benoit. Myself and four of my fellow initiates were to sail there on a ship called the Indigo Ribbon. The journey would take three weeks.’ Estenn paused and took a small flask from her belt. She unscrewed the cap and took a sip from it. ‘I’ve not told this story for some time, and it makes my throat dry.’ She offered the flask, and when Wydrin nodded she gently threw it to her. Inside it was a very sweet, very thick wine. Wydrin took three quick gulps and passed the flask back. ‘A week out from Onwai, our ship was taken by slavers. Those who resisted were killed. I was very young, and very frightened. I had only ever known the green mountains of Onwai, and the peace of the Golden House. I was terrified. Myself and the other novices were chained down in the hold of the slaver, where we stayed for another three weeks. One of my friends died of a fever, chained next to me, much closer to me than you are now. Another tore up rags and forced them down her own throat until she choked to death.’ The woman’s dark eyes sparkled in the firelight. ‘I was sold twice over the course of five years. My first owner was a Pathanian merchant who bought me to teach his children to read and write. That place wasn’t as bad as some. I had a small, bare room of my own, and I was given kitchen scraps to eat. Every night in that tiny room I would recite the lessons of Benoit and look for the good in my life. I trusted to the greater good that eventually I would be delivered from this misery, and that I would find my way back to Onwai and the Golden House. But Pathania, as I’m sure you know, is a land of plagues. Red coughing fever swept through the city and my owner’s children both died. I sat at night in my small room, listening to them cough and cough, tearing their lungs to pieces inside their own chests. When it was all done, he sold me. What good is a slave to teach children when there are no more children?’
She paused again to take a sip of the strong wine. Wydrin leaned forward. ‘A city in Pathania? Slavery has been outlawed in Pathania for decades. Are you telling me he openly owned slaves and nothing was done about it?’
Estenn looked at her for a moment, as if judging how much to tell her. ‘This was long before the Storm Days swept the beginnings of civilisation across Ede. That particular uprising was still two decades away.’
‘Hold on,’ said Wydrin. ‘The Storm war was over fifty years ago. That would make you …’ Wydrin shook her head. The woman’s skin was clear and unlined, and her body was lithe and obviously strong. There were no grey hairs in that black mane, and no crow’s feet at her eyes. She looked no older than thirty, if that. ‘You would be more than seventy years old.’
Estenn moved her head. It was not quite a nod. ‘Do you want to hear the rest?’
Wydrin frowned, and then shrugged.
‘I was sold to a mining operation on the western coast of Relios. There are chunks of precious minerals hidden in seams deep in the rocks of that country, and I was one of the people who worked to find them. That was considerably worse than being a scribe for a wealthy merchant. The earth in Relios is red, and riddled with soft clay. It doesn’t make for safe mining shafts. I saw lots of slaves die, and narrowly escaped death myself many times,
while I worked until I became a shadow of a person. I did not know who I was any more. I had no life of my own. I still recited Benoit’s lessons, but they had become just words to me, which, of course, is all they ever were. Salvation and wonder do not lie in human hands.
‘Eventually, the mine ran dry and I was sold again. Back onto a slaving ship I went, all hope of recovering myself long since lost. The ship took on supplies at Two-Birds, and that was when, finally, my destiny came for me.’
Estenn shifted on the ground. The firelight made her features a mask.
‘The captain of the slaver took a handful of us into Two-Birds with him. He fancied that perhaps he could pass us off quickly to some willing ship’s captain, or perhaps to one of the brothels. While I was in the town, a young woman helped me to escape. I will never know why.’ Estenn looked up and met Wydrin’s eyes. ‘That was when I found Euriale.’
‘You went into the island?’
‘Where else could I go? I was so obviously a slave, without a single coin to my name, and I was terrified by my sudden freedom. I had been a slave for years, and knew nothing else. More than anything, I wanted to be away from other people. Men and women had only ever brought me pain and false promises. Benoit, with his human teaching, had promised me a kinder world, and then left me to suffer.’
‘And you’ve lived here ever since?’
Estenn sat back slightly. There was a shrill cry from somewhere deeper in the jungle, and the sound of something heavy moving through the trees, not far from where they were. Wydrin looked in that direction, but no one else seemed to be concerned.
Estenn smiled, and it was almost a warm smile; that of someone remembering a distant but pleasant memory. ‘That first night, as I slept on the black soil of Euriale, the shadow of a wolf came for me. I was frightened at first, and it hurt, but their need was very great, and they had been waiting for me for a very long time.’
Despite the warmth of the evening Wydrin felt goosebumps break out across the tops of her arms.
‘The Twins?’ Despite herself, she whispered the words. ‘You mean Res’ni and Res’na?’
‘An echo of them.’ Estenn met her eyes again, and seemed to come back from wherever her mind had been wandering. ‘Long since perished, of course, but in this place, the ghosts of gods still walk. Tell me, Wydrin of Crosshaven, how much do you know about the mages, and their citadel?’
Wydrin cleared her throat. ‘Well, I’ve been inside the place, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Do you know how they trapped the gods inside it?’ insisted Estenn.
Wydrin shrugged. ‘I know what everyone knows. That they hid some very interesting, very powerful objects inside the Citadel, and when the gods came to take them, they cast a spell. Or something.’
‘Doesn’t that seem rather simplistic to you?’
‘Gods are greedy, and single-minded.’ Wydrin shifted on the hard ground. ‘From what I saw of Y’Ruen, she thought mainly of what she’d like to destroy and little else.’
Estenn nodded, as if this were the response she had expected. ‘What very few people now know is that there was a very specific artefact placed inside the Citadel to lure the gods. A very specific, very dangerous artefact. It was known as the Red Echo, and it was so dangerous that it was stored in two separate parts, so that no one should be able to use it. The Red Echo, it was said, killed mages. It could rip past a mage’s magical defences, and kill a great number of them in one, agonising second.’ Estenn tipped her head slightly to one side. ‘Can you see why the gods might have raced to claim it? The chance to finally wipe out the mages. Imagine if someone had used it? How different the world would be now.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
Estenn pressed her fingers to her throat again. ‘You are interesting to me. And sometimes I like to give people a choice. Most of the men and women who are with me now are people I once gave a choice to. I saw you fighting on the deck of your ship. You’re a strong woman, and a skilled fighter. You have the shape of a god on your skin, just as I do.’
Reflexively Wydrin put a hand to the tattoo of the Graces on her arm.
‘And more than that,’ continued Estenn. ‘If the rumours and stories are true, you saw Y’Ruen in all her glory. You helped to end her.’ Estenn was looking at her very closely now. ‘Do you even realise what you did? What you took from the world? Ede has wilted without the presence of her true gods. With Y’Ruen back the world was fresher, more vital, more full of magic. I felt it here, on Euriale, in the cradle of the gods. And then you took her away.’ Estenn took a long, slow breath, and when she spoke again her voice shook. ‘You took her away. I want to understand why.’
‘She was a dragon,’ said Wydrin, unable to keep the disbelief from her voice. ‘A bloody great fire-breathing bitch of a dragon, very intent on killing everyone and everything in her path. I saw what she did first hand.’ She thought of the Briny Wolf burning bright with dragon fire, and the men and women in the water. She thought of Y’Ruen coming back to pick them off, like a dog rooting for scraps. ‘I saw her murder and eat people, and she would not have stopped, not until every human was a dusty black mark on a rock somewhere. I saw that, while you were sitting out here in your commune for weirdos.’
There was a murmur at this from the men and women standing guard. Estenn held up a hand and they fell silent. ‘You cannot understand, Wydrin of Crosshaven. You have not seen across the years as I have. The last of the gods is dead now, and this world needs its gods.’
‘Gods?’ Wydrin could feel her voice getting louder, and despite the fact that she was unarmed and these people would lose nothing by slitting her throat, she could not stop it. ‘Gods, demons, spirits. Do you know what I have seen of gods and what they bring to Ede? Suffering, misery and horror. I have seen men and women burned alive, I have seen an entire city sunk under the sea because a god was offended. I have seen gods toy with the lives of men and women, because they have nothing better to do. I have seen apparently wise people exile one of their own because of rules made to honour a god that may or may not be there.’ Wydrin turned her head to one side and spat on the ground. ‘That is what I think of your gods.’
Estenn stood. Again she seemed to fade from view and abruptly she was there in front of Wydrin. She barely had time to react before the blow caught her, folding her over onto the broken tiles.
‘I do not give everyone a chance,’ said Estenn evenly. ‘Most are wise enough to take it.’
22
Frith stumbled on through the trees.
His sodden clothes had long since dried out in the heat of the day, but now they were clinging to his back with sweat instead. The jungle around him was a riot of colour, noise and movement. He had never been in a place that felt so virulently alive; the forests of the Blackwood were practically a graveyard in comparison. Everywhere there were birds, insects, tiny monkeys and other mammals – all of them buzzing or singing or calling to each other. Even the flowers and plants seemed more alive than was seemly; he saw fleshy green plants with rows of thorny teeth snapping shut around insects that flew too close, and long trumpet-shaped blossoms that released sporadic clouds of glittering golden pollen.
Frith sneezed. It was all giving him a headache.
And, of course, he was lost. Lost in an alien jungle, with no magic, no supplies and no map. When the Edenier had burned inside him it would have been so simple to summon the word for Seeing. That at least would have given him some idea of where Wydrin had been taken, and then he would have used the words for Ever and Fire to burn this stinking forest out of his path until he found her and then he would crush the idiots until their bones—
His footing gave way and he slipped to his knees, half falling into a thorn bush that clawed at his clothes and skin.
For a few seconds the jungle of Euriale rang with a long list of curse words, most of which Frith had picked up from Wydrin quite recently.
When he had exhausted that particular lexicon, Frith pulled h
imself to his feet. He spent a few moments picking thorns from his clothes, and pushed his hair back from his face.
‘I must take time to think,’ he said. Around him the cacophony of the jungle continued. ‘Wydrin’s life could depend on it.’
Beyond the trees to his left was a green pond, overhung with some huge twisted variety of willow tree. He pushed his way through and sat on a mossy rock at the water’s edge. On the far side of the water he could see a colony of tiny, silvery frogs wallowing in the mud there. Some of them hopped lazily into the water, raising small plops rather than splashes. Something about that movement, about the look of their grey bodies, tickled at the back of his mind.
‘I have no magic, no staff. No supplies, no weapons.’ He touched his belt, thinking of the short sword the pirates had taken from him, and even the vicious little scalpel Augusta Grint had given him. The pretty little knife he’d bought for Wydrin was now with her, wherever she was. ‘I should have waited,’ he murmured, his chest suddenly tight with self-loathing. ‘Waited until I was armed again, until I had a force behind me.’ But he also knew that he couldn’t have done that. When he’d woken up to find that Wydrin had been taken forcibly, cold panic had seized him. It was like Skaldshollow all over again, watching her body spin away through the Rivener, knowing that every chance had been lost, and the dark days after that, when it had been so easy to turn to Joah Demonsworn’s blood-soaked magic.
His eyes caught the movements of the frogs again. Perfectly formed and tiny, they hopped in and out of the sludgy water, hopping like little stones—
Frith sat up, holding his breath.
It was one of Joah’s memories, one of the ones he’d been left with when Joah had performed a ‘crossing’, briefly meshing their experiences together; for a time he had looked out through Joah’s eyes, and had seen many wondrous and terrible things. Much of it hadn’t made sense at the time, but eventually the knowledge had settled like sediment in a pond, and now he knew much of what Joah had – Joah, the greatest mage to have ever lived. The greatest – and the most terrible.