by Ian Irvine
“It’s a wonder you got it away at all, lugging all that.”
“It was rolled up, but the paint was cracking so I stretched it out.”
“Lucky you had all the gear.”
“That was Rix’s idea; I took it with me and left it with the horses.”
“Did… did Rannilt say how long she would be?” said Tali hoarsely.
“No.”
“How long do you think?”
“How would I know?” Glynnie snapped. “As long as it takes.”
She carried the package up to Rix’s chambers and into the salon, very quietly. Tali followed, though she knew she wasn’t welcome. The fire was blazing and Rix was sitting with his back to it, working through a stack of ledgers. He did not notice Glynnie enter. She poked him in the back with a corner of the painting.
He turned irritably, then shot to his feet. Glynnie dropped the portrait and ran to him, and they wrapped their arms around each other.
“You’re safe!” said Rix, crushing her against his chest. “Oh, you’re safe.”
Tali stood in the salon doorway, aching for the kind of passion they shared. Her stupidity had destroyed all possibility of it.
After what seemed like an hour, Glynnie noticed Tali standing there. She gave her a hard stare, pulled free then took off her heavy coat and hung it over the back of a chair. Rix picked up the portrait, unwrapped it and propped it on two chairs where it would catch the light from the window.
Tali had seen it a hundred times when Rix had been painting it, but it looked different now. Starker. Bleaker and less ambiguous.
“It’s changed,” she said.
“The wyverin is definitely alive now,” said Glynnie. “Its eye is open.”
“Its leg muscles are taut, as if it’s about to stand up. And it’s grown. It’s huge.”
Rix’s eyes slipped to the pile of sketches on the table. He picked up his sketch of the wyverin waking, frowned, carried it across and held it out next to the portrait.
“The size and shape are almost the same,” he said. “It’s as if—”
He let the sketch fall and absently scratched the back of his dead hand with his left hand. Tali saw that the skin was darker there, and raised, as if he’d been scratching it with his fingernails for ages. Scoring it.
“It’s as though my sketch changed the portrait,” said Rix. “At least, changed the wyverin in the portrait.”
“To Hightspallers,” said Glynnie, “its appearance symbolises the end of the world.”
“There’s a terrible irony here,” said Rix. “Mother chose the subject of the portrait and told me exactly what to paint. Maybe that’s why I hated it.”
“Why did she choose this particular subject?” said Glynnie.
“Father’s slaying of the wyverin was meant to symbolise him slaying time and change, and the enemies of our house and our country. But I now know the sleeping wyverin is the secret symbol of Cython—it’s their Sacred Beast.”
“The sword has changed, too,” Tali said quietly.
Rix glanced at it and she saw the shock on his face. “It’s become Maloch!”
“You didn’t paint your father with Maloch?” asked Glynnie.
“Definitely not,” said Rix. “I never liked that sword; its enchantment always made me uneasy. I painted Father with his favourite sword and it looked nothing like Maloch. It wasn’t enchanted, either…” He studied Lord Ricinus’s face, and started. “But… he’s changing too.”
His father’s face seemed to be dissolving before their eyes. The purple, venous drunkard’s nose that had given Rix so much trouble was gone, replaced by a vast horn of a nose. He looked younger, stronger, more coarse-featured and more unpleasant. But he no longer had that triumphant air. He looked uneasy… almost afraid.
Abruptly, Rix turned the portrait to the wall. He was breathing heavily. “I can’t tell you how much I hate it. I should break the damned thing up and throw it on the fire.”
“But you’re not going to,” said Tali.
“It’s still trying to tell us something. And…”
“And maybe it isn’t finished changing,” said Glynnie when Rix did not go on. “I’m worn out, Rix—I’m going to see Benn, and to the bathing room, then I’m having a long sleep.”
“Wait,” said Rix.
“What?” she said wearily.
“Thank you for going after the portrait… and thank you for coming back.” He hugged her again.
She stood on tiptoes, rested her chin on his shoulder for a moment, and went out.
Rix rubbed his hands through his short hair, making it stand up. He looked around distractedly and noticed Tali still standing there. They stared at one another. She felt he was judging her and finding her wanting.
He went across to the fire, stood there for a moment, warming his hands, then picked up Glynnie’s coat to put it away. He checked the pockets out of habit, frowned and pulled out a ragged scrap of paper. Something was written on it in an untidy, furious scrawl, as if the writer had been screaming. Tali leaned in close, trying to make out the words.
Tobry can’t bear to see that mean, horrible woman ever again.
We’re never comin’ back.
Tali reeled backwards, tears flooding from her eyes.
That mean, horrible woman.
An enormous ball of guilt and pain and nausea was churning inside her, heaving, swelling, rising up irresistibly. She tried to fight it down, tried with everything she had, but the guilt kept rising and choking her.
Never comin’ back.
She threw back her head and pressed her hands to her belly, but nothing could stop the nausea, or the agony, and as she screamed, the contents of her stomach burst out of her. She fell to her knees, heaving and heaving until there was nothing to bring up save bile streaked with blood.
But she could not rid herself of the guilt that easily. Tobry had loved her. He had clung to the memory of her love as a lifeline in his weeks of madness and torment, and at the moment he had most needed her she had rejected him.
Tali wiped the bloody bile off her mouth and tried to stand up.
“I’m going—” she croaked. “I’m going after them.”
Before Rix could speak, Benn ran in. He skidded across the carpet, stood staring down at Tali, on her knees with a puddle of vomit in front of her, then turned to Rix.
“Grandys’ army is coming across the plateau. Nuddell says it’ll be here within the hour.”
PART THREE
THE LOWER GATE
CHAPTER 66
Wil could not bear the loneliness any longer. Nor the guilt. He had to unburden himself and the only place he could do so was Cython. All his people were gone but he was going there anyway. He had injured the Pale; he had to make it up to them.
“It’ll be different this time,” he kept telling himself. “This time they’ll care.”
It took him the best part of a day to crab his way along the twisted, steaming passages of the Hellish Conduit and back into the familiar tunnels of the empty lower levels of Cython—the levels the Pale still did not know were there. One day, after he saved his people, they would return and build an even greater city here.
Up he went, through the ruined chymical level. Something bad was leaking; the fumes stung his ruined nose and tingled in his empty eye sockets. This level had been blocked off after the great battle during the Pale’s rebellion, but Wil knew a way through.
As he went, he rehearsed his story. He had to tell the Pale about all those little slave girls put to death by the Matriarchs; he had to explain why it had happened, and pay for it.
He reached the main level of Cython and turned a corner. Wil could read his location by running his fingertips along the Cythonian wall carvings, which were ever different. He went fifty yards then stopped abruptly.
“Gone!” he wailed.
He stumbled on, whimpering. The magnificent, carved and painted stone diorama, which had depicted an unspoiled mountain meadow, had lifte
d his spirits every time he passed by, but it was gone. The filthy Pale had smashed it to pieces and chiselled it off, leaving only bare, crude stone.
“How dare they!”
Wil’s scarred hands clasped and unclasped, involuntarily. To Cythonians, their art was their life, and even the lowliest of them, like himself, could tell the difference between good art and bad. But even bad art, even the worst, was better than this desolation. Why would they smash such a beautiful diorama? What kind of monsters were these Pale who, for a thousand years, had been slaves in Cython? The coarse, uncultured brutes! They deserved to be slaves.
He turned a corner, sweeping his fingers up and down the wall in arcs. The vandalism continued. When he’d lived here he had known every carving in Cython and he could still tell where he was—within a few feet—by feel alone, because every carving was different and the images and patterns were never repeated. Now he could have been in any wasteland, anywhere.
“Who—who are you?” someone cried out. “What are you doing here?”
A youthful voice. A girl. Wil turned his blind eyes in her direction.
“I’m Wil,” said Wil, remembering why he had come here. “Don’t be afraid.”
“What are you doing? You don’t belong here.”
He could hear the fear in her voice, and it hurt him. “Wil does belong! He used to live here. They used to call him Wil the Sump because he cleaned out the effluxor sumps. It’s a filthy job but Wil did it gladly.”
“Why are you so scarred and twisted?” she said, curious now.
“Wil delved too deep. He went too close to the Engine and it burned him. What’s your name?”
“Susi,” she said quietly.
“How old are you, Susi?”
“Nearly thirteen,” she quavered.
“Too old,” Wil said to himself. The girls he must apologise to had been much younger. “What colour is your hair?”
“Black.”
“And your eyes?”
“Brown.”
“And your skin? Is it pale, or olive?”
“Why are you asking all these questions?” The tremor was back in her voice.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Wil. “The Matriarchs did a great wrong many years ago, and Wil has to make it right. Wil has to apologise. Is your skin pale or olive?”
“Olive. But I’ve got to go now.”
“No, wait,” said Wil. “It’ll only take a minute.”
He rubbed his empty eyes. Susi’s hair was right, as were her eyes and skin. Did it really matter that she was a bit too old? No, it didn’t.
“Why do you have to apologise?” she said.
“It started a long time ago, when Wil still had his eyes. Matriarch Ady let him go into the Chamber of the Solaces to check on the Great Books, and Wil saw a new book—The Consolation of Vengeance. It was Lyf’s most important book, and Wil was the first to see it, to read it.”
“It doesn’t sound like a very nice book,” said Susi.
“It burned Wil’s eyes out, but it also gave him a shillilar—that’s a foreseeing—about the one.”
“Who’s the one?”
“A slave girl of the Pale. A little girl then, much younger than you. She had blond hair and blue eyes, and pale, pale skin.”
“I don’t understand why you’re telling me this,” said Susi.
She was fidgeting, getting bored. Stupid girl! How could she be bored by this story?
“Nearly finished,” said Wil hastily. “The one was going to change the story, you see. She was going to rewrite the ending of The Consolation of Vengeance, so the Matriarchs ordered that she be found and killed.”
“Killed?” Her breath made a hiss as she exhaled.
“But Wil couldn’t let that innocent girl be killed. She was the one!”
He could hear Susi’s teeth chattering. She was scared, but she wanted to know how the story ended. Just as Wil had saved Tali to find out how she would change the ending of the greatest story of all.
“But then… but then…” It was hard to confess what he had done; very hard.
“What did you do?” said Susi.
“Wil had to let them die… the innocents,” he whispered.
“What—did—you—do?”
“The Matriarchs made Wil watch.”
“Watch what?”
“Wil had to watch while those thirty-nine black-haired, olive-skinned girls were put to death, one by one.” His confession was raw with passion, quivering with self-hatred. “It wasn’t Wil’s fault.”
“It was your fault, you stinking murderer,” screamed Susi, her voice ripe with loathing. “One of those girls was my big sister, Asi. You could have saved her. You killed her.”
“What was Wil to do? If he’d said it was the blonde girl, the Matriarchs would have had her killed. They would have ruined the ending of the story.”
She advanced on him, screeching. “You killed my sister!”
“Not Wil, not Wil,” he wailed, stumbling backwards. “It was the Matriarchs.”
Susi threw herself at him, screaming and slapping him about the face, and Wil could not bear the dreadful sound. It brought back the memories he had been trying to suppress for more than ten years. But the only way he could stop her screaming was to close his hands around her throat.
When Susi died, when history repeated itself, Wil knew he was cursed beyond redemption.
CHAPTER 67
“It’s a perfect day for war,” said Grandys.
The miserable weather that had plagued him for a week had cleared overnight. When he rose at dawn and mounted his warhorse the overcast skies had cleared and the breeze was a mild northerly. It was time to end the false siege—time for the real battle to begin.
Lirriam was already in the saddle, talking to the men, studying the battle arena and checking all was in readiness. In the other Heroes it would have been duty done; in her it always felt like a challenge.
“It’s going to be a beautiful sunny day,” he said, savouring the fresh mountain air.
He rode slowly by Fortress Garramide at a distance of three hundred yards. Close enough to taunt them; far enough away that only the luckiest of shots could hit.
“I’m sure Rixium thinks so,” said Lirriam, her yellow mare matching his black stallion stride for stride, “since there’s no rain or fog to hinder his archers. They’ll shoot your men down in their hundreds before they get to the wall.”
“I’ve got 2800 men and I’m happy to lose a thousand to wear him down. He can’t take that number of casualties. He can’t win.”
“You’re back to your bombastic worst, Grandys.”
“Besides, attacking Garramide is just a diversion. I don’t care if I take it or not.”
“Rubbish! You’re a spoiled little boy who always has to win.”
He reined in and looked her in the eye. “How little you know me. I’m after the big prize, and it’s so very close. Tali’s inside, and so is the circlet.”
“How are you going to get to them without taking Garramide?”
“You’ll see.”
“They could have found the circlet already,” said Lirriam. “And cut out the pearl. They could be luring you into a trap.”
The stallion reared; he curbed it savagely. “My treasures are protected by a great, ancient spell. If they’d found my hoard, Maloch would have alerted me.”
“Everything fails in the end, Grandys—even great spells. Yours could have died long ago.”
“Ah,” he said, “but all the omens have turned my way. Including that one.”
Grandys gestured towards the escarpment track. Two people had just reached the top and one was unmistakable, even at this distance: massive; golem-like.
“Syrten and Yulia are back,” said Lirriam.
“The Five Heroes will stand together for the final onslaught. The final triumph.”
“It’s your final outing, Grandys, though I don’t think it will end in triumph.”
“I notice you haven�
��t been wearing your precious Incarnate lately,” he sneered. “Having trouble bringing it to life?”
She forced a smile. “You have no idea how patient I can be.”
“I’ve often wondered if it was patience—or lack of nerve.”
She did not reply and Grandys felt sure he had struck his target. He kicked his horse into a canter, heading directly across the sodden fields towards Yulia and Syrten. Lirriam wheeled and raced along the meandering road across the plateau.
“Be damned!” he said to himself.
He spurred his mount cruelly, driving it at reckless speed across the boggy land to get there first, and arrived a few seconds ahead, coated in mud to the top of his head. The stallion was lathered in sweat and so exhausted that it was trembling.
Lirriam reined in, smirking. “It’s so easy to manipulate you. You just can’t help yourself.”
“You’re the one who came second.”
Grandys beckoned to Syrten and Yulia. Syrten raised an arm thicker than most men’s thighs. When Yulia did not acknowledge the gesture, or even look up, Grandys felt a stab of unease.
“You brought back the Immortal Text?” said Lirriam.
Syrten nodded stiffly. “Custodian didn’t want to give it up. Yulia insisted.”
Yulia continued to stare at her hands, which were knotted around the reins. Her face was as blanched as the day she had been struck by Lyf’s arrow.
“What’s the matter with you?” Grandys said roughly.
“There’s something wrong with it!” Yulia burst out.
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can there be something wrong with the Immortal Text? It’s been locked away for two thousand years.”
“The moment I touched it, my magery told me that there was something false or deceitful in it.”
“Then it can’t be the genuine Text.”
“It passed the Seven Tests. There’s no question it’s the one. And yet—”
Grandys extended a meaty hand. Yulia took a cylindrical brasscase from her saddlebags, unscrewed the end and slid a smaller leather case from that. Opening it, she carefully drew out the contents, a coiled sheet, which she passed to Grandys.