by Ian Irvine
How gigantic it was, almost unnaturally so. Not bad, he thought grudgingly, though it would have been better in the days when he could use his right hand.
He pushed the sketch aside and began another, though this time Rix felt uneasy as soon as he began it. He sketched furiously, completing it in a minute, tossed his stub of charcoal at the fire, and focused.
The sketch showed a wyverin falling on a great city whose skyline resembled that of Caulderon, consuming it in fire and poisonous fumes.
“Enough damned wyverin!”
Rix threw the sketch on top of the first and began on a third, using a fresh stick of charcoal. This time he kept his eyes focused; he was going to control the sketch from beginning to end. He tried to draw life, hope and rebirth.
His drawing depicted a grey, smoky land where hundreds of wyverin flocked, devouring the world and scattering their befouling, elemental wastes across it.
Was that all? No, he had one more sketch in him, though it turned out to be the worst of all—a bleak, empty land stubbled by dead forests. A land never touched by cleansing sunlight, but lit only by a cold, silver moon. A land scoured of humanity, perhaps erased.
Rix cursed it, grabbed the blank sheets, the paints and charcoal and everything else, and stuffed them back into the cupboard. He went to the window and looked out across the sodden plateau.
It had all begun with his father’s portrait. What had Tobry said about it, the night he’d miraculously reappeared at the height of the siege of Garramide?
“I’ve a feeling the portrait will be found one day,” Tobry had said, “and then it’ll reveal its true divination.”
What could that mean? Lord Ricinus’s fate had been sealed a month before that night, so the divination must be about the wyverin itself.
When the wyverin wakes, the world ends. So Cythonian legend said.
But that was just a legend. It wasn’t real.
CHAPTER 58
Grandys dragged off his boots and stood knee-deep in the icy stream, though not even that could numb the bone-deep pain of his feet. After several painful healings the sloughed-off skin had grown back like scar tissue, thick and red and ropy, but the flesh beneath it burned constantly, as though his feet had been bathed in oil of vitriol. There were times when he considered hacking them off, as Lyf had suggested. It seemed the only way he would ever escape from the pain.
“Curse Lyf for all eternity,” he raged. “And Rixium too.”
“He’s getting to you,” said Lirriam, making no effort to conceal her glee. “He’s defended the three passes brilliantly and it’s shaken your confidence, Grandys. You’re on the slide—and you’ll never get off.”
She touched Incarnate and, momentarily, her eyes took on the red-purple glow he had seen in the stone previously—the glow she had woken by bringing it close to Tali’s master pearl. Incarnate had since gone out, though for how long? Lirriam was as stubborn as he was; she never gave up.
He wanted to smash her down and trample her into the muck, but he dared not raise a finger against her. Not even Rufuss, sick sadist though he was, would tolerate another attack on one of the Heroes.
Each for all, all for each—forever.
Who was Rixium anyway, Grandys mused, still standing in the stream. Who could this young man be who, at only twenty, had turned Grandys’ lessons back on him and troubled him more than any other commander ever had?
Was it because Rixium had once worn Maloch, and had used the sword brilliantly? Had some of its enchantment rubbed off on him? Or, chilling thought, did Maloch see Rixium as its true master, now that Grandys was past his best?
Lirriam must have read his thought, for she walked across to the edge of the stream and held a steel mirror up to his face. Grandys was shocked to see how badly he had aged since he’d come out of the Abysm a few months ago.
His skin, where the opal armour had broken away to expose it, had once been ruddy but it was now a bilious greenish-brown, splotchy and wrinkled. His hair was falling out, his jowls were sagging and his broken nose had a distinct droop at the end. Even the black opal armour, once so perfect and jewel-like, was losing its colour and turning milky.
And his guts were in turmoil, his bowels in constant flux. He was starting to think that he was disintegrating on the inside as well.
I won’t have it! Grandys almost screamed. He barely caught himself in time.
He caught Lirriam’s hateful eyes on him, saw the amusement there and turned away. He was not going to allow her another advantage. Once he had the master pearl and the circlet he would turn the ageing back, and he would be the old Axil Grandys again: proud, indomitable, fearless, undefeated.
“You’ve fallen into a funk,” said Lirriam. “After the hidings Rixium gave you, you’re terrified of him. No wonder you’ve held back every step of this journey.”
“If you don’t let up, I swear I’ll kill you.”
“You’d better, Grandys, because I never forgive and I never forget. But you won’t lay a finger on me—the Heroes would cast you out, and that would destroy you.”
“I made the four of you Heroes,” he blustered. “I can make others.”
“No, you can’t.”
“Why ever not?”
“We Five have shared pasts, shared agonies and shared persecution back in Thanneron, yet we rose above those lives to remake ourselves when we stepped onto this land. Our past is two thousand years dead, Grandys—we Five are living fossils, the last of our kind.”
“I have thousands of pureblood Herovians.”
“But they’re not our people; they don’t share our past and they’ve not been persecuted and forged in our cruel fires. Your brave Herovians concealed their race for the past fifteen hundred years, so as to live easy lives in Hightspall. Where’s the honour in that, Grandys? Where’s the nobility? And I doubt if many of them are purebreds, either. They’re a bastard race, no more like we Five Heroes than the Hightspallers are. You can’t replace us with any of them, no matter how hard you try.”
In his heart he knew she was right, though he wasn’t going to admit it.
“All you have is us, Grandys,” Lirriam went on. “That’s why you look so desperately to us for approval after each of your little victories—because we’re all you’ve got. And you’re all we’ve got, which is why we allow your brutality, and Rufuss his sickening sadism. Without the other Heroes none of us are anything—we’d be lonely aliens in a world that’s changed beyond our understanding.”
Grandys did not reply. They were bound together, right or wrong, for good or ill, for as long as they survived. All the more reason to make sure they did survive.
“When I’m ready, I’ll act,” said Grandys. “Only a fool tries to predict how I think, or what I’ll do next.”
“That fool is you,” said Lirriam, and went to her tent with a spring in her step.
He stood outside her tent most of that night, watching her mage-light flare and flicker. It heightened his unease. Lirriam was a brilliant sorcerer whose full potential had, hitherto, not been tapped. Now he gained the impression that she had been waiting for something—perhaps the chance that Incarnate offered—all her adult life. That she had been content to wait, saving her strength and never exerting herself fully, knowing her chance would eventually come.
Grandys wasn’t going to let her win. He was the most formidable man this land had ever seen, and he wasn’t done yet. The ultimate prize still lay ahead of him. The thought lifted his spirits.
It was time to start looking for the circlet.
CHAPTER 59
Even riding on gauntling-back the hunt for Tobry was taking too long, and Lyf was frantic. He’d had no news from Caulderon or his army in five days; no news about Grandys or Rixium either. All communication between Lyf and the outside world had been severed.
“The world could have ended for all I’d know,” he fretted as he clambered onto the vile beast his disability required him to use, and prodded it with the end of one of his
crutches.
Grolik lashed her barbed tail at Lyf. He used precious magery to block it as painfully as possible. She screeched, hurled herself into the air and twisted into a series of vicious aerobatics, trying to dislodge him and drop him on his head from a hundred feet. He curbed her with a fireball that seared off half of her crinkly right ear. Grolik flew on, hissing and spitting and curling her tail up like a scorpion.
They went through the same rigmarole every morning, until she finally submitted. One day, if he wasn’t careful, Grolik would catch him unawares and then he would die like any normal man, his work undone.
“The world looks as solid as ever to me,” Errek said. “But if you can’t trust your officers to do their jobs, there are spells that will allow you to speak to your people in Caulderon, and in the field.”
“I know the spells,” Lyf snapped. “I can’t afford the power it would take to use them.”
“And you can’t let go.” Errek settled back, arms folded behind his head, to enjoy the journey.
Nothing seemed to faze him. Indeed, being raised as a wrythen had made him blossom—he even seemed to have more hair than before. It irked Lyf since he was rapidly losing his own.
They had wasted days doubling back and forth between the ten thousand lakes of Lakeland, trying to make sense of a trail that meandered like a drunken ant and was often buried by spring snow or washed out by rain.
It had taken the best part of a week before they traced Tobry into a limestone cave that led deep into the Nandeloch Mountains, but the gauntling had baulked last night and would not approach the entrance. Lyf hoped it would be less recalcitrant in daylight.
“Go in!” he commanded.
The gauntling flew straight past, ten feet up. Lyf forced it to turn and fly back. It headed towards the entrance then shot away at the last second. Errek snorted.
“Giving you a body was a mistake,” Lyf muttered, as the gauntling streaked around in a mile-wide circle.
“Why so?” Errek said innocently. “Not that I’d call this barely tangible wrythen form a body.”
“You used to be so stern and kingly. Raising you has made you frivolous, scatty and just plain silly.”
Errek bowed ironically. “I was a stern and kingly shade because, like everyone in your ancestor gallery, you created me that way. I was a mere figment of your imagining; one you put together from scraps of history and a mouldy old portrait in the Hall of the Kings and Queens of Cythe.”
Lyf tried to force the gauntling to go in. She spiralled upwards.
“I preferred the stern and kingly you,” Lyf muttered. “It was easier to deal with.”
“This wrythen, feeble though it is, is the real me. I may be a great king in legend, but in real life I also had a sense of humour. Do you have a sense of humour, Lyf? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you laugh.” Errek grinned. “And certainly not at the funniest thing I’ve ever seen—yourself.”
“Life is no laughing matter. It’s deadly earnest.”
“On the contrary, life is an eternal joke. A man who can’t laugh at his own frailties and follies is a man who has no capacity to learn from his mistakes.”
“I don’t have time for this,” Lyf snapped.
“More’s the pity.”
“If you’ve got so much spare time, why not put it to good use and find your lost memories?”
“They’ll come, in time,” said Errek. “Or not. They can’t be forced.”
“I need them now.”
Errek shrugged.
“That was a remarkably fluid shoulder movement for such an aged wrythen,” Lyf said sourly.
“I was only forty-two when I died.”
“You look at least a hundred.”
“You reshaped my wrythen when you raised me, to fit your mental image of me.”
“Do you want me to change it to the real you?”
“I could do that myself, if I wanted to.”
Lyf stared at him. “You can do magery?”
“Some.”
“Then why don’t you change your shape to the real one?”
“It amuses me to be a middle-aged spirit in an ancient form. It also humbles me, and that’s no bad thing, because I was once over-proud. A common failing in kings, I believe. It’s one of the hazards of the job.”
Lyf did not reply. The gauntling was approaching the cavern mouth again. He prepared a command.
Go in!
The gauntling turned at an impossible angle, skidded sideways across the air, turned upside-down, dumped Lyf in the cave mouth then shot away. Lyf landed hard on his backside, rolled over and came to a stop with his stumps in the air. Errek’s wrythen was floating fifty feet up, laughing at him.
“I fail to see the humorous side,” snapped Lyf.
“The beast told you twice that it was afraid to go in. Why wasn’t that good enough for you?”
Lyf picked up his crutches and stumped inside without answering.
“The Defenders!” Errek gazed at the matriarchal stone figures standing with their hands upraised, one on either side of the passage. “I’d forgotten I’d put them here.”
“What are they defending?” said Lyf.
“No idea.”
“But you created them.”
“Yes, and the defences and traps beyond…”
“You must have some idea what they’re for.”
“It was ten thousand years ago,” said Errek. “And I died after considerable trauma. I don’t remember anything… except the fear.”
“The fear?” cried Lyf.
“I sealed this place for a very good reason, with the best traps and the most long-lived spells I could muster, to make sure that no one would ever find a way past.”
“But Tobry—or the shifter, whichever he is—has found a way past.”
“We kings try to control the future but we can’t even manage the present. Nothing endures forever, neither devices nor spells, nor even rock itself. In the end, all fails.”
“Then whatever your Defenders are defending against may also have failed.”
“I hope so,” said Errek.
They continued, but a few yards past the Defenders Lyf stopped again, staring at the wall.
“What is this structure?” he asked, peering through the gateway that was there one moment and solid stone the next.
“It used to be called the Sacred Gate.”
“What’s it called now?”
“Nothing. I’d say it was forgotten thousands of long years ago.”
“Why does it lead to a ruin in Caulderon?”
“One way leads to the ruin, though it wasn’t a ruin in the olden days.”
“One way? You mean there are two?” Lyf glanced behind him but saw only stone, and no gate, ephemeral or otherwise.
“There are two ways through the gate. The Sacred Gate leads directly to Caulderon. The other path—you have to enter the gate to see it—goes to Turgur Thross.”
“The sacred ruins on the northern edge of Garramide plateau?”
“Precisely, and only a mile or two from the peak called Touchstone—where the craft of alchymie was invented, ten thousand years ago. By my humble self, as it happens.”
“A lot seems to happen in that area.”
“The original capital of Cythe was at Turgur Thross, in my time. I wonder why it was moved?”
“The population outgrew the plateau,” said Lyf. “And it was too cold, wet and remote.”
“Too uncomfortable for my luxury-loving successors, you mean?” Errek sniffed the air, and again, then wrinkled his brow.
“Can you smell?” said Lyf. “In all the time I was a wrythen, I smelled nothing.”
“Faintly. And I don’t like it.”
“What can you smell?”
“I can’t remember, but the smell is familiar. Alarming!”
“Why did the shifter come here?” said Lyf.
“He’s a dying beast, looking for a hole to hide in.”
“But why all this way,
with such relentless purpose? He’s bypassed a thousand holes and hollows suitable for dying in.”
“I don’t know…”
“What is it now?” said Lyf.
“Memory echoes,” said Errek. “Echoes of echoes of the distant past, of the dark time before I invented king-magery… and the reason why I invented it.”
“That’s not helping,” said Lyf.
“We should not be here.” Errek looked down the dark passage. “We should turn around right now.”
“The shifter went down there and I have to find him.”
Lyf went on, not without a shiver, and Errek followed.
“The shifter has a child with it,” said Lyf, staring at the small, damp footprint.
“Why a child?” said Errek.
“Perhaps the shifter brought it along to eat. We’re getting close. I can smell the stench of the creature.”
They continued down a passage that became an expanding spiral, to a place where it broadened out and the roof rose, though the stone chamber was too gloomy for Lyf to make out any further details.
There’s the child, said Errek into Lyf’s mind. On the right. She’s sleeping. Don’t make a sound.
Can you see the shifter?
No.
Errek drifted by. Lyf crept past on his crutches, trying to move as silently as possible. He could see her now. The child murmured in her sleep, turned over and settled again. They continued down the widening spiral.
We’re close, said Errek. I don’t like that smell at all.
Shifters’ stink, said Lyf.
Not the shifter smell. Nor the tang of burnt sulphur. The other smell. In the cavern.
What other smell? What cavern?
Just ahead.
They entered the vast cavern. The mixture of smells was much stronger here, and it was hotter—very much hotter. Lyf could sense the vastness opening up ahead and below him, though the cavern was in a darkness his eyes could not penetrate.
Suddenly a hand gripped his shoulder, surprisingly strong for a wrythen. Stop!
Lyf looked back and Errek’s spectral hair was standing on end. “What is it now?”