Authors: Jen Williams
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.’
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, revealing 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.’
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.’
Cautiously, Frith stepped through the door and back into the Forge room, being sure to pull the door closed behind him. Joah was there, carrying a pile of stained rags towards a crate that already looked half filled with rubbish. The Heart-Stone, still caught within the aperture in the wall, was glowing and flickering oddly, spilling out its sickening, greenish light. The stone itself looked darker than it had, as though it were cast into permanent shadow.
‘Aaron, you’re awake!’ Joah dropped the rags into the crate, grinning broadly. ‘I’ve just been tidying up. I did what I could, of course, to keep this place held in the same moment of time, but even my spells have struggled with over a thousand years passing. I should be glad that any of it has survived at all, I suppose.’ He paused to slap a thick stack of leather books, which sent a cloud of dust up into his face. He coughed, waving a hand in front of his face. ‘I do apologise, dear Aaron. It’s really quite filthy.’
Frith looked around the room, desperately searching for something he’d missed on his initial visit, but the place was as confusing as ever; a great, round room, with myriad iron doors leading off to who knew what, the red lights in the ceiling glowing like dying stars.
‘I was wondering if –’ He took a deep breath. His stomach was roiling unpleasantly, and the light from the Heart-Stone was giving him a headache. ‘I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind showing me around this Forge of yours.’ He found himself slipping into the formal courtesies he’d once been so familiar with, back in his life at Blackwood Keep, before Fane and his followers had destroyed his life.
You are visiting another lord’s home,
he told himself,
and you must be polite. Feign interest. See what you can find out.
‘It all looks very interesting.’ He forced a smile, and watched as Joah lit up. This was exactly what he’d wanted to hear.
‘But of course!’ Joah immediately abandoned the box of junk and came over to take hold of Frith’s shoulder, steering him towards one of the iron doors. ‘It’s much bigger than people realise. Here, let me show you.’
It was a labyrinth of horrors.
The door opened onto a corridor, made from the same riveted iron plates Frith had seen before. It immediately turned sharply left, seeming to curve around the central Forge room, and on the opposite wall were more doors with narrow horizontal windows. They reminded Frith uneasily of jail cells, until he realised that’s exactly what they were, more or less.