by Ian Irvine
‘What’s he doing?’ said Sulien in a dead voice.
Karan put an arm around her. ‘It wasn’t possible to contact them, darling. Flydd is asking them to take you and Jass.’
‘I hope they say no,’ said Jassika.
Sulien felt the same. Nothing could be worse than being stuck here, in the mountains of nowhere.
The door opened and Flydd came out, accompanied by a very tall, thin old woman wearing an eye patch over her left eye, and a fat, barefoot old man in a gown that appeared to be made from hessian bags.
‘Come down, girls,’ said Flydd.
Sulien looked at Jassika, who glared at her and did not move. Sulien swallowed and climbed down, her pack on her back. The man eyed her and Jassika vacantly, then waddled to the easel and began to dab at a painting.
The woman, who wore a man’s shirt, loose trousers and knee-length boots, walked around Sulien, inspecting her from all angles. ‘Can you chop wood, girl?’
‘Yes,’ she said in a faint voice. The old woman looked hard and cold and mean. Sulien could not imagine being hugged by her. Or wanting one.
‘The woodheap is around the back. Fill the wood box.’ She squinted at Jassika, who had put on her most ferocious scowl. ‘What are you good for?’
‘Nothing,’ snapped Jassika.
‘That’s what I thought. You’ll find two buckets at the back door. Go down to the stream and carry water until the tank is full. It’ll take ninety trips.’
‘Get it yourself!’
‘The pantry is locked,’ said the woman, glancing at the fat man, ‘and I have the only key. If you don’t work, you don’t eat.’
‘I’m not your slave. I’ll hunt and fish.’
‘Good luck.’ The woman turned to Sulien. ‘Hurry up.’
‘I’ll say goodbye to my daughter first,’ said Karan.
‘You’ll ruin her,’ said the woman, folding her arms across a chest as flat as a table.
‘I’ll take the risk.’
Karan climbed down. Her limp was worse than usual and she winced with every step. She folded Sulien in her arms. ‘I’m really sorry, darling. I can’t take you where we’re going. But I’ll be back –’
Terror overwhelmed Sulien. ‘No, you won’t. You’ll be killed. And Daddy too!’ She let out a sob and, once started, she could not stop.
Karan hugged her more tightly and Sulien could not stand it. She pulled free.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ Karan was shaking, on the verge of collapse.
She took a step towards Sulien, who held up both palms. She had to push her mother away; it was the only way of making the abandonment bearable. ‘You’re making it worse, Mummy. Just – go!’
Karan let out a cry of anguish and Sulien almost cracked, but she hardened her heart and turned aside.
Flydd, who had gone aboard, cleared his throat.
Karan gave a wrenching shudder. ‘Sulien, promise you won’t use your mind-seeing gift.’
‘What?’ said Sulien.
‘If you did – if you fore-saw Skald again, for instance – the magiz might be able to hunt you down. Promise?’
‘I will if you promise you won’t do anything dangerous,’ said Sulien stiffly.
Karan swallowed. ‘I – I don’t know what I’ll be doing.’
‘Daddy’s lost and you’re going to get killed. I have to look after myself now.’
‘Promise you won’t mind-see again,’ Karan said desperately. ‘Please, Sulien!’
‘I’m not making promises I can’t keep, Mummy.’
Karan came towards her but Sulien backed away. Karan’s tremor was worse; she looked ghastly. ‘You’re only nine. You’ll do what you’re told.’
Sulien clenched her jaw. ‘I’ll do what I have to do.’ The Merdrun’s secret weakness was buried within her and she had to find it. It was the only way out, for everyone.
‘Karan, we have to go now,’ called Flydd.
An awful moan escaped Karan. She wiped her eyes and stumbled towards Jassika, reaching out to her.
‘Don’t pretend you care!’ Jassika spat. ‘All my life I’ve been dumped on strangers. The horrors I’ve seen. The things they’ve done!’
‘I’m sorry, Jass–’
‘No, you’re not. You don’t give a shit about me.’ Jassika walked into the forest, her back very straight, and disappeared.
‘She’ll be back when she gets hungry,’ Flydd said unconvincingly.
‘Wood, now!’ said the tall old woman. Then, to Karan, ‘Go, before you ruin her completely.’
‘Sulien, please promise –’
‘I can’t, Mummy.’
Karan lurched to the sky galleon. Her blanched face and look of utter desolation imprinted themselves in Sulien’s mind as the sky galleon lifted, creaking and shuddering and, keeping low over the trees, headed away.
She followed a dirt track down to an enormous pile of logs. The wood box, which was the size of a small shed, was empty apart from a rusty axe with a notched blade. No one could cut wood with it.
But escaping the Whelm and the Merdrun last time had been impossible too. Sulien took the axe and knocked on the back door. The woman opened it.
‘What?’ she snapped.
Sulien did not feel like being polite, but it was ingrained in her. ‘The axe is blunt. Do you have a sharpening stone, please?’
The woman’s furry grey eyebrows rose. She rifled through cupboards and came back with an oval stone.
‘Thank you,’ said Aviel.
She sat on a log, put the axe over her knee and began to sharpen it, the way dear old Rachis had done many a time, back in the good old days at Gothryme. Sulien let out another little sob.
‘Listen to the edge,’ he used to say. ‘It’ll tell you when it’s keen.’
Sulien listened to the edge, her tears falling on the blade. If Karan and Llian were killed, would anyone know she was here? Or care? Would she be stuck here for the rest of her life? Even Jassika’s boasting and carping would be welcome now, but there was no sign of her.
She hauled a log out of the pile, rested it on another, and began to chop. And chop.
An hour went by. Her palms were blistered, her arms and back aching. No one came to check on her. Apart from the ringing of her axe against the wood, the place was silent. No birds chittered. There weren’t even any blowflies.
The axe grew blunt. She sharpened it again, put on her gloves and split the wood she had chopped, carried it to the wood box and stacked it at the back. Jassika had not returned.
Chop, chop. Every blow was painful now but it was better than thinking about being abandoned; about Karan and Flydd getting killed; about Llian being tortured by the enemy. About being stuck in this terrible place forever.
By the time the job was finished, the sun had set. Sulien had been given nothing to eat and had only taken a couple of drinks from the stream. She loaded an arm with chopped wood and knocked on the back door.
‘The wood box is full,’ she said to the scrawny old woman. ‘I brought some wood for the stove.’
The old woman looked astounded. ‘Put it on the hearth, then wash your hands and get your dinner.’ Her voice was still hard, though not as cold as before. Sulien wondered if she would ever win her over, or if she wanted to. It might be easier to dislike her.
Dinner was a gluey stew made from anonymous vegetables and mashed grains, with occasional flecks that might have been meat, but Sulien was so hungry that she gulped down the lot, plus a crust of dark brown, gritty bread with a taste of mould. She was still hungry but nothing more was offered.
She washed and dried her bowl and spoon and put them on a shelf made from a crudely split log. Without a word the old woman picked up a battered iron lamp and showed her to a little room out the back. It had a narrow bunk on either side, the rough-sawn planks covered by lumpy, straw-filled mattresses and a couple of ragged blankets each. There were gaps in the walls she could put her hand through, and an enormous population of spiders of ever
y kind and size. The ceiling was strung with their webs, and so was every corner and crevice.
Sulien wasn’t afraid of spiders but she wasn’t fond of them either. She inspected the bedclothes carefully and got into bed, for it was chilly now and the old woman had taken the lamp. There had been no sign of Jassika all day. Surely she wasn’t planning on sleeping in the forest?
Sulien lay on her back, staring at the ceiling until it was fully dark, and mentally following the path of the sky galleon east over the thickly forested mountains. Where was Flydd going? He had not said. He was a brilliant man; he had led the fight that had finally defeated the lyrinx and banished them to Tallallame. Though at the time he’d had great armies at his command, and thousands of allies.
This war could not be more different. Most of Flydd’s allies had already been captured or killed, or had disappeared, and Santhenar had no armies anymore. All he had was a handful of friends, far away. He could not hope to stop 190,000 of the greatest fighters of all time … unless he knew their fatal weakness.
But not even Rulke had been able to find the rest of Sulien’s lost nightmare. Was it lost forever? She could not afford to think so. There had to be another way to find it. Uigg the drum boy had also hinted at the enemy’s secret, and then there was Skald …
Lucky I didn’t make that promise to Mummy, she thought. I’ll start by far-seeing Skald and finding out what he knows.
But not yet. Not until I’m strong enough.
11
It Had Gone Rogue
When Wilm rose at dawn, Klarm and M’Lainte were bent over a scrying dish half filled with quicksilver, in which a blue needle floated on a disc of golden mica.
‘That way,’ she said, pointing diagonally up the slope. She emptied the dish into a wide-mouthed metal jar, tapped in a few recalcitrant globules of shiny quicksilver and capped it tightly.
‘Ilisial,’ said Klarm, ‘take Wilm and search up the bottom and eastern side of the valley, as far as that rocky knob.’ He indicated a grey protrusion, perhaps a mile further up. ‘M’Lainte and I will take the western side. The guards will search the next valley east.’
‘What does the spellcaster look like?’ said Wilm.
‘It’s disc-shaped, five feet across and a foot through the middle, and made of blue-black metal. It won’t be hard to spot.’
‘What if we find it?’ Wilm had not slept well last night for worrying about the deadly device.
‘Back away, making as little sound as possible. Under no circumstances approach it.’
‘When you’re more than a hundred yards away,’ said M’Lainte, ‘signal me or Klarm.’
‘How?’ said Ilisial.
‘Make a fire and cover it with green vegetation so it smokes.’
Wilm looked at Ilisial, who seemed to be waiting for him to do something. ‘I’ll search the bottom of the gully, if you like.’
He had given himself the harder job, since the base of the gully was partly covered in thorny bushes and littered with boulders. He headed up, looking behind every obstacle. Though it was only 6.30 a.m. the sky was cloudless, the sun shining full on him, and it was already hot.
‘Too damned slow, boy!’ bellowed Klarm half an hour later. ‘Stop mucking about!’
He and M’Lainte were a quarter of a mile further up, on the other side of the gully, and Wilm realised that he was wasting time. The spellcaster would stand out in this empty landscape.
They had been told that it was capable of limited flight, assuming there was a field it could draw power from. But the air-dreadnought had crashed sixteen years ago. The spellcaster could be anywhere by now.
The scorching day wore on, every minute hotter than the previous one. Wilm saw nothing but grey lizards and amber-coloured scorpions, which raised their stingers at his approach, and a stubby snake covered in diamond patterns. It stood up on its tail and watched his every movement with swaying head and glittering eyes. He backed away. The sky was empty apart from skeets and other carrion birds riding the updraughts. Waiting for them to die.
‘Imbeciles!’ he muttered when he came together with Ilisial half an hour later.
‘What are you talking about?’ she said coolly.
‘The people who made the spellcaster.’
She stiffened. ‘They were honest crafters, doing their best in a terrible war.’
‘It’s a killing machine!’
‘What would you know about it?’
‘I know the difference between right and wrong. How can a machine be allowed to choose who lives or dies?’
‘You’re a common soldier, Wilm. You carry an evil sword – and you kill for pay.’
Her contempt was a slap across the face. ‘I’ve never been paid for fighting,’ he said hotly. ‘Not one copper.’
‘But you have killed people.’
‘Yes,’ he said slowly, sure she was building a trap for him.
‘How many?’
And there it was. ‘I – don’t remember. It was in battle. It was chaos. Life or death.’
‘So you’re a killing machine too.’ It was clear that she despised him. ‘Tell me, Wilm, as the arbiter of moral values around here, did your victims die instantly? Or did they lie there in agony for hours while you went about your merry way?’
‘There’s nothing merry about battle,’ he said quietly. ‘It was the most horrible experience of my life.’
Without any warning, something snapped in her. ‘Go away, killer!’ she screeched. ‘You sicken me!’
She bolted up the slope. Wilm stared after her, shaking. What was that all about? He stumbled across to the gully and continued up it, taking nothing in. Why was she blaming him?
At midday Klarm called them across to a shelf of rock running across the floor of the gully, where a larger seep supported a clump of multi-trunked trees. In their shade, the rock was pleasantly cool to sit on. Ilisial sat as far as possible from Wilm and did not once look his way. She was the only one not sunburned. Klarm looked to be in great pain.
‘This is going to take a hundred years,’ he muttered, unwrapping his inflamed stump and rubbing a yellow ointment on it. Had he really cut his own foot off, to escape a trap? Wilm could not imagine it.
‘Why wasn’t the spellcaster near the wreckage?’ said Ilisial.
‘Should have been,’ said Klarm. ‘It was supposed to be securely crated up.’
‘But?’ said Wilm.
‘I think the scrutators had it out on deck.’
‘Why did the air-dreadnought crash, anyway?’
‘Ah!’ said M’Lainte, and looked at Klarm.
‘I suspect the spellcaster was involved,’ said Klarm.
‘How?’ said Ilisial.
‘Perhaps it wanted to escape. I think it damaged the air-dreadnought to make it crash.’
‘It hit the dunes at high speed,’ said M’Lainte. ‘As if the controls had failed …’
‘Or had been taken over,’ Klarm said darkly.
‘Escape where?’ said Wilm. ‘There’s nothing out here.’
‘The weakness of personas is that they’re bound,’ said M’Lainte. ‘If a persona forms an amicable bond with the owner of the device it can be reasonably content –’
‘Though ultimately, most intelligent things crave freedom,’ said Klarm. ‘Like Akkidul.’
‘How can an enchanted sword be free?’ said Wilm. ‘It can’t move.’
‘But it can manipulate things to change to a more suitable master. By betraying its current master, for instance.’ Klarm looked at Wilm’s copper scabbard, meaningfully.
Wilm made sure the sword was pushed all the way down.
‘Where would it go?’ said Ilisial. ‘What does such a device want?’
‘Impossible to guess, though …’ M’Lainte glanced at the dwarf.
‘Common emotions are anger, bitterness, vengefulness and malice,’ said Klarm.
‘At the device’s owner?’ said Wilm.
‘Sometimes it’s directed at everyone nearby,
and they’re the most dangerous personas of all.’ He rose wearily. ‘Wilm, go with M’Lainte. Ilisial, come with me.’
Ilisial beamed at Klarm and they headed up the eastern slope together, talking cheerfully.
‘What does she hate me? Wilm said aloud.
‘A better question might be, why can’t you talk to young women?’ said M’Lainte.
‘Yes, why?’ he said dully.
She clapped him on the shoulder with a meaty hand. ‘It’s obvious you want something from them, lad.’
Wilm flushed until even the roots of his hair seemed to be burning. ‘I’ve never acted dishonourably to a woman in my life.’
‘But with Ilisial earlier, and with Aviel, you radiated anxiety. Just be your normal friendly self and seek nothing in return, and things will change.’ She headed up the slope, her eyes scanning the ground, the sky and the top of the ridge.
‘Aviel always pushes me away; she scorns the idea of love.’
‘She’s only sixteen, Wilm! And she’s had a hard life.’
‘So have I. I don’t have a father,’ he said bitterly.
‘But you had a mother who loved you. Aviel’s family used her as a workhorse, then betrayed her.’
‘Haven’t I proved myself? I’ve befriended her since she was two.’
‘If you keep pushing her for something she’s not ready for, it can only drive a wedge between you.’
‘How do you know? Have you ever loved?’
M’Lainte stopped abruptly.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Wilm, flushing again, ‘that was unforgivably rude.’
She laughed. ‘Few things are truly unforgiveable, and I’m not easily offended. Yes, lad, I have loved, long ago. But in the desperate final years of the war I came to love my work more, and to get more satisfaction from it.’
She scanned the slope and continued. What a fascinating woman she was. Wilm could have listened to her all day. ‘How did you come to be a mechanician?’
‘I was always good with my hands,’ she ruminated as they climbed. ‘Repairing clocks and wagons, water wheels and other mechanical contrivances, and looking for ways to make them better.