by Ian Irvine
He lifted her and went to put her over his shoulder. Karan screamed.
‘Flangers?’
Flangers had just taken Karan under the arms when a harsh voice gasped, ‘Drop her. Hands in the air.’
The sus-magiz was supported by two soldiers who had survived the landslide. He pointed his iron staff at Flydd, and a cruciform crystal in its head glowed the same blue as the crater.
Flangers let Karan down and slowly raised his hands. ‘If there’s anything in your box of tricks, Xervish, now would be a great time to pull it out,’ he said out of the corner of his mouth.
‘It’s empty,’ said Flydd.
‘Bind the prisoners,’ said the sus-magiz.
He was a bloody, blistered, withered ruin, but exultant now. Taking Flydd and the sky galleon, in addition to the other prisoners, might win the war for the Merdrun. After all we’ve done! Karan thought bitterly.
The track was scattered with the weapons of the dead, but all were out of reach. She lay in the mud in her wet clothes, shivering convulsively, while a soldier with charred hair bound Flydd, Flangers, Nish and Maelys, then herself. The other soldier, who had a turned eye blotched with red, kept watch. She tested her bonds. Immovable.
‘Get them aboard,’ said the sus-magiz. ‘Bind the pilot. Take no chances!’
The soldier with the charred hair was prodding Flydd and Flangers up the ladder when Karan heard hooves pounding on the wooden deck of the lower suspension bridge.
The sus-magiz cocked his head, then bared broken teeth. ‘That’ll be Gomlax; he went after the horses.’
He raised his staff but was so drained that the blue light from the crystal only illuminated a few yards around him. Above, the overcast had cleared, though only the brightest of stars could be seen.
‘Only the most desperate of men would ride a horse over a suspension bridge,’ Flydd said quietly.
‘At a gallop, in near darkness?’ said Flangers. ‘I’d call him suicidal.’
The horse rounded the bend. It was enormous and so was its rider, a vast dark shape in the dim light. He came up the track at a full gallop, risking everything on the rough surface.
‘Gomlax!’ yelled the sus-magiz, raising his staff and stepping out into the road. ‘Stop! There’s a great pit here.’
The rider swerved around a fallen rock and kept going.
‘Under the hull!’ rapped Flangers, shouldering Flydd in under the sloping side of the sky galleon and heaving Karan after him.
‘That’s not Gomlax!’ said the sus-magiz. ‘Take him down.’
Karan hit the ground hard and pain howled through her. She opened her eyes and saw a miracle – the horseman riding down the two soldiers, one after another, and the horse trampling them.
He stood up in his stirrups, a giant of a man, and galloped towards the sus-magiz, raising a blade a couple of yards long. The sus-magiz thrust out his staff. The rider swung savagely, his blade skidded along the staff in a shower of sparks and lifted the sus-magiz’s head six feet off his shoulders.
It was over. Really over this time. They had won. Karan could not take it in.
The horse stopped, breathing hard. The rider stood there for a moment, eyeing the headless sus-magiz, who was still standing there. The rider pushed him over, then his shoulders slumped. He dismounted, cut their bonds and dropped the sword.
‘Clech!’ cried Flydd, getting up. ‘How did you know …?’
‘Maelys found me a while back, coming up the road,’ rumbled Clech.
‘She told you about Nifferlin … about Aimee?’
Clech’s broad face seemed to crack. ‘What am I going to do without her, Xervish?’
Flydd embraced the giant. ‘I don’t know. I … just don’t know.’ He looked around. ‘Let’s get out of this shithole. Clech, Karan saved us today, again and again. But she’s hurt inside. Would you carry her aboard?’
Clech bent over Karan. ‘I’m so sorry about Aimee,’ she said.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered. ‘This might hurt.’
He lifted her effortlessly, carried her up into the sky galleon and below, and laid her on one of the bunks. Flangers was bent over Chissmoul, who was on her back, eyes staring upwards, jaw clenched, bloody foam around her mouth.
‘What is it?’ said Flydd, who had followed.
‘Some kind of a fit,’ said Flangers. ‘It’s happened before.’
‘Probably precipitated by the sus-magiz’s sorcery. Take her below.’ He looked down at Karan. ‘What happened to you?’
It hurt to breathe, and hurt more to speak. ‘Soldier trampled me. Tore something inside. Stabbed in the belly – couple of months ago. Nearly died.’
Flydd looked grave. ‘Lie still. I’ll get to you the very moment I can.’ He went up to the controls.
Maelys rose from Nish, wiping blood off her hands with a rag, and called up. ‘She doesn’t look good, Xervish.’ Maelys felt Karan’s forehead, then her hands. ‘She’s freezing.’
‘Get those wet clothes off her.’
Flydd lifted the sky galleon into the air and headed away through the darkness. Karan did not know where he was going and did not care. The pain grew ever worse; she could not think about anything else.
Maelys took off Karan’s wet clothes and wrapped her in blankets. It was a long time before the sky galleon settled and Flydd came. He pulled her blankets away and probed her middle with gnarled fingers. Karan was too ill to feel embarrassed.
‘So many scars,’ he said. ‘What a life you’ve lived.’
That from a man whose face and hands were little but scars.
‘Deep bruising here and here,’ he said, feeling along her left ribs. She winced. ‘Must’ve been a big fellow, the boot nails have left their mark.’
‘He was stumbling, falling with my bolt in his throat.’
‘And that killed him?’ He was still probing her; perhaps he was just talking to distract her.
‘Eventually.’
She closed her eyes but the image of the dying soldier, the bloody foam rising and falling from the wound with every sucking breath, remained. She would see his face in her nightmares tonight, and many nights to come.
Flydd was feeling her belly, across and back, across and back. ‘That hurt?’
‘Not much.’
He touched the long scar and she cried out.
‘What’s this from?’
‘Knifed by a mad magiz, one of mind-linked triplets. Should have died … a great healer dragged me back.’
He felt along her right ribs, one by one, and up over her breast to the collar bone.
Pain shrieked through her. ‘Aah!’
Flydd pulled the covers over her and got up painfully. ‘Three broken ribs, two digging in. I’ll have to move them back in place or they could pierce the lung. It’ll be painful.’
‘Get on with it, then.’
Flydd gave her a mouthful of a sweet liquor with an underlying stinging heat, and the fumes rose up her nose and overcame her. But even deep under, she could feel the pain.
30
I Know What Side I’m On
Ilisial had lain down at the rear of the cave and refused to get up. Wilm, who now had to keep watch for the enemy day and night, was so exhausted he could barely keep his eyes open.
In the middle of the following night he was pacing outside the entrance, thinking that they were going to die here, forgotten by the world, when a pale-yellow light flickered further up the range. He rubbed his eyes, looked again. It wasn’t fire, and sometimes it brightened in regular pulses before dying out, then starting up again a minute or two later.
Found you, you treacherous bastard!
Every time he thought about Klarm’s betrayal, and what it could mean for Santhenar, Wilm’s fury rose. What a contemptible worm he was.
‘Ilisial?’ he said softly, keeping his distance. He never knew what would set off one of her panic attacks. ‘I’ve found him.’
‘Who?’ she said listlessly.
�
�Klarm,’ he said in a neutral voice. She refused to believe anything bad about the dwarf, and any hint of Wilm’s feelings about him was likely to result in her abusing Wilm again.
She sat up, beaming. ‘I miss him so much.’
Great! Just great!
After three hours of climbing he saw that the flickering light came from a cave with a broad, low mouth, a ledge to either side and a projecting shelf of rock above it. The moon was sinking behind the mountains on their left when Wilm edged across to the cave mouth and peered in. Klarm was up the back, staring at the partly disassembled spellcaster.
‘What do you want?’ he snarled.
‘What are you up to?’ said Wilm, biting down on the word, traitor.
‘I was worried about you, Klarm,’ Ilisial said softly.
He smiled at her. ‘You don’t get second chances with devices like these, my dear. If you get control, you have to ride it all the way to the end.’
‘But why didn’t you come back?’
‘Spellcaster had a tantrum and stopped working, and it’s too heavy to carry.’
‘You might have come down and told us,’ Wilm muttered.
‘All that way on my bleeding stump? What’d Flydd say?’
‘How did you know –?’
‘I’m well aware that you’re his informer.’
Was that what he believed? Was it why Klarm was so hostile?
‘I’m not an informer,’ Wilm said stiffly. ‘But I did do my duty. I hope you can say the same.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ snapped Klarm. ‘Oh, I get it. Wilm the hero, who sees deeper and further than ordinary men, thinks I’ve turned my coat.’
‘Again!’
‘What would know about it, you obnoxious little turd? You weren’t there.’
‘I know what side I’m on,’ Wilm said recklessly.
‘You’re so arrogant and stupid that I’m not even going to talk to you. Go away!’
‘I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what you’re really up to.’
‘Get out!’ roared Klarm, standing up on one foot and his bare stump. ‘Before I throw you out.’
‘Go on then, short-arse.’
Klarm put on his wooden foot, then came across, slowly and, Wilm thought, warily, and stopped. Then Wilm made the mistake of laughing.
‘Wilm, Klarm, no!’ cried Ilisial.
Klarm clenched a fist around his knoblaggie and Wilm was blasted out of the cave. He slid down for a good thirty feet, sharp slates tearing through his shirt and pants and scratching down his back, which was still bruised and scored from last time. His left shoulder slammed into a boulder and he rotated around it and cracked his head on another rock.
He rolled over and tried to get up, but the pain in his shoulder was excruciating.
‘Wilm?’ called Ilisial. She actually sounded concerned, which was novel. ‘Are you all right?’
He stifled a groan. ‘Think I’ve dislocated my shoulder.’
‘Stay there, I’m coming down.’
‘Leave the judgemental bastard,’ said Klarm. ‘It’ll do him good.’
Ilisial skidded down to Wilm, heaved him to his feet, roughly and angrily, then recoiled. ‘There’s blood all down your back.’
‘Don’t panic,’ he muttered. ‘It’s only mine.’
She thumped him. ‘Put your arm around my shoulder – and shut up.’
He put his left arm in through his shirt to support it, and his right arm over her shoulder. With a series of heaves, each more painful than the last, Ilisial got him up to the cave.
‘Idiots!’ she muttered, though Wilm was pleased to see that she was more like her old self.
‘What’d you say?’ said Klarm, glowering.
She glowered back. ‘What’s the matter with you two? We’re supposed to be on the same side.’
‘I know what side I’m on,’ said Wilm. ‘Not sure about him.’
‘Bugger off then,’ said Klarm.
‘Stop it!’ she screamed. ‘Wilm, I believe Klarm.’
‘What’s there to believe? He won’t tell us anything.’
‘I know he’s on our side.’
‘No, you don’t,’ said Klarm. ‘You don’t know anything, Lassie.’
‘Don’t call me Lassie, you stupid old fool!’ she snapped. ‘Apologise and shake hands.’
‘Never!’ said Klarm.
‘Damned if I will,’ said Wilm.
Ilisial stamped on his wooden foot, so hard that it must have jarred Klarm’s stump. ‘Next time it’ll be your good foot.’
‘All right! Anything to get you off my back. Wilm, I apologise for telling you the truth about yourself so bluntly.’ Klarm held out his hand. ‘I know you’d prefer to hear a lie.’
Wilm ignored it, fuming.
‘Wilm?’ Ilisial said in a dangerous voice, ‘Do you want me to fix your dislocated shoulder, or will I leave it to Klarm?’
Klarm grinned menacingly.
‘Klarm,’ said Wilm, ‘I’m sorry I’ll always think of you as a stinking turncoat.’
Ilisial growled.
‘Best we can do, my dear,’ said Klarm with his most disarming smile.
The uneasy truce lasted another day and a half. Klarm spent all his waking hours working on the spellcaster, and sometimes he called Ilisial and they debated the efficacy of one modification or another. Wilm realised that he had badly underestimated her. And how could it be otherwise? M’Lainte was brilliant and it stood to reason that her apprentice would also be the best.
‘I think I’ve got it now,’ said Klarm after she had explained a complicated part of the spellcaster’s mechanism, pointing out details on the sketches in her notebook. ‘Would you and Wilm mind going out for an hour or two while I finish it off?’
‘Aha!’ cried Wilm, his suspicions rising again.
‘Give it a rest,’ Ilisial said wearily. ‘It’s dangerous; Klarm doesn’t want us all to be killed.’
Dangerous for whom? Wilm nodded curtly and went out.
‘Get well away!’ said Klarm. ‘Just in case.’
Ilisial emerged, looking strained. She brushed past Wilm in a way that said clearly, Leave me alone! and sat at the furthest end of the ledge, in the shade, staring out.
He climbed a third of a mile to an outcrop of pink and white, contorted rock with a good view west, south and east, and stared moodily at the arid range that formed the far side of the Sink of Despair. Beyond, he knew from Flydd’s great map, was the long, narrow desert of Kalar, then the Wahn Barre or Crow Mountains, about which he knew nothing.
North again stood the rain-drenched plateau, one of many rising out of a large expanse of rainforest, known as Mistmurk Mountain. There Flydd had foolishly written his Histories of the Lyrinx War that had told the enemy so much about mech-magery.
And Ilisial, as an apprentice to the greatest mechanician of all, already understood such devices better than all but a handful of people. How had she known it was the right path for her?
Wilm sighed and turned towards the north-west. Out there, hundreds of leagues away beyond the drylands of Carendor, was the Sea of Perion. In the Time of the Mirror, and for an age before that, it had been the Dry Sea, a sun-baked abyss more than ten thousand feet deep. A salt-scalded wilderness beside which the Sink of Despair was a garden.
Until, on what was to be the last day of the Lyrinx War, the Aachim had blasted away the Trihorn Falls, reopening the channel that had been blocked thousands of years before and allowing the ocean to pour in. In a decade the Dry Sea had flooded again, and it had transformed the dry lands all around.
He looked down. Ilisial was still on the ledge, looking up, but the moment she saw him she turned away. He was about to head down to the cave when a blot of darkness formed outside its entrance and a thread of white lightning, so bright that it hurt his eyes, streaked up from it.
Ilisial shrieked and sprang up. Terror clamped around Wilm’s heart and for a second he could not move, then he ran, knowing he was going
to be too late.
31
The Ecstasy Was On Him Now
Two days after his return from the Sink of Despair Skald was ordered to the rooftop again, where six soldiers were waiting, and Durthix. Dagog scowled in the background.
‘We’ve located the secret weapon,’ said Durthix, ‘in a cave high on the mountainside.’
‘How was it found, High Commander?’ said Skald.
‘You don’t need to know. Your orders are to bring back the secret weapon and kill the three enemy.’
‘Yes, High Commander, though …’
‘Is there a problem?’
‘This will require my third and fourth long-distance gates in two days, High Commander. And such gates are very draining.’
‘Are you saying you’re not up to the job? After begging for it, and swearing on my honour?’
‘Not at all,’ Skald said hastily. ‘I’m worried that I may be short on power to make the return gate.’
Durthix handed him a primed crystal. ‘This focus has been improved. It’s more accurate and will take less out of you. However, at need, you may replenish yourself by drinking lives.’ Durthix’s mouth turned down. Most Merdrun considered that act, necessary though it might occasionally be, as dishonourable.
‘What if there aren’t any enemy lives available?’
Dagog came forwards, panting and licking his lips.
‘Do whatever is needful to recover the secret weapon and bring it back undamaged, Captain,’ said Durthix.
That was clear enough. ‘Yes, High Commander.’
‘If you succeed, your previous failure will be forgotten.’
‘And the price of failure?’ said Dagog.
‘If Skald fails,’ said Durthix, ‘the price of his oath will be paid. I’ll leave that to you.’
That was also clear – the magiz would drink Skald’s life, if he had survived, and the lives of all his relatives. He licked his lips again; he ached for Skald to fail.
Skald looked into the primed focus and saw the destination – a wide-mouthed cave high on a mountainside – as clearly as if it had only been fifty yards away. He conjured the gate.