The Iron Ghost

by Jen Williams

  ‘You!’ he bellowed. ‘Betrayer! Worm! What have you got to say for yourself?’

  Prince Dallen shook his head slightly, letting the small clods of dirt fall back to the ground.

  ‘Father—’

  ‘Father? Father! I have been cursed. For letting the Skalds poison the land I have been poisoned myself. With you, my weakling, scheming son. My prisoners freed, the Heart-Stone taken, and all by my own cursed flesh and blood.’

  Dallen opened his mouth to speak again, but his father’s voice became quieter, and somehow more deadly. ‘And have I not just passed the graves of your squad? Led to their deaths out in this godsforsaken place.’

  Behind him, the king’s wyvern, a huge beast with long furred eyebrows sprouting from its horned head, hissed and spat at them in apparent reaction to the king’s anger. Sebastian’s hands tightened around his sword. Looking at the wyvern gave him a tight feeling in his chest, and it was hard to drag his gaze from it. The rest of the king’s guard had stayed mounted, each of them with an ice-spear in his or her hand. Their faces were as cold as the landscape.

  ‘Father, please.’ Sebastian watched as Prince Dallen struggled to his feet, roused to action by mention of his lost soldiers. In the bright sunshine he was a sorry sight, bedraggled and blood-stained. ‘I was only doing what I thought was right, for all our people.’

  King Aristees sneered. ‘What you thought was right? You disobeyed your king! And where is the Heart-Stone now? Tell me you at least have that, Dallen, or gods help me, I shall part your sorry head from your sorrier body right now, in the middle of this cursed place.’

  Sebastian stepped towards him, ignoring Wydrin’s murmured words of warning.

  ‘Your majesty, the Heart-Stone was taken from us by a man long thought dead.’ King Aristees turned to him, his lichen-crusted eyebrows raised in surprise. ‘Your son and his followers fought valiantly to keep it from enemy hands, but there was very little they could do. Very little any of us could do, in truth.’

  ‘Fought valiantly?’ Aristees boomed. Sebastian felt a fine spray of spittle settle on his face, and fought the urge to wipe it away. ‘What would a vile little warmling like you know about fighting valiantly? Your head has been on your shoulders for much longer than I wish it to be, warmling, and it’s time I corrected that.’

  Aristees took a step towards Sebastian, brandishing the axe, and Dallen stepped in front of him, pushing Sebastian back with a light touch to his arm.

  ‘The prisoners are still mine, Father. You will not harm them.’

  Aristees’ face grew rigid, darkening with rage. Sebastian saw him staring at his arm where Dallen’s hand now rested, and he realised at once that they only knew the barest part of this conflict. This is an old wound between them, he thought, and I have only made it worse.

  ‘It’s like that, is it?’ Aristees bared his teeth at them both, and his eyes were bright with hate now. And something else, Sebastian thought – relief. He’s been waiting years for an excuse like this. ‘And who took the Heart-Stone from you so easily?’

  ‘It was a mage,’ said Dallen. ‘A mage so powerful—’

  ‘A mage,’ spat King Aristees. ‘Are we suffering a plague of them now? Warmling nonsense.’

  ‘Father—’

  King Aristees hefted his axe, but he just used the flat head of it to push his son in the chest, hard. Dallen stumbled backwards, one wary hand going to the pommel of his sword.

  ‘I cast you out!’ spat Aristees through gritted teeth. ‘I cast you out from the Frozen Steps, from all Narhl territories!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You will no longer be my son, and your name will not be spoken again in the Hall of the Ancestors. I cast you out of the Frozen Lands, and you can die with your warmling friends, in their hot, stinking civilisation.’

  King Aristees turned and headed back to his mount, which lowered its shaggy head at his approach. The soldiers still mounted looked unmoved by the king’s rage, and Sebastian wondered how often they witnessed such outbursts, and exactly how long this day had been in coming. He glanced back to Wydrin, who was standing next to Nuava. She gave the tiniest of shrugs.

  Dallen seemed to come back to himself then, and he ran a few steps after his father. All at once he looked much younger.

  ‘Wait,’ he said, and all the shrewd diplomacy was gone from his voice. ‘Wait, Father. You can’t do that. I’m the heir to the throne, the only one you have! What will you do?’

  King Aristees had settled himself back into the saddle, his great battle axe once more slung comfortably across his shoulders. His face could have been carved from stone.

  ‘What will I do? I am young yet, whatever you may think, boy. I will take another queen, and hope that her flesh does not produce another warmling snake like you.’

  He flicked the reins once, and the wyvern turned on them all, long tail sweeping out towards them. Sebastian staggered back, convinced for a moment that it would knock them all to the ground, and then it was off, pouncing up into the air and away. After a moment, the rest of the king’s soldiers followed, and in seconds they were a clutch of blue snakes, wriggling away from them.

  There was silence in their small, sorry camp. Wydrin cleared her throat and sat back down, continuing to sort through the Narhl baggage, while Nuava looked up at them all, her own woes temporarily forgotten.

  ‘Your highness,’ started Sebastian, and then immediately regretted it. ‘Dallen, I . . .’

  Prince Dallen turned to look at him, and his smile was very bleak indeed. ‘This day has been coming for a long time, Sir Sebastian. I had hoped that I could turn it from its path somehow, stall it, but in the end I only hurried it along. I just – I wish it hadn’t cost the lives of my soldiers. They were good men and women. The best, in fact.’ His voice broke a little on the last word.

  ‘What will you do now?’

  Prince Dallen touched his hand to the furred pendant that hung around his neck. ‘The only thing I can do. My father will never have me back, that much is certain, but I can at least restore some small portion of my honour.’ He met Sebastian’s eyes, and his gaze was cold and clear. ‘I shall help you find your friend, and I shall restore the Heart-Stone. I can help the mountain-spirit, if nothing else.’

  Sebastian smiled. ‘We would be glad of your help, Prince Dallen.’

  ‘Please, just Dallen now. I could do without being reminded of that just at the moment.’

  ‘One less princeling, that’s what I like to hear,’ said Wydrin. ‘Come and have a drink, Dallen, and we’ll figure out how we’re getting our other one back.’

  30

  It had seemed important to Sebastian that the brood sisters have some sort of routine, a framework to structure each day. He took to training them as he’d been trained, and as the weeks passed, he saw them settle to it as if they’d been born to such a life.

  He stood in the thick grass, watching them work through their exercises as a strengthening breeze pushed at his back. They were near perfect now, their movements swift and confident. A number of them had proven so adept at the old routines that he had singled them out for a kind of promotion; Crocus, Skylark, and Becoming had taken over his role as master-at-arms, and now they walked up and down the rows, adjusting posture and administering praise. They were becoming a genuine unit – whereas before they had thrown themselves into battle with wild abandon, now they moved with surety, with strategy. With their own natural skills and the powerful bond they felt with each other, they would eventually become an unbeatable army. A small one, no doubt, but absolutely formidable.

  The day was overcast, and turning colder. The clouds to the south had a yellow tinge to them, a sure sign that snow was coming. Sebastian reached into his pocket and closed his fingers over the blue glass globe in there. Above him, Isu was a looming presence.

  ‘You are pleased with our progress, Father?’

  Ephemeral appeared at his elbow. She was dressed in thick furs – the brood sisters all felt
the cold keenly – and she had a fat book under one arm.

  ‘Very much so, Ephemeral. You certainly learn faster than I did, or any of the novices. I wouldn’t like to meet your sisters in battle.’

  Ephemeral was quiet for a moment. Normally, she was a cauldron bubbling with questions, and Sebastian felt a tremor of unease for the first time that afternoon.

  ‘What is it?’

  The brood sister tipped her head to one side, considering. Idly she stroked the cover of her book with one clawed hand.

  ‘You train us for war, Father, and yet we have taken an oath not to take another human life. I do not understand.’

  Sebastian took a slow, deep breath, thinking of his own training on similar slopes. Had he thought then about the lives he would take? It was difficult to remember.

  ‘There is more to this than the ability to swiftly injure, or to kill,’ he said. He scratched at the scar on his cheek, caught himself doing it, and quickly took his hand away. ‘The training teaches discipline, calm thinking in the face of conflict. It teaches you how to defend yourselves. It makes you stronger. I learned all of this when I was a boy, and it gave me structure.’

  ‘Then you do not intend us to fight?’

  ‘I . . . no, Ephemeral. I just want you to be able to live in this world peacefully, and I want to give you –’ He paused, uncertain of what to say next. ‘I am teaching you what I know, for better or for worse, I suppose.’

  ‘And once we have learned this discipline, we will be able to explore the world?’ Ephemeral peered up at him, her eyes narrowed. ‘I am eager to go, Father. I want to see the other places, the places that Wydrin spoke of when she was here. I want to see the Marrow Market at Crosshaven, or the Seven Waterfalls at Burning Rock. Or the jungles of Onwai. There is so much to see.’ She broke into a grin. ‘I will see all of it, and it will be whole and unburnt.’

  Sebastian bit his lip. ‘Shall we take a walk?’

  Ephemeral nodded. They left Skylark shouting commands at the brood sisters to walk around the back of the temple. At the rear of the red brick building there was a long narrow garden. In the distant past it had been planted with hardy vegetables and medicinal plants, but now it was a confusion of overgrown shrubs and weeds. The outer bed had been planted with elder thorn bushes, which the knights had ground down to make numbing salves. These had now overtaken much of the garden, their ruddy thorns wickedly sharp.

  ‘There is a great deal more to being a knight than simply learning to fight,’ said Sebastian. He pushed through the bushes, unmindful of the thorns as they scraped against his leathers. ‘There is learning, and meditation too.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Ephemeral eagerly, stepping alongside him. ‘I have read all the books you were able to bring us. In one of them I found a great list of other libraries, enormous ones where you could read and read for years and never finish all the books. I will visit those one day too.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sebastian, although his heart sank a little. ‘One day, you will travel with us.’

  ‘One day soon, Father?’

  Sebastian nodded reluctantly. ‘It may be necessary, at first, for you to travel quietly. As we did on the journey up from Baneswatch. People will be wary of you. They may be frightened.’

  ‘We have taken an oath,’ said Ephemeral, stepping around another bush. ‘We will do no harm to another human being.’ She hesitated. ‘I am sad, for the lives I have already taken.’

  Sebastian looked at her, remembering the battlefield in Relios. The screaming brood horde, so alien and strange in their golden armour, with their crystal swords. She looked so human to him now, with her braided hair and the smudge of book dust on her cheek. Would they look so human to anyone else?

  ‘You know, Ephemeral, that you were not truly responsible for that.’ He spoke in a low voice. ‘Y’Ruen commanded you then. When your commander is evil,’ he struggled to find the right words, ‘when the person who commands you is evil, you may find yourself doing evil deeds.’ Part of him recoiled at that, knowing it was a terrible simplification, but the anxiety in the set of her mouth was too clear.

  ‘It is more than that though, isn’t it?’ Ephemeral looked down at her feet. ‘Our blood is the blood of the dragon. The god of destruction birthed us beneath the ground, and death and destruction runs in our blood.’

  Sebastian put a hand on her shoulder, making her meet his eyes.

  ‘But you have a choice, Ephemeral. And it’s what you choose to do now that matters. I truly believe that.’

  There was a rustling hiss from behind them. Sebastian turned just in time to catch sight of a scaly tail disappearing from sight.

  ‘A thorn adder,’ he said. ‘They often make their homes under these bushes. We shall have to cut all this back and replant, I think. It would be a good project for us.’

  Ephemeral was already pushing past him, following the snake. ‘Are they poisonous, Father?’

  ‘No,’ Sebastian went after her, smiling faintly. ‘A bite would be no worse than a bee sting, although I wouldn’t recommend it.’

  They tracked it to the very back of the garden, where a low stone wall marked the boundary. Here the elder thorn was particularly thick. Ephemeral bent down and pushed the bushes back, revealing a swirling, hissing nest of snakes.

  Sebastian took an involuntary step backwards. ‘Careful,’ he said. ‘It looks like they’re riled up.’

  There had to be at least twenty snakes curled up in the natural hollow between the bushes. Their brown and teal scales were dull and dusty, but their eyes were chips of gold, glinting in the overcast daylight. Sebastian had seen many such snakes in his boyhood, but something about this nest caused a fierce knot of tension in his stomach – it was the way they were moving, he told himself, twisting and slithering agitatedly, as though the nest were being poked with a stick.

  ‘They can feel my sisters,’ said Ephemeral in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘They can sense the dragon blood all around, and it confuses them.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Sebastian found his hand straying to the pommel of his dagger. It might be best to deal with this nest as they had dealt with the wolf. ‘How can they feel you?’

  ‘Blood calls to blood,’ Ephemeral crouched, peering closely at the snakes. ‘Once these creatures were cousins to the dragon, when the world was young and full of magic.’

  ‘How can you know that?’

  Ephemeral shrugged. ‘It is one of the things I just know. I can feel them, as they feel me. Look.’ She reached out a hand to the snakes, and they all stopped moving as one. Not a single tail twitched. No tongues nipped out to taste the air. ‘They are so small, and easily swayed.’

  ‘How?’ Sebastian swallowed hard, staring at the unnaturally still snakes. ‘How are you doing that?’

  ‘It is the connection that flows through our dragon blood.’ She looked up at him, almost shyly. ‘You feel that connection too. That connection to us. Can you feel the snakes?’

  Sebastian took a step backwards, frowning. ‘No, of course not. They are just snakes.’

  Ephemeral stood up, and the nest of snakes began writhing again.

  ‘Just try it. Reach out for them. In your head they will feel a little like we do.’

  Sebastian stared at her. The tension in his stomach had spread to his chest, and he felt a rising note of panic there.

  ‘They can feel you too,’ she said. ‘Trust me. Just try it.’

  Hardly knowing what he was doing, Sebastian looked back down at the snakes. They were all watching him as they writhed, eyes like molten gold. And there was something, a cold tickle in the back of his mind. Was that his imagination? Did his link to the brood sisters give him a link to such low creatures?

  ‘I don’t—’

  As one, the snakes began moving faster, their glistening sinuous bodies slithering against each other in a frenzy, as though they were being heated over a fire. One, then two, then five of the snakes turned their arrow-shaped heads up to Sebastian and hissed, re
vealing swollen throats and fangs dripping with poison.

  Sebastian stumbled away.

  ‘You did it,’ said Ephemeral, cheerily enough. ‘You found the connection. Do you still feel it?’

  He did – a cold thread in his chest, a silvery chill that was somehow appealing. To be so single-minded, so pure of purpose. He touched a hand to his forehead, and found that he was sweating.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said, already turning away. ‘Tomorrow we will burn all these bushes back.’

  31

  Frith woke to a surge of bile in the back of his throat. He sat up rapidly, swinging his legs over the side of the small bunk and concentrating fiercely on not being sick. The cramped bunk room was still dark and damp smelling, and he could see a thin line of bruise-coloured light under the door. There were noises beyond it, the sounds of someone moving about briskly, occupied with some important task.

  After a few moments the nausea passed, and Frith looked cautiously around the room. There was no sign of the woman he thought he’d glimpsed before he’d surrendered to sleep, and it now seemed likely she’d been an hallucination, brought on by shock and the effects of Joah’s strange magic.

  ‘I must leave here soon,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Or I shall become every bit the lunatic Joah Demonsworn is.’

  At the sound of his voice, low as it was, there was a scuffling from inside his cloak. He reached within and retrieved the warm bird-body of Gwiddion, who peered up at him with bright, intelligent eyes.

  ‘You are still with me, then.’ Despite himself, Frith smiled. He turned the bird over carefully in his hands, gently pressing here and there for injuries. As far as he could tell, nothing was obviously broken, but Gwiddion squawked indignantly as his hands passed over his left wing. Sitting alone in the dark, Frith attempted to summon the healing magic as he had done for Wydrin and her brother, but without the words to channel it, the Edenier stayed silent.

  ‘I’m afraid you may have to wait awhile, Gwiddion.’ Frith bundled together a number of the foul-smelling blankets into a sort of nest on his bunk, and placed the bird inside. Gwiddion opened and closed his beak, swaddled now like a small child. Frith took a step back, suddenly feeling vaguely foolish. He was strangely glad that Wydrin was not here to witness this. ‘Stay there,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Don’t make any noise.’