At Trevi we saw our first true signs of battle. I smelled it first, the bitterness of smoke lacing an evening mist as we rode along the Julana Way, weary and feeling the miles where we sat. The scent of Vermillion’s burning still haunted my nostrils but that had been an inferno billowing out hot clouds that quenched the stars. This was the stink of old fires hiding among ruins, smouldering, chewing slowly through the very last of their fuel beneath thick blankets of ash.
The sun descended toward the western hills, throwing our shadows before us and tingeing the mists with crimson before we saw the ruined fort. The mound it stood upon was too small and isolated to make it a convincing foothill, too large for me to easily believe that men had heaped up so much earth. A small town had grown at the foot of the mound to service the fort’s needs. Little of those homes remained: most lay in ashes; here and there a standing spar. The fort itself had lost a large part of its gatehouse in some devastating explosion, masonry scattered the slope, reaching down to the blackened ribs of the closest buildings. What magics or alchemy the Red Queen had employed I couldn’t guess but she had obviously not been minded to mount a long siege or to leave the garrison secure to threaten her supply line.
“Impressive.” Snorri sat tall in his saddle, eyes on the scene ahead of us.
“Hmmm.” I’d be glad when it was all behind us. The road led on into a tangle of forest a quarter of a mile or so past the fort. It looked like the sort of place survivors might gather and plot revenge. “We’ll steer well clear of it. Stay alert. I don’t like this place.”
The words were scarcely off my lips before Squire started beeping. It wasn’t something she’d done before. The noise was like no sound any horse could make, or any human or instrument for that matter. It held an unnatural quality, too precise, too clean. Hennan looked around in surprise, trying to locate the source. As far as I could tell what he was sitting on was making the sound.
“It’s coming from the saddlebags,” Kara said, nudging her mount closer to the boy’s.
“Ah.” I guessed then what was making the beeps and all at once the day seemed colder than it had a moment before. “Hell.”
Snorri gave me that two-part look of his, the first part being: tell me what you know, and the second part being: or I’ll break your arms. I dismounted and started to undo the straps on Squire’s left saddlebag. It took a bit of digging to get the package out, and then some wrestling with twine and rags to unwrap it. The beeps came every four seconds or so, the gap long enough so you might imagine the last one was the end of it. A few moments later I pulled away the last of the wrapping and held Luntar’s box of ghosts in my hands. In the light of day it looked every bit as unnatural as it had back in the throne room. It seemed as if it were a piece of winter viewed through a box-shaped hole, and it weighed far too little for what I knew it to contain. It beeped again and I nearly dropped it.
“What is it?” Kara and Hennan almost in unison, the boy a fraction ahead.
“A funeral urn,” I said. “Containing the ashes of ten million dead Builders. I opened the lid. A fan of light spread out above the open mouth and coalesced into a pale human figure. A gaunt man. I realized two things simultaneously. Firstly, that I recognized the man. Secondly, that the shock of the first realization had made me drop the box.
Hennan moved as fast as I’ve ever seen another human react. He’d been fleet-footed when I’d tried to catch him the first time we met in Osheim, but half a year had quickened him. He dived forward and, at full stretch, caught the box an inch above the ground. The air left his lungs in a sharp “oooof.”
“Thank you.” I scooped the box from his outstretched hands and set it on a marker stone beside the road. Snorri leant down to help the boy up. I crouched to stare at the ten-inch ghost standing in the air above the box. The phantom wore a long white tunic, buttoned at the front and coming down past his knees, a lean, one might say scrawny man of about my age, a narrow, owlish face beneath an unruly mop of light-coloured hair, a frame hooking over his ears and holding two glass lenses, one immediately before each eye. He looked far too young but I knew him.
“Taproot?”
“Elias Taproot, PhD, at your service.” The figure executed a bow.
“Do you know me, Taproot?”
“Local data suggests you are Prince Jalan Kendeth.”
“And him?” I held the box so he would get a good view of Snorri, now standing in the road, hands resting on Hennan’s shoulders just before him, both of them staring our way.