by Jen Williams
Frith shook his head, unsure what to say for the best. ‘I honestly cannot tell you. It seems to be something I have acquired since we arrived here.’
‘And what did it feel like?’
‘I was angry. Wydrin was in danger. Everything seemed to slow down, to grow faded.’ Frith bit down on his words. He did not want to speak of this, but Wydrin was right; if he was going to find out what this was, this was the best place to do it. ‘I concentrated on them. I wanted them gone, so I pushed them. I pushed them while everything else was still.’
‘When you say you pushed them—’
‘Through time,’ said Frith. The sudden realisation was like being doused in freezing water. ‘I pushed them forward through time.’
Selsye stopped, staring at him. For a moment he thought she was going to call him a liar, or call for guards to take him away. Instead, she gave a joyful shout of laughter. ‘That is incredible! Come on, there’s no knowing when Xinian will attempt to spirit you away from me, so I must find out what I can.’
She led him up a steep flight of stairs at the end of a dark corridor, and opened a hatch in the ceiling. They emerged into a room of brilliant light, and it took a few moments for Frith’s eyes to adjust to the glare. By the time he could see clearly again he realised they must be inside one of the giant globes they had seen from the outside. The smooth white walls of the globe rose around them on all sides, appearing to be made of some sort of clouded glass – he wondered briefly what Crowleo would make of it – and the floor was covered in hundreds of silk strips, some painted with mage words, others blank. It was impossible to see what the floor looked like through them, and Selsye cheerfully kicked them to either side as she strode across the chamber to the thin figure standing facing away from them.
There was a moment, so brief, like a cold finger pressed to the back of his neck, and Frith almost guessed before the man turned around. Instead, he felt a sudden surge of foreboding so strong that it was like drowning.
‘Joah,’ cried Selsye, ‘you could at least keep them all in one pile instead of chucking them all over the floor. Xinian would have kittens if she saw this mess.’
The man turned around. It was Joah Demonsworn, alive and breathing, so much younger than when Frith had last seen him, and with no sign of the madness that had so gripped him. He had an open, handsome face, his brown eyes were kind, and he turned to Selsye with the slightly startled look of someone who had been deep in thought. His hair was bound back in a loose tail and his beard was short and carefully maintained – the beard, perhaps, of a young man who isn’t very good at growing them yet.
‘I am so close to a solution though,’ he said. He was holding something between his fingers, a thin sheet of nearly transparent material, a mage word painted on it in black ink. Frith barely noticed. He thought of Joah calling him Aaron, of him saying they were brothers, and how he had sent a bolt of lightning to Wydrin’s heart, blowing her clean off her feet and ripping her from his arms. Heat prickled in his fingers, and there was a roaring in his ears. If the Edenier had still been within him, he knew that Joah Demonsworn would have been a smoking corpse.
‘Lord Frith?’
Frith took a breath, and realised that Selsye had been speaking. He’d heard none of it. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘I was just introducing you to my assistant here,’ continued Selsye. Joah was peering at him curiously. He wore a simple tunic of olive green, and loose trousers bound into furred boots. His arms were criss-crossed with multiple lines of silk. ‘Well, I say assistant, but he knows more than I do these days. He hardly ever sleeps, I can’t keep him from study.’ She touched Joah’s shoulder, briefly, fondly, and Frith thought: He will kill you. Years from now he will kill you and the woman you love. ‘Lord Frith, this is Joah Cirrus, our most promising student, and a fellow crafter of the Edeian. Joah, our guest here has an unusual instinct for the craft. Xinian brought him to Lan-Hellis for, well, complicated reasons, but I reckon we can make good use of him while he’s here.’
Joah stepped forward, a shy smile on his face. ‘It is an honour to meet you, Lord Frith,’ said Joah. ‘Anyone who has impressed Mistress Selsye in so short a time must be a crafter of great skill indeed.’
‘Ye gods, Joah, please don’t call me that.’ Selsye grimaced at him. ‘You make me sound ancient, and I’m barely older than you.’
There was a moment’s silence, and Frith realised that he still hadn’t spoken, and they were beginning to think it strange. He cleared his throat. ‘The honour is mine,’ he said, fighting to keep his voice level. ‘This place is truly extraordinary.’
‘We do a lot of magical experimentation here.’ As she spoke, Selsye absently began to collect some of the silk strips from the floor, winding them around her arms as she did so. ‘Joah, what is it you are working on at the moment?’
The young mage held up the strange diaphanous material again. ‘I am trying to develop a way of easily and swiftly bonding a mage word to an object, or indeed, a person.’ He nodded at the silk strips Selsye was clearing away. ‘Our current system is wasteful and longwinded. It is possible to have the words inked directly into your skin, of course, but that carries a degree of risk – what if the person doing the inking gets his lines slightly wrong? I am crafting a material that can be inked ahead of time, and will bond on contact. Here.’ He bent down and cleared away some strips with one hand to reveal a leather-bound book. Carefully, he laid the material over the cover, and there was a sharp hiss. The mage word glowed pale blue for a moment, and small curls of grey smoke began to rise from the book. Joah sighed, and then stamped out the tiny flame. ‘It’s almost there,’ he said. ‘It will be enormously useful.’
‘And that reminds me,’ said Selsye, smoothly cutting into his flow. ‘Our guest has demonstrated a very unusual form of magic, something I have never seen before.’ She caught Frith’s alarmed look, and shook her head ever so slightly. ‘Do not be reluctant, Lord Frith, Joah can be trusted with what you told me. If anyone can help unpick this for us, it’s my assistant.’
Joah tipped his head slightly to one side. The light in his eyes was easy enough to read: hunger. Did Joah already know about demon magic, or was he still looking for the power that would give him the edge over other mages?
‘Thank you, but I fear we will not be here for very long.’ Frith forced a smile on his face. It felt too tight. ‘Once we are sure the situation is secure, Wydrin and I have other business to attend to.’
‘Then we shall be swift, as Mistress Selsye suggests.’ Joah nodded, his voice warm. He could be kind, Frith remembered. He could be generous, and his need to expand the knowledge of the mages was genuine. But he had murdered for that knowledge, over and over again. ‘Please, tell me everything you remember, and in as much detail as you can.’
‘So, what do you think?’
They had been housed in what Frith took to be one of the small rooms normally reserved for students of Lan-Hellis. There was a washbasin, a small wooden chest, and a basic straw bed piled with furs and blankets. There was a narrow window too, although there was very little to see out of it – just the sweeping darkness of Whittenfarne, and distant ghostly lights. He and Wydrin sat on the bed together, sharing a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine. Wydrin had her legs crossed, and he could tell from the set of her shoulders that something had unnerved her. He didn’t want to add to that, but could see no way of avoiding it.
‘Joah is here,’ he said simply.
Wydrin looked up, startled, the hand not holding the bottle of wine dropping towards her sword belt. He shook his head hurriedly.
‘Not here. In Lan-Hellis. He is Selsye’s assistant, of all things. This is obviously some time before he becomes their worst nightmare. She called him Joah Cirrus, which was his name before they crowned him Joah Lightbringer. Long before Joah Demonsworn.’
‘If he harms you—’
‘I do not think I am in danger from him. No more than anyone else is, anyway. I would be willing to
bet that he hasn’t met the demon yet, although perhaps his mind turns in that direction.’
‘And he is Selsye’s assistant?’ Wydrin looked horrified. She passed him the bottle and he took a gulp of wine before answering.
‘Yes. She is proud of him. They are both eager to help me figure out this new magic of mine. I don’t see how I can refuse their help without raising awkward questions.’
‘You could kill him,’ suggested Wydrin. ‘Or I could kill him. I would be fine with that. I’ve already done it once.’
‘Believe me, I did think of that. If I had had the power I once had, he would already be dead.’ Frith clenched his fist, breaking the bread he held into crumbs. ‘But we do not know what killing Joah would do. Besides which, there would be no explaining it to Xinian or Selsye. Say that we killed him for crimes he hasn’t committed yet? We would be imprisoned immediately, or killed outright, and then Estenn would retrieve the Red Echo and all would be lost anyway.’
Wydrin rubbed crumbs from her hands, and then swiped them off the blankets. ‘By the bastard Graces, why do things just get more complicated for us?’
‘When I saw him, when I heard his voice …’ Frith looked back to the narrow window. There was nothing but darkness out there. ‘I remembered it all at once. The Rivener, O’rin dying on the floor, losing you. The way that he just peeled open my mind, my memories, and took what he wanted. He saw my love for you and was jealous of it. Used it against me, and you suffered for it.’
‘But we came through it.’ She leaned forward and squeezed his knee, looking at him steadily. ‘We all did.’
Frith put his hand over hers. He thought of the blade in his hand, the Edenier trap opening like a dark flower. And the hunger that lived inside him now, the same hunger he’d seen reflected in Joah’s eyes that night.
‘What of the Red Echo?’ he said, stepping away from the memories. ‘It is secure?’
Wydrin sat back, grimacing slightly. She took the bottle and took several long gulps before wiping a hand across her mouth. ‘It’s not a thing at all,’ she said. ‘It’s a culoss, or something very like it. Do you remember those?’
Frith smiled faintly, despite himself. ‘Of course I do. I blew a few of them up, if I remember correctly.’
‘Walking bags of dust and worm guts,’ said Wydrin, returning his smile reluctantly. ‘But they fought on our side in the end, against the newly arisen brood army. You know, if we’d just listened to them in the first place, none of this would have happened.’
‘And I would have walked away from you and Sebastian and into another life. A bitter, twisted existence, dreaming of revenge, of justice for my family, knowing I could never have it.’ Frith looked down at his hands. Once they had been scarred, his fingernails all torn off with pliers. ‘And I would never have had you. I have always been selfish, it’s true, but in this I cannot bring myself to feel guilty. Wydrin, I would not give you up for anything.’
‘And you’ll never have to,’ she replied, an unusually serious tone to her voice, but when he looked up she was breaking the bread into more pieces. ‘They keep it down in the dark, in a cellar under the main room. It can talk, and it calls itself Echo, but it is just a spell, Xinian tells me. Somewhere there is another one just like it, and together they form a piece of magic so powerful it could destroy the mages.’
‘Hopefully Sebastian will be there by now,’ said Frith, hoping he sounded more certain than he felt.
‘There have been no messages from their other stronghold,’ said Wydrin. She shifted on the bed. ‘I can’t help feeling like we’ve made a mistake somewhere. We shouldn’t have split up again. It puts us all in danger, and I can’t say why.’ She shook her head, and he saw a flicker of anger pass over her face. ‘There is too much we don’t know, and it makes me nervous. I hate being nervous. I want to get out there and stab something.’
Frith put the last of the bread aside and shifted over until he could put his arm around her. She stiffened at first, refusing to be mollified, but he leaned down and kissed her hair, and then the warm skin of her neck. She looked up at him, and he was glad to see mischief dancing in her eyes again.
‘Lord Frith, are you attempting to distract me with sex?’
‘I am,’ he said, ‘it’s true. I am occasionally capable of entirely selfless acts.’
She laughed delightedly at that and slid her fingers between the buttons of his shirt. His heart eased a little. If nothing else, there was always this. Always. He tried not to think of the darkness outside the window.
55
For the first time the Narhl man looked uncertain.
They had finally reached the lagoon, the ships at anchor near one of its sandy banks. Tall trees towered to all sides, a wall of green foliage so dense it seemed to suck light from the place, and the water was crystal blue. Even if Terin hadn’t claimed that the waters had healing properties, Devinia thought the place looked inviting – after days on board the Dragon’s Maw under the blistering sun, the idea of a quick swim was very attractive – but still he held them back. Terin’s eyes moved constantly, searching the treeline for something she couldn’t guess.
‘Well?’ snapped the Banshee. Her face was a patch of darkness within her hood, her bare arms marbled with the furry red growth. In some of the more advanced cases, the red growths now resembled fibrous thorns, bursting up through the skin. Ristanov’s arm bristled with them. ‘We have come to your precious lagoon, grey-man. You will heal my people here, or I will cut your throat myself and let you bleed out in this water, yes. What are we waiting for?’
Terin turned to her, his face solemn. ‘My apologies, Captain, but this is not an instant process. First of all I must meditate so that I am at one with the spirits here, and then I must commune with them. I can ask the water spirits to heal you, but if I just blunder in, making demands …’ He smiled faintly. ‘I am sure you understand the importance of democracy, Captain.’
The Banshee stiffened, her head twitching back so that for a brief moment it was possible to see her face. Devinia caught sight of one wild blue eye in a thicket of red, and then it was gone.
‘Perhaps, priest, I will just butcher you here. Fresh meat for dinner, yes. That may do my crew more good than your prayers.’
‘Oh, great.’ Augusta appeared behind her, wiping her hands on a scrap of cloth. Her broad, wrinkled forehead was pink with sunburn. ‘So we came all the way out here for nowt, then? If you’re going to just kill the fool we could have done it days ago and still be picking his bones clean now.’ Augusta shook her head in disgust. ‘Let him do his business. If it doesn’t work, you’ve still got his skinny hide to fillet.’
Ristanov hissed through her teeth at the old woman, but when she turned back, she waved a dismissive hand at Terin.
‘Do what you must. The crew need to rest, anyway.’
‘I would like to go down into the water,’ said Terin immediately. ‘I will be able to commune more directly with the water spirits that way.’
For a brief moment Devinia thought Ristanov would strike him, she looked so irritated, but instead she turned away. ‘Devinia the Grey, get your charge into the water. You could use a bath.’
With no small difficulty, she and Terin were lowered down into the shallow water, swimming until they could put their feet on the sandy bottom. From the ship, the Banshee had a team of three men with crossbows trained on them, just in case they decided to take their chances within the island.
‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ said Devinia. ‘Ristanov has never been an especially patient woman, and that shit on her face isn’t putting her in a good mood.’
‘Everything is as it should be,’ he replied. The water came up to their waists, clear and cool against their skins. Terin crouched, letting the water lap against his chest, then his neck. He closed his eyes and breathed out slowly. ‘Almost everything, anyway.’
‘This is you meditating, is it?’
He sighed and swept his hands through the wa
ter slowly, causing a thousand shards of light to jump across the surface. ‘You could say that. This is a beautiful place, but it is so hot. How can anyone live in such a place?’
‘I’m beginning to think no one should.’ Devinia glanced back at the ship, eyeing the crossbow bolts still aimed at them, before edging a little closer to Terin. ‘Are you going to tell me what this is really about?’
Terin opened his eyes and looked at her, his dark blue eyes suddenly shrewd. A smile touched the corner of his mouth. ‘All I can say, my friend, is be ready to move. And a friend of the Copper Cat says hello.’
Devinia caught her breath. ‘You know Wydrin? Do you know where she is? I need to—’
‘What is this?’
They both turned back towards the ship at the sound of the voice. A withered figure, half wrapped in a long grey cloak, was standing by the guardrail, watching them. Kellan hadn’t troubled to cover his head like the Banshee had, and Devinia noticed the men with crossbows edging away slightly. They were all infected, but even so, no one wanted what Kellan had. In the daylight he was an especially alarming sight. The ring of gold on his forehead was too bright to look at.
‘What is this?’ he repeated, turning to look at the Banshee, who was watching him carefully. ‘Our most prized prisoner going for a little dip?’
‘The priest claims he must meditate in the water before the lagoon will provide the cure for our sickness.’ Ristanov’s voice was tight. ‘It amuses me to have Devinia the Grey do menial tasks such as this.’
‘Nonsense!’ boomed Kellan, holding up stick-thin arms to the sky. The grey cloak fell away and they saw the red ruin of his chest. ‘There is no cure for this! We are becoming, we are changing, we—’
‘I am the captain here, Kellan!’
His narrow head whipped towards her like a snake, and behind them the Dawning Man lurched into life. Huge golden shoulders twisted under the bright sunlight and it took several steps forward, sending waves across the previously calm water. For a few seconds Devinia thought it would simply bring its giant feet down on the ships and shatter them into splinters, but instead it stepped around them, sloshing water to all sides, and bore down on the two small figures in the shallow water. Its huge shadow fell over them, glowing red eyes like baleful lamps. Devinia shoved at Terin, pushing him in the chest.