The Written (51 page)

Outside the room, behind the
locked door, down the long hallway and up several flights of
curling stairs, in the highest part of the fortress, Vice strode
back and forth between the pillars and tall windows. His boot
scuffed softly across the smooth marble. Anticipation bubbled up
inside him as he felt the final pieces of his plan sliding and
clicking into place. His victory felt very close at hand now. There
was only one final problem to deal with, and he was tied to a chair
downstairs in one of the empty dining halls. He would take care of
him in a moment.

There was a clattering or
armour and the sound of boots on marble, and the Undermage turned
around. A soldier ran up to him and saluted quickly. The man seemed
very agitated. Vice gestured for him to speak. ‘Your Mage, they’re
here, in the city,’ he blurted.

Vice allowed himself a brief
shiver of excitement. ‘King Bane?’

The soldier nodded eagerly.
‘Yes my lord. His soldiers are rounding up our men and going about
the streets telling everyone to stay inside.’

‘Good. Tell them not to resist
and to follow their orders. Bane comes in peace, do you understand
me? None of the Skölgard are to be harmed in any way. You can
escort the King to the great hall at his leisure, and tell him I
will await him there,’ ordered the Undermage. The soldier clicked
his heels together with a metallic twang and hurried back down the
hallway.

Vice smiled with pride. He
could almost hear the pieces clicking into place now. It was time
to pay someone a brief visit.

Farden was concentrating on
staying conscious. He hadn’t felt like so close to slipping away
since the shipwreck, when he lay on the cold table with the healer
standing over him humming to himself as he worked. He focused all
his energy on simply breathing and tried to get some of the magick
to creep back into his body. The warm glow started to warm his cold
aching bones. There must have been something wrong with his eyes
because the floor and the walls in front of him were painted with
harlequin patterns of different coloured light. Everything had been
turned shades of red, green, yellow, and blue. Farden blinked,
hard, but the colours didn’t go away. There looked to be a wide
door at the end of the room, and a small flight of steps. A long
hardwood table lay against the wall on the left, surrounded by
wooden chairs, some lying awkwardly on the floor, others stacked in
twos and threes between the pillars. He squinted at the crest
hanging on the wall to his right, a golden pair of scales, equally
balanced, emblazoned on a white shield topped with tiny mountain
flowers shaped from polished steel.

Farden was in the Arkathedral.
He was somehow back in Krauslung, not Albion. He pondered how long
he could have been there, tied to the chair in that empty room. His
tongue was dry enough and his stomach ached enough for it to have
been days. Farden had no way of knowing.

There was an abrupt bang and
the metallic sound of dangling keys twisting in locks. There was
another bang, and a slow creak. Two blurry figures walked in to the
hall, a tall one and another, Farden couldn’t make them out. The
tall one walked straight towards him while rubbing his hands. He
appeared to be smiling. The other disappeared into the shadows.
Farden blinked slowly like an owl, and lifted his head to look at
the stranger walking slowly across the floor. The muticoloured
light swirled over him and turned his robe into its canvas. It
painted his face strange hues of red and yellow. Vice leaned close
to Farden and chuckled. He was in a good mood. ‘I’ll take these,’
he said, and reached into Farden’s pockets to retrieve the Weight
and the daemonstone. It glowed in his hand and Vice narrowed his
eyes at it. ‘Aptly named,’ he muttered, and slipped it and the
Weight into a pocket of his own.

Farden tried to spit at him,
but there was nothing in his mouth, so he just panted instead,
feeling his furry tongue rasp against his dry teeth.

‘Manners Farden, we have
company,’ said the Undermage.

‘Wh...’ the mage croaked.

‘Why? When? What? You still
have no idea what’s going on do you? Poor Farden, so blind.’ Vice
stepped back to admire his prey, helpless and weak, bound tightly
to a chair. He looked up at the huge stained glass window that took
up the whole of the back wall. It depicted a huge arching portrait
of the sun shining over the port of Rós with a man standing in the
centre of it, a proud looking old mage accepting a ball of light
from the white goddess above him. Vice scowled, and began to pace
back and forth.

Farden coughed and spluttered.
He managed some hoarse words. ‘I killed your hydra, it’s over.’

‘Hah, I find that very
unlikely. I might as well tell you that at this very moment the
good King Bane is perusing the newest addition to his realms. After
all of this trouble with his lovely daughter, he is most anxious to
see order restored to the Arka, especially after all the mess they
have made.’ Vice sneered and his teeth glowed red in the odd light.
‘And Farden, the so-called saviour of the proud Arka, will be
charged with treason and sent to the gallows to hang for all to
see. It seems that you have gone mad, my good mage, just like your
uncle did. It was you who committed the murders at Arfell, it was
you who stole the tearbook from the Sirens, and it was you who
tried to summon the hydra for yourself. Thank the gods that I was
there to stop you in time. You see Farden, Bane is here to announce
the new and only Arkmage, his very loyal subject, the Lord Vice. I
wouldn’t be too surprised if Åddren did not survive the night.’
Vice grinned, his masterpiece divulged. There was a moment of
silence as the pieces finally slid into position, and Farden was
left to stare into space. It was all just for power. Utter,
ruthless, and absolute power.

‘You’re nothing but a common
thief,’ mumbled Farden.

‘Oh I am much more than that
dear boy, I am a merchant of chaos. There will be all out war
again, if the King of Skölgard and I have anything to do with it.
The fall of the Siren kingdoms will take a year or two at most, but
we will break them in the end.’

‘With another of your plots?’
Farden narrowed his eyes, thinking of all the things Vice had taken
from him. ‘You disgust me Vice. It should be you in the gallows,
not me,’ he said.

‘Then tell me why it’s you
that’s tied to a chair, bound and beaten, and confused as usual? It
has taken us years to get this far. And if you hadn’t been such a
disappointment then you wouldn’t be in this current situation,’
replied Vice. He jabbed a finger at the mage.

Farden grinned a weary but
insolent smile. ‘Then why is it so hard to kill me?’

The Undermage shot him a dark
look. ‘Because you’re a stubborn bastard, and I needed your
stupidity. Of course it’s not that things went without any
complications. The sorcerer I placed on the
Sarunn
with you was one of my oldest but he was a
complete moronic fool. He was supposed to wait until you got back
from Nelska, once you had delivered the precious tearbook to that
Siren Queen, Svarta. He obviously got a little too greedy. And
after all this time to think that Farfallen, that ugly beast, had
survived his wounds? That I did not expect. But despite these
things it all fell into my lap, and my plan went ahead
accordingly.’

‘What about Helyard?’

‘That dreary old fool was
doomed from the start. His hatred for the Sirens made him an easy
target, and with the power he had it made sense that he was behind
it all. You saw for yourself how quick the dragon-riders were to
condemn him, and the amount of dignity he displayed on leaving the
hall. The old bastard deserved everything he got.’

‘You love hearing the sound of
your own voice don’t you Vice?’ interrupted Farden. The Undermage
backhanded him hard and he spat blood on the floor. The slap made
his head throb even more. He rolled his eyes and tried to focus
again. Vice was still talking.

‘What did I say about manners
in front of guests? You’re about to miss the best part Farden,
patience please. Do you want to know what you are, why you were so
perfect to manipulate?

The mage shook his head,
suddenly very wary that a pair of eyes were watching him from the
shadows. Vice laughed with a dark tone and crossed his arms
triumphantly.

‘You were an experiment
Farden,’ he lectured, ‘a test to see if a Written could withstand
the deeper magicks and attain a new state of perfection. I was the
one who originally brought the Scribe to the Arka all those years
ago, and with you I had him write a few special things into your
Book, a few extra things an ordinary Written couldn’t survive,
things that in the end, turned your own uncle mad.’ Vice paused to
sneer once again as Farden glared. ‘That’s right, you heard me, you
were to be a weapon just like your uncle Tyrfing.

‘But you weren’t perfect
either, oh no, by all definitions you were yet another disaster: a
reclusive self-involved individual with a perverse sense of right
and wrong, hanging on every word that dreary vampyre of yours had
to say and too stupid to see past your own anger. So you became a
tool Farden, a pawn for me to manoeuvre and exploit as I wished
while I waited for another exceptional individual such as yourself
to come along. Someone of better upbringing, with ideals and power,
somebody who would follow and serve the true power in
Emaneska.’

‘I guess that true power would
be you then?’ Farden spat, straining uncomfortably against the
ropes.

Vice’s eyes momentarily flashed
with a deep murderous fire that Farden had never seen before. ‘You
Arka are like lambs for slaughter to me, meat to be sold and
bartered with. I have watched you since the first sun rose above
the mountains, when you were over-confident and weak, and I have
watched you grow into a spineless nation of magicians and
prostitutes. I’ve spent too long simply watching, and now what is
there left to do with the Arka except destroy them? I just happened
to save two of the better ones for myself,’ he snarled. Vice slowly
lowered his head until his eyes were level with the mage’s, only a
few inches from his face. Farden stared straight back at him. ‘What
are you?’ he asked, and the Undermage tapped him on the cheek.

‘That’s a story for another
day, my dear mage, one that you won’t be hearing.’ He tapped him
again, harder. ‘You’re not curious Farden? Not at all? Who else
could I have under my wing besides Ridda and that idiot, Karga?
Could it be Åddren? No of course not, he’s catatonic after the loss
of his precious Helyard, too busy soiling his robe with fear and
weak indecision.’
Slap
. Farden’s cheek
stung. He didn’t care any more. Vice had taken everything away from
him that there was to take. The Undermage continued.

‘Not any of the Sirens, no, who
could get closer to you than anyone. Let me see, maybe the man you
buy nevermar from, that good friend of mine? No closer still, even
more than your precious Durnus...’ Vice chuckled, and stepped back
to swing an arm wide. He pointed to the shadows. ‘Say hello to
Farden,’ he said.

Footsteps echoed on the stone,
and then a very familiar figure walked from the darkness, a figure
he had let his hands explore every inch of, a smile he had kissed
countless times, eyes he had stared into for hours on end, that he
had emptied himself into, that he had told his darkest secrets to
except one, that he loved this person more than anything or anyone
he had ever encountered, that she was the only thing that made him
feel normal.

Cheska performed a little wave
and smiled at him coyly. Farden was breathless. There was one more
thing to take. His heart felt like it was slowly grinding to a
halt. The love of his life stood in front of him with her hands on
her hips, smiling with those mountain-lake eyes, reflecting purple
and green in the strange light.

‘You died... in that fire...’
managed Farden.

Cheska wandered closer. ‘The
fire was Vice’s idea, but it was necessary to make you believe I
was gone.’ She shook her head. ‘You always were a strange one,
Farden, so emotionally complex for a Written. You’re so concerned
with not becoming your uncle you didn’t give any thought to who you
were.’ She leaned in to whisper in his ear. ‘You’re like fire, you
only come alive in the dark.’

Farden could smell her, that
scent that she had left on his pillow. He choked back something,
and didn’t dare himself to speak. She smiled. ‘It was fun, for a
while,’ she said. ‘And we got what we needed.’

‘If you’re curious Farden, the
only thing I needed from you was you,’ said Vice, in a low
tone.

The mage looked up suddenly,
feeling the same darkness he had felt in the bowels of Carn Breagh.
Something felt deeply wrong. He stared straight into Cheska’s
complacent eyes and saw only sick truth hidden there. She stepped
slowly back, now with a very serious expression. There was no
fondness there. Vice walked up behind her and let a pale hand rest
on one of her shoulders. He watched Farden with glowing eyes,
victorious and supercilious. His other hand curled around her waist
and pressed her against her stomach.

‘A little spark of life grows
inside Cheska’s womb, a child of pure power born from two Written.
There is a reason the offspring of such a union is outlawed,
Farden, and that reason is very simple. Your child will be the
finest mage Emaneska has ever seen, and my finest weapon.’

Farden strained against his
ropes, seething with anger and grinding his teeth at the two of
them. His face went red with exertion, and his breath came in
ragged gasps. The ropes held fast.

‘At least you were useful in
the end, hmm?’ Vice chuckled, and then he whispered in Cheska’s
ear. ‘We have to go upstairs, your father will be eager to see
you,’ he said, and she nodded.