by Ian Irvine
“The Three Spells must be cast within the hour or Bloodspell fails.”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course.”
Reaching skywards, he read the glyphs of Writspell that were still hanging in the air, and cast the spell to burn all written evidence of the greatness of Cythe, Hightspall and Cython away.
The contents of the furnace ignited in a great conflagration. The cast-iron walls cracked and it fell into three pieces. A howling wind scattered the ashes, revealing a white outline burned deep into the black rock—the wyverin devouring Grandys.
He cried out and blasted away the top foot of rock. The outline was still visible.
“Up!” he roared. “To the topmost platform. The Third Spell will prove all.”
“Bloodspell!” said Lirriam.
CHAPTER 81
In the middle of the highest platform stood a basalt crucible the size of a cauldron, coated in moss inside and out. Syrten dumped Tali beside the crucible and ran down again. His devotion to Yulia’s corpse was beginning to make her uneasy.
This platform was an egg-shaped cut-out facing east that took the full force of the wind and rain. Behind it the peak was reduced to a thin crescent, up the crest of which the steps ran for another twenty feet to the bowl-shaped tip of Touchstone. It was barely visible through the wind-churned mist that kept opening to reveal the forested hills, only to close them off again.
Every surface up here was covered in emerald moss, as deep as a carpet, interspersed with waving strands of feathery grey lichen as long as Tali’s hand. A single small, wind-twisted tree grew from a crack in the rocks near the brink.
The wind sighed, whispered, howled, screeched. The rain was torrential and blown almost horizontal. She was soaked through, miserably cold and feeling worse all the time. Lirriam’s partial healing was already failing, probably because Tali had used the master pearl.
What was the basalt crucible for? And why had Grandys brought her here for the endgame? Was she to be a blood sacrifice?
Holm, noticing that she was shivering, took off his coat.
“You need it just as much as I do,” said Tali.
“Because I’m old?”
“You’ve lost weight in captivity. You were never thin before.”
“I’ve often been thin before. I also spent years on my boat, working out at sea in all kinds of miserable weather, but I’ve never been stuck out in driving rain after some old fool cut a hole in my head.” He wrapped his woollen coat around her and put his cap on her head. “Wool keeps you warm even when it’s wet.”
“Thank you.” She pulled the coat around her. “That’s much better.”
Grandys scanned the sky again. He was doing it all the time now, not that he would have seen his nemesis in this weather if it had been ten yards away. He set down the ice chest, which was inches thick in ice. The rain slicked the surface and froze into another layer, and another.
After tipping the water out of the crucible, he blasted fire into it, burning the moss to ash which he scrubbed out with his thick fingers.
“Stand there,” he said to Syrten, indicating a point two feet east of the crucible.
Syrten did so, his massive body shielding it from the rain.
Grandys thumped the top of the ice chest with a fist, cracking the ice. He picked it off and opened the chest. Frigid mist drifted out. He lifted out the racks containing the phials of frozen blood, stood them on the mossy ground and bathed them in a warming yellow radiance created via king-magery.
He counted them. “Ninety-seven.”
“Get on with it,” said Lirriam. She seemed more anxious than he was.
“The Third Spell must be cast within the hour,” said Grandys, “but it must be cast right. The blood must be thawed gently—too much heat would cook it and the spell would fail.”
He picked up a phial, inspected it, and snapped his fingers. The yellow radiance went out.
“One—the chancellor,” he said, reading the label, and poured the blood into the crucible. It was thin and watery.
“Two—General Libbens,” he said as he emptied the second phial.
He kept on, naming each involuntary donor, most of them the great people of Hightspall and Cython. General Rochlis, Lyf’s most brilliant and Castle Rebroff, was followed by a list of names she did not know.
“Ninety-four, Surgeon Holm. Ninety-five, Rixium Ricinus, known as Deadhand. Ninety-six, Glynnie, a doughty maidservant.”
Grandys poured the contents of the three phials in together and scanned the sky again. Tali wondered how he had obtained Rix’s and Glynnie’s blood. He must have taken it when Rix had been under his thrall and he had held Glynnie captive, months ago.
Tali’s heart was beating erratically; her head wound throbbed mercilessly. Her blood was next. Lirriam was on her feet beside Syrten, watching Grandys’ every movement. Rufuss stood behind Lirriam and Syrten, tall enough to look over their heads. He was staring blackly at Tali’s throat as though he longed to close his bony fingers around it and squeeze the life out of her. And she knew he did.
“If Rix is going to attack, he’s got to do it now,” Tali said softly to Holm. “If he waits any longer he’ll be too late.”
“He can’t take on king-magery with just a sword. He’ll be waiting for the wyverin to attack.”
“I wish it would hurry up.”
“I’m not sure I do,” Holm said darkly.
“Why not?”
“It’s more than twice the length of this rock platform. If it attacks Grandys here it’s liable to crush us all to jelly.”
“Ninety-seven,” said Grandys. “Thalalie vi Torgrist, known as Tali.” He met her eyes and smiled thinly. “Her blood is special and magical because it’s been bathing the master pearl all this time.”
He poured it in, a long, crimson stream, as rich as the light that glowed inside Incarnate. The bottom of the great crucible was now inch-deep in blood.
“It’s up to us. We’ve got to stop him casting the third spell,” Tali said quietly.
“At any cost?”
“Yes.”
Seeing that the Heroes were intent on the crucible, Holm held out his bound hands. Tali touched the master pearl with the hand in her pocket and poked the ropes with a fingertip. They loosened. He moved away, casually.
The rain increased to a deluge. The mist had gone but the sky was a uniform grey. Grandys checked for the wyverin, then set the talon blade on a mossy pedestal as if to warn off his nemesis. After adjusting the circlet he wiped away the water streaming down his face, put the canister down next to the crucible and reached up with both hands.
“Since the Immortal Text no longer plays a part in the spell,” he said to Tali, “I’m drawing on the power of king-magery to call a mighty fire bolt all the way from the storm clouds above the Vomits.”
Holm was edging closer to the cliff behind the crucible. Closer to Grandys. Tali had to keep him talking.
“Why are you telling me this?” she said acidly.
“Just a whim,” said Grandys. “The fire bolt will sear the ninety-seven samples of blood to vapour, symbolically and actually erasing all Hightspallers and Cythonians from the land.”
Despite Holm’s jacket, the cold became icy. Genocide was what she had long feared, though in the beginning she had feared it from Lyf.
“But not Herovians,” said Lirriam. “Our blood is different.”
“Pure!” said Rufuss.
“Dead!” Syrten said dolefully, gazing at Yulia’s face.
It was uncovered and rainwater had puddled in her open eyes. They appeared to be staring up from the bottom of a lake. He reached down and tenderly closed her eyes.
“The Engine is on the brink,” said Tali. “If you use king-magery to cast this spell, you could tip it over into catastrophe. It could destroy the land.”
Grandys went still, his hands upraised. “There is no Engine at the heart of the land! It’s a lie fostered by Lyf to control his sheep-like people.”
He looked to Rufuss but evidently saw nothing worthwhile in his mad eyes. Nor in Syrten’s downcast eyes. But Lirriam’s eyes were shining.
“Risk all to gain all, Grandys,” she said passionately. “And if by some mischance it does lead to apocalypse, let it be a glorious one.”
Tali had to stop him. She climbed to her feet, slowly and wearily. She swayed there, then reached out to Grandys, trying to hold him back with the scrap of power remaining in the master pearl.
“Get away!” Grandys cried. “Don’t come near me.”
He kicked her legs from under her, the way a brute might kick a dog, and she fell hard. Grandys shook a set of crimson glyphs from the tube and spoke the words of the spell, carefully enunciating each word.
As he completed the spell and reached up to call the fire bolt down, Holm cast aside his bonds, sprang in behind Grandys and wrenched Maloch from its scabbard. Holm had chosen his moment well. Grandys could not stop him, for he had no option but to complete the spell.
Holm swerved around Grandys and brought the enchanted blade down with all his strength across the stone crucible, cleaving away the right-hand side. The larger part of the crucible tilted to the left, carrying the blood with it. The cut-away section fell down and the fire bolt thundered into the base, shattering it to gravel and grit.
Bloodspell, devoid of blood, failed, and the consequences were brutal.
Grandys shrieked and doubled over. Lirriam clutched at Incarnate. Blood spurted from the healed stump of Rufuss’s arm. Yulia’s eyes sprang open. Syrten let out a glad cry and ran to her, only to wail in desolation when he realised that nothing had changed. She was still dead.
Pain speared through Tali from the top of her skull to the soles of her feet. Holm stood slumped to one side, still holding Maloch, panting. Then Maloch reacted violently, hurling him backwards against the jagged rock face. He screamed, doubled up, but, oddly, did not fall. He hung on the rock, four feet above the ground, and the sword fell from his fingers.
Blood slowly began to seep through the front of his shirt, dripping off something dark protruding halfway down the right side. He had been impaled on a spike of rock.
“Maloch suffers no hand save my own,” said Grandys, wheezing a little. He took the sword back.
“I knew that before I took it,” said Holm.
“Then you’re a brave man and I salute you.”
Tali crawled across to Holm.
“Lucky I gave you my coat,” he said wryly. “If I’d still been wearing it, it would have been ruined.”
Her eyes flooded. “How can you joke?”
“How can I do otherwise?”
She struggled to her knees, her head still pounding mercilessly, and reached up. “I’ll try to get you down.”
“The spike is the only thing stopping me bleeding to death,” said Holm. “If you pull me off it I won’t last another minute.”
“Then I’ll heal you,” she said desperately. “There’s still some power left in the master pearl.”
He laid a weathered hand on her shoulder. “You made your choice in the Pale’s rebellion, Tali, and you chose destruction. You can’t take it back.”
“Then I’ll give you my healing blood, as much as it takes.”
“Don’t waste it. This wound is beyond any healing,” said Holm.
“You can’t die! Please, tell me what to do.”
“There’s nothing you can do. Besides,” he smiled down at her, sadly and a trifle remotely, “would you deny me the solace I’ve craved these past thirty-eight years, since my folly cost me my wife and unborn child?”
CHAPTER 82
Rix gestured behind him. Careful now. We’re nearly there.
Grandys’ guards at the base of Touchstone had fought hard, though not as hard as Rix had expected. It had strengthened his belief that Grandys wanted him to fight his way up to the highest platform of Touchstone—that he needed Rix for the endgame. When Grandys had blasted at them on the second platform, and missed both times, it had confirmed Rix’s suspicion.
“What does Grandys need you for?” said Glynnie.
“I don’t know. I’ve been wracking my brain about it for hours.”
Rix’s plan was much the same as it had been back at the dome: wait for Lyf or the wyverin to come, and hope he could take advantage of the ensuing chaos to bring Grandys down, and save Tali and Holm. And he only had three men left. Plus Glynnie, who had refused to stay behind, and Radl, who had insisted on riding with them to Touchstone.
He peered around the mossy rocks, squinting through the rain. The mist opened to reveal the people at the other end of the topmost platform, then closed again, reducing them to wraith-like shadows.
Rix looked left, and reeled. Holm, who had done so much to support him over the past months, in fearless action and through wise counsel, hung on the stone wall, impaled. His torso was drenched in blood which the rain was washing down his legs in red rivers. He was still alive, though one glance told Rix that nothing could be done to save him.
Tali was on her knees before Holm, her tiny frame swathed in his coat, her shaven head covered by his woolly hat. There was blood on her neck from her head wound. And she looked almost as bad as Holm; deathly bad.
Was this the end for all of them? It seemed probable. The final battle would surely be won with magery, not might, and neither he nor Glynnie had any magery. Nor did Tali, by the look of her.
Rix took Syrten and Rufuss in at a glance. Both were very dangerous, despite their injuries and their fragile mental states. Lirriam sat under the ledge, toying with Incarnate as if she were waiting for something. She was more dangerous than either of them, though she had always been enigmatic and Rix could not guess how she would act.
Finally, he assessed his enemy. Grandys was haggard, his opal armour was flaking off, and he appeared to have aged twenty years in the last few hours. Rix could hear every ragged, whistling breath. He felt a tiny surge of hope, but dismissed it. Nothing Grandys said or did, or appeared to be, could be trusted. Everything, including his current appearance, could be part of the endgame he had been planning for at least a month.
Grandys swayed, spread his feet to better support himself and peered into the left section of the cloven crucible. “Blood—still there. Can—Bloodspell—be recast?”
“As long as it’s within the hour,” said Lirriam. “You’ve got sixteen minutes left.”
Tali forced herself to her feet. Rufuss turned on her.
“Can I kill her now, Grandys?”
Lirriam glanced across at the steps. “Rix is here.”
Rix ducked down.
Grandys was so exhausted he could not draw enough breath. “That’s how—I planned it. Don’t kill him—I need him. Just—hold him off—until—”
“But you command king-magery,” she said.
“Three Spells—more draining than—expected. Must save strength—repeat Bloodspell.”
“Syrten!” said Lirriam. “Guard the entrance. Let no one through.”
Syrten rose like an automaton, took his sword in his right hand, hefted a war hammer in his left and moved towards the steps.
“Can I kill her?” Rufuss repeated.
“No!” snapped Grandys.
When Rix saw Rufuss turn those black eyes on Tali, the madness was visible from ten yards away. He was cracking, and it looked as though he planned to disobey Grandys and kill Tali anyway. Rix could wait no longer. He had to attack, despite king-magery.
“Now!” he hissed.
He exploded up onto the platform. His three men followed him, then Radl, and Glynnie last.
“Hold them back, Lirriam!” cried Grandys.
“Fourteen minutes!” She continued to stare into the flickering stone.
“Stop them, Syrten!” shouted Grandys. “I can’t move until the spell is cast.” He raised his arms to the sky again.
Rix had to get to Tali before Rufuss did, but Syrten was blocking the way. Rix ducked a blow from the war hammer
that would have smashed his head right off his neck. Syrten must have forgotten Grandys’ first order—to not kill Rix—and was obeying his command to stop them, any way he could.
On the other side of the platform, Grandys was slowly intoning the words of Bloodspell, and it was taking all he had. His upraised arms were shaking as if he were holding up a boulder.
Rix parried Syrten’s sword thrust and drove the point of his own blade into Syrten’s chest. The thick opal armour cracked but absorbed the blow. Syrten blinked and struck again. Rix dived past him, caught Syrten’s upraised arm from behind and tried to wrench the hammer from his hand. It did not budge. Though Rix was immensely strong, Syrten was far stronger and his flesh was as hard as stone.
“Out of the way!” Rix cried. If he could not get past, Rufuss was going to kill Tali.
Rix hacked at the side of Syrten’s massive neck and this time felt the armour crack. Syrten’s head was knocked sideways; a line of blood ebbed out along the crack. He rubbed his neck, more in irritation than pain, and slowly turned.
Rix kicked him in the groin and yelped. It felt as though he had broken his big toe. He retreated. Syrten followed, thud, thud. Rix’s guards attacked Syrten from the sides, though their blows had even less effect than Rix’s. He attacked with a flurry of blows but could not get past, and Rufuss was moving ever closer to Tali.
His face was an icy, dripping mask and blood was oozing from his stump. Rufuss slowly raised the five-foot-long blade. Rix fought desperately but knew he could not get there in time.
“Break the master pearl,” Holm croaked to Tali.
She was staring at Rufuss’s sword as if mesmerised. “What will happen then?”
“Don’t know.”
Syrten was fast when he got going, Rix realised, but slow to move from a standstill, and he was not agile. The key to beating him was speed and dexterity. Rix ducked left, spun on one foot and dived under Syrten’s upraised arm, but too late. Rufuss was beginning his downswing.
Tali raised the master pearl and pointed it at his chest.
“Then let it be destruction,” she choked.