The Copper Promise (19 page)

‘And in the stone room, where there are no windows, you are your real age,’ said Wydrin, remembering the elderly voice they’d heard while outside. ‘Clever.’

‘Of course. I need all my wisdom and skill whilst I work the glass. These days young Crowleo helps me with the heavier stuff, but inside these rooms I can be whatever age I wish.’

‘Extraordinary,’ said Sebastian. He was keeping back by the door, far from the delicate objects. ‘Truly, a wonder.’

‘Indeed,’ said Frith. ‘I assume, then, that my father entrusted the secret of the vault within one of your objects?’ His voice was tight, and Wydrin guessed he wasn’t especially pleased by this turn of events.

Holley nodded to Crowleo. The apprentice pulled a pair of brown velvet gloves from a pocket and slipped them on. Reaching to the back of the table he plucked an odd, spiky confection of glass and passed it to Frith. At first Wydrin thought it was in the shape of some kind of elaborate shell, but when he held it up to the light she saw that it was actually a number of clear glass leaves, splayed out in a fan. There was a hint of green to the glass that made her think of the clear water of the Graces’ pools, or the Sea-Glass Road itself.

‘Can I see?’ she asked, but Holley shook her head.

‘Fierce magic I made for this one. Only those of the Frith blood can hold it with bare hands. If young Aaron Frith here wasn’t who he claimed to be, he’d be writhing on the floor by now, blood foaming on his lips.’

Frith shot her a dangerous look.

‘Good thing that I am, then. How does this work? I can’t see anything.’

‘Look deeper into the glass,’ urged Crowleo. ‘Relax your eyes and let it come to you.’

Frowning slightly, Frith held the spread of glass leaves up in front of him. The last of the day’s light filled it, and soft green reflections played across his face like marsh ghosts. He narrowed his eyes, his lips pursed.

‘I still can’t – wait, there is something.’

‘What do you see?’ asked Sebastian.

‘I see this place, again. I can see the edge of the cliff, but now there is a bridge leading from it. There is no such thing.’

‘That you can see,’ agreed Holley. ‘What else is there?’

‘If I follow the bridge, it stretches far across the forest. Here and there it weaves in and out of the treetops, and finally it comes to another cliff, but instead of reaching up to the edge it leads straight into the rock, where there is a dark cave.’

‘And there you have your vault,’ said Holley. ‘It’s a long, cold walk, so I suggest you get yourselves moving.’

‘But the bridge – it was here in my father’s time, I assume, but it must have long since fallen into disrepair and collapsed into the forest below. We saw no bridge on our approach.’

‘You’re a fussy one, aren’t you?’ Holley’s face creased up with distaste, and for a moment it was possible to see the older woman who had originally greeted them. ‘Come outside,’ she said, waving them all back towards the door. ‘I’ll show you your damn bridge.’

Outside the sun had sunk below the horizon, and the sky was shading towards the deep indigo of dusk. Holley had grown progressively older again as they walked through the house and now, outside the influence of her magical windows, she was a stooped old lady with white hair down to her shoulders. Her eyes were as bright and lively as ever, though.

‘There, out there, look.’ She took them to the cliff’s edge and pointed to a distant lump of land that burst forth from the black trees like a mottled whale breaching the surface of the sea. ‘That’s where you’re heading, all the way across there. Do you see it?’

‘I see it, Secret Keeper, but what I do not see is the bridge,’ said Frith.

‘Look through the glass again, impatient Lord Frith,’ said Holley. ‘And tell me what you see.’

Frith held it up to his eyes, and Wydrin saw them widen in surprise. He took the glass away, looked at the cliff’s edge, then back again. He repeated this process twice before he spoke.

‘I see a secret way,’ he said. ‘There is a bridge there, but I can only see it when I look through the glass.’

‘Let me look,’ said Wydrin.

‘It will do you no good,’ said Holley. ‘Only those of Frith blood can hold the glass, and they alone can see the secret. You are not of the blood, I assume? And you have not borne children of the Frith line?’ She smirked slightly as she spoke.

Wydrin snorted.

‘Certainly not.’

Frith still held the glass, peering out across the cliff. When eventually he lowered it, his face was set into grim lines.

‘It looks very lonely, and very dark,’ he said, almost as if he’d forgotten they were there. He glanced at them. ‘But no time like the present.’ And he started to march towards the edge of the cliff.

‘Not so fast, princeling,’ called Wydrin.

Frith turned back, impatience in every line of his body.

‘What is it?’

‘Look out there. It’s dark now. The people at Pinehold …’ Wydrin pursed her lips. Frith and Sebastian had described the remains left outside the town walls on their walk to the Secret Keeper’s house. ‘Those people are long dead.’

Sebastian rounded on her angrily.

‘We have to go back for them, Wydrin! Once we know the exact location of the vault we can trade the information for their lives.’

‘We will do no such thing,’ started Frith hotly. Wydrin held her hands up for peace. She tried to use the same tone of voice Sebastian used on her when it was close to chucking out time and he wanted to go home. ‘We can’t help those people now, Seb. If we’re going back to Pinehold—’ There was another noise from Frith, but she waved him down. ‘If we’re going back to help, and yes, I do think we should, Sebastian, stop looking at me like that, if we’re going back, then we have to go back fighting fit. We need to rest, eat some decent food, and sleep in some decent beds.’ She jabbed a finger at the cliff’s edge. ‘And I’m not crossing any invisible bridges in the bloody dark. That’s if the Secret Keeper wouldn’t mind putting us up for the night?’

Holley shrugged.

‘We’ve got plenty of rooms.’

Frith sighed heavily, and took a moment to glare at both her and Sebastian. The big knight still looked reluctant, but in the end he shrugged. Lord Frith crossed his arms across his chest.

‘An early start, then.’

‘He was a prickly man, your father. Difficult, even. I dare say the staff up at Blackwood Keep dragged his name through the mud more than once, when he was safely out of earshot.’

Holley pulled a battered clay pipe from an inner pocket and began to fill it from a leather pouch on the table. She and Frith were alone in a cosy living room filled with over-stuffed chairs and elderly bookcases. In here she looked to be in her mid-sixties, a woman just starting to slow down.

‘Distant, but interested. That’s how I would have described him.’

‘That does sound familiar,’ said Frith dryly. Holley shrugged, and sucked on the pipe, releasing a soft cloud of smoke that smelled of cabbages.

‘I knew your family well, boy. Did you know that?’

Frith shook his head.

‘I knew your grandfather, and his father before him. I counted your father as a friend, truth be told.’

‘Have you always kept the secret of the vault, then?’

‘Aye. The location of the vault changes, every few generations or so. A new place, and a new glass to keep the secret in, just in case the worst should happen.’ She took another long drag on the pipe. ‘In your case, I suppose it did.’

Frith ignored this.

‘You knew about the bridge, then? You must have, if my father came out here to visit the vault.’

‘Your father trusted me.’

‘More than his own son, it seems.’

‘Look.’ Holley jabbed the end of the pipe at Frith. ‘Your father was a decent man. Do you truly think he kept this from you for cruelty’s sake?’

There were a few moments of silence between them. The fire in the grate spat and smoked, while all around the house creaked and sighed and settled its wooden bones for the night.

‘Why?’ asked Frith eventually. He felt tired, possibly more tired than he’d ever felt in his life. ‘Why all this secrecy? Scores of other old families have similar hoards and they do not insist on such conspiracies.’

‘And you know what’s in there, do you? Been in the vault, have you?’ She smiled crookedly.

‘You know I have not.’

‘Whatever it is, your ancestors thought it worth protecting.’

‘
Do
you know? Do you have any idea?’

Holley shook her head.

‘The day your father came to show Leon, your brother, I think it was the happiest I’d ever seen him. He was excited to be sharing the family secret, and, well,’ she gestured at the room, taking in the enchanted windows, ‘it’s not just any secret, after all.’

Frith swallowed hard.

‘Not excited enough to share it with all his sons, apparently.’

Holley waved a hand at his objection as though swatting away a small fly.

‘Oh, you were young, and no doubt he felt he had all the time in the world. It was safer to keep the numbers that knew about it low.’

‘He was probably right to do so.’ There was a cold hand at Frith’s throat as he thought back to his last months inside Blackwood Keep. His father and brother had known, and kept the secret while under the ministrations of Yellow-Eyed Rin. All day and all night he’d listened to them, the noises they made as they died. Would he have been able to keep the secret? Uphold the family honour? He wasn’t certain. Not certain at all.

Some of what he felt must have shown on his face, as the Secret Keeper leaned forward with a stern look.

‘There was nowt you could do, boy. You hear me?’

‘I didn’t tell them,’ said Frith, his voice small even to his own ears. ‘I didn’t tell them I didn’t know because I thought they would just open my throat and have done with it.’

Holley nodded.

‘It was the right course of action.’

‘If I’d known the secret I could have saved them. Nothing is worth this, nothing is worth being the one left behind …’ He bit down the rest of those words. ‘But instead they died, and for what?’ Frith thumped his fist against the arm of the chair. After a moment he closed his eyes, attempting to hold back the surge of anger. ‘What could possibly be so important?’

Holley leaned back in her chair, sighing as her old bones popped.

‘That, I imagine, you will find out tomorrow.’

It was getting late, and the apprentice showed no signs of retiring. Instead, he refilled their glasses with red wine, and pushed forward a plate of cheese and oatcakes.

Wydrin had gone to bed more than an hour ago, complaining of a stiffness in her shoulders and a need for a good twelve hours’ sleep, while Frith had retired after a long talk with the Secret Keeper. To Sebastian’s surprise, the old woman had not gone to bed at all, but had gone back out to the stone workroom, to potter around, as she put it.

‘She doesn’t sleep much these days,’ explained Crowleo. They were in a comfortable room on one of the upper floors. Sebastian suspected it was Crowleo’s own study; there was an old but carefully polished desk, a merrily burning fireplace, and a few items of discarded clothing. Young men who were studying rarely remembered to tidy away inconsequential things like clothes, in Sebastian’s experience. He’d had similar habits, after all.

‘My father was the same,’ admitted Sebastian. ‘In his later years he would go to bed last and be up before all of us.’

Crowleo smiled.

‘She says she can feel the end coming, and she has so much work to do yet. No time for sleep. Was your father a Ynnsmouth knight too?’

‘No. He was a stonemason. Not everyone feels the mountains calling.’

‘But you did?’

Sebastian had to smile at the apprentice’s enthusiasm. In the warm glow from the fire his eyes glittered, their gaze always resting on Sebastian’s face.

‘When I was twelve years old, I had a dream from which I woke covered in sweat.’

Crowleo raised his eyebrows. Sebastian cleared his throat and continued.

‘I dreamed I walked alone on a mountain path, snow under my bare feet. I came to a great wall of stone that blocked my way, but suddenly it cracked down the middle like an egg, and I could walk through into the space beyond.’ He paused. The wine was fine and smoky in the back of his throat. ‘In the dark, the mountain spoke to me. When I told my mother about the dream, she took me to the Order and I was inducted before my thirteenth birthday.’

‘A tender age.’

Sebastian shrugged. ‘It was a good life for a boy from a poor family. The Order fed me, clothed me and taught me my letters, until I was old enough to swear my sword in front of the god-peak. My mother was very happy.’ For a moment he remembered the look on her face the last time he’d seen her, and he turned away from that memory quickly.

‘I grew up with tales of the Ynnsmouth knights,’ said Crowleo. ‘An ancient order. Proud and steadfast.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Sebastian, not quite able to keep the bitterness from his voice, ‘they were certainly full of pride.’

Even so, he could not turn from those memories completely. Growing up under the shadow of the god-peaks he’d always felt like he was doing the right thing. He was made to be a knight. That’s what it meant when the mountain itself spoke to you.

‘How old were you when you came to be an apprentice to the Secret Keeper?’

‘Fifteen. My parents died when I was young.’ Crowleo cleared his throat, glancing at the window. During the day it would have a spectacular view of the forest, but it was full dark now and night filled the glass like ink in a bottle. ‘My aunt looked after me for a while, but she was old and stuck in her ways. I do not think she liked me very much.’ Crowleo laughed, although Sebastian thought it sounded a little strained. ‘I did have a great interest in making things, so as soon as it was seemly she dropped me off here with all my belongings in a bag and a word not to come back too soon. Holley seemed completely unsurprised by my arrival. Perhaps she saw it in one of her glasses. She has never said.’

‘She does extraordinary work.’

Crowleo nodded rapidly.

‘Holley says there are two types of magic in the world – that of the mages, and that of Ede itself, a magic that comes from the soil and air. This place, where she built this house, is teeming with magic.’ He paused, rubbing some cheese crumbs from his fingers. ‘She can do things with the glass that I can barely comprehend, even after years of working with her, but I am learning. I am starting to see how the light refracts, how it can be separated and combined –’ He paused, and then laughed at his own enthusiasm. Sebastian smiled. ‘I know techniques and secrets that other men and women would kill to get their hands on. It is just a little lonely. A little quiet.’