by Ian Irvine
‘Skald!’ whispered Sulien. ‘Skald Hulni.’
‘What’s that, darling?’ said Karan, taking her small, cold hands.
‘The Merdrun I’m ... seeing through. A young battle mancer … He reminds me –’ Sulien frowned as if chasing a lost thought, then shook her head. ‘He’s using a seeking spell.’
‘Clever fellow,’ said Flydd. ‘Pray he fails.’
‘He’s desperate to find the box. He’s shaking.’
‘Why does he want it so badly?’ said Llian.
Sulien’s eyes closed again. Karan sat beside her, still holding her hand. Was going home the right thing to do, with Llian so opposed? How could she rely on her own judgement when she had made such colossal blunders these past few months? Like coming to the future.
Llian had never felt he belonged at Gothryme, because she was such a controlling bitch! What if he’d had enough of her? If he discovered the secret she’d been keeping from him all this time he would be gone in an instant.
Would Sulien stay, or go with him? Karan thought she would go. Feeling a scream building up, she suppressed the dangerous thoughts. If they left her, she would surely go mad, like her poor mother. But where else could they be safe?
After pacing for an interval, Flydd said to M’Lainte, ‘It’ll be dark soon. How far are we from Thurkad?’
‘Hour and a half.’
‘Get us there, fast as you can.’
‘What about Gothryme?’ cried Karan.
‘The enemy have invaded, and you want to run away?’ Flydd snarled.
‘They want Sulien dead. Will you protect her, every hour of the day?’
Flydd didn’t answer. He didn’t care!
‘Take your seats,’ said M’Lainte, standing at the controls with impressive calm.
As the sky galleon heaved itself into the air and hurtled north, the sun went down behind the mountains to their left, streaking the sky with light and shadow. Home was so close Karan could almost smell it – but she wasn’t going to get there.
Sulien’s far-seeing went on, in fragments, for the best part of an hour. The enemy searchers scoured the rain-drenched plateau in straight lines, an arm’s length apart, ploughing through chest-deep pools and sucking mires. Three soldiers were taken by swamp beasts that lunged from the brown water, their massive shearing blades crunching right through the Merdrun’s crimson armour. Two more were dragged into giant carnivorous plants and submerged in viscous yellow digestive acids.
‘They’re screaming for help,’ whispered Sulien. ‘But the other soldiers are just ignoring –’
Whatever was in the amber-wood box, the enemy were desperate to find it.
Sulien shuddered, wiped her running eyes and continued. ‘The water’s all red. Red everywhere –
‘I’ve got it!’ she cried in a young man’s voice that lacked the harshness of the other Merdrun. ‘I’ve got it!’
She opened her eyes very wide. ‘That was Skald, in a gully on the edge of the mountain. He’s holding up a big wooden box.’
‘But what’s in it?’ said Karan irritably.
‘The greatest folly of my life,’ said Flydd in a dead voice. ‘Something I’d assumed to be destroyed when the sky palace crashed.’
Stupid man! What had he done?
‘I’d love to hear your story,’ said Llian, bright-eyed, his pencil hovering over his journal.
‘Put that away,’ snapped Flydd.
‘Tell us!’ Karan yelled.
He scowled at her. ‘You can’t imagine what it was like being trapped up there, with no way down.’
‘Then how did you climb up in the first place?’
‘Fourteen years ago, I went there to a secret rendezvous, to plan the fightback against the God-Emperor, but none of my fellow conspirators turned up. Turned out they’d all been imprisoned or killed. The body I had then was old, well past sixty. I broke my ankle and it healed so badly I couldn’t climb down again.’
‘Must be lonely up there,’ said Llian.
‘The top of Mistmurk is surrounded by mile-high cliffs on all sides, and it never stops raining. I was stuck there, waiting for my allies to appear. Then, after it became clear they weren’t coming, waiting to die. More than nine years I spent there, and they were hard times ... I was rotting alive. I – I had to keep my mind active or I would have gone insane.’
‘Arguably, you did,’ said Karan waspishly.
‘Not helpful,’ said M’Lainte without looking around. It was dark now, for the waning moon had not yet risen.
‘I’d always planned to write the truth about the Lyrinx War,’ said Flydd. ‘Someone had to. Everything the Council of Scrutators wrote was propaganda … or outright lies.’
Llian stared at Flydd, his eyes shining. Irritating men, both of them!
‘So you wrote some books,’ said Karan. ‘So what?’
‘I made paper from reeds, and ink from soot and rotgut spirits I distilled to numb the endless nights, and in five volumes I set down my Histories of the Lyrinx War,’ said Flydd. ‘At least, the vital last thirty years. It seemed important at the time – every node of power had been destroyed, and the depraved God-Emperor controlled the world with his sorcerous quicksilver tears, Gatherer and Reaper.’
‘I don’t see –’
‘If you’ll shut up for a minute, I’ll tell you.’
Karan shut up, flushing.
‘My fifth book described the last two years of the war, and I named all the key names: the top scrutators and generals, the greatest mancers, the most skilled artisans and artificers, and people with every other skill vital to such a war. I listed our most important mines and manufactories and training colleges, told the stories of the most important battles and how they were won or lost …
‘Imbecile that I am, I even described our magic-controlled weaponry, the flying thapters and armoured battle clankers, and how they were powered by the fields surrounding natural nodes. I drew dozens of maps showing battlefields, mines, manufactories …’
He put his head in his hands. ‘And fool, fool, I reproduced Tiaan’s priceless charts of the locations of nodes and fields throughout Lauralin and Meldorin …’
The skin on the back of Karan’s shoulders crawled. ‘Why would you do such a thing?’ she whispered.
‘So the future can learn from the past.’
‘The future never learns from the past,’ said Llian. ‘It always thinks this time is different.’
‘At the time, we believed the nodes of power were gone for good,’ said Flydd.
He ground his grizzled head into his spread hands and went on. ‘Our brilliant advances in mech-magical weaponry, and the fields that powered them and are now regenerating, are our only advantage in the coming war. If I’d thought there was a chance the books had survived, I would have raced to Thuntunnimoe the moment we saw the Crimson Gate open.
‘But now the Merdrun have them, and my Histories will tell them everything they need to know to master our mech-magic … and utterly expunge us from Santhenar.’
Karan rocked back and forth in her seat. Coming to this worn-out future had made things disastrously worse and there was nothing she could do about it.
And Sulien had far-seen this gifted young Merdrun battle mancer, Skald. What if he had also seen her?
2
Where All His Bodies Are Buried
Flydd would never take them to Gothryme now, but it was only eighty miles from Thurkad; they could walk it in a few long days. The mountains and forests west of Gothryme were vast and Karan knew them well – they could hide there for years. It would be a hard life, but they would be as safe there as anywhere. Assuming she could convince Llian to give up his dream, which would not be easy. Impossible to pursue another Great Tale while hiding in the wilderness.
But her duty to get Gothryme back, and pass it down to Sulien, was paramount. Llian had known it from the moment she was born, but he no longer cared. When had his love died?
It had been coming for a long tim
e. Years, despite his recent heroics. What had been the catalyst? Her refusal to allow him any part of Gothryme? Or did it go deeper? Had he discovered her wicked secret?
Shivers ran up the back of Karan’s neck. As a great chronicler, Llian had a close-to-perfect memory, and chroniclers were also skilled detectives, adept at noticing clues, linking facts together and sorting truth from lies. Reading faces, too.
The sky galleon lurched violently, throwing her off her seat and dragging her back to the present. If Skald had far-seen Sulien, the enemy’s magiz could already be looking for her. Could Karan protect her family from him, in a world at war? Could anyone?
She had no way of deciding what to do, and little hope that she could make the right choice this time, when she had blundered so badly in the past.
Llian had gone to the port-side rail. Probably sulking, she thought waspishly, but regretted it at once. He was just as tormented. More so, if he knows. Sulien lay on the floor, wrapped in a blanket, asleep after her traumatic far-seeing. Flydd was sitting in a rear corner of the cabin, at a bolted-down table, whispering into a glassy sphere, the size of an orange, mounted in a semi-circular brass frame.
‘What’s that he’s using?’ Karan asked Lilis.
She had known Lilis as a twelve-year-old waif, and more recently as a junior librarian at the Great Library in Zile. Karan could not come to terms with her as an old woman with white hair, a scratchy voice and a beak of a nose. After Lilis succeeded Nadiril, the magic that went with the Librarian’s position had greatly extended her lifespan, but she had retired a few years ago and was now looking for adventure. She might get more than she planned.
‘It’s a farspeaker,’ said Lilis. ‘He’s telling our allies to prepare for the worst.’
Every so often Flydd consulted a notebook, rotated the sphere of the farspeaker to a new position and bent over it again. Each time he spoke, it glowed mustard yellow. Karan glared at him. He ignored her.
The sky galleon dropped sharply as M’Lainte settled it onto the cracked roof of a mansion of long ago and climbed down, carrying a box lantern. Decrepit buildings stood all around, some more or less intact, others reduced to chimney stacks, sections of broken wall and piles of rubble. Across a broad avenue, a line of once great public buildings stood empty. Many were roofless, with gaping window openings, and some were a few keystones away from total collapse.
Before the Lyrinx War, Thurkad had been the greatest city on Santhenar, home to a million of the most corrupt and venal people in the world, and Karan had no good memories of the place.
Emmant, an outcast half-Aachim who had conceived a murderous lust for her, had nearly killed her here. Tensor had shattered the Great Conclave with a forbidden potency here, driving her out of her wits. Llian had been imprisoned and sentenced to death here, and had been lucky to escape.
But the Lyrinx War had almost emptied Thurkad, and when the Dry Sea filled to become the Sea of Perion again, causing sea level to fall everywhere else, the coastline had retreated fifteen miles east. Thurkad was now a vast ruin on a salt-scalded plain, home only to a few thousand renegades and desperadoes, preying on each other and on the early settlers returning to Meldorin.
Flydd looked up at Karan. ‘You might as well know the worst.’ He lifted the hatch and yelled, ‘Wilm? Aviel?’
Wilm climbed the ladder. A tall, strong youth, but thin after slaving for the enemy on the Isle of Gwine, and missing half his right ear from a near-fatal brush with the summon stone several months ago. He wore a black-handled sword in a copper sheath, though it looked wrong on him. Since he and Aviel had been dragged into the future, Wilm had been out of his depth.
Aviel was head and shoulders shorter, slender, with a sweet, heart-shaped face, fine silver hair that drifted in the slightest breeze, and a determined set to her small jaw, though she stood behind Wilm as if using him as a shield.
Llian came in, glanced at Karan and looked away. She knew the signs. He was steeling himself for another argument.
M’Lainte heaved her bulky body back up from the roof, panting.
‘What is the worst?’ said Llian.
‘Merdrun armies have gated into Roros, Guffeons, Gosport and Fadd,’ said Flydd, naming the four largest cities on the east coast of Lauralin. ‘They took Guffeons and Fadd without much of a fight – after they slaughtered hundreds in the market squares, the citizens got the message. Gosport is still fighting but my informant says it’ll be over within hours.’
‘And Roros?’ said Llian. ‘We’ve been there, many years ago.’
‘Two hundred and twenty-six years ago,’ said Karan softly. It must be changed out of all recognition by now.
‘Roros is the greatest and proudest city on Santhenar,’ said Flydd, ‘and they don’t take kindly to outsiders telling them what to do. Since the time of the God-Emperor they’ve been prepared, under Governor Yulla Zaeff –’
‘The third “Reckless Old Lady”,’ said Lilis with a fond smile.
‘Yulla is a greedy old woman, but she loves Roros and she had two days’ warning. It was long enough to activate every trap that human cunning has been able to devise, and hide many of the people the Merdrun are likely to target. They’ve suffered ten thousand casualties, from an attack force totalling sixty thousand, and they’ve only taken a quarter of Roros.’
‘The Merdrun will make them pay tenfold for every casualty,’ said Wilm in a quiet voice.
He had seen first-hand their savagery. Aviel took his hand in both of hers, a touching gesture from someone who normally kept her distance.
‘They’ve probably invaded other cities, but not all of my informers have farspeakers,’ Flydd concluded.
‘And they aren’t reliable at great distances,’ said M’Lainte.
‘That all the bad news?’ said Karan.
Flydd snorted. ‘Thousands of Whelm have renewed their oath of service, this time to the Merdrun’s leader, Durthix. And there’s another thing. I don’t know if it’s good or bad …’
‘Spit it out, then,’ said M’Lainte.
‘They’ve driven the townsfolk out of Guffeons, locked the gates, and Merdrun civilians are coming through the Crimson Gate in their tens of thousands.’
Karan shivered. ‘Does that mean they’re here for good?’
Flydd packed the farspeaker into its battered case and rose stiffly. ‘Get your gear. We’ll be here for a day or two.’
‘What is this place?’ said Llian.
‘Flydd has spies and boltholes all over the land,’ said Lilis, smiling. ‘He can’t let go.’
‘Once a scrutator …’ said Flydd.
He led the way across the roof and down a broad stone stair. As Karan followed, something crunched underfoot. The steps were littered with regurgitated owl pellets, full of grey fur and small, fragile bones. How easily they were crushed.
Flydd stopped on a landing several levels above the street and unlocked an iron-reinforced door, using three keys one after another. He went carefully along a dark hall, opened a second door, and the light was dazzling.
He swore, shaded his eyes and snapped, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
The room had once been a grand chamber, with high ceilings, large windows and intricate mouldings painted in many colours, though the plaster had come away from the laths in places, the ceiling and walls were mouldy and stained, and the broken windows had been crudely boarded up.
A mellow, slurred voice said, ‘Toasting the end of the world.’
Flydd laughed. ‘Even at the end of the world it’s good to see you, old friend.’
On a long leather sofa, once magnificent but now battered and grubby, three scantily clad women sat around a handsome man of middle age, a dwarf with a wooden left foot. He raised an etched-glass goblet brimming with dark red wine. Empty bottles lay all around. A scarred redwood table bore a platter of pastries and two more bottles.
‘Won’t get up if it’s all the same to you,’ said the dwarf. ‘Not sure I can stand at the mo
ment.’ He turned to the dark-skinned lass next to him. ‘Open the best bottle, Telia my dear. Flydd’s not an adaptable man; he can’t abide the cheap stuff.’
‘I think not,’ said Flydd. ‘We must talk privately. Right away.’
When Klarm had paid his companions and they were gone, Flydd said, ‘This disreputable wretch is my old friend, the former Scrutator Nuceus Klarm, a mighty mancer and a good man to have on your side. I can’t tell you how many times he’s saved my life –’
‘Twenty-three times,’ grinned Klarm. ‘And I only regret twenty-two of them.’
Flydd turned to Karan. ‘This is –’
‘Karan Elienor Melluselde Fyrn,’ said Klarm softly. ‘Well, well, well.’
‘How did you know?’ Karan cried, alarmed.
‘I used my knoblaggie –’ he held up a small brass object like three intergrown plums, ‘– to gate us to the top of the tallest tower of Shazmak, a couple of years ago.’
‘What for?’
‘To try and discover what had happened to you.’ His eyes roved over Llian and Sulien, then Wilm and Aviel. ‘Sadly, I overdid things; can’t make gates anymore.’
‘Who can?’ Flydd said curtly. ‘Apart from the enemy.’
Klarm did not reply.
Karan wasn’t sure what to make of him. He looked like a drunken reprobate, but clearly there was much more to him. If Flydd wouldn’t help her, maybe Klarm would.
Flydd introduced the others. Klarm rose, a trifle unsteadily, and shook hands with everyone. Karan noticed Sulien eyeing him apprehensively.
‘You look out of place among all these scoundrels, my dear,’ he said to her.
‘Mummy and Daddy aren’t scoundrels,’ Sulien said hotly. ‘And Wilm and Aviel are … really nice.’
‘But not Flydd,’ Klarm said sagely. ‘Don’t worry, child, I can tell you where his bodies are buried, in case you ever need a hold over him.’ He tapped the side of his nose and winked.
Sulien managed a smile.