The Copper Promise (35 page)

Frith cleared his throat. He was unnerved by the silence of the assistants.

‘You will teach me, then?’ He despised the hesitancy in his own voice, but he wasn’t sure what to make of Jolnir and his friends.

‘Teach you, boy?’

The woman called Luggin had removed a packet of powders from her coat and was throwing small handfuls onto the fire, turning it red and green while Jolnir nodded with approval.

‘Yes.’ Frith bit down on the word, making it sharp. ‘I need information on the mages. It is essential I know their secret words of power, the ones that are no longer generally known. A Regnisse of Relios sent me here. She said you could tell me.’

‘The secret words, the words of power.’ Jolnir waved his hands over the fire in what, Frith suspected, he thought was a mystical fashion. ‘Those of destruction and control.’ Jolnir nodded rapidly. ‘Those words are not to be given lightly.’

‘I must have it. I must have that knowledge.’

‘My dear friends.’ Jolnir held up his strange, withered hands, addressing the three assistants. ‘I have decided to teach this good boy all I know of the mages and the old gods, and indeed, the language they used to talk to each other. It is time the words were passed on to someone worthy, don’t you agree?’

Luggin, Muggin and Dobs looked back with polite smiles, just as though he were telling them how he’d decided to take up knitting, or collecting seashells.

‘Right, good, excellent!’ cried Jolnir. ‘Get to work, then, my lovelies. Luggin, I wish you to bring me all the relevant books and papers, and as much linen and ink as you can rustle up. Muggin and Dobs, we shall have ourselves a feast this eve. Off to the waters with you, and bring back as many of those tasty little fish as you can find. Oh, and some clams too. It is a night for clams!’

The three assistants scrambled off on their assigned missions, still not saying a word. Luggin disappeared into one of the conical huts, while Muggin and Dobs walked back through the grass towards the coast. Jolnir and Frith were left alone again, save for the ever-present black birds.

‘And what,’ said Frith, ‘was all that about?’

‘I like to keep them busy,’ Jolnir chuckled. It sounded like a marble rolling around a wooden basin. ‘I hope you like seafood, lad. You’re going to be here a while.’

‘Tell me what you know. Of the mages, of the old gods. A man who comes all the way to Whittenfarne must know much, is that not so?’

They walked in the last of the evening’s light, heading out to the north of the island. Frith doubted the sense of trying to get anywhere on this godforsaken rock in the dark, but Jolnir had just listened to all his protests courteously, and then insisted they go anyway. Frith had attempted to construct a torch from the stiff blue grass but Jolnir had hit him with his stick until he stopped.

Frith sighed. The mists were drawing in again, while the sun’s last breath of light turned the sky a sickly mauve. He looked down, watching for holes and hungry lizards.

‘I know what anyone knows,’ he said. ‘The mages were powerful men and women who lived thousands of years ago. They were able to perform amazing feats with the magic they commanded, and many of them perished in a war with the old gods, which ended when the last mages trapped them inside the Citadel.’

‘That’s what happened, is it?’ Jolnir sounded amused. ‘I’m sure you know best. Tell me, Lord Aaron Frith, why do we not perform these amazing feats any longer?’

Frith’s foot slipped on a damp rock and he stumbled.

‘I don’t know,’ he snapped. ‘Because it’s gone. The magic went with the mages.’

‘But ours is a magical world, is it not?’ Jolnir gestured around at the darkening hills as if this explained everything. ‘There is a magic inherent in Ede, a strangeness that leads to mysterious places, powerful objects, yes?’

Frith remembered Fane’s glowing helm, and the unnerving atmosphere under the Citadel.

‘Yes,’ he agreed reluctantly. ‘But that’s different.’

Jolnir nodded. The wooden bird mask was rapidly becoming a jagged black shape in the shadows, a sister to the rocks and hills.

‘There are two types of magic, Lord Aaron Frith. There is the
Edeian
, a natural force present in the world. It is in the soil, the sky, the air and sea, in the grass and rocks and flesh. And then there is
Edenier,
the magic of the will, a magic that comes of thought and want and personality.’ He waved his sticks airily. The objects tied to them rattled. ‘
Edeian
is still with us, of course, but it is largely inert, not generally a power that humans can bend to their will. And
Edenier
has vanished from the world. Isn’t that right?’

Frith paused.

‘Yes,’ he said eventually.

Jolnir chuckled. Overhead, Frith could hear the cries of the birds, although the sky was now so dark he could only make out their flittering movements against the clouds.

‘Edenier was the magic of the will, the magic of men, a tremendously powerful and dangerous force. We study it, here on Whittenfarne.’

The mystic’s voice had grown unusually quiet.

‘What is so special about Whittenfarne?’

‘It was their holy place, where they communed with their gods.’

‘The mages were priests?’

‘You could say that. Jumped-up priests, perhaps. Either way, they spoke to the old gods on these very rocks. Always chattering away about something, demanding this, entreating that.’ Jolnir cleared his throat, a muffled noise within the headdress. So far Frith had yet to see him take it off. ‘That was what the words were about, do you see?’

‘I don’t—’

‘Of course you don’t!’ Jolnir nodded rapidly. ‘The gods gave them the language so that they could speak to them. That is why the words are so powerful. Once, the mages were on good terms with the old gods, long before that business with the war and the Citadel. The words, with Edenier, could shape and change the world around them.’

‘Are the words so important?’

‘Words are
always
important,’ said Jolnir. ‘Even normal, non-magical words, in the right place, can change the world.’

Frith took a deep breath. ‘Can you tell me these words?’

Jolnir waved his spindly hands dismissively. ‘The mages learned the language of the gods, and much else besides, but eventually things turned sour. Mages were no longer content with learning from the gods, they wanted to be gods themselves.’

‘You sound as though you thought the mages fools.’

Jolnir laughed softly. ‘The stories tell us that the gods had grown cruel, but I know the truth. These men and women, the mages of Whittenfarne, were greedy.’

Frith stumbled on another rock. It was now so dark that the sky still visible through the clouds had only a bare scattering of stars to provide light. In the middle of the island, distant even from the lights of the other islands, full night was likely to be as black as ink.

‘This is ridiculous,’ said Frith. He stopped walking and crossed his arms over his chest. ‘Where are we going?’

‘I am telling you what you wish to know, am I not?’ asked Jolnir.

Frith gestured around at the island, not even certain the mystic would be able to see him do that, although he couldn’t help noticing that Jolnir hadn’t fallen in any pools or stumbled over any rocks.

‘It is too dark! We shall break our necks, or become lost. What is the point of this?’

‘Sometimes one must stumble, blind, before finding the light.’

‘Oh yes, very good. I suppose you save that up for every idiot that comes to this godforsaken island looking for enlightenment?’

The birds overhead gave a chorus of raucous cries.

‘Not everyone is worthy, Frith, not even a great lord. Perhaps you are not worthy. You have the look of a weak man, after all, one who would fail at the first obstacle and then forever complain that it was unfair.’

All at once Frith was back beneath the stones of the Citadel with the whispering voices of the long-dead mages.
You are not strong enough to be what we were, little man.
They had taunted him, and tortured him. Not strong enough, they had said. He remembered the rage that had carried him through, and again it began to warm his belly.

‘You do not know me, old man.’

There was a soft roar and Frith’s hands were suddenly boiling with a violent orange light. The black hills were lit up as bright as midday, and the water of the pools made flame-bright mirrors. There was a crackle, and the light ran up over Frith’s arms so that he seemed to be wearing a coat of fire. He held his hands up.

‘I have the power already, do you see? I could burn you all, everything on this ridiculous island, because
I have the last of the mages’ powers
.’

Jolnir hit him with his stick.

‘And now you have your light, yes?’

Frith stopped. ‘What?’

‘Here, tie this around your right hand.’ Jolnir reached inside his feathery cloak and produced a long, ragged strip of linen. He passed it to Frith, unmindful of the flames. There was a symbol written on the fabric in black ink.

Frith stared at it. ‘What?’

‘Are you deaf as well as stupid? Tie it around your hand, lad.’

Frith did so, although the rioting flames made it awkward. Once he’d wrapped the fabric around his hand like a bandage he tied a knot. Instantly the fire covering his arms and chest vanished, to be replaced with a small but fierce ball of light centred around his right hand. He held it up in front of him. It burned steadily like a tiny sun.

‘What is this?’

‘The words written on that piece of cloth are Guidance and Light. Rather useful, wouldn’t you say?’

Frith stared at the light. It was beautiful and, more than that, it was his to control. He wanted it to burn brighter, and it did. It became impossible to look at it directly. He willed it to become dimmer, and it became a soft glowing orb on the ends of his fingers.

‘The words force the magic a certain way,’ he said quietly, awestruck.

‘Yes, yes. They are channels siphoning off the raw power, sending it down certain routes. It is a fine thing to see.’

‘And I do not need to say the word?’

‘You have any gods around here you need to speak to? In time, you will learn to see the words in your head, and to write them, and that will direct the Edenier.’

Frith looked at the mystic. In the eerie light of the orb the bird headdress was a thing of deep shadows and alarming angles. There was nothing human about it at all.

‘You knew. How did you know?’

Jolnir shrugged. ‘I am the most learned mystic of Whittenfarne, the mysterious and all-knowing Jolnir. How could I not know?’

‘Being the most learned of the creatures on this island is hardly something to crow about, old man.’

Jolnir barked harsh laughter at that. Frith shook his head in annoyance.

‘Such a difficult boy.’ Jolnir made to hit him with the stick but Frith stepped out of range. ‘Look at the words, Lord Aaron Frith, the words for Guidance and Light. They are your first.’

Frith did look. The words were of no alphabet he recognised. In fact, they barely looked like letters at all to his eye; the shapes were chaotic, swirls bisected with straight lines, circles and dots peppering elegant, curving waves. He thought he could make out where one word ended and the other began, but that was about it.

‘There are a great number of words in the mages’ language still remaining to us, Lord Aaron Frith, and you will learn to read and write every single one of them. So shut up and listen.’

Up close the ruins were more intact than Sebastian had initially thought. Once, this had been a temple to a forgotten god, built by someone who’d liked tall, pointed arches and graceful walls that joined one tower to another in odd, sweeping curves. The lower sections of the walls were obscured by the scruffy but virulent thorn bushes that populated so much of Relios, and the huge bricks were the same deep orange as the clay underfoot, so that even on a bright morning such as this the ruins spoke of dried blood and old fires. The shadows that lay on it were black and precise.

Sebastian approached cautiously. From a distance it appeared abandoned, but as he got closer he could see paths through the bushes that led through the last unbroken archway to the courtyard beyond. Someone had trimmed the bushes back to make it easier to move around, and they’d done it fairly recently.
Who worshipped here? What did they worship?
Before he could think on it further something else caught his eye. Movement.

The courtyard was ahead of him. Out of the shadows to his left something round and red rolled towards him rapidly. He stopped it with his boot half a second before he realised it was a human head, all the skin flayed from it until it was a bloody red ball. He snatched his foot away and drew his sword.

‘Greetings, sir knight!’ came a voice from the shadows. It was high and clear, the voice of a child, and after a moment a slim shape emerged from the dark. It was a girl, no more than ten years old, with long brown hair tied in a braid that fell over one skinny shoulder and large blue eyes, the colour of mountain ice. She wore a strange mixture of rags patched with pieces of leather, while her bare feet left scant markings in the orange dust. She grinned up at Sebastian, and he found he was vaguely unnerved by her teeth; they were all very small and neat and white, while the incisors looked slightly sharper than was necessary.

Sebastian glanced warily around the courtyard. He could see no one else. He sheathed his sword.

‘You know I am a knight?’

‘Of course,’ said the girl brightly. ‘You’ve come from the big group camping down the hill.’

He nodded towards the severed head.

‘And is this yours?’

Suddenly the girl’s face was very serious.

‘That belongs to Bezcavar. He is the master of wounds and broken things, big and small.’

Bezcavar
.

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Ip,’ she said, no longer looking at him. Instead she went over to the head, which was swiftly turning dark and sticky under the hot sun, and placed her bare foot on its bloody cheek. She rocked it back and forth, considering. Sebastian could see blood squelching up between her toes. ‘When they are done with them, they sometimes give me bits to play with.’ She looked up and gave him that unsettling grin again. ‘I like heads best of all.’