by Ian Irvine
“Do you think it could?” said Benn in a hopeful voice.
“Anything could happen.”
Though she did not think it would. The tide had turned and it was running the Heroes’ way. With the power of all five pearls, Grandys might be able to wrest the circlet from Lyf as well.
She heard a roar from the far side of the fortress. Had the besiegers taken heart and gained a foothold on the wall? After a war that had lasted six months, was Hightspall’s last bastion going to crumble in a few bloody minutes?
“I command the pearls!” roared Grandys. “The power is mine. King-magery, come forth.”
The sky went black. The ground shook, deep and low, though this tremor was unlike any of the quakes Glynnie had experienced in the past months. The ground seemed to be rolling up and down, lifting her to her tiptoes then falling away beneath her—she felt a sickening lurch in the pit of her stomach each time it dropped. Five times the ground moved up and down, each wave stronger than the time before.
A whirling, tumbling nebula of force blasted dust into her face and grit into her eyes. The yard cracked in an irregular curve from one side to the other, only feet from where Glynnie and Benn stood, and dust and steam spiralled out. She saw down several feet into what appeared to be an old graveyard, or perhaps a mass grave, judging by the number of bones.
A host of spirits wisped into visibility, rising, fluttering. Not full spirits—most were little more than faces, or heads and shoulders—but all were shouting angrily at being disturbed. As they rose into the grey light they faded and disappeared, and their cries died away. The ground shifted and the crack closed.
Now a vortex appeared on the golden stone of the castle wall below the dome, projected through the camera obscura. It was whirling around the rooftop of North Tower, spinning smaller and tighter and faster all the time. It was so dense that nothing could be seen through it; so compact that objects seen near its edges were distorted as though the very light was bent as it passed by.
Grandys was directing it with the master pearl, moving it in the air like a conductor waving his baton. Every movement tightened the vortex, thickened it and spun it faster, until it had contracted from yards across and twice as high to a tiny, shrieking cyclone only a foot tall.
“Syrten, the platina canister!” said Grandys, his magnified voice booming and echoing off the walls and towers. “The one substance that can contain king-magery.”
Syrten carried a large conical canister to the end of the second slab, near Yulia’s feet, and set it down. It stood as high as his knees.
“Cap!”
Syrten took the cap off and stepped back.
Grandys, his jaw knotted with the effort, directed the vortex over the opening of the canister, then brought the hand holding the master pearl down sharply. The vortex dropped into the canister. Yulia’s body heaved, her legs rising a foot into the air. Syrten put the cap on smartly and Grandys held the canister up.
“King-magery is mine,” he exulted, kissing the canister. His voice was thick and slurred, as if he were intoxicated by the moment.
“Ours,” said Lirriam.
“What?” he said, shaking his head as if he did not understand.
“The pact, Grandys. Each for all, all for each—forever. King-magery doesn’t belong to you—it belongs to the Five Heroes, as we were.”
“Whatever you say!” said Grandys. “I won’t let anything mar this magical moment.”
He turned his back to her and walked forward until he stood squarely in front of the camera obscura. After taking a deep breath, he lifted the canister high in the air and amplified his voice until it rattled the slates on the surrounding roofs.
“I, Axil Grandys, hold king-magery in my hand. Men and women of Garramide, you have fought bravely, but nothing can prevail against me now. Lay down your arms.”
CHAPTER 75
“Do you believe him?” whispered Benn.
‘Yes,” said Glynnie. “But I’ll never trust him.”
Two figures appeared on the platform above the great dome, the highest point of Garramide. The big man was Rix and the boy could have been Thom. Clearly, wherever Lyf and Errek had gone it wasn’t to the dome, so what were they up to?
“Men and women of Garramide,” Rix bellowed through his speaking trumpet, “Axil Grandys is a cheat and a liar, and the Five Heroes can never be trusted. We fight on!”
“How dare you defy the man who holds king-magery in his hand?” said Grandys.
“I do because I must. We will never submit.”
“Then die!”
Grandys attempted to blast Rix off the top of the platform. It missed him, though Glynnie saw Thom go tumbling backwards. Rix dropped the speaking trumpet, ran after Thom and disappeared from view.
“Thom!” whispered Benn.
“He’ll be all right,” Glynnie said unconvincingly. “Rix won’t let any harm come to him…”
Lirriam was speaking to Grandys, and the amplifying charm picked up her words as well. “You may have taken king-magery,” she said, “but you can’t use it without the circlet.”
“Lyf won’t have gone far. I’ll have the circlet this very hour.”
Grandys looked down at the master pearl, and the two other pearls in his hand, then held his hand out to Lirriam.
“Why are they no longer black?”
The camera obscura showed the three pearls clearly. Most of their black, pearly lustre was gone, changed to a cloudy grey.
“They did the work they were created to do when you raised king-magery with them,” said Lirriam. “You’ll get no more from them.”
Grandys drew his arm back as if to hurl them against the wall.
“Wait!” she said. “They may still have a part to play… when you cast the Three Spells.”
Grandys handed them to her, indifferently.
“It’s time to tidy up,” he said. “And I don’t need these two any more.”
He drew Maloch and advanced towards Holm and Tali, who lay as still as before. Was she unconscious? Dying? Holm did not look up when Grandys approached him, raising the sword.
“Stop!” said Lirriam.
“What now?” said Grandys.
“You’ll need Tali for the endgame,” said Lirriam “and she’s in a bad way. Holm has to keep her alive.”
“I suppose so, dammit!”
Grandys picked Tali up and disappeared from the eye of the camera obscura, which continued to project the scene onto the castle wall after Syrten gently raised Yulia’s body and everyone left the rooftop.
“They’re coming down,” said Benn. “Do we have to fight them?”
“He’s got a hundred guards,” said Glynnie. “Fighting would be suicide. Run and tell Rix that Grandys is on his way up. Don’t take any risks.”
Benn raced away. Glynnie called the battering-ram crew away into hiding, then crouched in the shadows as the door of North Tower was unblocked and Grandys led the Heroes towards the long stairs leading to the platform above the dome. He did not look back. He had the air of a man who saw victory within his reach.
“Stinking mongrel bastard!” Glynnie said under her breath. “How I’d love to bring you down.”
And then, as Syrten headed up with Yulia’s body, Glynnie recovered the thought she had lost hours ago. The portrait! She raced up to Rix’s chambers, went to the window and checked on the fortress wall. It was still in friendly hands, though that could change in minutes. She had to act fast. She picked up the portrait and began to lug it down.
The fortress was eerily empty, unnervingly silent. No doubt everyone who did not have urgent duties was in hiding, guarding the children and the elderly, and waiting in terror for an enemy they could not hope to stop. An enemy whose brutality was legendary.
She took the darkest and most obscure passages, knowing she wasn’t safe anywhere, but encountered no one. The portrait was awkwardly large and troublesome to manoeuvre around the corners of the stairs. Glynnie reached the lower side door,
stopped and checked outside. There was no one in sight.
She scurried across to the broken entrance to North Tower and began to heave the portrait up the stone steps. She was nearing the top when she heard someone coming down, a heavy tread.
There was no chance of avoiding detection. She grounded the portrait and was feeling for her knife when she remembered that she had lost it during the fight in the old ballroom. In all the drama since, she had forgotten to replace it. Glynnie was turning to run when Rix came around the corner.
“What are you doing here?” they said at the same time.
“What’s that for?” said Rix.
Glynnie would have thought it was obvious. “Give me a hand. And pray that the device still works. How’s Thom?”
“Not good. Grandys’ blast drove him against the wall—he’s got two badly broken legs.”
“Oh!” said Glynnie. “But he’ll be all right? He’ll be able to walk?”
“That’ll depend on the healers. Poor lad; I should’ve been more careful.”
He took one end of the portrait, she lifted the other and they carried it up to the top of the tower. She studied the area in front of the camera obscura, picked the best spot and dragged the portrait into position.
“It’s changed again!” said Glynnie.
Rix glanced at the wall beneath the dome, where the gigantic image was projected in brilliant detail. The warrior now lay on the ground with the wyverin tearing at his belly, disembowelling him.
And the warrior’s face had completed the change—from Lord Ricinus to Axil Grandys.
Rix gaped. “I never saw the likeness before. Glynnie, you’re amazing!”
“It’s taken you long enough to realise it,” she said, grinning.
He picked her up under the arms, whirled her around in a circle, kissed her on the mouth and put her down again. He looked around, frowned and cleared his throat. Glynnie spotted a speaking trumpet lying on the ground and tossed it to him.
“Tell the whole world to look at the wall. Tell Grandys.”
Rix raised the trumpet to his mouth. “People of Garramide! Herovians! Heroes! You know the legend of Axil Grandys. Look to the wall! Look and see his doom for yourselves.”
Silence fell. Even the sounds of battle from the distant wall ceased.
Glynnie took Rix’s hand. “It might be an idea if we get out of sight. Out of danger.”
They took shelter in one of the corners, where they could see the image on the wall without being in the line of fire from the platform at the top of the dome. There came a roar from the outer wall, and the sounds of cheering. But there was no reaction from Grandys. Why not?
“His army can see the image,” said Glynnie, “but he can’t—not from the top of the dome. He’d have to come down.”
“They can signal him,” said Rix.
“Whatever the trouble is, he’ll want to see it for himself. He’s that kind of man.”
“And then he’ll want someone to pay.”
There came an echoing, fearful cry from high above. Grandys had seen the image of himself being disembowelled by the wyverin.
Rix dived and grabbed the portrait. Grandys blasted the camera obscura to bits and the image vanished.
CHAPTER 76
When Grandys successfully summoned king-magery, Lyf’s heart stopped for ten beats.
“He’s done it,” said Errek, who was sitting on the side wall of a small tower to the left of the main dome. “I never thought he would. You’ve got to hand it to the brute—”
“Don’t!” choked Lyf.
Errek raised a wispy eyebrow. “Don’t what?”
“How dare you praise him? How dare you admire him?”
“To beat your enemy, you first have to know him. Grandys is a violent, treacherous swine, but there’s also much that’s admirable about him. In ingenuity, strength and sheer, dogged determination, he’s certainly your master.”
“Stop it!”
Errek pretended to weigh Lyf up, head to one side. “You too are admirable, in your own way, but self-indulgence makes you less of a king than you could be.”
“What self-indulgence?” Lyf said coldly.
“The petty despairs you wallow in after every setback. You lack determination, Lyf; you fail in persistence.”
“For almost two thousand years as a wrythen I fought the long fight, always cleaving to my plan, never giving up.”
“You gave up several times, I believe. Besides, it’s an easy life being a wrythen, if I may be excused the joke.” Errek chuckled. “We can’t die, we barely feel pain and we don’t require clothing, shelter or sustenance. In short, a human’s basic needs are irrelevant to us.”
“He commands all the pearls,” said Lyf. “He’s on his way here, after my circlet.”
“All the more reason for you to strike first.”
“With what?”
Errek’s reply was cut off as the gauntling, which Lyf had called an hour ago, came swooping down.
“Where the hell have you been?” snarled Lyf.
The gauntling twisted her head around and spat a slimy gob at him. Lyf ducked, hauled himself onto her back and rode in circles around Garramide, trying to come up with a plan.
“Well?” said Errek after the beast had made several circuits.
“Nothing.”
Errek sighed. “The solution is staring you in the face.”
“What solution?”
“Look at the wall beneath the great dome.”
Lyf turned that way. “I don’t see anything.”
“You will on the next circuit.”
The gauntling circled and finally the image came into view. Lyf studied it incredulously, suspecting a trick.
“It’s the portrait Rixium painted for his father’s Honouring,” he said at last.
“The portrait you ordered destroyed, though you didn’t check to make sure it was. Just as well, in the circumstances.”
“It’s changed,” said Lyf, staring at it until his eyes watered. Then he laughed. “I know what to do.”
“Have you fully thought it through?”
“There isn’t time. I’m going to wake the Sacred Beast.”
“It’s the Chymical Beast, and it’s liable to eat the magian who wakes it,” said Errek.
“It’s worth the risk.” Lyf felt the blood burning through his veins at the thought. “Grandys is terrified of it.”
“It’s also an enigmatic omen for our land, which is why I created king-magery in the first place.”
“Why did you create king-magery?”
“I still can’t remember; those memories were lost when I died. But beware—”
“Of what?”
“When the wyverin last roamed the land, nothing but disaster befell Cythe.”
“Your memories are clear enough when you want to hector me,” Lyf snapped.
“Wake it and you could bring calamity down on us. Calamity that could tip the Engine over the edge.”
“Where did the wyverin come from, anyway?”
“It came through,” Errek said cryptically.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Another memory I can’t recover.”
“Try harder!” Lyf tilted his head to one side and pursed his lips, mimicking Errek’s actions a few minutes previously. “When I analyse your character—”
“I’m sure you identify all manner of faults,” Errek said with an ironic little bow. “And all true, but beside the point. If you are going to commit this disastrously reckless act, do it now, before Grandys makes all our actions redundant.”
“How do I command so great and unfathomable a creature?” whispered Lyf as he prepared to cast the final stage of the waking spell Errek had given him. It was the reverse of the spell Errek had used to put the wyverin to sleep before his own death, and a most difficult and perilous spell it was.
“You don’t command the wyverin,” said Errek. “You entice it.”
“How?”
“With the body and blood of a great magian. I know.”
“If you’re not careful, the magian will be you.”
“I have a plan,” said Lyf, and cast the final stage of the spell.
The wyverin’s nearest eye opened; the gravel and slag of its bed cracked and formed little landslides to either side as it moved. It raised its head, swung it towards the nearest wall and bit through several cubic yards of rock, out of habit. Then it began to lever itself to its feet.
With a gesture, Lyf created an image on the end wall. A picture very like Rix’s original portrait, save that the man triumphantly killing the insultingly small and feeble-looking wyverin—the brutish oaf gloating over its downfall and trumpeting the superiority of man over beast—was Axil Grandys.
The wyverin eyed the image as if it were having difficulty bringing it into focus—or, perhaps, taking time to recognise what the image signified—a colossal insult to the greatest and noblest beast of all.
It roused like an earthquake and thundered into the air, lashing the walls of the cavern with its tail, shattering the rock and flailing fusillades of gravel in every direction. It bit wagon-sized chunks from the wall, chewed them and coughed up a spray of acid-drenched slurry powerful enough to have eaten through inch-thick plate armour.
The wyverin raced around the cavern three times, gathering speed, then tucked its wings back and shot towards the spiralling tunnel that ran up to the ruins at Turgur Thross, leaving a landslide of crumbling and tumbling rock behind it.
Lyf drew on the circlet and flew after it, with Errek close behind. They followed it around four of the spirals, but the wyverin was rapidly leaving them behind.
“That way!” cried Errek, pointing up a small, vertical chimney barely wide enough for a human. “If we don’t get out first, the chance will be wasted. And call the gauntling, now.”
Lyf called Grolik back to Turgur Thross, though not without a deep foreboding for what he had unleashed.
“Why first?” said Lyf.
“We must reach Grandys at the same time as the wyverin does—otherwise it may eat him and the canister of king-magery. That would be unimaginably bad.”