Authors: Jen Williams
The memory was so vivid that she had to press her hand to her mouth, concentrating furiously on not being sick. She stayed where she was for a time, breathing hard and trying to see past the pounding behind her eyes.
It was the taint of the demon. It had been inside her, however briefly, and it felt like every part of her was filthy, lessened in some way. When she had touched minds with Mendrick, she had caught a sense of something huge and tranquil: a cold presence, distant and clean. Bezcavar had been pain and fire and misery and madness, like being buried alive under a pile of corpses at a battle where everyone had died in pain and terror. She had felt the demon slip fiery tendrils around her mind, flowing into every place she kept hidden.
The relief when the Rivener had torn it from her had been immense.
Her stomach sour but quiet, Wydrin lifted her head and looked around. She was on the floor of someone’s front room; it was furnished simply enough with table and chairs, thick woven rugs on the floor, some painted plates hanging from the walls. There was a door leading to a rough stone staircase, the steps cast into shadow, and another door that was still ajar. Wydrin could see the street beyond, but she had no memory of how she’d got there. She could hear nothing at all, not even the wind that habitually howled around Skaldshollow’s walls. And there was something else as well; the light was all wrong. The sliver of daylight coming in through the crack of the door was a deep, murky red, as though they were experiencing some kind of doom-laden sunset, but something about it set her teeth on edge. The light just felt wrong, as though the entire place were trapped inside a red glass bottle.
She climbed shakily to her feet.
‘I fell from the Rivener, then.’ She patted herself down as she spoke. Nothing appeared to be broken, although she reckoned her backside would soon be sporting an exciting range of black and purple bruises. Her dagger and her sword still hung on her belt, thankfully. ‘Fell back down into the city and managed to get a roof over my head while I was unconscious. That was bloody clever of me.’
‘I dragged you here.’
Wydrin spun. Seconds ago she would have sworn she was alone in the bare room, but now there was a figure standing in the far corner. She was tall, with dark brown skin and a shaven head, and her left arm ended in a stump. The woman was watching Wydrin with cold amusement.
‘And who might you be?’ Frostling was already in her hand, red light spilling along its length like wine. ‘And, thank you, I suppose.’
The woman raised an eyebrow, sending a flurry of creases across her smooth forehead. There was a mage’s word tattooed on it, although Wydrin could not have said which one.
‘I am Xinian the Battleborn.’
Wydrin nodded. ‘The ghost who spoke to Frith. I guessed as much. I have to say, you look remarkably sprightly and solid for someone who has been dead a thousand years.’
‘In this place, I am as real as you.’ Xinian came forward, circling the room and moving with a careful grace. She did not appear to be armed, so Wydrin lowered her weapon. ‘What have you and your friends done, sell-sword? This city has been torn out of its rightful place and cast half into the world of the dead.’
Wydrin shrugged. ‘I have no idea. It’s the sort of thing that seems to happen to us.’
‘But you smell of the demon,’ said Xinian. ‘Its reek is all over you.’
‘That I can agree with.’ Wydrin wrinkled her nose. ‘When I get out of here I’m having a week-long bath.’ She shoved Frostling back into its scabbard. ‘I hosted the demon briefly, and then it was torn out of me by Joah’s contraption. What happened to it after that, I don’t know. Hopefully it has been scattered to the winds.’
Xinian stared at her, appearing to weigh her words. ‘You survived the Rivener?’
‘I have a link to . . . someone else. I thought it likely that it would keep me from losing my soul to that thing.’
‘That was a foolish thing to do.’
‘Well, I am known for my staggeringly intelligent plans.’ Wydrin rubbed her face. Keeping up all this bravado was exhausting, and her eyeballs felt like they were trying to push their way out of her skull. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I go where Joah Demonsworn goes,’ the woman replied. ‘He has this place captive now, frozen in place. A short time ago it was as if the sky was blotted out by a terrible eclipse. I felt this city shift closer to me, and now I walk it as you do. And I am not the only dead thing here.’
‘It sounds to me as though something went very wrong, in that case.’ Wydrin shook her head. ‘I left them up there, with him. I shouldn’t have done that, but I was desperate. Frith was dying, and I . . .’
The woman was looking at her too closely now.
‘I have to get out of here,’ said Wydrin. ‘I need to know what’s going on.’
‘You may not find that so easy.’
In the following silence, there was a scraping noise from upstairs, followed by the heavy thump thump thump of footsteps. Wydrin listened, and caught the sound of a faint moan, as though someone had been disturbed in their sleep.
‘There are people in this house?’
Xinian the Battleborn looked up at the ceiling. ‘Not people as such, no.’
It shuffled down the stairs towards them, dragging one heavy foot after the other, its head lolling to one side. Its mouth hung open, exposing a black, swollen tongue, and its skin was an unnatural blue, riddled with cracks that glowed softly. Wydrin was reminded of the Heart-Stone, how it had glowed in a similar way in Joah’s lair, casting its poison out into the world, but this was a man, or at least it had been one once. Now its eyes were blind, and its blackened fingers clutched convulsively at its sides. The rags it wore were soiled and torn.
‘The Rivened,’ said Xinian. ‘Joah took their souls and cast them out, and now this darkened city has given them some semblance of life again. The dead are walking.’
‘Oh great.’ Wydrin took a step back, unsheathing Glassheart. ‘I don’t suppose the Rivened are looking forward to a restful old age and a quiet pint by the fire?’
The man with livid-blue veins turned his blank eyes on them, an expression of faint puzzlement creasing his face. The light that was inside him pulsed.
‘It can see your soul,’ said Xinian, in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘You are about the only thing here left with one. And that will make it hungry.’
As if waiting for that very word, the husk that had once been a man leapt forward, mouth agape and fingers grasping. Wydrin stumbled backwards, bringing Glassheart up in an awkward defensive motion. The blade scraped across the Rivened man’s forearm, slicing through the flesh like butter and revealing a solid mess of rotten muscle and congealed blood. Appearing not to notice, it reached for Wydrin and she felt its cold fingers settle around her neck before she buried Frostling in the creature’s chest. This slowed it down slightly, but didn’t stop it from snapping its jaws at her face.
‘I would do what you can to separate its head from its body,’ said Xinian mildly, as though advising the best way to gut a chicken. ‘It is being powered by something other than a beating heart now.’
Grunting with disgust, Wydrin brought her sword up and ran it across the husk’s neck, ripping a hole so large that its head flopped back at an awkward angle, throat gaping open, and then it fell away from her into the hallway. Once on the floor it struggled for a time, arms and legs working in the dust, and then it was still.
Wydrin put her hand to her throat. More bruises tomorrow.
‘That was unpleasant.’ She turned back to Xinian the Battleborn, who was standing with her arms crossed over her chest. ‘This has happened to everyone who went through the Rivener?’
The woman nodded. ‘There are few left in this city who did not suffer that fate. Joah has been quite busy.’
Wydrin sheathed her sword, and keeping Frostling in her right hand she pushed the door open and went outside. The sky over Skaldshollow was that deep, unsettling red, like a storm in hell, and although she could see the sun it was a milky disc hidden behind a shifting skein of membranous black. The streets were cast in shadow, but she could see some people moving out there. Slowly. Shuffling as the Rivened man had shuffled, and with that faint blue glow.
‘Shit.’
‘They will all desire your soul, sell-sword,’ said Xinian from behind her. ‘Everything here is stopped, or dead, and you are the one bright piece of life.’
‘And you don’t count?’
Xinian shrugged. ‘I am an echo of a soul, given solidity by this dark magic.’
‘Right. Obviously.’
Wydrin stepped out onto the street, treading as quietly as she could. To her right was the looming form of the Tower of Waking, and curled around it like a jagged tumour was Joah’s Rivener. The strange red storm light danced across them both, the violet light of the Rivener’s eyes like windows onto a nightmare. She looked back to the south, and she could just make out the portion of the wall where Joah had smashed his way in; it was a line of broken rocks now, and it was possible to follow the path of destruction all the way there. Crushed roofs, flattened houses, even the faint wisps of black smoke from fires only recently extinguished.
‘All right,’ she said in a low voice, talking more to herself than the mage ghost. ‘I just have to be fast and quiet. Run towards the wall, keep my head down, and I’ll be out of here. No one knows where I am, and Joah will assume I am dead. I can do this. I –’
She paused. Just for a second, she had felt Mendrick’s presence in her head again, but as soon as she reached out for him it was as if the connection were severed
. Mendrick? Are you there?
But there was nothing; only a deep sense of loss, an emptiness where his voice had been. What had just happened?
‘It may not be as easy as you expect, sell-sword,’ said Xinian from just behind her. ‘Do you think these creatures see through their eyes? You will smell of life to them.’
‘Look.’ Wydrin turned back to the mage, still endeavouring to keep her voice down. She would worry about Mendrick later. ‘If you like, you could help me, instead of dispensing reminders of how doomed I am. You killed Joah once, didn’t you? Well, that’s what I intend to do again, only I’ll do a better job than you. And it’s Wydrin Threefellows, by the way, also known as the Copper Cat, and leader of the Black Feather Three.’ This last wasn’t strictly true, but Wydrin kept going. ‘I’m not just any common sell-sword.’
Xinian the Battleborn looked at her for a long moment, her dark brown eyes cool and unflustered. Eventually she shrugged. ‘You have the ego of a mage.’
‘
Pft
. You’ve met Frith, right?’ Wydrin turned away. ‘You can help me or you can go to hell. I’m not dying in this place.’
Up the street, men and women who were now empty vessels, their skins filled with a roaring hunger, turned to look towards them. Wydrin got ready to run.
Joah sat alone in the heart of the Rivener. His body appeared to have finished its changes now, and although part of him was curious to see what he had been left with, he found he did not yet have the energy to find a mirror to examine himself. Instead he sat and listened to the new, surging voices that existed within his head. It was similar to the roar of the Edenier, that sensation of waiting power that had lived curled within his chest, but now it inhabited every fibre of his being. He felt tremendously aware of everything: the hot tide of blood moving within his veins, the rough wooden grain of the arms of the chair under his fingers, the taste of magic in his mouth, brackish and bitter. He could hear the screaming coming from the Edenier chamber, as the demon Bezcavar thrashed and raged inside it. That had been unexpected. It seemed that he still understood very little about human beings, even after all these years. He had thought that Aaron would join him, that his mage-brother would not even question his plans – were they not mages together? The last two in all of Ede? Surely they were destined to do great things together. And he had not expected the red-headed woman to make a deal with the demon in exchange for Aaron’s life.
Joah raised a hand to the burnt side of his face, touching the hard scabs forming there.
He had known that Aaron was dying. Had known that he was ill. But it had seemed like such a small thing, a problem that would eventually be swept aside. Why had he not asked Bezcavar to heal him? It was always within the demon’s power to heal wounds.
Joah curled his hands around the ends of the armrests.
Because the demon was ever a jealous creature. Hadn’t it encouraged him to turn away from the mages of a thousand years ago? Hadn’t Bezcavar’s hand also been on the hilt of the sword when he’d cut his first rivals down? The demon wanted Joah all to itself.
Instead, the woman had saved Aaron, and in doing so removed Bezcavar from the equation entirely. Humans were so unpredictable.
He looked up at the Edenier chamber, where all the collected magic swirled along with the incorporeal form of the demon. It was difficult to see, but you could just make it out: a darker shape amongst the shimmering white of the magic. And you could certainly hear it: an inhuman voice screaming in rage and frustration. Screaming to be let out, to be allowed the sanctuary of a human body again.
Thinking of that, Joah looked towards one of the doors that led away from the Rivener’s central room. That was where the girl had fled, the one called Ip that Bezcavar had been hiding away inside for so long. Joah had considered stopping her, but the new forces that were changing his body had thrown him to the floor and she had slipped away. Presumably she was still inside the Rivener somewhere, unless she had found a way out.
Joah stood up and approached the Edenier chamber. Immediately the swirling clouds of magic inside grew in violence, and the screaming so loud that he winced faintly.
‘It’s easier if you stay there for now,’ he said. The screaming changed in pitch, and he looked down at his hands. The fingers were unnaturally long and pale now, ending in strange needle-like points. ‘Think of it as a rest, my friend. I think you have done enough.’
The Rivener had done its job well. Most of Skaldshollow’s people had given up their souls, and now there was a storm of magic inside the chamber. All pointless now though, of course.