The Iron Ghost

by Jen Williams

  The sky was the deep purple of early dawn now, the stars slowly fading out of view as the silvery light of the sun stole their luminance. The scrubby land that spread out below the statues was still deeply shadowed in places, and Dallen found that his eyes were drawn to it. For a few moments, he forgot the men and women around him as he stared down at the snow and rocks below them. Had he spotted movement then? Was someone down there?

  He looked to the wyverns. Their sense of smell was powerful, enough for the Narhl to use them to hunt down deer or the fleet-footed goats of the far north, and if there was anything approaching they should have caught the scent. But the animals showed no sense of alarm. One of them was up already, stretching its long, pale blue tail behind it as its rider started the day by rubbing its shiny body down with handfuls of clean snow. The other three wyverns were stirring too, and as he watched, one of them lifted its head and looked back down the hill. Not alarmed, not yet, but there was something.

  ‘Hoy,’ he called to the nearest soldier, a thickset woman with green lichen in her eyebrows. ‘How many do you have on watch? And where?’

  The woman frowned at him, casually passing a spear from hand to hand. ‘I’m not supposed to talk to you.’

  ‘We are very exposed up here,’ he said. He was thinking of Joah Demonsworn, who had appeared out of nowhere and slaughtered his troop. Of the terrible stone and metal monster that had torn its way out of the earth. ‘This is a bad place to make camp.’

  The woman lowered her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry, your highness, but the King has been very clear.’ She looked uncomfortable, as Odissin did. ‘You are to be treated as a prisoner.’

  Dallen turned away from her, biting down a frustrated retort, and that was when he saw death coming for them, fast and silent. A woman was running up the hill towards the statues, a sword in each hand. Her skin was pale green and her long white hair streamed out behind her like a flag. She bellowed no war cry, and there was a look of serene concentration on her face. Her eyes were yellow and full of murder.

  ‘Watch out!’

  But they were so fast. All at once lots of women were streaking up the hill, and then they were over the summit and amongst them. The Narhl soldiers were taken completely by surprise, most of them without their weapons, many still eating their breakfast.

  The women were unnaturally quick, whirling and diving and lunging without appearing to need to think about it. Their reactions were instantaneous; Dallen saw one Narhl soldier, faster than the rest, fling his ice-spear at one of the green women, but, rather than shying away, she leapt towards the spear, smacking it from its dangerous arc with one blow of her sword so that it clattered harmlessly against the nearest statue, and using the momentum of her leap she turned and brought her other sword down across the Narhl soldier’s neck. Dallen saw his blood spray crimson in the dawn light, and then he was down.

  ‘Kill them!’ his father was bellowing, ‘Kill them all!’ The king had a hold of his axe and was charging in a frenzy, but the green women were too fast, simply dancing out of his way. All around him, Narhl soldiers were falling, screaming in the dirt, bleeding out. Dallen scrambled awkwardly to his feet, stumbling backwards as a man with his chest torn open collapsed in front of him.

  ‘Someone untie my bonds!’ he cried, but even if they had wanted to, the Narhl soldiers had no chance to free him; they were falling fast now, and the smell of blood was overpowering. The woman with the green lichen in her eyebrows staggered past him, one hand pressed to her neck, her eyes wide and glassy. The woman who had stabbed her pushed her easily onto the ground and glanced up at Dallen, and nodded once before heading back into the fray.

  What is going on? ‘Stop, please!’

  He saw his father beset on all sides by three of the green warriors, and he had dropped his axe in favour of a pair of curved blades. King Aristees was famed throughout the Frozen Steps as a legendary fighter but Dallen could see that his father was struggling. Soon, they would put him down too.

  ‘Wyverns, to me!’

  The big lizards were confused, cowering back against the stones away from these newcomers, but each of them turned towards his call, long snouts snuffling the air.

  ‘To your squad!’ he cried. ‘Protect the squad!’

  The biggest wyvern, Odissin’s own, curled like a snake, jaws yawning open to reveal rows of shining white teeth. It made to strike at a nearby attacker, but a man appeared from behind the nearest statue, a man with long black hair and broad shoulders. Dallen was so surprised to see Sebastian that for a few moments he didn’t recognise him, and then the big knight placed a hand on the wyvern’s flank and immediately it coiled back in on itself, hiding its long head under its own tail. The other wyverns followed suit, drawing together as though frightened or confused.

  ‘Sebastian?’

  One of the women approached him – her white hair was cut very short – and in desperation he summoned the Cold. He saw her blink with surprise as the temperature around them plummeted, and her eyebrows and hair were suddenly rimmed with frost. Another second and her blade gained an icy coating.

  ‘I will freeze your blood in its veins, monster.’

  ‘Dallen, stop!’

  Sebastian left the wyverns, who were still mewling like pups, and jogged over. He placed a hand on the woman’s arm.

  ‘They’re on your side, Dallen.’ He stepped over the bodies like they weren’t there. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Am I all right?’ said Dallen, weakly. It really was Sebastian; his long black hair was tied back in its customary braid, and his blue eyes were narrowed against the cold. Dallen could see how he was looking at him; making note of every bruise, every cut. When Dallen didn’t elaborate, Sebastian turned to gesture at the female warriors. King Aristees was now on his knees in the dirt, a smear of blood on his dirty white beard.

  ‘These are . . . my friends, I suppose. The brood sisters. It’s a bit complicated to explain, actually; remind me to tell you the story some time.’ He smiled wanly. ‘This one here you just tried to freeze is Havoc, and this is Ephemeral, their leader.’

  Another one of the women stepped forward. Her hair was tied back in a braid like Sebastian’s, and she was watching Dallen closely.

  ‘Why –’ Dallen shook his head. ‘Why have you done this?’

  ‘Why?’ Sebastian looked utterly confused for a moment. ‘Because they had taken you prisoner. They were beating you, killing you slowly. Frith saw it with his seeing spell.’ He nodded to the woman called Havoc, who circled Dallen and cut his bonds with a quick stroke of her knife. ‘I couldn’t just leave you here.’

  ‘So instead you come here with these . . .’ he gestured to the green-skinned soldiers, lost for words – ‘with whatever these creatures are, and you kill my people?’

  Sebastian said nothing at all for some time. He was breathing hard. Now that the fighting was over, the dawn light seemed to fill the space between the statues like liquid gold. Dallen could see it reflected on the shining white hair of the warrior women, and in the pools of blood already being absorbed into the dark earth. The wyverns still cowered, the sunlight turning their shining skins to brittle crystal.

  ‘They were killing you,’ said Sebastian eventually. ‘I could not just stand by and let them do that.’

  ‘Why not?’ Dallen raised his hands once, and dropped them. ‘I had accepted it. It was the justice I deserved for getting my squad killed. My father was too merciful. And now it seems that I am responsible for even more deaths.’

  Sebastian took a step towards him, then seemed to think the better of it.

  ‘I could not leave you here,’ he said again. ‘Wydrin is dead, and I could not lose you too.’

  Dallen frowned. Despite everything, he had liked the mouthy red-headed sell-sword.

  ‘What will you do now, Sir Sebastian?’ he said, noting how the big knight winced at the use of that particular honorific. ‘Kill my father in front of me too?’

  Sebastian
shook his head tersely. While they had been talking, the brood sisters, as Sebastian called them, had gathered the last of the living Narhl together and made them kneel next to their king by the largest statue. There were six of them left.

  ‘Let’s see what King Aristees has to say for himself,’ said Sebastian. ‘And then I expect we’ll work it out from there.’

  The old man glared up at them as they approached. Had he ever been bested in battle before? Seen his soldiers torn to pieces around him? Dallen didn’t believe so.

  ‘King Aristees,’ said Sebastian evenly. ‘It seems you are my prisoner now.’

  ‘Aye, well. Just goes to show that I should have killed you on the spot. My axe thirsted for your blood, and I denied it. Not a mistake I’ll be making again, you can be sure of that.’

  ‘Oh, I’m absolutely sure of it, your majesty.’

  Aristees actually chuckled at this. ‘Heh. Well. Shall we get down to business, warmling scum?’

  ‘Business?’ Sebastian tipped his head to one side. ‘What business could we possibly have?’

  ‘You came back for my son, didn’t you? That’s what you want, isn’t it? Well, he has always been a wrong ’un, and you’re welcome to him. He won’t live long in your own lands, of course, eating your poisoned food and sweltering around your fires. But you can have him. I require three of your snake women here, and then you can go.’

  For a few moments, everyone was silent.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Sebastian eventually.

  ‘I don’t know where you found them, but I would certainly like to know. I’ve never seen such ruthless fighters.’ King Aristees grinned up at them, revealing yellowed teeth. ‘I saw one of them, there, tear out Nestor’s throat with her teeth.’ He barked laughter. ‘They are cold-blooded and merciless, like us. I shall make one my wife. Imagine the sons I shall have!’

  ‘Father,’ cut in Dallen, ‘what in all the frozen wastes—’

  ‘It will be our greatest legacy!’ boomed Aristees. He seemed utterly unconcerned by the carnage around him, or how close he’d come to death. There was a strange light in his eyes. ‘No more weak sons who crave the warmth of unnatural appetites, only worthy successors to my throne, with blood on their teeth and claws.’

  ‘I do not understand, Father,’ said the one Sebastian had named as Ephemeral. She was standing with her swords still drawn and was peering down at King Aristees in great confusion. ‘Does he wish to make us his queen?’

  Sebastian ran a hand over his face wearily. ‘We’re going to need to have a long talk.’

  69

  Frith sat cross-legged in his room, the Edenier trap nestled on a rug in front of him. It seemed to hum with its own dark energy, so close to being complete now. He reached up and absently wiped the sweat from his brow. It was mid-morning and the temperature inside the inn was stifling.

  ‘One more step,’ he muttered to himself. As he watched, a shiny black beetle scuttled across the rug, heading towards the device. Halfway there it stopped, its tiny antennae waving furiously, before turning back and heading the other way. ‘One more step and it is done.’

  It was a thing of evil. Black twisted metal shot through with sections of silver, and all covered with the demon’s icons; it seemed to crouch on the rug like some hibernating spider, simply waiting for the right season to uncurl its legs and start hunting. Except, of course, Frith knew what it was really waiting for.

  He had taken Joah’s pieces and his memories, and he had finished the thing, twisting and welding the metal, soldering it with magic and seeding it with power. It was constructed with both Edenier and Edeian, but ultimately it was a demon’s toy, and that came with a certain price, just as the Rivener did.

  ‘I cannot,’ he said. He felt lightheaded. The beetle had crawled back under the gap between the rugs and vanished. ‘I have done many things I regret. But to do this would be the end of me.’

  He could, he supposed, leave this place now. He could use the Edenier to take himself home to Blackwood Keep. There Eric and the rest of his servants would have been spending their time making the castle a home again, as he had instructed them to do. By now there would be furniture in all the rooms, fires in all the fireplaces, and perhaps they would even have managed to erase the smell of blood from the Great Hall. The graves they had made for his father and brothers – they had no bodies to bury, but they had had the gravestones engraved anyway – would be well tended and covered in flowers. The pear tree that grew in the small graveyard would be bearing fruit; his mother had been fond of pears, and in a rare fit of sentiment his father had planted a pear tree next to her grave when she died. Now all their souls rested underneath its spreading branches.

  If he went back there now he could forget about Skaldshollow and the monster resting at its heart, and instead throw himself into the arranged marriage proposed by Lady Clareon and her estate. The Blackwood and the Stony Dale would combine their resources and prosper together. It was, after all, what his father would have wanted for him – a chance to see the Frith name continue, and for the castle to be filled with a family again. History and responsibility had ever been his father’s favourite subjects after all. He could build this new life for himself, and when he was old and grey – he grunted laughter at this, his hair already as white as it would ever be – he would tell his grandchildren stories about how, for a little while, he had been an adventurer, how he had defeated a dragon and travelled Ede in the company of sell-swords. Perhaps all his stories would end abruptly, and he would certainly never speak the names of Skaldshollow or Joah Demonsworn, but that would be an easier price to pay than the one that was facing him now.

  Could he forget it, though? Could he forget any of it? Would he spend the rest of his life haunted by the violet light of the corrupted Heart-Stone, or the terrible rooms hidden away inside the Rivener? It was all too easy to imagine spending the rest of his life dreaming of the moment that Wydrin’s body spun away into the dark, lost to him for ever. Or even worse, would he wake in the night remembering exactly how her hair had smelt, or the sound of her laughter, or any number of a thousand things he would be incapable of forgetting?

  He had already lost everything that was important. This rage was too big to hide from, and he had never been very good at that anyway.

  After a few moments he stood up and covered the Edenier trap with the rug. It was a relief to have it out of sight. Once that was done he retrieved his money belt, pushed his hair out of his eyes, and left the room.

  Moving through the crowded streets of Holcodine, Frith couldn’t help but be reminded of Krete. There was the same stifling desert sun and the same fetid scent of too many people in one place, but now he was walking without a stick, and his back was straight and true. He wound around the men and women on the street easily, keeping his eyes on his destination: the Storm Gates.

  The huge circular monstrosity rose from amongst the shabby one- and two-storey buildings like a great flat tooth pushing through the flesh of the city. Bone-white stones blazed under the midday sun, the biggest and brightest thing in Holcodine. The upper wall was topped with huge bronze spikes, and if Frith forced himself to squint in that direction he could just about make out the severed heads that had been impaled there. Ravens perched nearby, looking bored now that they had stripped the skulls of all the juicy bits, and there was a wavering, ever-present roar, the cacophony that gave the Storm Gates their name: a thousand blood-thirsty citizens, baying for their day’s entertainment.

  When he stood outside the walls, Frith paused. Part of him wanted to leave – to go back to the inn, buy several bottles of wine and get enormously drunk. Instead, he forced himself to look at the place; up close the huge bricks weren’t as pristine as they appeared. Closer to ground level the walls were thick with graffiti, mostly detailing who the author wished to see punished next, or which of the convicts had won their respect. Curiously, there were lots of handprints, all clustered together in a line that seemed to run the circumferen
ce of the building, daubed in dark, ruddy mud.

  ‘They make all the prisoners do it before they enter the Gates.’

  Frith looked down to see a grubby child at his elbow with a tray of something sticky slung round his neck. The boy grinned up at him. He had a tattoo of an octopus on one cheek.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The handprints. I can tell you’re not from round here, see, and I could tell you were wondering what they were about.’ The boy sniffed. ‘Every man and woman that fights in the pit leaves their print out here. Once they’ve done that, they belong to the Gates. Can I interest you in a snack, milord? For the games?’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘We’re doing a special deal on these today, milord.’ The boy plucked a long thin stick off the tray and held it up for Frith to look at. There were small objects skewered on the stick, brown glistening things with lots of tiny legs. ‘It’s appropriate, see, for today’s games. My mum covers them in fat and boiling sugar. Very tasty. Just two coppers.’

  Despite himself, Frith peered closer at the stick.

  ‘What are those, exactly?’

  ‘Grasshoppers and stinging ants,’ said the boy. ‘You don’t have to worry about the stings none, ’cause my mum chops them all off, see. The grasshoppers I catch myself.’

  Frith drew up straight. ‘No – thank you. Do you sell any drinks? Without insects in them?’

  The boy snorted at him. ‘Who’d put insects in a drink? That’d be stupid.’ He reached under the tray to retrieve a brown leather skin, which he held up to Frith. ‘Spring water with a touch of lemon. Perfect for a hot day like this, milord.’

  ‘And where exactly do you get spring water from around here?’

  The boy decided to keep quiet this time and simply grinned up at Frith. Sighing, Frith fetched a coin from his belt and exchanged it with the boy for the skin.