A Circle of Iron (Eldernost: Book 1)
Chapter 4
The Greenwell divided the world, separating the lands ruled by men from the lands they did not, the known from the unknown. So far as Thorn knew, the great wood had always been there, keeping its secrets as the fortunes and borders of men and nations shifted around it. In ancient times, the impenetrable green had been the only frontier the Old Empire could not conquer. Men said an ancient race had once made the wood their home. They had built the great city of Eldernost, the stone roads, and all the other towers and shrines and markers scattered through the westernmost fringes of the Greenwell. Men said these ancients were masters of magic, for precious traces of it remained behind, like ghosts in the ruins.
The ruins and the remnant magic were all that was left to remind the world the ancient race had ever existed. Thorn was pretty sure he knew what had happened to them. If you found a forest infested with wolves, no need to wonder where all the deer went. The wights had hunted the ancients to extinction, and now they hunted men.
Eldernost sprawled across both banks of the Horngren River, both above and below the great falls where the water tumbled over jagged rock and threw up a white spray and dull roar that never subsided. The lower city, on the west bank, was where most of the scavengers worked, digging, scraping and hammering, searching desperately for some trace of magic that might buy them a real life. The upper city at the top of the falls was dominated by the crumbling remains of a great castle. The imposing structure rose from a rugged island that split the river before it cascaded down to the easier terrain below. Ancient stone stairs carved into the hillside flanked the falls to either side and joined the upper and lower city.
Thorn stood on a low ridge and looked out over the ruins. The city sloped away from him, down toward the river, and the water was a silver ribbon winding through the maze of green-choked, crumbling stone. The bright sun was just peeking over the forest canopy, bathing the ruins in golden light. Thorn imagined how the city must have looked when it was alive, in ages past. From what he could tell, the buildings had been bigger and fancier along the river, and picked up more of both as they drew closer to the falls and the twin stairs that climbed to the upper city. The builders had favored the river and wanted to be close to it. In a city built by men, it would have had a rundown river port or a reeking fish market clogging its banks.
Three massive stone bridges spanned the river as it wound through the city, though the one nearest the falls had been sundered long ago. The stonework reached across the water from either bank, but there was a ragged gap in the center where the two spans would once have joined. Huge blocks were exposed above the surface of the river below, the pale stone almost hidden entirely by a green blanket of moss.
Thorn sighed. The day was of a kind that might ordinarily lift a man’s spirits, but the dead city was impervious to its charms. No matter how cheerful the weather, the story the ruins told was always the same: Everything dies.
The crew made their camp on a broad stone foundation flanked by cracked pillars that leaned this way and that like drunken soldiers in their ranks. Most of the scavs did their digging near the edge of the ruins, and the elevated slab gave Thorn the best view of his wards he was likely to find. “Go on ahead and lay down a hexing circle,” he said to Blind Tom. “Might be it won’t do us any good in the ruins, but we don’t know that for a fact. Best take what precautions we can.”
The fat wizard struggled out of his pack and collapsed onto the stone, wheezing and sweating. He was wearing the heavy black robes of a Magister, and Thorn couldn’t think of an outfit any more foolish for the heat of the day. Once Quinix stopped heaving like a bellows, he dug around in his pack and drew out a flat ring of hammered iron, about the breadth of a man’s hand. He smiled and offered it to Thorn.
“What’s this, then?”
“It’s a torq,” said Quinix. He pulled out more of the rings and passed them around. “You wear it around your neck—see, you can pull it apart like so.” The wizard demonstrated, pulling apart the ends of the torq and slipping it around his neck. “It’s for protection. The wights don’t like iron.”
“That’s a fact,” said Thorn. He put on the torq and rolled his shoulders to get the feel of it. The iron rasped against the heavy scar tissue that stippled the flesh of his neck and throat. “This was a fine idea. Wish someone on my crew had thought of it.”
“Hmph,” said Blind Tom. He fastened his torq around the mastiff’s neck.
Big Odd put on the torq and ran his fingers around the edge. “I feel better with a bit o’ iron between a wight’s teeth and my throat.”
“It ain’t much to look at,” said Mara, “but I guess we’re not planning to present ourselves at court.”
Thorn wasn’t about to mention it, but he rather fancied the look of the iron torq. It struck him as something the Andermen might have worn when they came howling out of the North, burning the Old Empire to its foundations and raising a kingdom from the ashes.
“What else you got in that bag, wizard?” he asked, craning his neck to see if he could get a look.
“Quinix,” said the wizard. He smiled nervously and dove into his pack once more, finally revealing a round wooden plate with a smooth stone anchored in the center by a brass pin. Along with the plate, Quinix removed a small leather pouch. He loosened the drawstrings and poured a number of small iron balls into the palm of his hand. Thorn could see runes engraved in the surface of the balls. They reminded him of the runes carved into Blind Tom’s hexing stones, but he couldn’t decipher their meaning.
“We are the stone in the center,” Quinix said, pointing. “The balls represent the wights. Observe.”
Quinix dropped the iron balls onto the surface of the wooden plate, and they began to spin around the circumference of their own accord. Around and around they spun until one by one they rolled off the edge of the plate and dropped into the wizard’s hand—all but one of them, which wobbled and then rooted in place, above and to the right of the center stone.
“Hmph,” Blind Tom said, and turned his attention to picking burrs out of the mastiff’s coat.
“Well, that’s something,” Thorn said, scratching his chin. “But what’s the point?”
“The range is only about a hundred yards,” Quinix said. He looked at the wooden plate and then turned, pointing in the direction indicated by the ball. “The scrying tablet is telling us there’s a wight about…seventy yards that way. No other wights are within the device’s range.”
Mara shook her head. “How does it know where the wight is? If it’s just your wizardry at work, why do you need the contraption?”
“My wizardry and more,” Quinix said. He held up one of the iron balls. “This little ball has been infused with magic—enough to buy a nice house, I should think. Imagine the tablet is the center of a spiderweb. It casts out invisible strands in all directions—up to a hundred yards, as I said. If a wight falls into our web…well, it won’t be trapped, as a fly would, but we’ll know exactly where it is and where it goes.” He tossed the iron ball into the air and let it fall into the palm of his hand. “The magic I have put into the scrying tablet allows us to create this invisible web. With it, we can locate and track the wights’ movements.”
Mara made a warding sign and scooted over to help Blind Tom with the dog. Thorn held out his hand. “Can I try?”
The look that passed over Quinix’s face seemed rather possessive to Thorn, but then the wizard shrugged and dropped the iron balls into his hand. Thorn placed them carefully on the wooden plate and watched them spin round and round until only one remained, affixed in the same position as before.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. In truth, he was fascinated by the magical device, but he’d also gained some potentially valuable information. Whatever magic was at work, it was in the device and not in the wizard. He needed the scrying tablet. He didn’t necessarily need Quinix.
While Thorn tinkered with the device, Quinix went over and sat near the others. He reached out a h
and to scratch the mastiff’s ears, but the rumbling growl from deep in the dog’s massive chest made him think better of it.
“What’s his name?” he asked instead.
Blind Tom shrugged. “Being a dog, he don’t notice the lack of one very often. He answers to bacon or rabbit. You find yourself needin’ to discuss something with him, you might try one of them.”
Quinix nodded and shifted his ample weight on the stone slab. “I understand you’re a wizard.”
Blind Tom snorted. “I know some tricks. Don’t call myself a wizard, and don’t need no one else doing it neither.”
“They say your hexing circles render wights powerless so they can be killed.”
“They sound like idiots,” Blind Tom said. “Only thing a circle does is let you set up an ambush. Without it, a wight’ll have a better idea where you are than you do.”
“The whispering wood.”
Blind Tom shrugged. “Maybe the trees talk to them. Maybe the earth or the bloody birds of the air. All I know is what works. Guess I’ll leave the ‘why’ of it to wizards.”
Quinix nodded enthusiastically. “It’s always best to maintain a pragmatic attitude towards magic,” he said. “What good is lore if it doesn’t permit one to accomplish some productive task?”
“Well, so far I ain’t seen nothin’ but some pig iron and a fancy plate that don’t do anything my dog’s nose can’t do just as well. Unless you got a wand in there can turn a wight into a toad, I don’t see we’re any better off than we were afore.”
Quinix didn’t seem to take offense. He reached back in his pack and pulled out a small vial filled about halfway to the top with a milky liquid. Thorn saw golden, glowing motes of light suspended in the substance. “I can infuse your hexing stones with this,” the wizard said.
“No one touches my hexing stones but me,” said Blind Tom, in a voice that made it clear he didn’t intend the discussion to last very long.
“But I can improve on them!” said Quinix. “This is magic! Whatever the stones do—and I should point out, you don’t even know—they’ll be far more potent!”
“They don’t need improving,” said Blind Tom. “I got ‘em from my father, he got ‘em from his father, and all the way back to the day the world was born. I guess they worked just fine through all those years without you rubbing that spunk on them.”
Quinix looked at the bottle and shook it. “It’s not spunk.” he said. “It’s magic!”
“How do you even know it looks like spunk?” Thorn had often been suspicious of the extent of Blind Tom’s blindness.
“I ain’t always been blind, and I know what it looks like. Don’t need any of it on my stones.”
Mara and Big Odd snickered. Thorn turned to Quinix. “If that is what you say it is, it’s got to be worth a fortune. Viorno could have traded it for an army of mercenaries to kill wights for him.”
A guilty flush colored Quinix’s chubby cheeks. “It’s not pure,” he said. “It has some elemental impurities—which is what produces its cloudy appearance, I might add.” Here he paused to scowl at Blind Tom, who didn’t seem to notice. “The impurities are mostly principle of earth, which, indeed, will aid in the infusion of the hexing stones.”
“What will it do?” asked Mara.
“Well, who knows?” said Quinix. “We don’t even know what the stones do now, or even, I should say, if they do anything at all.”
Thorn wasn’t inclined to let Quinix change the subject. “Even if it ain’t pure, it still must be worth a small fortune. Where’d you get it?”
Quinix cupped the vial protectively in his hands and frowned. “Lord Viorno has many scavs in his service,” he said. “When they return from the ruins with a find, it is delivered to the alchemist called Scorza. We are…I would not say ‘friends,’ but acquaintances. Scorza extracts the magic and delivers the finished product to Viorno.”
“You’re skimming,” said Thorn, and laughed.
“I’m saving for the future!” Quinix retorted. “Scorza and I have an agreement, you might say. With each extraction, we keep a little for ourselves. Not enough that Lord Viorno would ever notice. We’re hurting no one.”
Thorn shrugged. “I wasn’t planning to hand you over to the Gray. What you’re saying is that this is your treasure, acquired at some risk to yourself, and you’re willing to use it if it will help us. Ain’t that something, Blind Tom?”
“I already laid out my circle.”
“I guess we’ll be back tomorrow, and the day after. We could let Quinix see what he can do with the stones before you put ‘em down again.”
Blind Tom shrugged.
Thorn sat down by Quinix and clamped a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry about old Tom,” he said. “He’s spent so much time with that dog, they more or less got the same manners. We appreciate what you brought, and we’ll put it to use.”
“Hmph,” said Blind Tom, and plucked another burr from the mastiff’s hide.